Akiko gathered Raya close, one arm locking firm around her waist. The other braced against the rock, claws sparking faint foxfire that danced along her knuckles.

"Hold tight," she muttered.

Raya didn't argue. Her gloved hands tightened around Akiko's shoulders, face pressed in close, breath ghosting quick over the comms.

Then Akiko let the foxfire surge.

Blue-white flames burst from her boots and threaded along the edges of her suit, a controlled thrust that lifted them smoothly off the vent's floor. The heat warped the air, steam chasing them in coiling streams as they rose. The walls of the vent blurred past, slick and glittering with condensation that flashed to vapor in their wake.

Raya's mana rippled every time her heart jumped. A swirl of light that should have been purely gold, the same gentle hue it always took when she healed or cast barriers. But now it was threaded through with darker veins, tiny spirals of something more intricate, almost hungry.

Akiko felt her own heart tighten, just a fraction.

Magic reflects the soul. Your desires. Your values.

Kaede's words. Delivered so offhand once that they'd stuck to Akiko's ribs for years.

Raya's magic had always been luminous. Gentle. The way she laughed with her whole body, the way she tended strangers without a flicker of hesitation. It had been so easy to trust that light.

Now it was different. Balanced, maybe. Or shadowed. Akiko couldn't decide which.

She pushed the thought aside before it could bloom into something larger. No reason to make a fuss. Not unless things started spiraling the way Akiko's own power sometimes had.

For now, she just held Raya tighter, guiding their flight with slow corrections, claws biting into the stone when they needed to stabilize. Ready to catch her, physically, or otherwise.

They broke the surface with a final burst of foxfire. Steam roared up around them as Akiko stumbled forward, knees flexing to absorb the last of their momentum. Her breath came out in a shiver, misting in the cooler air. The suit still thrummed faintly from the climb, a phantom pressure in her limbs.

The Hold was colder here, a natural chill. The corridors whispered with recycled drafts, vents chugging in a lazy rhythm. After the dreamlike violence below, it felt almost absurdly mundane.

Except for the chill trailing at her heels.

Akiko frowned. The [Frost-bound Core] essence, now slotted as Equipment, still clung to her, exhaling cold in a faint radius. Not enough to freeze, not enough to hurt, just an ever-present bite, like walking with snowmelt tucked beneath her collar. More suited for a scorched wasteland than a frigid mine. An annoyance, not a danger.

She flexed her fingers, half-expecting to see frost there. Twenty hours left before she could touch her Essence Layer again. She'd known it the moment the lockout engaged, but now that she was back in the open air, the restriction gnawed a little deeper.

Still… she could live with it. The fire-aspect boost from the last absorption made her foxfire sing, crisp and sharp, and the cooling aura might just keep her nerves steady in the hours ahead.

She exhaled. Tension rode out with it. No perfect tools. Only what she had now.

And then she realized people were watching. A cluster of technicians stood by the barricades, tools and data slates clutched to chests. Their faces weren't fearful anymore. They weren't suspicious. They looked at her like pilgrims might look at a saint. Eyes wide, mouths half-open, soaking in the twin tails that drifted behind her and the faint foxfire still limning her ears.

Akiko's gut did a small, uneasy twist. She'd always hated being the center of anyone's myth.

Sten stepped forward, hard lines around his eyes pinched a little deeper than before. He looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Akiko's brows drew down. Her suit's internal chronometer ticked calmly at the edge of her HUD, same timestamp as when they'd first descended, give or take the hours they'd spent below. Not long enough for him to look like that.

A beat of unease curled through her gut. Had there been something off down there? Some subtle time dilation in that place, bending hours into days outside?

She flicked through her logs, checked the sync against the local beacon. No discrepancy. No lost time. Just a handful of tense hours they'd spent clawing through that flooded hell, nothing more.

Which meant…

Her ears twitched. Sten must've just had it rough up here. Holding the line. Watching the readouts. Waiting for them to come back or not at all.

Still, the haunted look on his face made something in her chest pull tight.

When he spoke, his voice was less gravel, more tired relief.

"Vent's holding steady now. Pressure normalized across the secondary conduits. Means you two did it."

Akiko's mouth ticked up at one corner. "Glad we could keep your pipes from exploding."

His lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but close. "Yeah. Well. For what it's worth, you've earned some quiet. Don't break anything else for a while."

Raya was there beside her, quiet and solid, one hand brushing against Akiko's wrist in a small, private reassurance.

Akiko didn't say anything. Just let herself breathe, let the tension start to unwind, as people edged closer, this time not to scorn or demand, but to stare at something they couldn't quite name.

When they finally pulled away, Raya gave a tired laugh and gestured toward one of the side alcoves where crew lockers and tool benches were crammed together.

"Gonna get out of this thing before we head home," she muttered, tapping the chest plate of the pressure suit. It was scuffed nearly white in places, thin stress lines spidering out from the joints.

Akiko leaned against the wall and waited. At least outwardly. Inside, something low and hungry coiled tighter with every piece of armor Raya peeled away.

Shoulders first, muscles flexing as the plates came off. Then the careful twist and wriggle to slide out of the heavier torso shell, the way her undersuit pulled taut across her hips before settling back.

Even bruised, even with dried coolant streaking the weave, Raya was stunning. The kind of sight that sent a hot pulse right through Akiko's gut, left her breath tasting sharp.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Her fingers drummed out a slow, restless rhythm against her thigh, claws half-pricked and retracting again. Watching with the same intensity she used to track prey.

Raya finally rolled her shoulders and let out a small sigh, shaking out her hair where it had been pinned awkwardly by the helmet. She caught Akiko's look. Eyes narrowed, mouth curling into something that was part smirk, part exhausted relief.

Akiko let her mouth hook up at one corner, voice low. "Better?"

Raya gave her a wry look. "Ask me again after I stop feeling like a half-cooked ration pack."

Then they started walking. Their footsteps were slow on the grated corridor, boots scuffing through stray droplets.

"What happened while we were separated?" Akiko asked, voice low. Her ears were half-pinned back, still twitching from leftover adrenaline.

Raya nodded. "Karn happened. He's… still trying. Wants to tear the veil. Not just between life and death. Between selves. Merge everyone into one great undifferentiated mass."

She swallowed, eyes on the floor. "Guess it's his twisted answer to grief. If everyone's one, nobody's alone. Nobody's lost."

Akiko huffed, a small humorless sound. "Pretty solution. Horrible reality."

Raya's gaze flicked to her. "And your side?"

"The bigger game. Not just Karn. The realms themselves. Power scraping at the edges of everything, trying to break through. Whoever wins shapes reality in their image. And guess who's apparently stuck being interesting enough to put on someone's betting slate."

They walked in silence for a few steps, the weight of it all settling like dust in old corners.

Then Raya's hand bumped against hers. Akiko curled her fingers until they brushed the back of Raya's glove, and didn't let go.

As they walked, Akiko turned inward towards Takuto.

That notification, the 'racial' one, she sent across the link. That wasn't yours. Or mine.

Takuto's voice, calm and metallic, coiled through her thoughts. Correct. It was not generated by any monitoring protocols we have established. The style, formatting, none of it matches your System's parameters.

So where did it come from?

Origin trace leads inward. He paused, as if he were turning the words over. Deep within your mana core. Deeper than my normal access allows.

She frowned, stepping around a stack of cargo crates while Raya brushed past a pair of engineers. You're telling me my own core sent me a message?

Not in the way you mean. This is encoded into the underlying weave of your being. To access it directly would require dismantling that weave entirely.

Her ears twitched at the thought. So it's just been sitting there? Waiting?

Dormant. Possibly older than your System. Your recent evolution event appears to have activated it.

Akiko's tails shifted behind her, remembering the flare of light when the second one unfurled. Something hers, yet untouchable.

That's unsettling, she admitted.

It is also unprecedented, Takuto said. We will need to uncover additional information to further understand the source and meaning of it, and whether we can expect more such notifications.

Ahead, Raya glanced back with a questioning look. Akiko shook her head and kept walking. The unspoken question, what else might be buried in her, settled into the pit of her stomach.

They didn't say much on the walk back to their tiny apartment. The Hold was calmer now, pressure valves cycling in slow, steady breaths, stray drips from overhead pipes catching the light like brief diamonds.

Here and there, people watched them pass. Some with wary respect, others with wide-eyed awe, but none with the hostility Akiko had felt just days before. The myth of what they'd done below was already rewriting itself into whispers in the dim hallways.

Akiko didn't care. Not really. All that mattered was the slight brush of Raya's hand against hers as they turned the last corner, and the tiny seal on their door that meant the rest of the universe had to stay outside.

Inside, it was cramped and cold, still smelling faintly of recycled filters and the old coolant dust that clung to everything in the Hold. But it was theirs.

Raya kicked the door shut, breath fogging in the chill. Her eyes met Akiko's, still dark with leftover tears and exhaustion.

Akiko swallowed, reached for her. And when Raya came willingly, it wasn't gentle. It was two people burning off every last echo of terror and adrenaline in the way only they could.

The days after were slower.

Akiko spent long hours seated cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, foxfire rolling over her in steady waves. Learning how to shape her aura now that her second tail was part of her, how to keep it tight and disciplined so she didn't burn through mana like a breached conduit.

Raya sat opposite her, legs folded under, hands lightly resting on her knees. Golden light pulsed beneath her skin, sometimes swirled with tiny shadow veins. They didn't speak much during those meditations. Just watched each other's breathing, listened to the low hum of the Hold, made sure neither of them slipped too deep.

Outside, the air was changing. The geothermal crisis had shaken everything loose. The Red Stripes, the most organized of the outer rebellion groups, were pushing harder on the Haven remnants. Sometimes with sabotage, sometimes outright firefights in distant corridors. People started whispering about ration stockpiles, about old vendettas being settled now that the Hold was on uncertain footing.

Akiko hated it. Hated the sense of things fracturing again, of hungry eyes starting to look at her as a potential scapegoat all over.

That was when Raya dropped her little bombshell. She was strapping on her boots, hair pulled back in a quick, messy tie, when she glanced at Akiko and said, almost too casually, "So… Alannah's been helping me make a few contacts. There's a salvage crew heading out. They're going to pick through some of the old Haven wrecks from the entity's orbital party."

She flashed a small, conspiratorial grin. "Figured we could tag along. Get your parts before someone else strips them out."

Akiko blinked, then let out a short laugh that felt brighter than it should've after weeks of strain. "When were you going to tell me you'd been making plans behind my back?"

"When it was actually useful." Raya nudged her knee. "And now it is."

She was halfway into her old Haven-issue pressure suit, standing awkwardly by the crate they'd been using as a gear bench. The dim lights overhead caught on the suit's battered seals, the chemical mesh dull and creased from too much use.

She glanced over her shoulder, caught Akiko's eyes tracking her, and let out a tiny, exasperated huff.

"Stop staring."

Akiko leaned back against the nearest wall, just a patch of corrugated composite within arm's reach in this shoebox of a room. Her arms were folded, mouth hooked into a lazy grin. "Not a chance."

Truth was, the suit was a little too big on Raya, built for broader bodies. It only made Akiko's attention sharper. She studied the faint frown on Raya's face as she cinched straps tighter to compensate.

"Wish I had something like yours," Raya muttered finally, hands brushing down over the fabric of the suit. "This is just… layers of old mesh and prayers."

Akiko pushed off the wall, closing the small space between them in two quiet steps. "Someday we'll fix that. We'll have time. I'll get you a suit as clever and armored as mine."

She hooked a finger under Raya's chin, tipping her head up. Her grin turned slow, wicked. "And trust me. It'll look even better on you."

Raya let out a tiny, embarrassed laugh, the first real color in her face all morning. "Shut up."

"Make me."

Akiko didn't look back at the door when it sealed shut behind them. Easier that way. If she let herself linger on it, that cramped room with the smell of recycled filters and the quiet way Raya's laugh always seemed to fill more space than should fit, it might start to feel like something they were leaving behind forever.

Couldn't afford that kind of softness right now.

The Hold was tense as a live wire. Too many people clustered near bulkheads, eyes darting like they were waiting for something to snap. Conversations dropped to near silence when she and Raya passed, then picked up again in sharper, quicker bursts.

Near a junction point, a harried-looking man came around a corner too fast and almost plowed into them. His datapad jolted in his hands, schematics jittering across the screen.

"Shit… sorry—" Then his eyes went wide, tracking the swirls of foxfire that clung around Akiko's aura. "Wait. You're the one from the vent. With the tails. And your friend…"

Raya gave him a small, polite nod. Akiko just tilted her head, watching him sweat.

"There's trouble two sections over," he blurted, voice dropping to a nervous rasp. "Red Stripes pushing hard on the last of Haven's holdouts. You don't want to get caught in it. Try maintenance sub-A. It loops around and keeps you clear of the mess."

Akiko studied him a moment longer, until he shifted from foot to foot. Then she nodded, short and sharp, and kept moving. Raya fell in close at her side.

At a hatchway with a narrow viewport, Akiko paused, hand bracing on the metal. Through the small pane she caught a glimpse of motion and her stomach did a slow, sour turn.

Skadi, her white hair pulled back in a punishing knot, coat stamped with a harsh slash of red. Her face was set in stone, jaw tight, eyes like cold chips of Zepharan ice. A few armed followers moved in her wake, nerves crackling off them like static.

Akiko's breath stuck. Old guilt twitched low in her gut. She stayed perfectly still, barely daring a breath, until Skadi and her crew moved past, fading into the crowd.

Raya's hand brushed against the outside of her forearm, a light pressure on hardened plating that somehow still felt intimate. Akiko exhaled, nodded once, and pushed through the hatch, leaving the window, and the storm brewing on the other side, behind them.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.