Ikra let out a short laugh.
"Cute, really." he said plainly.
With the very same hand Ryu had tried to break, Ikra seized him by the shoulder and drove him straight into the ground. Stone shattered on impact, the street caving inward as Ryu's body cratered it.
Before Ryu could even rebound, Ikra's boot came down hard against his side, then again, and again, each kick heavy enough to level walls.
Still, there was nothing.
No broken posture. No slackening of movement. No sign that the blows were doing anything beyond forcing Ryu to stay down for a fraction of a second longer. Ikra frowned, not in frustration, but in focus.
He pressed harder, testing angles, timing, and force. The glowing patterns across Ryu's body flared brighter with each strike, absorbing, reinforcing, answering violence with more violence.
"Hm," Ikra muttered. "So that's how it is." He was drawing his leg back for another kick when a voice cut through the destruction.
"Ikra!"
He turned his head to see that Anora stood a short distance away, gripping a weapon that clearly hadn't been hers to begin with. Its frame was mismatched, its grip cracked, unmistakably scavenged from a corpse.
Her armor was scorched, her clothes torn, soot and dried blood smeared across her face. She looked exhausted, furious, and very much still standing. Ikra straightened, a grin spreading across his face.
"You look like you crawled out of hell."
Anora scoffed and dropped herself onto a chunk of broken rubble, resting the weapon across her knees. "Funny. I was about to say the same thing. You look like one of the devils running it."
She took a breath, eyes flickering briefly to the ruined street, then back to him. "What are you doing here, Ikra?" Ikra didn't answer right away. Instead, he glanced down, just in time to see Ryu move again.
The ground exploded as Ryu launched upward, body snapping into motion with feral speed. Ikra caught him mid-charge, arms locking around his torse in a tight hold. Ryu thrashed, striking blindly, but Ikra's grip only tightened, muscles coiling like iron cables.
Ikra turned slightly, positioning Ryu so Anora could see him clearly. "Wait a moment," Ikra said calmly. "Your answer's coming."
Ryu struggled harder, the red and gold glow along his body pulsing violently, heat rolling off him in waves. Ikra held firm however, unmoved, almost proud as he restrained him.
"You're looking at it," Ikra continued, voice carrying unmistakable satisfaction. "My son's awakening. Fully underway." He glanced back at Anora, eyes sharp, grin unshaken.
Anora let out a breathy laugh, shaking her head as she watched Ikra restrain Ryu like it was nothing more than a rough training bout.
"You know," she said, amusement laced with disbelief, "you're probably the only person alive who treats an awakening like this. Everyone else would be scrambling to isolate him, put up barriers, evacuate the nearby area."
Ikra chuckled in response, still holding Ryu firmly as the younger man continued to struggle on instinct alone. "Isolation dulls the blade," he replied. "I'd rather see how sharp he really is."
Anora's smile faded as she stepped closer.
"But that's exactly why we need to talk about his powers."
Ikra tilted his head. "And why would that be?"
"Because," Anora said quietly, "either you missed something, or kept something from me." Ikra followed her gaze. She nodded toward Ryu's face.
"Look at his eyes."
Ikra did.
At first, all he saw was the familiar, red light burning behind Ryu's pupils, wild and violent, the unmistakable sign of an awakening. Then his breath caught. Threaded through the red was something else.
Gold.
A clean, luminous hue layered within the crimson, steady where the red surged. It didn't behave like flame, it behaved like intent.
Ikra's eyes widened.
"...That's new," he murmured.
Anora nodded, her expression turning grave. "Now answer me honestly," she said. "When it happened that night, when the golden light came raining down across the Badlands, was Ryu also hit by the golden light?"
Ikra snorted softly, glancing away as if the answer bored him. "Probably just sand," he said. "You can see for yourself how many buildings have been smashed around by us. Wouldn't be surprised if something got in his eyes."
Anora didn't laugh.
Instead, she straightened, and the air around her seemed to tighten. When Ikra looked back at her, her eyes were no longer her usual color. Violet light burned within them, sharp and unblinking.
"Do you really want to test your luck lying to me?" she asked calmly.
Ikra froze for half a second.
He knew that look.
Her ability didn't care about excuses, or confidence, or how convincing someone sounded. It cut straight through intent and peeled the truth bare. The fact that she hadn't already called him out meant she was giving him a chance.
He exhaled, a long, tired sigh, and his grip on Ryu loosened just a little.
"...Figures," Ikra muttered. "Of course it'd be you."
Ikra finally looked at her again, expression stripped of its usual bravado. "Yeah," he admitted. "You're the only one who could've figured it out by now. Everyone else who was there wouldn't have a single doubt except you, and it's been years since that night."
Ryu thrashed around once more in his arms, red and gold light flaring, oblivious to the weight of the confession. Ikra continued, quieter now, "And I was hoping it'd stay buried, for his sake."
Anora held his gaze for only a heartbeat longer before breaking it herself. "We'll talk about it," she said, already stepping back. "Later."
Ikra opened his mouth to respond, but she didn't give him the chance. A handheld radio sailed through the air toward him. He caught it on instinct, blinking as she was already turning away.
"Stay alive," she threw over her shoulder.
Then she was gone.
Anora sprinted through the village streets, boots pounding against broken stone and scorched pavement. The destruction hit her all at once now that she was moving through it instead of fighting within it.
Walls collapsed inward. Rooftops lay folded like paper. Fires smoldered where nothing remained to burn.
And the bodies.
They were everywhere.
At first glance, someone unfamiliar with death might not even recognize them as corpses. The shapes were wrong. Shrunken, twisted, skin drawn tight over bone. They looked like husks, like something left out under the sun for far too long. Dehydrated. Preserved in the worst possible way.
Raisins.
The thought made her stomach twist. These people hadn't just been killed. Something had been taken from them.
Anora forced herself not to slow down. Curiosity could wait. Fear couldn't. Whatever had done this, whatever power was at work here, made her chest tighten with unease. It made her cautious of a possible virus, one that could spread out into the world.
She pushed harder.
When the hotel finally came into view, her breath hitched. The building looked like it had barely survived a siege. Windows blown out, parts of the facade torn away, deep gouges carved into its walls.
"Damn it…"
Anora broke into a full sprint, lungs burning, every step fueled by a single thought.
Please still be standing…
Anora took the stairs two at a time, barely slowing as she reached the VIP floor. The hallway was quiet, that alone setting her nerves on edge. She shoved her door open without knocking.
"Pheo."
He was already on his feet, gear half-secured, posture tense like he was bracing for impact. The room locked disturbed. Furniture shifted, curtains torn loose, the air still heavy with something wrong.
He looked like someone preparing to walk back into a storm. Anora shut the door behind her and exhaled once, slow and measured. Just like that, the chaos she'd been running through vanished from her face.
Her expression settled into the calm, controlled mask everyone knew. "What are you doing?" she asked evenly. "And before you answer that, give me a full report. Start from when the village went dark."
Pheo hesitated, then frowned. "Where have you been? You disappeared the moment everything went to hell–"
She cut him off with a glance sharp enough to stop him mid-sentence. "Which one of us is responsible for reporting to the other?" she said.
Pheo looked away first. His shoulders slumped just a fraction, irritation giving way to resignation. "Right… yeah. You." He took a breath and began.
He told her about the first signs. The distortion in the air, the way the sounds of the festival twisted before cutting out entirely. About realizing the shield was active and how panic spread once people understood they were trapped. He described the entity's movements through the village. Fast, deliberate, and playful at first.
Then the fight.
He explained how it attacked without pattern, how it adapted mid-combat, how it didn't react to pain the way anything alive should. He spoke about the cloth. How it moved like it had a mind of its own, striking from angles that shouldn't have been possible.
Anora listened without interrupting, arms crossed, eyes never leaving him. "It didn't react to damage properly," he said. "Cuts, impacts, none of it slowed down. I couldn't tell what even counted as a weak point."
He went into further detail about the entity's movements. Erratic, inhuman, and learning mid-fight. How it wasn't behaving like a predator or a soldier, but as if it was experimenting.
"There was no hesitation," Pheo continued. "No fear. Just… persistence. Like it was testing how far it could go without considering what would happen to it." Anora listened closely, eyes sharp, memorizing every detail.
"It killed indiscriminately," he added. "Villagers, outsiders, even kids. It didn't matter. It didn't linger. Didn't react. When there was nothing left standing, it would move on to another area."
There were moments he skipped over. Exchanges he compressed into vague phrasing. He spoke of "engagements" instead of blows, of "pressure" instead of the raw panic he'd felt when the thing had closed in on him.
He avoided specifics about how close he'd come from dying, how helpless he'd felt when nothing he did seemed to matter. That if whatever inside him didn't intervene, he would be among the countless corpses laying on the ground.
Anora nodded slowly, absorbing everything. "That's enough," she said. "For now." She glanced around the room, then back at him. "You stay here. If it appears again, you don't engage alone. I don't care how confident you feel."
As Anora turned to leave, she paused at the door. "And Pheo," she said without looking back, "next time, don't edit the truth to make it easier to say."
"I did," Pheo said suddenly. Anora had already been halfway turned away, but the certainty in his voice made her stop.
"I told you everything I needed to," he continued, jaw set. "And I need to do it that way." She looked back at him now, studying his posture, the stiffness in his shoulders. He wasn't defensive, he was resolved.
"I need to go back," Pheo said. "Back to how it was before I went to The Free City. Before things got… comfortable. Before I had space to hesitate." Anora frowned slightly. "You think comfort is what's holding you back?"
"I know it is," he replied. "Out there, every step meant something. Every mistake had a cost. I was exposed. I was forced to move forward or die trying."
She crossed her arms. "You've been standing on the line between life and death every time we spar," she said flatly. "And each time, you made progress. Nothing speaks more than results."
Pheo looked away.
In those moments, when exhaustion stripped everything else away, when instinct overrode fear, that was when it happened. When the world narrowed, when his power answered without being called.
And when he heard the voice.
The last time.
His fingers curled slightly at his side.
He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know if it was real. And he didn't know what would happen in the future. But he knew, with a clarity that scared him, that he needed a breakthrough that could cost him his life if he failed.
Anora watched him for a long moment, then sighed. "Just don't confuse recklessness with growth," she said. "You don't need to bleed out to prove you're moving forward."
Pheo met her eyes again, determination still unshaken. "I know," he said. "But I can't afford to stay safe."
"Then survive," she said. "That's the part you don't get to skip."
Trying to give shape to the feeling gnawing at him, Pheo spoke again. "Ever since Elion," he said, slowing now, choosing his words. "Every time that power surfaced, it only lasted seconds. Never more. It flared, then it's gone, like it knows when to stop."
Anora glanced at him, but didn't interrupt.
"I think I know why," he continued. "I don't feel it consciously, but maybe… somewhere deeper, I know I'm not truly in danger. Not really. Sparring, training, controlled situations where there's always a way out. Always someone watching."
He met her eyes.
"And maybe the power knows that too."
Anora exhaled sharply. "That's a dangerous line of thinking."
"I know," Pheo said immediately. "That's exactly why it might be true."
She stopped walking. "You're talking about putting yourself in a situation where there's no safety net," she said. "No margin. That's not training, that's gambling with your life."
Pheo didn't flinch. Instead, he asked quietly, "Has danger ever stopped you from acting?" The question hung between them.
For a moment, Anora said nothing. Her jaw tightened, and her gaze drifted somewhere past him. Somewhere older, heavier. Then she let out a breath that sounded like surrender.
"...No," she admitted.
She looked back at him, her expression hard but honest. "You're right. I can't tell you not to do something I've done my whole life." She stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"But hear this," she said. "Whatever choice you're making, don't pretend it's noble or controlled. If you're wrong, if your deduction fails, you don't just get hurt. You die. And you need to be ready to accept that."
"I am," Pheo said, without bravado. Anora studied him one last time, then turned toward the exit. "Then let's go," she said. "Before either of us talks ourselves out of it."
They left the hotel together, the door closing softly behind them. Stepping outside, both of them remained on high alert, senses sharp as the ruined streets stretched out before them.
"We split up," she said, already scanning the area. "Cover more ground. If there are any survivors left, we pull them out immediately." Pheo nodded, and without another word, they parted ways.
As he moved through the village alone, he felt the full weight of the tragedy set in. This wasn't the distant aftermath he'd glimpsed before. It was intimate, suffocating. He saw what the survivors had been reduced to.
Makeshift barricades that eventually failed, hollow eyes that had learned too quickly how to endure, wounds deep enough to tell that they wouldn't live to see another day. Some knelt beside the dead, their grief silent and raw, clutching bodies so ravaged they barely resembled the people they once were.
Everywhere he looked, the village was broken. Homes torn open. Streets littered with debris and remains. It felt less like a place that had been attacked, and more like one that had been erased.
Then he saw it.
Lying amid the destruction was the corpse of the entity, the source of it all. For a long moment, he could only stare, his pulse loud in his ears. This was the thing that had torn the village apart. The thing that had pushed him to the edge, that slaughtered everyone.
And now it was dead.
Or at least… it looked that way.
One of the rescuers approached him, boots crunching softly against the rubble. He slowed when he noticed where Pheo's attention was fixed, his gaze drifting to the corpse at Pheo's feet.
"That one's different," the rescuer said, brow furrowing. "Definitely doesn't look like the others." He was right. Unlike the bodies scattered across the village, shrunken, darkened, and shriveled like something left too long under a merciless sun, the entity's corpse hadn't collapsed into itself.
It was still wrapped in layers of dark, tattered cloth. The fabric clung to its body as if it had been deliberately bound even in death, strips overlapping and twisting around its limbs and torso.
In places, the cloth had fused to the flesh beneath it, soaked through with fluids and grime. Whatever was underneath was rotting, but not naturally. The decay was uneven, patches of flesh had collapsed into blackened, wet pulp, while other areas remained disturbingly intact, swollen and discolored.
A sour, metallic stench hung around it, slowly and visibly, as if time itself couldn't decide what to do with it. Pheo kept his eyes on it. "It's special," he said. "We need to watch it. Contain it. As soon as possible."
The rescuer glanced at him, curiosity flickering. "Why? It's dead."
Pheo shook his head. "It's the cause of the village's destruction."
The man let out a short, uneasy laugh. "Good thing it's dead then. What's a dead thing supposed to do to the living?"
"There are many ways," Pheo replied. "Disease. Contamination. The grief it leaves behind. He paused, then added, more firmly, "But as I said, this corpse is a special case."
He looked back at the wrapped, rotting figure. "It doesn't seem to die no matter what we did," Pheo said. "It clings to the living. Keeps itself moving. Keeps trying to bring others with him."
Before the rescuer could voice his doubt, Pheo spoke again, his tone cutting through any hesitation. "That corpse was the only threat inside the shield," he said. "There should be nothing else to worry about. The only thing left now is figuring out how to disable the shield."
The certainty in his voice left no room for argument. The rescuer studied him for a moment, then nodded, lifting his radio. "Found something unusual," he reported. "Possible high-risk remains. Requesting containment and further instruction."
Static crackled, followed by a brief acknowledgement. The rescuer lowered the radio and gave Pheo a final nod, trusting him without fully understanding why.
Pheo turned away, a faint sense of disappointment settling in his chest. He wasn't sure what he had expected. Fear, resistance, questions… none of it came. Instead, he wandered deeper into the ruined stretch of the village.
As he walked, he slowly realized where he was. This area should have been crowded with food stalls. Rows of makeshift kitchens, hanging banners, the smell of oil and spices thick in the air.
Now it was all flattened, the ground scorched and broken. Burnt frames and collapsed counters were all that remained.
Yet not everything was destroyed.
Crates lay half-buried under rubble, some split open, others strangely untouched. Sealed containers of grain, preserved goods, even bottled water sat where they had been dropped, as if whatever swept through the village had ignored them.
Pheo stopped, staring at the supplies. Maybe with what was still left, he could do something to help. Seeing what he had, he began to gather whatever was available and do what he could.