As she jolted awake, her eyes snapped open in an instant—sharp, alive. A small, knowing smirk tugged at her lips.
"Alright… you can let me go now."
Adam loosened his hold, embarrassed by how tightly he'd been clinging to her. The quiet between them trembled with the weight of what he'd just been through—short, fleeting moments that somehow carved themselves deep. Small experiences didn't mean small impact.
Yuruki steadied herself, then wandered forward with a lightness that didn't match the ruin around them. She turned in slow circles, sensing the air, the ground beneath her, the strange pulse of this place. Her eyes shone—bright, spinning with wonder.
"A different world!" she announced. Then she glanced back at him, her smile mischievous. "C'mon… there's no time to waste on moping."
She grabbed his hand, dragging him forward as she inspected everything she could touch. Light glinted off her analytical processing eye as they turned with her, reflecting hues of this foreign landscape.
"This texture… these minerals… even the air composition feels different." Looking at the animals and even Adam "The respiration model here—could be glycolysis, or something parallel to the Krebs cycle, or maybe…" She paused just to stare at him. "It's wild."
She studied him with a seriousness that cut through her excitement.
"I doubted it was you. Suspicious, you know? But then you said my name."
Her finger lifted toward his eyes—now red—then traced the outline of his shifting different form.
"And you were literally fading a moment ago. That's not exactly subtle."
She tapped her fingers together, pacing in quick circles.
"But I kept thinking… and thinking… wondering."
Her tail flicked behind her as she wandered down the broken path, muttering to herself. "If you'd been erased. If you'd left the universe entirely. If you'd been pulled into higher-order conceptual space and reshaped into something familiar enough to be recognized but still… different."
Eventually she stopped, panting, dropping into a squat and clutching her legs.
"Huff… I'm talking too much. Anyway—because of all that, I knew it was you. But you confirmed it first, Adam. You said my name. Yuruki."
Adam watched her rambling collapse into breathless honesty, and despite himself, he smiled. Quietly.
"…What if your thoughts were wrong?" he murmured. "What if I wasn't unique after all?"
She fell silent. "Then ill adjust and think another solution..."
Then, without warning, she reached for the ground, gathering whatever she could grab—rocks, plants, fragments of what used to be life. Holding them like a child presenting treasures, she lifted a skull with an empty, neutral smile.
"Look, Adam. This skull—similar to ours, but not the same. Everything here is a bit different." She held up a stone next. "This rock is more compressed than it should be. Metamorphic, but we're on the surface. That's absurd."
Then a plant.
"And this flora… I memorized every species in our world. This isn't any of them. Shorter. Denser. Adapted to something else."
The drones behind her zipped around, storing every sample she handed off without hesitation.
Adam's voice softened. "Is everyone… fine? I was only gone for a couple of months."
Yuruki didn't answer at first. Her stillness was too deliberate... As she thinks that Adam really didnt think about it at all as Adam heart was pounding of how the system was lying to him.
Then, quietly:
"Everything's fine… by my definition."
She brushed off her hands and looked straight at him.
"So? Are you planning to leave this place and come back later, or are you going to actually do whatever you came here to do?"
He exhaled—long, heavy. The kind of sigh that held exhaustion and uncertainty tangled together. Bringing her back wasn't simple. His exit points were built for him, not for someone like her. But the memory of the portal from that mechanical world stirred in him.
Maybe… maybe that could take them both.
And for the first time since returning, the possibility didn't feel impossible.
I nodded once, and Yuruki answered with a simple blank eyes, soft smile.
"...Alright."
Time slipped by as we walked the ruined paths leading back toward Ashfall. The silence was calm—until the trees shuddered with sudden violence. Birds burst upward in a frantic cloud as something thrashed hard within the undergrowth.
I sighed. Of course.
"I haven't told you everything… but this world gets darker than it looks. They always come back. Especially now that the fanatics are gone."
Yuruki exhaled through her nose. "Yeah. I noticed."
I drew my sword from its sheath, feeling the weight settle into my grip. Her quiet, this time, was different—no questions, no rambling. She simply moved beside me. That alone meant more than most words.
And there, in that moment, something inside me thrummed—stronger than before. The strength I'd gained from killing those cult fanatics… I felt it clearer now. Sharper.
I lifted my hand, and the world itself seemed to shift.
A tide of ghouls—hundreds—burst through the trees, snarling, ripping bark and soil apart as they lunged. Hollow eyes. Rotting limbs. Pure instinct.
Ten of them jerked violently in mid-charge, frozen as chains of luminous, fading blue wrapped around their limbs and necks. The glow flickered like spiritual fire, tightening.
I swept through another ghoul, cutting deep into its arm. A second creature lunged for my throat just as Yuruki's drones descended overhead—
A column of searing light, flame-white and edged with plasma, tore through them. Her ten drones fired again, beams burning so hot they stunted the ghouls' regeneration and melted straight through bone.
"I don't know what these anomalies are…" she muttered, mechanical eye flicking through panels, "but fine. I'll handle it."
She raised her hand. The drones responded instantly—hundreds of ghouls lit up under the barrage, flesh evaporating, limbs dropping, their screams drowned under the roar of plasma.
I grinned despite myself.
"Nice."
I moved in, slicing through immobilized ghouls whose chests still glowed from the blast. Heads rolled. Bodies collapsed. Slowly, the surviving monsters realized they were losing.
The forest erupted with the sound of retreat—claws scraping, bodies crashing through the underbrush as dozens fled deeper into the mist. Yuruki didn't stop firing, sweeping the beams after them, expression blank but focused.
"C'mon! C'mon! Is that all!?" she shouted, breath quickening, a wild edge to her voice as she huffed through the lingering steam.
When the last echo faded, she walked behind me again, quiet as before—her smile blank but unmistakably satisfied.
Ash drifted down like snow.
The mist pulsed faintly with darkness.
"Yeah," I said, stepping forward, "we're at Ashfall."
And there they were—Garfield and Karrin waiting near the settlement's edge.
The soldier clenched his hands.
"Forgive me for running… I'm a—… I'm a waste." His voice cracked as he bowed his head.
I let out a slow breath.
"It's fine. You survived."
And I meant it. The leather helmets in their hands, stained with soot and memory, said enough. Every person here had lost someone—dragged off, swallowed, torn apart.
Mothers cried. Children clung to each other. Villagers stared at Yuruki's machines with trembling fear, whispering curses, blessings, suspicion. They didn't know what she was. They only knew she wasn't from here.
She walked behind me silently, observing everything with those sharp eyes.
Karrin lowered his head.
"Damn it… embarrassing myself like that. Crying… sobbing… How did you stay calm? How do you do that?"
Adam: "I don't know…"
Karrin: "I was weak. Shameful."
He covered his face, then bolted out of the settlement before anyone could catch him.
Yuruki didn't move. Didn't comment. Just watched him run.
Adam: "Let's go after him."
She nodded. "But—wait."
Her hand tugged on my hoodie—clean again, as if restored by something I couldn't quite explain.
She looked down.
"I'm… just experiencing everything. That's all. I succeeded." Her voice softened. "You're here."
I blinked, confused.
"…?"
She glared lightly, annoyance showing through the embarrassment.
"I am not some supernatural human. I don't understand how you can do all that."
She crossed her arms.
"Carry me. I'm just a normal person. Can't you get that?"
I sighed, crouching so she could climb on.
Her drones and robots drifted down with her, forming a quiet procession behind us.
And like that—
we moved forward again.