The bone-jarring return of gravity left a lingering ache in Jin's marrow, but it was Seraphina who bore the brunt of the physical and spiritual toll. As they scrambled onto the last stable ledge of the maintenance hatch, her legs gave out. She didn't just fall; she collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, her silver hair spilling across the rusted metal. Her skin, usually pale and ethereal, had turned a sickly, translucent grey, and her breathing was a series of shallow, wet rasps.
"Seraphina!" Mei scrambled to her side, her own newly awakened legs trembling as she knelt. She placed a hand on the warrior's forehead and flinched. "She's freezing, Jin. Her mana core isn't just empty—it's inverted. The zero-G shift caused her internal energy to backflow."
Jin looked up. The woman on the landing pad, Kaelith, hadn't moved. She stood at the edge of the Obsidian Wing's ramp, her mechanical coat snapping in the high-altitude gale. One of her eyes was a standard amber, but the other was a complex, multi-lens cybernetic optic that whirred as it zoomed in on them.
"I don't carry corpses," Kaelith's voice carried over the wind, cold and filtered through a vox-grille. "And I don't carry 'Burnouts.' If she can't walk onto my ship, she stays on the Pillar."
"She saved us," Jin growled, his ivory arm throbbing beneath his sleeve. He scooped Seraphina into his arms. She was terrifyingly light, her soul-frequency flickering like a dying candle in his Runic vision. "She's coming with us."
He climbed the final ladder to the pad, his muscles screaming. As he crested the edge, he stood face-to-face with Kaelith. Up close, the pilot was a patchwork of scars and high-end black-market tech. She smelled of recycled oxygen and heavy engine oil.
"The Architect said you were an Alchemist,"
Kaelith said, her cybernetic eye clicking. "Prove it. She's suffering from a Type-4 Mana Collapse. Her soul is rejecting her nervous system because of the damage you caused at the Cloud-Palace. Stabilize her, or she'll be brain-dead before we hit the stratosphere."
Jin didn't hesitate. He carried Seraphina into the cramped, dimly lit hold of the Obsidian Wing. The ship was a mess of exposed wiring and vibrating bulkheads, but it felt safer than the open air. He laid her on a cold metal bench and looked at Mei.
"I need your help. I'm going to bridge her core with mine," Jin said.
"Jin, you can't!" Mei whispered, her eyes wide. "You just burned your bloodline to make my pill. If you link with a collapsing core, it will pull you down with her."
"I have no choice. She's the second verse, Mei. If she dies, the song ends."
Jin didn't reveal his ivory arm to Kaelith, who was watching from the cockpit door. Instead, he kept his duster on but placed his hands over Seraphina's heart and forehead. He closed his eyes, and his Runic Eyes flared in the darkness of the hold.
He saw her internal structure—a beautiful, shattered lattice of silver light. The [Moon-Crest] was dormant, but the jagged edges of her broken mana channels were cutting into her very lifeforce.
[Initiating Runic Infusion: Soul-Anchor Protocol]
Jin didn't use the raw power of his bloodline this time; he used the logic of it. He began to "etch" a series of stabilization runes directly into the air, his fingers tracing invisible lines of golden heat. He wasn't just healing her; he was creating a permanent [Symmetric Link].
The realism of the process was brutal. As the link established, Jin felt Seraphina's agony. It hit him like a physical blow—the coldness of the void, the sting of the betrayal by her sect, and the crushing weight of the Lunar power she wasn't ready to hold. He gasped, his back arching, his white hair damp with sweat.
In that moment, their minds touched. He saw her memories, and she saw his—the rusted shipping container, the smell of cheap nutrient paste, and the secret, golden thrum of the Primordial code.
"Don't... let go..." Seraphina's voice echoed in his mind, a faint, desperate whisper.
"I've got you," Jin replied through the link.
He forced the golden energy to wrap around her shattered silver channels, acting as a temporary prosthetic for her soul. It was a slow, meticulous grind. Every rune had to be placed with the precision of an atomic clock. If he moved too fast, her core would explode; too slow, and she would slip away.
Outside, the ship's engines roared to life. "Strap in!" Kaelith shouted. "Thorne's heavy interceptors are breaking the clouds. We're leaving!"
The ship jerked upward, the G-force slamming Jin against Seraphina's body. He didn't break the connection. He held her through the ascent, his ivory arm glowing fiercely beneath his coat, hidden from Kaelith's sight by the shadows and the spray of sparks from the ship's struggling stabilizers.
Finally, the silver flickering in Seraphina's soul stabilized. The grey tint left her skin, replaced by a faint, healthy glow. She took a deep, shuddering breath and her eyes snapped open—no longer solid silver, but a clear, vibrant blue, flecked with tiny sparks of gold from Jin's essence.
[Link Established: Soul-Bond Level 1]
[Passive Gained: Shared Perception - You can sense each other's status and location across dimensions.]
Jin slumped back against the bulkhead, his energy completely spent. He looked at his right hand; the ivory skin had climbed slightly higher, now reaching his elbow. The cost was high, but she was alive.
Seraphina sat up slowly, looking at her hands, then at Jin. The silence between them was heavy, filled with the realization that they were now permanently tied together.
"You saved me," she whispered, her voice no longer cold, but filled with a deep, unsettling wonder. "Why? I'm just an exile. A 'Burnout'."
"Because in this world," Jin rasped, looking at the stars appearing through the ship's viewport as they cleared the smog, "we're the only ones who speak the same language."
Kaelith walked into the hold, her cybernetic eye whirring as she looked at the stable Seraphina. She looked at Jin, a new, begrudging respect in her gaze.
"You actually did it," the pilot muttered. "The Architect was right. You're a freak of nature, kid. Welcome to the Obsidian Wing. We're heading for the High-Atmosphere Cloud-Cities. But don't get comfortable. The Thorne Corporation doesn't like losing their property, and we've got a three-day flight through a storm-cell to get there."