A howl echoed from miles away, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the very stone. It was a reminder, a promise not forgotten. Lucid knew what it was, the mountain wolf, the S-Grade Unfaithful. He could feel the lingering, malignant echo of its Fate Essence polluting the thin air. It was not close. It was far, far away.
'Just how far did we get thrown?' he thought, the realization dawning with a mix of dread and faint, desperate hope. The distance might be their only salvation.
He remembered the last moment of consciousness: manifesting his chains, weaving a dense shield around himself and Ayame, then the world-shattering impact. He had been knocked out instantly. He did not understand what had happened in the moments after, but he knew his shield had not been enough. Not for her.
She was a bloody mess.
Ayame lay on her side in the crimson snow, her body broken and still. A faint, wet, gurgling sound came from her lips with each shallow, agonizing breath. Each exhale formed a pathetic little cloud in the freezing air, the only sign she still clung to life. Then, even that rhythmic cloud ceased. Her body went utterly still. She had fallen into a deep, wounded unconsciousness, teetering on the very edge.
Lucid desperately crawled toward her, his own body protesting with sharp pains. His hands, scraped and trembling, hovered over her. He had no bandages, no salves, no medical tools. He had never carried them, relying foolishly on his own practical healing ability.
He focused, calling upon the faint green light that symbolized Alice's restorative power. He willed Fate Essence to flow from his palm, directing the soothing glow toward Ayame's worst wounds. The light pulsed over her torn side, her bruised skin… and did nothing. It swirled and faded, unable to take root, unable to heal.
A cold, sinking horror gripped Lucid's heart. The worst of his fears was confirmed. The healing was not a universal magic. It was a bond, a shared function between him and Alice. Alice inhabited his body, granting him the status and abilities of an Enlightened. He could use her powers because they were, in a fundamental way, his own. Ayame was a separate entity, a different being with her own, distinct reservoir of Fate Essence. His healing could not touch her.
She was not Enlightened. She was not even Awakened, as far as he could tell. Yet she had been so strong, standing toe-to-toe with that monstrous S-grade wolf, even wounding it. What was she? And what was someone like her doing in the middle of these mountains, left to die in the snow by a mere C-Tier beast? The contradictions swirled in his mind, useless against the immediate crisis.
He had to focus. There had to be something he could do. She was still alive. Her heart, though faint, still beat.
He turned his focus inward, away from Alice's borrowed light, toward the core of his own being. He recalled the events within the Sentrum Rift, the Omega Rift when facing Ivy. When Ivy exerted domain control, Lucid had pushed back. He had used his Chains of Envy not as weapons, but as barrier forming a domain as conduits for his will. And in a moment of desperate clarity with Karmen's mother, a being conjured from the Rift's threads of fate, he had done the unthinkable. He had touched those threads directly, weaving a temporary revival from pure will and essence.
But that was different. That being was a construct of the Rift, of fate itself. To touch and manipulate the real threads of fate binding a living, independent soul… that was not something he was supposed to be able to do. It was a violation of a fundamental order.
But she was alive. Her thread was not yet severed. It was frayed, thinning, but still there.
He could feel it. A faint, silver-glimmering line, thin as a spider's silk and just as fragile, leading from her chest into the vast, unseen tapestry of the world. It was beautiful and terrible.
"Lucid, what are you doing?" Alice's voice echoed in his mind, sharp with concern and a hint of alarm. She could feel him reaching for something profound, something dangerous.
"I have to try," he whispered aloud, his voice raw.
"You are not inside a rift, you can die..." Alice whispered.
He called out a name under his breath.
"Domain control..."
He closed his eyes, blocking out the blood, the snow, the distant memory of the howl. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw it: the Chain of Heart, not as a weapon, but as a heart, a bright punding illuminating heart. He imagined it not as shackles, but as light. He reached not with his hands, but with his will this time, toward that silvery thread attached to Ayame.
It was like trying to grasp a sunbeam. It slipped through his mental fingers. He felt a resistance, some force of law pushing back against his intrusion. This was not his domain he had formed a temporal domain, of shackles weaving around them in an impossible blinding white light.
He had formed his own domain inside another dangerous domain he couldn't fully grasp. All he understood in that moment was that there were threads, weak ones, strong ones and chained theards amongst them just outside the domain he had formed that continued to pierce inside his own domain.
Ayame's breath hitched, a final, weak rattle.
"No," Lucid growled, the sound torn from deep within. He pushed harder, ignoring the warning tremor in his own spirit. He thought not of manipulating her fate, but of reinforcing it.
He poured every ounce of his will, his own Fate Essence, not into her body, but into that fraying thread. He imagined his essence as a golden filament, winding around her silver one, bolstering it, strengthening it against the pull of the void.
It was agonizing. It felt like he was trying to hold back a tide with his bare hands. The pressure was immense, a weight against his soul. He felt a hot trickle seep from his own nose.
"Lucid, you are straining our bond! You will damage yourself!" Alice cried out, her voice filled with genuine fear.
He did not stop. He focused on the thread, on the tiny spark of life at its end. He poured his will into it, a silent, desperate plea.
*Live.*
*Stay.*
*Your journey is not finished. Our path together is still, not finished.*
Slowly, weakly, the silvery thread glowed a little brighter. The fraying ends seemed to stabilize, held together by the tenacious, golden will he had wrapped around them.
On the snow, Ayame's body shuddered. A deep, ragged breath dragged itself into her lungs, stronger than the last. The terrible gurgling lessened. The bleeding from her most severe wounds did not magically stop, but it slowed from a river to a trickle.
Lucid slumped forward, gasping, the mental and spiritual effort leaving him drained and shaking. He had not healed her. He had not closed a single wound. But he had, perhaps, bought her time. He had anchored her fading life a little more firmly to the world.
He opened his eyes. Ayame still looked broken, pale as death against the red snow, but the awful stillness was gone. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, strained, but steady rhythm.
He had done it. He had touched a thread of fate, and he had not been struck down.
"Foolish, reckless, impossible human," Alice whispered in his mind, but the anger was gone, replaced by a hushed awe. "You should not have been able to do that..."
"I know," Lucid replied mentally, exhaustion weighing down every word. He wiped the blood from his nose with a trembling hand. "But she is still here."
He looked at Ayame's peaceful, unconscious face. The battle was not over. They were stranded, wounded, and prey in a deadly range. But she was alive. And for now, that fragile, hard-won thread of life was enough.
He stood up deliberately, slowly pushing himself up from his knees. A blinding, sharp pain flared deep inside his chest, right where his heart beat. It felt as if hardened ropes, like the links of his own chains, had materialized around his heart and were tightening with merciless force. It was a pain so utterly consuming it stole his breath.
He choked, a guttural sound escaping him, and threw up a mouthful of bright red blood onto the crimson snow. The world tilted. The soothing green light that usually emanated from him flickered and cut out entirely, leaving him raw and exposed to the agony. He fell forward, catching himself on his hands and knees in the snow. It hurt. It absolutely hurt. His heart felt twisted, wrung out, a physical manifestation of punishment.
"Lucid... hang on..." Alice's voice was strained, panicked in his mind. "I cannot heal this. It is not a wound. It is a... backlash."
He coughed, holding a fist to his chest as if he could physically stop the crushing pressure. A cold, logical thought pierced the haze of pain.
'Could this be the price for playing with the threads of fate?'
The answer came as another wave of nausea and seizing torment. He vomited again, more blood mixing with the bile, his body revolting from the overuse of Fate Essence in a way it was never meant to be used. He toppled over onto his side, gasping, the freezing snow a bitter contrast to the fire in his veins.
He could not stay here. Ayame was defenseless. The wolf, though distant, was still out there.
Through the pain, he grasped for an anchor. "Chain of Heart!" he rasped, the words a command and a plea.
His heart, the source of the torment, responded. It flared with a soft, steady white light from within his chest, visible even through his clothing. This was not Alice's borrowed power of the passive green glow. No this was an attribute of the trait. Chain of Heart an ability within him that he unlocked, which had an attribute: Weak Regeneration.
Although this was ultimately her own trait, he realized that he had helped shape it himself, turning it not only into a way to heal, but also into a means of protecting himself.
The trait was only F-Rank. But Alice was a Primordial Being. An F-Rank trait from a Primordial was a concept of a different magnitude, far beyond the mid or even high ranks of a lesser Enlightened or Awakened. Alice was not a power to be reckoned with lightly. She was Primordial-rank, and even her weakest traits and attributes she possesed held profound strength.
'What was Renji again... an Archon rank?' The random, wandering thought surfaced through the pain. 'How odd...'
The white light from his heart pulsed in time with its frantic beat. It did not flood him with instant wellness. Instead, it worked slowly, stubbornly, like something repairing him. It targeted the metaphysical strain, the backlash from his forbidden act. The crushing pressure around his heart began to ease, the phantom chains loosening link by agonizing link. The internal bleeding slowed, then stopped as the torn vessels were meticulously knotted back together by threads of pure, willful light.
It was not a fast process. It was grueling. But it was enough. After what felt like an eternity, the worst of the seizure passed. The pain receded from a roaring inferno to a deep, throbbing ache. He could breathe again without tasting blood.
Shakily, using his arms that trembled with exhaustion, Lucid pushed himself back up to his knees, then to his feet. He stood over Ayame's still form, swaying slightly, but upright. The white glow from his chest faded to a faint ember, then vanished, its work done for now.
He looked down at his hands, still stained with his own blood. The price had been severe, almost fatal. He had touched the threads of fate, and the universe or whatever force that was out there had tried to snuff him out for his audacity. Only the primordial-grade resilience granted by his bond with Alice had allowed him to survive the recoil.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gaze returning to Ayame. She was alive because of his gamble. He was standing because of Alice's nature. The balance was terrifyingly delicate.
He lifted Ayame, gathering her limp form into his arms. He ignored the surprising weight of her dense frame, the way her legs trailed through the snow. The tattered remains of her clothing, torn from her rapid deformation during the fight, offered little protection. He quickly wrapped his own thick coat around her, shielding her from the elements, and in doing so, exposed himself fully to the harsh, biting cold. The wind felt like knives against his skin, but he only held her tighter and continued walking.
The road ahead was still long, a treacherous path through the crimson-stained wilderness. But the oppressive red hue of the air was beginning to thin, the jagged, alien peaks giving way to more familiar, if still harsh, mountain slopes. They were close to exiting the Red Zone now. At least that was something positive, a small, hard-won victory in a day of violence and sacrifice. He clung to that thought as he carried her forward, one step at a time, into the gradually lightening grey of the mountain pass beyond.