Kaai turned to run.
Instinct screamed at him — get out, get away, anywhere but there. The mall was collapsing behind him, steel screaming as the world folded in on itself. But before he could take a step, something cold and firm seized his left arm.
Pain exploded through his side.
He hit the floor with a grunt, dust choking his lungs.
When he looked up, she was already lifting him — small, impossibly strong, her hand wrapped around his forearm with the certainty of someone who had already decided neither of them would die here.
And she wasn't pulling him away from the chaos.
She was dragging him toward it.
Kaai's breath caught in horror. Beyond the falling ceiling, through fire and smoke, two shadows moved — enormous, anatomically impossible. Giants of flesh and stone, their forms twisted and skeletal, tearing through the ruins as if the laws of nature no longer applied. Every movement was an earthquake. Every breath, a storm.
His voice vanished under the crash of concrete. The ceiling split open, raining fire and debris. The girl planted one foot, crouched low — and leapt.
"WAIT, WHAT ARE YOU—!"
The question was lost to the roar of the world giving way.
The force of her jump shattered the floor beneath them. The air screamed in their ears as they shot through a hail of falling metal and dust. Kaai's stomach lurched, gravity vanishing as they plunged through chaos. His hand caught the strap across her chest — cold armor, slick with soot.
The giants' silhouettes loomed through the smoke, their forms lit by the fractured moonlight that bled through the broken roof. The sight burned into his mind — two titans tearing reality apart — before they vanished into the fog below.
Then came the landing.
The world slammed back into him like a hammer. The shock ripped the air from his lungs; dust and glass exploded outward, swallowing them in a storm of gray.
Then silence.
The echo of their fall rolled through the ruins like a dying heartbeat.
Kaai groaned, forcing himself upright, every nerve screaming. Pain burned down his left side, vision blurring at the edges. When the dust settled, his breath caught.
They were surrounded by buildings.
Or what was left of them.
Skyscrapers lay toppled, fused together by time — steel ribs and concrete flesh, molded into grotesque shapes by decay. The streets were gone, replaced by jagged stone and pools of stagnant water that shimmered faintly under the broken moon. The air reeked of rust and old rain.
Then he saw it.
Hovering just ahead, half-hidden between the shattered towers, was a shape that did not belong to this dead world. Smooth, silent, alive.
The air-gowl.
Its surface pulsed with faint veins of light, each thrum sending a ripple through the air that brushed against his skin like a whisper. It was beautiful, terrifying — a fragment of alien order in the chaos.
Kaai took a step closer, heart hammering. "What… what is that—?"
The girl didn't answer. She stepped forward, her hair glowing pale blue — the color of calm focus.
Her hand reached out and found the air-gowl's handle.
The machine breathed.
Light surged up its body, racing along invisible lines, spilling into the air like liquid fire. The ground trembled. A shockwave rippled outward, slamming gently against Kaai's chest — not pain, but recognition. Something inside him flickered in response, echoing the machine's pulse.
When it ended, the gowl hovered higher, humming with quiet life.
The girl turned to him. Her hair dimmed to white — the color of calm and command — and for the first time, Kaai realized something that made his stomach twist.
She wasn't afraid of the monsters.
She wasn't running from the chaos.
She was leading him through it
The air-gowl pulsed again — once, twice — and then something inside it answered.
A deep, thrumming resonance filled the air, like a heartbeat that wasn't their own. Kaai felt it crawl up his spine. The veins of light across the gowl flared brighter, spilling radiance into the dark until the ruins themselves seemed to wake beneath it.
He didn't wait for it to calm.
He moved.
Still aching, still breathless, Kaai lurched forward and threw his heavy pack onto the gowl's rear platform. The metal rippled faintly under the weight, then stilled. He hauled himself up after it, limbs trembling, his body screaming in protest.
The girl didn't even look back.
She pressed one hand to the control crest and closed her eyes. Her hair shifted from white to blue, then to red — focus, resolve, ignition.
The gowl roared.
Light burst from its undercarriage in spiraling rings, scattering dust and debris like a storm. The sound cut through the night — sharp, alien, alive. Kaai's ears rang; his heart skipped a beat.
The giants heard it.
One turned — a slow, grinding motion that sent a shockwave through the ruins. Its head tilted, stone and flesh groaning as those abyssal eyes ignited like dying suns.
"Shit—" Kaai hissed.
But she didn't hesitate.
The gowl surged upward.
Kaai's body lurched as gravity tore away beneath him. The platform tilted, his stomach dropped, and instinct overrode everything — he clutched her armor, fingers digging into cold metal. The wind howled past, shredding his breath from his chest as they shot through a corridor of shattered skyscrapers.
Faster. Higher.
The ruins shrank below, the chaos reduced to dust and flickering firelight. The shattered moon hung above them — fractured, bleeding light through a veil of clouds.
The air grew thin and biting cold. Kaai gasped, shivering, the world spinning below in a panorama of ruin. The gowl hummed steady beneath them, vibrating with the girl's pulsing energy as she guided it through the dark.
And then — a shadow moved.
The sound was low, distant at first — then close. Too close.
Kaai looked down.
One of the giants had seen them.
Its massive head tilted upward, twin eyes burning through the smoke. A guttural rumble shook the air as its arm, the size of a collapsing tower, began to rise toward them.
The girl's hair flared crimson.
Kaai's heart skipped a beat.
Its arm — the size of a tower — rose from the ruins like a mountain breaking free of the earth. Debris rained from its body: cars, stone, and the ghosts of streets tumbling through the fog below.
Kaai's breath caught. One hand like that could have crushed the entire mall they'd escaped.
The girl's grip tightened around the gowl's handle. Her hair blazed — from dim crimson to a blinding scarlet — the color of fury sharpened into focus.
Then the gowl's thrusters screamed alive.
Light roared from its core as she pulled hard on the controls. Lines of pale energy flared down her arms and carved themselves across the gowl's hull like veins of living fire. The craft obeyed instantly, stabilizing with a guttural snarl as it shot higher through the collapsing skyline.
Below them, another giant moved.
It had seen them.
Two molten eyes lifted from the ruin — watching, calculating.
The first giant struck again. Its arm carved through the haze, trailing rivers of rubble and flame. The girl banked hard; Kaai was nearly flung off, vision white with vertigo. The world spun — glass, dust, moonlight — until she leveled out at the last second.
He barely had time to breathe before the next swing came. Another dodge. Then another. For what felt like minutes, she wove the gowl through chaos itself, her silent control terrifyingly precise.
Kaai's lungs burned. His body slammed against the harness again and again until pain blurred into numbness. "It's getting closer"
But she didn't hear him — or didn't care.
Then, without warning, the gowl nosed down.
Kaai's stomach turned to ice. The horizon flipped — sky became ground — and his scream vanished into the deafening wind. The world collapsed into color and motion as they plunged between skyscrapers, shards of metal and concrete flashing past like blades.
The dive should've killed them.
It didn't.
At the last heartbeat, she twisted the gowl sideways — the thrusters howling — and the craft skimmed a rooftop, catching a burst of lift that sent them hurtling through a chain of collapsing towers. Each gap was a hair's breadth; each turn, a brush with death. She was flying through ruin like she knew every broken street and fallen beam by memory.
Kaai's vision went black around the edges, his body weightless from the g-forces. His sight dimmed, came back in pulses of light and shadow. When it steadied again, the roar had faded.
They'd made it.
The ruins fell away behind them — and in the distance, beyond the storm of dust and wreckage, the open wasteland waited.
The giants had stopped giving chase.
The girl exhaled through her nose, shoulders trembling once before stilling. The red in her hair cooled to white again — calm, control, composure.
Kaai leaned back against the railing, chest heaving, laughter caught somewhere between awe and disbelief.
"From here on out you are the on driving"
She didn't answer — only glanced at him once, eyes faintly blue in the dark, and the smallest ghost of a smile tugged at her lips