The dust didn't so much settle as it was swallowed—a thick, choking cloud of pulverized concrete and rust that filled the shattered hallway like a solid thing.
Ash rose from his defensive crouch, a sharp flick of his wrist dispelling the last shimmer of his conduit's barrier.
His suit was untouched, not a speck of grime on its tailored lines, but his composure was cracked.
His eyes, sharp and irritated, scanned the rubble—and locked onto the small, dust-streaked figure standing atop the wreckage.
Jessa.
For a full second, his mind refused to reconcile the image.
The one he'd taken from the hideout—a bargaining piece, a bit of gutter-bait to lure that Lucent into the open.
He'd left her tied up in a storage room with Tink, a trivial task for later retrieval once the main objectives were complete.
She shouldn't be here.
She couldn't be here.
Not unless someone had let her out.
But that wasn't what stole the air from his lungs.
It was the conduit in her hand.
Long, sleek, bone-white—it glowed with a soft, sterile light that seemed to push back the filth of the collapse.
It waspristine.
Corporate-grade.
The kind of artifact that never, ever found its way into the Junkyard unless carried by someone like him.
And it was being held by a slum kid in torn clothes, her knuckles white around its perfect form.
His surprise hardened into cold, razor-focused suspicion.
Who gave that to her?
The Red Dogs?
Impossible.
Gideon's gang scavenged rust and patched together scrap.
They didn't have access to clean tech like this—not unless Tenn had been hiding more than just frozen Dolls.
Another player, then.
Someone inside the operation?
A rival corporate faction interfering?
His gaze tracked from the conduit to Jessa's face.
Her eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on him with a hollow intensity that felt all wrong.
This wasn't the sharp, wary urchin he'd grabbed.
This was something… emptied out.
And then filled with something else.
A tool.
In every sense of the word.
Ash's lips peeled back from his teeth, not in a smile, but in a silent snarl of recognition.
Someone is using our bait as a weapon.
And they didn't ask permission.
Without a word, Jessa raised the conduit.
It hummed to life, not with the flickering, unstable light of Junkyard scrap-tech, but with a deep, resonant pulse that seemed to draw the dust in the air toward it.
At its tip, the aether condensed—not into a simple, functional shape, but into a complex, three-dimensional lattice of interlocking violet lines.
It glowed with a cold, precise light, spinning slowly in the ruined air.
A fractal glyph.
Ash's breath caught.
Higher rank.
He knew the rules—the more complex the effect, the more intricate the glyph.
Simple spells made circles, triangles, squares.
But this… this was architecture.
This was a glyph with layers and layers, a spell with intent woven into its very geometry.
He didn't wait to see what it did.
Instinct—the kind honed by surviving many fights and back-alley burns—screamed at him to move.
He threw himself backward, not with grace, but with raw, desperate momentum.
His shoulder hit the frost-coated floor, and he rolled, the world tilting.
Just as he cleared the space, the air where he'd been standing collapsed.
A sudden, violent drop—as if an invisible anvil the size of a room had been slammed down from the ceiling.
The concrete beneath buckled instantly, cratering inward with a deafening crunch.
Dust blasted outward in a perfect ring, and the rubble around the impact zone shuddered and settled lower, as if the very floor had sighed under a new, terrible weight.
Ash scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Gravity.
She hadn't thrown a projectile.
She hadn't summoned fire or ice.
She'd increased the weight of the air itself.
That wasn't a Junkyard spell.
That wasn't something you bought in the Neon Bazaar.
That was specialized, high-tier manipulation—the kind of thing used in corporate demolition or orbital engineering.
His eyes snapped back to Jessa.
She hadn't moved.
The violet fractal still spun at the tip of her conduit, its light reflecting in her hollow, unblinking eyes.
She wasn't even breathing hard.
This wasn't a fight.
This was an execution—and he was the one standing on the wrong side of the glyph.
Ash observed every bit of movement Jessa.
The rage on her face was raw, untrained—a gutter-kid's fury given form.
But her eyes…
Ash couldn't place it, but something in them was wrong.
They weren't just angry.
They were also hollow at the same time.
Lit from within by a borrowed fire, empty of the person who should have been behind them.
He didn't have time to unravel the mystery.
With a practiced, fluid motion, Ash's own conduit was in his hand—a sleek, black etched with subtle orange filigree.
With a flick of his finger, a sharp mental command, and the air around him ignited.
Rank 2—Fire Darts.
Ten darts of compact, searing flame blinked into existence formed into three-inch darts, hovering around him like a constellation.
They hissed softly, warping the air with heat.
This spell wasn't some common corporate-issue tool.
It was a custom creation—one of the few requests he'd ever made.
Back in that place, that eerie maid with the black-and-white streaked hair had asked them—Blaze, Ash, Cinder, Ember—if they desired anything special.
Not out of kindness, but like a chef asking how you'd like your poison prepared.
Ash hadn't asked for raw power.
He'd asked for control.
True pyrokinesis.
Not just throwing fire, but wielding it—feeling its flow, bending its will with his own, making it an extension of his mind.
The maid had eerily smiled and said, "Understood."
What she delivered was deceptively simple on the surface: Fire Darts.
A basic offensive spell by any catalog listing.
But Ash learned its depth the first time he used it.
Most spell apps were merely just pipeline: input intent, output effect.
A glyph did the thinking for you.
Not this one.
To control the darts—to make them weave, split, strike from multiple angles at once—required an active, sustained consciousness.
He had to hold each darts in his mind, feel its position, its heat, its trajectory, all simultaneously.
It was less like casting a spell and more like playing a ten-fingered instrument while solving a geometry problem in a burning room.
It was exhausting.
It was intimate.
And in Ash's hands, it was artistry.
He'd never told the maid thank you.
He wasn't sure she'd done him a favor.
Now, with the violet fractal still spinning in Jessa's grip and the memory of the crushing gravity fresh in the ruined floor, Ash focused.
The ten fire darts stopped their idle hover.
They aligned, pointing at Jessa like the heads of striking serpents.
He wasn't facing a child anymore.
He was facing a possessed conduit and a glyph that could flatten him into paste.
His lips curled, not in amusement, but in cold, professional recognition.
Alright, little weapon.
Let's see what your handler taught you.
Ash raised his left hand toward Jessa, fingers curled loosely, thumb cocked like the hammer of a revolver.
His expression was cold, focused—no theatrics, no smirk.
Just a professional assessing a target.
"Bang."
The word was soft, almost casual.
The ten fire darts shot forward.
But not in a barrage.
Not all at once.
They launched in rapid sequence, one after another, like bullets chambered and fired from an invisible gun.
Each orb hissed through the dusty air, leaving faint, shimmering trails of heat distortion in its wake.
They closed the distance in a heartbeat—a lethal constellation of searing light aimed at the girl on the rubble.
Then, something shifted.
An unseen force, subtle but immense, seemed to bend the space around Jessa.
The lead fire dart's trajectory warped—not deflected, not blocked, but gently, irresistibly curved, as if it had met an invisible slope in the air.
It veered sharply to the left, slamming into the shattered wall beside her in a burst of molten concrete and sparks.
The second followed, bending the opposite way, carving a scorched groove into the ceiling.
The third, fourth, fifth—each one altered course just before impact, their paths splitting and flowing around Jessa like a river parting around a stone.
They struck the ruins around her in a staccato rhythm of explosions, throwing up plumes of dust and flame, but leaving her untouched at the center.
She hadn't moved.
Hadn't flinched.
The violet fractal at her conduit's tip pulsed once, and the air around her shimmered, not with heat, but with a faint, gravitational lensing—a bending of light, of space, of everything that passed through it.
Ash's eyes narrowed, his mind racing.
Not a shield.
A field.
She wasn't stopping the attacks.
She was altering their direction.
Warping the very physics around her body.
His fire darts weren't missing.
They were being rerouted.
"Interesting." Ash murmured.
Arden couldn't believe what was happening.
One moment, he was bargaining for his life with a stylus pressed to Tenn's throat.
The next, the ceiling collapsed and a kid—a literal kid—dropped into the middle of it all like some derailed miracle.
And she wasn't just standing there.
She was pressing Ash.
Making him move, making him defend.
A wild, reckless hope surged in Arden's chest.
He wanted to cheer.
He wanted to shout.
But then a rerouted fire dart exploded against the wall three feet to his left, showering them in burning debris and shattered concrete.
The heat washed over his face, sharp and searing.
This isn't a rescue.
This is a new kind of crossfire.
"We need to move," he hissed, his voice raw with urgency.
He grabbed Tenn's arm, trying to pull her back toward the relative cover of a collapsed support column. "Now!"
But Tenn didn't budge.
She slipped from his grip like water, her arm limp and unresponsive.
Arden stared at her. "What are you doing?! Let's go!"
Tenn wasn't looking at the fight.
She wasn't looking at Ash or the explosions.
Her gaze was locked on the conduit in Jessa's hand—that long, bone-white shaft glowing with cold, sterile light.
Her brow was furrowed, not in fear, but in a deep, searching confusion.
Her lips parted slightly, as if trying to recall a word stuck on the tip of her tongue.
She'd seen conduits like that before.
Not in the Junkyard.
Not in here.
Somewhere else.
Somewhere clean, and quiet, and cold.
A lab.
A schematic.
The memory was a ghost—there and gone, buried under layers of frost and fear.
But the feeling it left was clear: that conduit didn't belong here.
And its presence meant something worse than Ash.
"Tenn," Arden tried again, his voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "Please."
But she just stood there, silent and staring, as the hallway erupted around them and a child warped gravity with a weapon she shouldn't have.
Tenn finally turned from the terrifying spectacle, her gaze settling on Arden.
Her expression was unreadable—not angry, not relieved, just… hollowed out.
The cut on her neck had stopped bleeding, but a thin, dark trail of dried blood stained her skin.
"…I still can't believe you really poked my neck," she said, her voice flat, almost detached.
Then, without another word, she turned and started moving—not running, but walking with a stiff, deliberate pace toward a gap in the rubble where the hallway curved away from the fight.
Arden stared after her for a second, stunned by the sheer normalcy of the complaint amidst the chaos.
Then he scrambled to catch up, his boots crunching on broken concrete.
"That's why I said I'm sorry, okay?" he replied, his tone fraying with panic and guilt.
He jogged to fall in step beside her, his eyes darting back over his shoulder where violet light and fire still clashed. "It was the only move I had! He wasn't going to stop unless—"
"I know," Tenn cut him off, not looking at him.
Her voice was quiet, but it carried a finality that silenced him. "I know why you did it. I'm just… telling you what happened."
She didn't say I forgive you.
She didn't say it's okay.
She just stated the fact, as if filing a report on a malfunctioning machine.
And then she kept walking, leaving him to follow, the ghost of her blood still on his hands and the weight of what he'd done hanging between them, unanswered.
But Arden still slipped the sharp stylus back into his jacket pocket. His fingers brushed the cool metal once before letting it go.
You never know when it'll be useful again.
Across the ruined hall, Ash watched the two figures retreat into the gloom, swallowed by dust and shadow. A hot spike of frustration shot through him—they were slipping away, and he was stuck here.
But the girl with the white conduit hadn't moved. Her hollow eyes were still fixed on him, the violet fractal humming softly at her fingertips. She wasn't chasing Arden and Tenn. She was here for him.
Incomprehensible. Illogical. A variable that shouldn't exist.
Ash clicked his tongue sharply against his teeth. The sound was swallowed by the low rumble of settling debris.
There was only one logical move left.
He tapped the nearly invisible comm-piece nestled in his ear, activating the channel.
"Hey," he said, his voice low, stripped of its usual theatrical lilt. "I need help."
A beat of static, then Cinder's flat, disinterested tone filtered through.
<
Ash's jaw tightened. He could hear the distant, muffled thumps of her own engagement through the line—gunfire, shouts, the hum of her rifle.
"Sadly," Ash replied, his gaze never leaving Jessa, "those shakings you're experiencing didn't come from me."
He paused, letting the implication hang in the staticky silence.
"Someone just intruded on our fun."
<<…So you need help with that intruder? Didn't know you were this desperate.>> Ash can imagine Cinder snickering behind him.
"I'm not asking for help fighting this kid," Ash snapped, his voice tight. "Tenn and Arden managed to slip further. I need eyes on them. You can help with those drones of yours, yeah?"
Across from him, Jessa stood motionless, her free hand tapping a slow, arrhythmic pattern against the side of her conduit.
The violet fractal still spun, but no new attack came.
Not yet.
She was waiting.
Or reloading.
Or something worse.
<
Cinder's tone was dry, almost amused.
"Yeah," Ash said, his eyes narrowing as Jessa's tapping grew more deliberate. "Sorry, but no time to explain."
Jessa stopped tapping.
The violet fractal at her conduit's tip dissolved—and in the same breath, a new, more intricate pattern bloomed.
But this one didn't fire outward.
It wrapped around her, a cocoon of interlocking violet lines that spiraled from her feet to her shoulders, encasing her small frame in a lattice of glowing, gravitational code.
Ash took an involuntary step back.
Defense?
Mobilization?
What is she—
Before he could finish the thought, Jessa's body flickered.
Not like an illusion.
Like a stone skipping across water.
One moment she was twenty steps away.
The next, she was ten—her position jumping forward in a jarring, instantaneous lurch that left no afterimage, no blur of motion.
The air where she'd been standing warped, buckling inward with a sound like a muted thunderclap.
She had just teleported—or something violently close to it—using her own body as a projectile in a localized gravity well.
Ash's blood went cold.
Ash was not a brawler.
He didn't close the distance.
He controlled it.
He fought with precision, with fire, with misdirection—not with tackles and grapples.
But Jessa gave him no space to think.
Her violet-wrapped body surged forward, not with a fighter's charge, but with a terrifying, physics-defying lurch.
One moment she was across the rubble, the next she was inside his guard, her small frame crashing into his midsection with the force of a runaway truck.
There was no technique to it.
No finesse.
It was pure, amplified momentum—gravity itself hurling her into him.
The impact drove the air from his lungs in a choked gasp.
He felt his ribs buckle—a sickening, internal crunch that echoed through his bones.
The world spun as he was lifted off his feet and thrown backward, skidding and rolling across the frost-coated concrete until his back slammed into a shattered pipe.
Pain, white-hot and immediate, lanced through his chest. He tasted copper.
Cracked.
Maybe broken.
Gritting his teeth, Ash pushed himself up on trembling arms.
His vision swam, but his training held.
He didn't panic.
He assessed.
Across the rubble, Jessa was already rising, the violet glyph still shimmering around her like a malevolent aura.
Then, a familiar heat bloomed beneath his skin—starting at his forearms, where the intricate, burning lines of his Scorcher tattoo coiled.
The design glowed a deep, pulsing orange, and a soothing warmth spread through his torso, knitting tissue, easing the sharp edges of the fracture.
The pain dulled from a scream to a deep, throbbing ache.
Not a full heal.
Not out here, without proper support.
But enough to keep him standing.
Enough to keep him fighting.
He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, his eyes never leaving the girl.
Okay.
So, she fights like a cannonball.
Time to stop treating this like a duel.