Iyu drifted farther down the hallway, his footsteps muted by the thick carpet beneath him. The place felt as if it was frozen in time, the golden wall scones still glowing softly, ornate frames lining the walls with everything arranged with deliberate excess.
It was the kind of luxury that was meant to impress, not comfort. Chandeliers reflected faintly off polished marble accents, their light bending across the red strips that were woven unnaturally into the decor, curling along pillars and doorframes like decorative ribbons.
He slowed, eyes tracing the doors one by one. Each of them bore a name etched into a polished metal plate, the lettering elegant and precise. Not room numbers, but names. Some of them tugged at something in the back of his mind.
He paused in front of one, his eyes tracing the engraved nameplate.
Aero Valen.
His brow furrowed. The name tugged at something in the back of his mind. He moved on, fingers brushing the cool wall as he walked, passing another door moments later.
Aeris Valen.
That made him stop. The same surname, but different first name. His chest tightened slightly, not with fear but with that strange sensation of familiarity without context, like recognizing a melody but not memorizing where you'd heard it from.
Siblings, maybe. Or something else. He couldn't tell why the names mattered, only that he had heard of them before. More doors followed. Merchants, officials, named etched with pride while others were accompanied by subtle symbols beneath the lettering.
The floor really was for people who mattered. People who were supposed to be safe. His gaze lingered on the craftsmanship of the doors themselves, the polished wood unmarred, the locks intact.
There were no signs of struggle. No blood. It felt wrong, like stepping into a preserved memory while knowing the world outside had already ended. Then he saw something, a door set slightly apart from the others.
The name engraved there made his breath hitch.
His father's name.
His hand lifted on instinct, hovering inches from the handle. Questions flooded his mind all at once. Why was his name there? When had his father–
Footsteps echoed from the stairwell.
Iyu froze. Relief almost surfaced first. A survivor. Someone else who made it. He turned, opening his mouth to call out, his voice already forming a cautious greeting. Those words soon died in his throat.
What emerged from the stairwell wasn't moving like a person should. Its presence felt off, like the air itself recoiled around it. The red strips he'd noticed earlier, decorative, he'd thought, shifted subtly. They curled and tightened as if responding to something unseen.
Iyu's instincts screamed.
He took a slow step back, eyes locked on the figure as his hand dropped from the door. Another step. Then another. The thing's attention seemed to snap toward him, and in that instant, the red steps lashed outward.
He didn't hesitate anymore. Iyu turned and ran. The hallway that had felt silent and elegant moments ago became a narrow tunnel of terror as strips of cloth tore through the air behind him, slamming into walls and snapping around doorframes.
His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he sprinted, the image of his father's name faded fast as survival took over. Pheo snapped toward the sound the moment he heard it, an echoing chout that tore through the hotel's hollow quiet.
"Pheo!"
The door burst open a second later. Iyu stumbled inside, breath ragged, and slammed the door shut behind him with all his weight. He twisted the lock hard, then pressed his back against the door, bracing his feet against the polished floor just as something hit the other side.
The impact rattled the frame.
Again.
And again.
The wood groaned.
Pheo was already moving, heart pounding. "What happened?"
"Where's Anora?" Iyu blurted out, panic bleeding through his voice as his eyes scanned the room. "She wasn't out there, and I don't see her here either. Pheo, where is she?" Pheo's jaw tightened. "The plan changed."
That only made Iyu stare at him harder. "What do you mean the plan chang–"
"Later," Pheo snapped, cutting him off sharply. His eyes flicked to the door as another violent slam shook it, dust falling from the hinges. "Focus. What is that?" Iyu huffled, forcing a shaky grin despite the fear crawling up his spine. "Room service."
Another slam, harder this time, made the door bow inward.
Pheo didn't smile. "Yeah. Thought so."
The banging became frantic now, uneven, as if whatever was on the other side didn't care about breaking the door, but about getting through it. The handle rattled violently. Something scraped along the wood, slow but deliberate.
Iyu swallowed. "It followed me from the stairwell. I don't know what it is, but it moves wrong. It was injured yet moved as if it was at its peak condition. It also had these… strips. Like cloth but–"
"I don't need the details, at least for now." Pheo said, already scanning the room. His gaze landed on the bed. "Just buy me a few seconds for now."
"For what?" Iyu demanded, pressing harder against the door as it shuddered again. Pheo didn't answer. He dove to the bed, ripping the pillow aside and reaching beneath the sheets. His fingers closed around cold metal.
The pistol came free.
Iyu barely had time to register it before–
BANG!
The sound was deafening in the enclosed room. Glass exploded outward as Pheo fired into the window, shards raining down into the open air beyond. Iyu flinched hard at the sudden noise, instinctively turning his head until–
The door gave in.
Wood splintered as something massive slammed through, tearing the lock clean out of the frame. Iyu was thrown inward, barely catching himself as the door flew inward. Red strips of cloth poured through the opening like living things, curling and dragging against the floor, walls, and ceiling.
And for the first time, both of them saw it clearly.
The entity stood in the ruined doorway, its form wrong in a way that made the air feel heavy. Cloth writhed where limbs should have been, stretching, coiling, dragging pieces of debris along with them. There was no hesitation in it, no surprise. Just intent.
Iyu spun on Pheo, furious and terrified. "What the hell are you doing?!" Pheo didn't answer. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Iyu's wrist in a grip that left no room for argument, and yanked him toward the shattered window.
"Thinking fast," Pheo said, voice steady despite the chaos, "is the only option we've got." The cloth surged forward, slamming into the walls, tearing chunks of plaster free. Pheo tightened his grip. "Jump."
"What? Are you insane?!"
Another strip whipped past where Iyu's head had been a second ago. Pheo met his eyes, deadly serious. "Trust me, or we die here."
There was no time.
Together, they leapt.
They hit the roof of another building hard, boots scraping against gravel and loose tiles as momentum carried them a few steps forward. Ity barely managed to steady himself before whirling around, breath ragged, heart hammering against his ribs.
"What if I had died back there?" he snapped, anger cutting through the adrenaline. "Did it ever cross your mind that the jump was a bit too high? Or was that just part of the plan?"
Pheo straightened, eyes still scanning the edge of the building, measuring distances, exits. Only when he was sure nothing followed immediately did he look back at Iyu. "But you didn't," he said calmly.
"That's not an answer."
"It is," Pheo replied. "Because I knew you wouldn't."
Iyu scoffed. "You guessed."
"No," Pheo said, shaking his head. "I watched."
Iyu frowned, thrown off just enough to listen.
"The way you stand," Pheo continued, "your balance. You don't lose yourself in panic when something goes wrong, you adjust. When I grabbed you earlier, it was your body that reacted first, not your mind. You braced, shifted your weight. People without training don't do that."
Iyu opened his mouth to argue, then stopped.
"And the way you move," Pheo added. "You keep your center low. You check corners without realizing it. Hanging out with you, talking with you… You don't think like someone who's lived an ordinary life."
Iyu looked away, jaw tightening. "That doesn't mean I wanted to test it by jumping off a building." Pheo almost smiled. "Fair." Before either of them could say more, a wet, heavy impact echoed from below.
Iyu turned just in time to see the entity slam into the ground. Its body hit like a sack of meat dropped from the sky, spreading unnaturally on impact. "...That was stupid," Iyu muttered. "Even for it."
"Wait," Pheo said quietly. They watched closely, until they started to see movement. The thing didn't stay still. At first it twitched, small, wrong movements, like nerves firing without direction.
Then the cloth began to pull inward, gathering itself. Bones, or something pretending to be bones, shifted beneath the surface. With a slow, deliberate motion, the entity pushed itself upright.
The movement was slow, deliberate, almost lazy. Cloth straps dragged along the ground before tightening, pulling the rest of its body forward in a way that mimicked walking without ever truly being it.
Iyu's stomach sank. "That fall should've crippled it."
"Apparently," Pheo said, voice tight, "it doesn't care about things like that." The entity finished straightening, its head tilting upward. Even from this distance, Iyu could feel it, sense it, locking onto them.
It started walking. Each step was unhurried. Confident. Iyu swallowed, eyes fixed on its unnatural gait. "I don't like the way it moves."
"Neither do I," Pheo replied. "Which is why we're not staying." He turned and took off across the rooftop. Iyu hesitated only a second longer, watching the thing below reorient itself, before following.
They leapt down into the maze of rooftops and narrow paths, boots pounding against concrete and tile. Behind them, the entity changed. Its cloth straps unfurled violently, slamming into walls and rooftops.
Several of them stabbed into the ground, stiffening, thickening, becoming legs. One by one, the entity lifted itself off the street, rising into a grotesque, spider-like silhouette. It didn't chase the way a person would.
It repositioned, vaulting over obstacles, crushing market stalls and low walls beneath the sheer force of its landing. A strap came down where Iyu had been a second earlier, pulverizing stone into dust.
"What… what is it doing?" Iyu shouted between breaths. "Improvising," Pheo said grimly. "Same as us." Another strike came in from the side. Iyu barely rolled out of the way, the impact cracking the ground hard enough to send a shock up his legs.
He scrambled to his feet, lungs burning, vision blurring at the edges. The thing was adapting too fast, every miss teaching it something new. Then, all of the sudden, Pheo slammed into him.
Iyu stumbled, nearly falling. "What are you–?!"
He didn't get to finish.
Pheo shoved him hard, sending him tumbling down a side path, out of the main streets and into the shadow of collapsed buildings. Iyu hit the ground and skidded, pain flaring through his shoulder as he rolled to a stop.
"Pheo!" he hissed, scrambling up. "What are you doing?!" Pheo was already backing away, gun raised. He pressed a finger to his lips, eyes sharp, urgent.
Don't move.
The entity paused. Its many legs shifted, cloth tightening and loosening as its head angled toward Pheo. The moment stretched, then snapped. Pheo fired. The shot cracked through the air, striking the entity's torso.
It didn't slow down, but it noticed. Every strip of cloth reoriented at once, vision tunneling, attention locking completely onto him. Pheo ran. He kept firing as he moved, each shot drawing the thing further from Iyu's hiding place.
The entity lunged after him, legs hammering the ground, its strikes smashing through walls and rooftops in a furious pursuit. Iyu stood frozen for a second, watching it all unfold.
"No," he whispered. "No, don't do this." His instincts screamed to follow, to help, but Pheo had already made the choice for him. Charging in now would only drag the entity back toward him, making the sacrifice meaningless.
His fists clenched.
"Damn it…"
Forcing himself to turn away. Iyu sprinted in the opposite direction, heart pounding, mind racing. He didn't know where he was going, only that he had to find someone. Anyone.
Someone strong enough, fast enough, desperate enough to help stop that thing before Pheo ran out of road. Behind him, the sound of destruction echoed through the village as the entity chased its chosen target, blind to everything else.
Pheo, now alone, once again found himself playing the role he had sworn he was done with, being the one left behind. The world around him blurred as he pushed forward, heat pressing down on him, the sunlight still harsh and unforgiving.
For a moment, his surroundings shifted. Stone replaced dust. The rooftops and shattered streets peeled away, and he was back in the caverns again. Cool, echoing, endless. His breath came out ragged as he glanced over his shoulder, and the thing chasing him refused to settle into one shape.
It flickered between realities. The writhing mass of cloth and limbs one instant, then Beam, the giant metallic worm-like creature coiling through his vision the next. Street and fabric overlapped, memories bleeding into the now.
His head throbbed.
Why am I here again?
The question echoed louder than his footsteps. He had asked himself that same thing so many times before, always in moments like this. When running wasn't about escape, but about buying time.
Images surfaced uninvited. His father's shadow looming over him, voice sharp, hands harsher. Chains biting into his wrists when he was caught and sold, treated as something expendable.
The Badlands followed after that. Endless stretches of sand and ruin where death wasn't an event, but a constant presence. Bodies half-buried by dunes. People disappearing overnight. Survival measured in hours, not hopes.
Back then, fear had been a tool. Pain had been routine. Hesitation had been fatal. He had learned early that if someone had to suffer, it might as well be him. That mindset had kept him alive.
But somewhere along the way, things had changed. The memory shifted again. Clean tents, reinforced walls, the steady order of The Director's camp. Meals that came regularly. Nights where he could sleep without one eye open.
People who watched his back without asking for payment. For the first time in his life, danger wasn't constant. Death wasn't breathing down his neck every second. He had been safe.
And that, he realized with a bitter twist in his chest, was the problem. He'd let himself relax. Let himself believe that this version of life was permanent. That the instincts carved into him by pain and loss could dull without consequence. He'd laughed more. Trusted more. Forgotten how sharp the world could be.
I got soft.
The realization hit him harder than any blow. Not weak, but comfortable. And comfort was a luxury he was never meant to forget the cost of. The caverns trembled. The afternoon sun bled back into view through cracks in the vision, reality snapping into place just as something whistled through the air.
Impact came without warning.
A spear tore through his body, punching out the breath from his lungs in a sharp, broken gasp. His momentum died instantly, legs giving out as pain exploded through him. He collapsed forward, hands scraping against the ground as the weapon pinned him in place.
Pheo choked, vision swimming, the realization settling in with grim clarity. One after another, they pierced him. Shoulder, leg, torso… until his body sagged, motionless, suspended by steel.
Pheo closed his eyes.
And retreated inward.
He was back in the caverns again. But this time, he wasn't exactly there. He stood apart, older, whole, watching. His younger self lay crumpled against a wall, the impact cratered deep into stone.
His body was broken in ways no child's should be. Blood stained the ground beneath him. Beam loomed closer, its massive form scraping forward, metal screaming against rock.
Pheo felt anger rise in his chest. Not at Beam, but at himself.
All that training. All that suffering. And this is where it led you?
Then he saw it.
Watching as his older self, he noticed what the child he once was never could. In the space before his broken body, something flickered. A small flame hovered in the air, no bigger than a candle's glow, yet impossibly vivid against the cavern's gloom.
Gold. Not the color of regular fire, but something denser, richer, alive, the golden flame. It shifted, folding in on itself, until wings formed from the light. A tiny bird, sculpted from flame, hovered silently, untouched by the dust and heat around it.
Pheo felt his breath catch.
The bird drifted closer, each beat of its wings leaving faint trails of light that lingered before fading. It circled the child once, almost reverently, before dipping lower. When it dove, it did so without hesitation, straight into the child's chest.
The moment it vanished, the caverns erupted. Golden flames burst outward, flooding the space, drowning out Beam's metallic roar. The heat wasn't burning, but overwhelming, cleansing.
The child's eyes snapped open, pupils reflecting fire as power surged through a body that should not have been able to move. And within a blaze, a voice spoke. Not loud, not commanding.
Familiar.
I will lend you my strength one last time.
The flames roared higher, filling every corner of the cavern.
But if you wish to use my powers again… if you want answers–
The voice softened, almost mournful.
You must isolate yourself in pure darkness… so the brightest light may shine.
The vision shattered.
Pheo gasped back into the present, pain screaming through every nerve as reality slammed into him. The golden flames rolled off him in waves, licking across the sand and climbing the jagged walls.
Where moments ago spears had pinned him in place, there was now only warped metal, glowing red before melting into useless slag. Pheo staggered upright, breath ragged, every nerve screaming. Not in pain, but in awareness.
His body felt too alive, strength flooding muscles that had been moments from failing. The entity recoiled further, its cloth-straps retracting instinctively. Where the fire had touched, the fabric blackened and shriveled, jerking erratically as if alive and panicking.
A low, distorted sound escaped it. Not a roar, not quite a scream, but more like something frustrated, confused by prey that refused to stay broken. Pheo didn't waste time marveling at it.
He clenched his fist, and the flames answered. They condensed around his arm, coiling tight instead of spilling outward. He lunged forward, driving his fist into the ground and dragging the fire with it.
The resulting arc of heat tore through the entity's lower mass, shearing through several of the cloth-limbs before they could retract. The severed strips writhed on the stone, burning away into ash. The entity reeled, forced back by instinct rather than strategy this time.
Good.
You can bleed.
The sensation inside him shifted. Subtle, but unmistakable. The fire flickered, not dimming, but thinning, as if stretched too far. His chest tightened. He remembered the voice.
One last time.