New Japan’s government had taken me in their limousine. I gorged myself on sweet candy and expensive wine. I had rolled down the windows, just to see outside. I wish I hadn’t. What the heck was going on?

  “ARATA TANAKA, LIAR?” a cardboard sign asked in dying marker. Someone had drawn a surprised chimpanzee with Xs for eyes. A girl in a lilac hoodie held “SIGN MY HOODIE, UNEMPLOYED KING”. A tabloid mic with a cracked NetNine flag was pointing towards me. More, less pleased figures begun moving towards me. I quickly begun rolling up the windows.

  “What the hell are they doing…!? Go! Move the car! Don’t stop the car here! It’s like a protest!” I shouted at the driver, who didn’t respond. “You’re fired! I’m gonna make sure you’re totally unemployed from now on!”

  I took my phone and called the Japanese politician who picked up my story. “Hello? Please come to NetNine immediately! I don’t want to get out the car! They’re seriously angry at me…! It’s scary out here…!” No response.

  The driver in the black suit and sunglasses turned around. “Arata Tanaka, I have some urgent news I must inform to you. We felt it would be best to tell you in person. If the media were to catch wind of what I’m about to say to you, it would cause quite a bit of an issue for you. A short while ago, the mayor, Nicodemus, picked up on your Island Ape video. His announcement was just made. For some reason, all congressmen suddenly gave their signature for your arrest.”

  “Signed… what are you talking about?”

  “We cannot imagine any sort of grounds or the reason for Nicodemus to get this involved ourselves. But… the perception of this will be of your villainy. They’ll say you’re an illegal immigrant in this country, and that you’re an insane fraudster.”

  “No! What is it with you guys?”

  “The Tanaka family owe us 3250 in credits. We will collect it immediately.”

  “What’re you talking about!? That’s the money my mother spent! And she only borrowed it because you guys in the government said we all needed a basement for the fallout!”

  “We will be collecting it all immediately, and will be rescinding your Japanese passport, unless you reject being from Japan, and make no mention of the Assassin’s Association in this interview. You will show that you are untrustworthy, and these theories will all go away. You have caused your country enough harm with these stories; you’ve made all Japanese on the Island look bad.”

  The crowd banged on the window, shouting at me. Laughing.

  “So my own government is betraying me!? You know full well that the association exists! You guys are villains just like the Chinese!”

  “No. You’re no longer Japanese. But before you fall into darkness, you will right your wrongs, and distance yourself from us. Now, this is your last stop.” The man in the dark suit opened the door with a button. The masses crowded around me. A sea of people, staring at me, jeering and laughing. There must’ve been at least 200 people.

  “Hey! You media people are smearing me! I’m not here illegally, that’s totally groundless! Don’t go out scribbling an article without any proof! I’m telling the truth, you’re all gonna see, then you’ll be sorry you ever doubted me!”

  “Arata Tanaka, the unemployed man with extraordinary claims, has just exited a 5,000 credits limousine. If this isn’t a sign the benefits system has gone out of control, I don’t know what is.” The NetNine reporter added, as their mic was trying to find its way through the mass towards me.

  This wasn’t what I expected. I thought I’d be rich, famous, and respected as some type of movie hero by now. But it seems I’ve been targeted. Instead of getting cover, I may get buried in the swarm.

  “Show the choke,” a baseball cap said. “Do the ape choke.”

  “Aha… I do not do requests,” I told the cap, and flexed my forearm like a guy who had read about forearms. “Hypertrophy. Gains.”

  “Gains?” someone echoed, everyone laughed.

  “This guy really is a comedian,” a little girl shouted, and I felt like punting her into the air.

  I’d make all of them eat their words. It was time to Grow; I moved through the crowd with my increased strength. An elderly Asian auntie looked at me like I was the devil. The lobby doors of Studio D were made of polished white metal. I hesitated for a second, but the Island Ape fight still gave me enough adrenaline to push on. I set a shoulder the way you do when you want to look like you have done this before. The security guard buzzed and the doors unlatched. I pretended that had been my plan. Inside, a potted fern in a terrazzo planter reached a fraction toward me as I passed, as if someone had breathed from my direction. It corrected itself, embarrassed to be a plant in public.

  This was it. I could take the fall and look like an absolute nutjob to the entire world. The media would give me another nickname, but I’d live, right? Or I tell the truth, shake the world, and do the best interview ever. I bet they expect me to run away, and of course, that’s exactly what I’d do in any other circumstance. But I have a guardian angel, Oruun. He will bail me out if things go wrong! They underestimated me!

  The NetNine reporter crab walked backward in front of me, heels skidding on the tile. “Arata, if you strangled a registered assassin, where is the proof? CAP says anomalies get masked. Your VOD is a green blur.”

  “Registered assassin,” I said. “Terra caste. He tapped.”

  “Do the trick again,” she said. “Make this grow.”

  “Not today,” I said, and kept moving. “I can’t get big with everyone watching me like this, aha. I mean… I must concentrate, and I need lots of nature around me. Flowers, grass, trees…”

  “Fraud,” a voice contributed from the vestibule.

  “Aha… I prefer entrepreneur,” I said, which made nobody happy, except me. An entrepreneur is what I am. I intend to leverage public discourse to keep my life and make some credits. Oruun’s guidance had me wailed on by a monkey. Still, I survived. It was time to cash in my check.

  The studio smelled like hairspray and hot plastic. The APPLAUSE sign flashed in red. The host wore a smile he had ironed, hair like black seaweed, and a suit the colour of bronze. “Welcome back,” he beamed at the wrong camera. “Our next guest claims he choked out the Island’s Ape, the cryptid which some say stalked our homes and stole our bananas for the last decade. Please applaud politely, because lawyers.”

  APPLAUSE winked on. The audience obeyed, mindlessly.

  “So, Arata Tanaka,” the host said, shaping my name like a lawsuit. “You, which NetNine described as the most ‘Unemployed Man’ on The Island, wrestled a cryptid to sleep?”

  Bringing up that title really annoyed me. The news report wasn’t fair, I was just lounging around on a public bench, enjoying my day, then they decide to make me the face of economic decline. I hadn’t showered in weeks, so I looked like a disease-ridden rat. Now, I could use growth to show off my muscles!

  “Registered assassin,” I said. “He tapped.”

  He motioned at the set’s living wall. “Do we dare, you know.” He wiggled fingers at the ferns.

  I touched a frond. It leaned a hair; caught itself. The front row made the noise people make at decent card tricks.

  “You cannot fake plants,” I said.

  “Our fact checker says you can fake plants,” the host said. “Also, you keep saying assassin like that is normal.”

  “It kind of is here.”

  Silence. I opened my mouth to say something that would, hopefully, sound witty and intelligent, but the building hummed and cut me off. Low, freight train low. The rigging shivered. A boom mic drifted into the air, causing a child to scream in terror.

  “Is that part of your bit?” the host asked, smiling wider because fear is bad television.

  “Not mine,” I said.

  The catwalk tilted one degree. The floor manager hissed, “We are live,” which is television for do not make this worse.

  “Guys, you will not believe me, but there is a grey alien coming to collect me. His name is Oruun, and we go way back. Do not worry, I will speak to him and, aha… make sure we’re all good here,” I said, or I think I did, as my voice sputtered and my face went as red as the woman’s shirt in second row.

  In the crowd I saw Baatar. He filled two chairs and drew a finger across his throat. The paper on his lap was probably my suicide note, apologizing to the world for my lies. It was time to leave.

  “Mr. Tanaka, what are you implying?” the seaweed haired man said, as confused as me, while I darted out, running past security and into the greyness of The City. Living in the forest made me forget how utterly depressing this place was.

  Within the smog and concrete, a saucer blended in. I scurried into the alleyway like the rat I am, wishing for Oruun to save me from further public embarrassment. I needed him. I messed up. Though, maybe they will edit it and make me look good? Probably not.

  The lights blinked once and twice, and then the air picked me up by the chest.

  “Special effects,” the reporter said, still trailing me. White pressed from every direction; a table that was not a table caught my back.

  “You tried to turn your trial into social media followers,” said a voice that had never missed a library return. “Bold.”

  “Oruun,” I breathed. “I was doing PR. D-don’t worry…! I had my eyes peeled for the dragon, too.”

  “Oh, really? Fantastic. Then, you must be aware of the news in Finland?”

  Silence. I had not.

  “… You can either broadcast or be useful,” he said, adjusting a control. “Pick one.”

  A panel unshuttered, and relaxed into window. The Island, the sea, the ring of service lights slid away. On a console, feeds stacked: thermal, sat, a Black Box tactical map with too many red chevrons and a single gold ping that made my bones ring if I looked straight at it.

  “Finland,” Oruun said. “Kemijoki Reconstruction Zone. Armor stalled. Evacuation corridor compromised. I found the dragon.”

  “Dragon? Oh. Yeah. Well done, Oruun, aha… I knew you’d do it… amazing.”

  “The Corpse Fauna also found the dragon,” he said. “I’ve been investigating him. He took your doctor’s shape because he consumed him. He is already ahead of us. Because you couldn’t keep quiet and made several poor decisions.”

  “Sorry, Oruun. But hold on. I could stream,” I said, reaching for the gimbal. “People deserve to see. Maybe the association would turn on the… uh, Eldros… and help us out?”

  He ignored my ramblings. The gimbal did not exist for my hand. “Broadcast or be useful,” Oruun said, nudging a headset toward me. “Pick one.”

  I took the headset. CHANNEL THREE — OPEN flashed in my periphery. My voice came out of my own ear, radio brittle. “Arata Tanaka, um, copy.”

  “I read,” a woman said. “Thermal blind. Wind vector. I cannot—”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Who am I, uh… speaking to?”

  “Oruun’s wife, Ursa. Do not disappoint my husband again, or we will have problems, Arata.”

  The Sanctum re vectored. The stars outside smeared a hair, as if someone dragged a fingertip across a wet picture of the sky. Oruun’s hands moved like he was doing math with gravity and preferred not to be interrupted.

  “Do you remember what happened to Finland, Arata.”

  “Yeah. I read that a thief stole a Great Campaign nuclear weapon from the Assassin Association and fled into the north. He was cornered in the mountains and… blew himself up. And everyone else. Not an attack by Russia, like they told… erm, us.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Good, you weren’t simply idling around in that foul toilet, I see. I need you to understand, the star dragon, in its prime, could erase this city by exhaling. By flapping its wings, it would effortlessly surpass the destructive power of those nuclear bombs. Fortunately, it fell through the Kuiper Belt. It bled star cold for a year. It is still wounded. That is the only reason your Eldros confidant dares to measure itself against it.”

  Something clicked. Eldros. Doctor Vainio. This was all connected,

  “H-hey, Ursa,” I said. “Funnily enough, I… met this… Corpse Fauna… last Thursday. Since he is still alive… we should be looking for a… b-big ape, not a fly. Trust me.”

  “Copy,” she said. “Searching for apes.”

  Oruun watched me instead of the feeds, either pleasantly surprised or quietly furious.

  “That would explain how I couldn’t find him,” he said, almost complimentary. “Cryptids are tricky to locate. Now, we are heading to Finland.” He tilted a control. With a lift of Oruun’s grey hand, the ramp lowered.

  One second, I was smelling hairspray; the next, the air pressure dropped so fast my ears popped like gunshots. The Island was gone. The world blurred into white

  I ran to the cockpit window and looked down. The land was lifeless, desolate. Kemijoki lay ahead as a sheet of hammered pewter, scored with old tracks and new fractures. A blue Rovaniemi sign leaned at an angle. Cold diesel and gelled exhaust rode the air. The snow under my boots made a high squeak. Exo suits were equipped, Oruun buckled me in. He was even more feeble than me, so he used gravity magic.

  “You’re an Earthadon,” Oruun said, not looking at me, which is how he lets you be brave. “And a Nature specialist. You won’t be able to endure radioactivity or cold for long. Listen to your body.”

  “Um, I’m really just following your lead, Oruun” I said. “I have no idea what’s going on anymore. But I’m eager to help, since I messed up… aha…”

  “Be quiet,” the woman rasped. “I can feel the spirit of two figures ahead.”

  A gust tried to push us somewhere else. I reached without thinking, called growth, and felt the seed under my skin answer like a coin warming in a palm. My body grew, and my feet planted into the ground. I was able to remain standing, Oruun resorted to hovering and shouted “Now. Go.”

  “Reading celestial magic in the veil,” a tech breathed on another channel. “And a shadow user.”

  “Well done, dear,” Oruun smiled. “We’ve found the pest.”

  The white brightened. Not white. Gold. A razor of gold tore the storm open like a wound across the sky. Snow sublimated into glitter, then into nothing. For one honest breath, the whole taiga saw the truth:

  The Dragon was enormous enough to shame the horizon. A celestial Chinese dragon, body curling like calligraphy written across kilometres. Every scale was a burning coin, every whisker a comet tail. It moved like geometry that had learned to dance and found that distasteful but necessary.

  And opposite it, a man. Doctor Vainio floated at eye level with the beast, wrapped in his long black coat, mustard scarf, and hat. Round lenses glared white, hiding the three sets of eyes beneath. His cane dangled casually from two fingers. The thing wearing Doctor Vainio stepped out of the snowstorm like it had rehearsed the entrance. Calm. Precise. Wrong. Every part of him moved like the doctor, but none of it belonged to him anymore.

  I swallowed. “You… why are you even here!? In Finland?”

  His eyes didn’t blink. “Of course I am here. I am Finnish.”

  My stomach dipped. Easy Petri. The black-market demolition freak who stole nuclear material like it was pocket change. The guy who pushed a button and erased half the coastline before anyone knew he’d even crossed the border.

  “He believed he had mastered destruction,” the doctor’s mouth said, calm as a lab report. “But he only revealed how quickly humans collapse when the right buttons are pushed. Yes. To think an assassin would kill millions, just to become a legend.”

  I felt the cold bite through my gloves. Petri hadn’t started a war; he’d just… ended part of the map, with a blast that carved Finland open and left the doctors digging through frozen rubble for months. The doctor must have a been part of that team.

  Four translucent, insectoid wings erupted from under the coat, too thin, too fast, too wrong. His voice carried without volume. “Legend at half strength.”

  The Dragon’s reply rattled my bones before my ears. “This planet is corrupted. I will erase it.”

  Vainio adjusted his scarf. “And I will consume you properly. Be it here, or in ruins.”

  The Dragon struck first. A golden blast of light sliced the air, carving a straight line through the blizzard. Snow ceased to exist along the evac route; trucks jolted as ground reappeared beneath them.

  Oruun reacted instantly. He raised both hands, shouting “Gravity Crush”. I felt the air distort as he tried to drag Doctor Vainio downward, pinning him like a meteor under weight. But Oruun strained and gritted his teeth. He overextended. The field buckled in response, but the Corpse Fauna didn’t fall. He simply leaned slightly, his wings compensating, the space around him bending to his preference rather than Oruun’s command.

  “Your gravity reaches too far, little grey,” he murmured without turning. “For being as ancient as I, your combat knowledge is lacking.”

  His counter came instantly. The water in the air condensed into a needle. The wind twisted into a sheath. Shadow draped itself over the edges so sight couldn’t tell where substance ended and pain began. I had no clue what magic he was using, or what was happening. The lance struck the Dragon’s flank. The Dragon tried to rewrite space out of the way, but it still took a vicious blow. Meteor scars split wider. Gold cracked. A seam opened along its ribs, and I half-expected a heart the size of a car to fall out onto us.

  The Dragon roared and retaliated. A second plane of gold flared out, low and precise, slicing the storm like a book page turning. The corridor brightened; traction returned; the last trucks fishtailed to safety.

  “Remember Arata,” Oruun said through grit teeth, “he is only this bold because the Dragon still bleeds the Belt. In strength, this is not a contest. Find a way to utilize the dragon sphere…! Stop them both!” He spoke with desperation, uncharacteristically.

  Upfield, Doctor Vainio decided to prove him wrong. He split. Three copies of him flickered across the storm, as if reality was buffering on a dying connection. Each raised a cane. Each spoke. “Collapse.” They struck points along the Dragon’s meteor wound with surgical precision. Invisible force punched inward. Radiant cracks raced across the Dragon’s body like breaking ice. Beside me, instinct surged hot under my skin. I threw my hand forward and called a vine. I had already realized Nature magic relies on flora and organic life. Out here? Almost none. A single frozen root clawed out of the snow and immediately snapped from the cold.

  Useless.

  “No…!” I yelled, trying to reach again. We severely miscalculated our own abilities.

  The Dragon tried one last elegant move, raising a wall of gold between Vainio and the evac route. But its manners cost it everything. Vainio dove. The three flickering versions of him collapsed into one, wings screaming against the cold. His cane stabbed forward, shadow wrapping it in a double helix. The blow struck the Dragon’s throat, right where the meteor had bored deepest, and sank in.

  The sky buckled. The aurora dimmed, tried to blink, failed. Oruun threw everything he had, gravity spiking in a dome meant to wrench Vainio away from the wound. But apparently, this Gravity Crush couldn’t get a grip; I could only see a distortion of light reflect from the dragon’s body.

  I looked at the dragon. It had no dragon sphere. Did it lose it in the crash? Did losing this part of itself weaken it even more? I felt riddled with guilt and a heavy sense of… well, badness.

  Vainio glanced back at Oruun and shook his head almost kindly. “Too late.” The Dragon fell. It hit the Kemijoki with a force that turned the riverbed into a drum. Gold scales, once divine, guttered in the dark like dying candles. Doctor Vainio hovered above the ruin in perfect posture, wings buzzing, cane dripping with light that didn’t belong in a world like this.

  He sighed in disappointment. “Had I reached the Trident before the Belt scars… what a feast you might have been.”

  The Dragon’s dying light spread across the ice like spilled sunlight. Pieces came off the Dragon. Golden opportunities, I thought. Palm to shield sized golden plates slipped from seams that had not been there a second prior and ejected in orderly vectors. One bit halfway into the ice not ten meters from my knees. Another slid under a splitting pane and vanished.

  “It’s dead,” Oruun said, almost angry. “Now it’s shedding its plating… I don’t believe it. The Corpse Fauna slayed the star dragon.”

  I ran to the nearest plate. Up close it was too smooth to be worked metal and too stubborn to be stone. The edges hummed. When my fingertips hovered over it, the pulse in the gold matched mine for half a second, a syncopation so intimate I pretended I had not noticed.

  “Don’t you dare touch those plates again Arata,” Oruun shouted. He flicked a thin loop of metal, no bigger than a bracelet, etched in tidy hexagons, and let it drop. It spun once above the plate and became a hovering ping on our HUD. I had never seen anything like it. “All calls,” a Black Box operator cut in, tight and professional. “CAP veil remains active. Box the square at civil. Maintain the mask.”

  “Tag set,” Oruun said over him. “Civil twilight in six hours. Black Box will box this area off by dawn. The public won’t know any difference. Likely, they’ll say China was testing nuclear weaponry.”

  “They will take it for themselves…? That’s… that can’t be right,” I said. The seed in my palm warmed like a coin someone else wanted to spend.

  “They will try,” he said. “They will not keep it for long. Louie, Kwon and Mr. Slithery all know that a Corpse Fauna exists, somewhere. So, they’ll destroy the corpse… and conclude this madness for us.”

  Along the river, the Corpse Fauna’s head lifted, tasting air that did not belong to us, with lips that stretched inhumanly into a proboscis. He was terrifying.

  We moved to back up the ramp. Under the ice, the nearest plate thrummed once, like a heartbeat you could almost count.

  “Get rid of your devices,” Oruun said. “With no more Celestial readings, Nuxx won’t be alerted for some time.”

  “So, Nuxx… what does he look like?” I said, biding time. Desperately thinking of a strategy.

  “Cthulhu, an octopus Nine-Aberrant, is my best guess. I will train you, personally. I pray your dragon sphere has a trump card hidden within.” He seemed disappointed. Beaten. “What he looks like, and who he is, doesn’t matter. If you remember anything, remember this; Nuxx is the greatest threat to our universe, bar none.”

  I nodded, then stopped nodding. I felt like a vulture, waiting out the dragon, ensuring it was time to swoop in. A hairline seam in the ice softened. Frost crawled backward in neat lines. The plates pulsated, catching my eye. “Arata,” Oruun said. It was not a warning. It was the moment before one.

  “I know,” I said. “… I, uh, think I left something back there… maybe my dragon sphere…? H-hold on…”

  I awkwardly trudged back through the snow. Oruun was silent, only the crunching of snow filled the air. Then I ran. I ran back towards those golden scales, high off the dopamine it gave me yesterday, I could feel a smile warm my face already. Oruun froze my body still, but it was too late. Heat hit and warmed me entirely. I was probably smiling like a maniac. Gold climbed my palm in thin veins that looked like they had always been there. The plate’s geometry unfolded across my wrist in tidy hexagons, then locked to a ridge at my forearm with a small, final click.

  “Stop,” Oruun shouted forcefully, already moving towards me. His hand closed on my shoulder and met something harder than cloth. The armour chose me.

  Across the field, the Corpse Fauna froze. His wings trembled. The cane that was not a cane angled toward me like an accusation. “Thief. You are not worthy.” He lifted higher, speaking calm and clear, as if giving a lecture to first year morticians. “Return that.”

  “I will not,” I said.

  He moved first. The lance came again, narrow and perfect. The golden ridge on my forearm lifted half a finger and met it. The sound it made was small and private. The lance died. The Dragon’s eye, far across the ice, turned. Pain lived there. The Kuiper Belt lived there. I felt the last of its light slide into my bones.

  Oruun stared at me as if measuring a weapon he had only read about. “You wear its last breath,” he said quietly. “If you master that gift, you can free this universe from Nuxx, Arata,” Oruun said, finally exhaling. “We leave. Now. Before the Association decides that belongs to them.”

  “No, we don’t” I said.

  “… My, Oruun. You’ve been treating your pupil rather poorly.” The Corpse Fauna quipped.

  The dragon’s power trembled within me. Gold crawled up my wrist, then retreated, like it was testing how much of me it could own. My face was obscured with a golden helmet.

  Across the ice, the Corpse Fauna stood perfectly still holding his hands behind his back. Head tilted. A mortician evaluating a cadaver that insisted on breathing. “I’ve completely failed,” he murmured, voice soft and flat, as if speaking to himself. “The dragon is reactive. But you’re unstable.” He didn’t move toward me. Just observed. Like I was a rare animal he expected to die on its own.

  Behind me, Oruun touched down in a glide of manipulated gravity. His eyes flicked between me and the place the Dragon had fallen, then snapped to a conclusion only he could see. “We leave,” he said. “Now. To Edenfall.”

  My breath hitched. “Hold on… I’m not… aha… y-you people can’t…” My voice cracked and jumped like it wasn’t mine. “You can’t just tell me I’m going to another planet.”

  “You are the armour-bearer,” he said. “Your personal wants are not particularly relevant. Let’s go.”

  That detonated something in my chest. The gold on my arm brightened; pain lanced up into my shoulder. I dug my fingers into my hair, helmet rattling. “I didn’t ASK for this!” I shouted. “I’m not some… some weapon you get to boss around!”

  Corpse Fauna’s head tilted further. “Emotional overload... and your power only soars higher.”

  “I have been living in a toilet for a WEEK!” My voice broke, embarrassingly high. “The Association hates me, security thinks I’m a clown, the news keeps calling me an unemployed liar, I can’t breathe without someone laughing at me… and YOU…” I jabbed a shaking hand at Oruun, “… you just tell me I’m going to a DIFFERENT PLANET?! Like I’m luggage?!”

  Oruun blinked with that alien slowness that meant he genuinely did not understand the problem. “Nuxx will check the logs,” he said. “He will hear of this any day. He will come. We do not have time for volatility.”

  “Oh, volatility?” I barked a laugh. “I’ll SHOW you volatility!” The spike of gold up my arm sharpened into a blade of light as I lunged. Oruun raised one hand. Gravity folded. My punch stopped a centimetre from his face, frozen mid-air like a pinned insect.

  “This is not a fight,” he said.

  “It IS NOW!”

  I tore free of the hold by sheer panic, swinging again. The armour reacted faster than I could think, throwing a line of gold that carved a trench in the ice. Oruun stepped aside, redirected my momentum with a lazy wave, and I skidded across the frozen river, spraying shards. I got up, chest heaving, vision doubled. Oruun didn’t flinch.

  “You lack control,” he said. “And understanding.”

  “I lack RESPECT!” I spat, charging him again. “I’m done being everyone’s punching bag!”

  This time my fist clipped his jaw, just barely, but enough to make his head turn.

  A flicker of shock crossed his face. Just a flicker. But I saw it. Across the field, Corpse Fauna gave a small, satisfied exhale. “Quite impressive. If it connected, you’d have burst Oruun’s head like a watermelon.” He took a step back from the fight, interest fading into that pale disappointment only he could deliver. “Armour response rising. 17%. Silver-tier magical readings already… but Arata will break. The armour will seek correction. Retrieval later is optimal…” He turned away and flew over the snow. He did not register our existence. No threat. No grand exit. Just gone.

  Oruun didn’t watch him leave. His attention was on me. Only me. I swung again, but gravity rippled out in a silent cone. My legs buckled. The armour hissed with gold static. Then I hit the ice, breath escaping in a grunt. I tried to get up. I couldn’t. The sky above me blurred. My arms shook. My helmet felt too small. He stepped closer, voice low. “You are afraid,” he said. “Good. Fear acknowledges the scale of what hunts us.”

  I choked on something between a laugh and a sob. “I can’t keep doing this, Oruun. I can’t. I’m not built for this cosmic nonsense. I just… I just want a life. A real life. Something more than… toilets and humiliation.”

  “You seek opportunity,” he said. “A place where your potential is not suffocated.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes,” I said, trying not to cry. The gold dimmed on my arm. “Y-you… you promised you’d help me.”

  “Edenfall,” he said, kneeling beside me. “Is where that life begins.”

  I stared up at him. Those large, dark eyes held countless secrets. His tiny lips remained locked, I thought he may be incapable of a smile. The ice around us. The place the dragon fell. The empty horizon. The fact that everyone else had already decided my fate except me. For the first time, choosing anything felt like freedom. I reached up. He took my hand. Not warm. Not gentle. But firm.

  “Fine,” I whispered. “I’ll come. But after this… after Nuxx… I want something better. I want a real life. Please, Oruun. I’ve never trusted anyone before… aha… b-but… I’ll trust you.”

  Oruun nodded once at me, the snivelling dragon-rat-boy. “Then let us earn your bright, wonderful future.”

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