It was only a small drop from the jagged gap where he'd forced himself out of the warehouse wall—but it felt like he'd been hurled off a rooftop. His knees buckled for a second, boots skidding on wet ground. He caught himself on his palms, grit and glass biting into his skin.
"Fuck," he muttered through clenched teeth.
The next breath burned.
He staggered upright, sucking damp air into his lungs. Cold rain slapped his face and soaked into his hair, washing rust-colored dust from his clothes.
His right shoulder screamed.
Kota glanced down.
Blood ran in uneven lines from high on his shoulder, trailing down his bicep and dripping off his fingers in slow, dark drops. The slice wasn't neat—it was jagged, carved through skin and muscle in an angry red line almost as long as his hand. Flesh gaped around the wound, swollen and already inflamed. The edges were ragged where the beast's hook-like claws had torn rather than cut.
His shirt clung to it, fabric torn open and stained nearly black in the low light.
Not good.
Not deep enough to kill him quickly.
But bad enough that if it got worse, if it got infected—
A low, scraping shriek echoed behind him.
Kota snapped his head up.
Through the gap in the warehouse wall, he saw claws—those same elongated, rust-stained blades—punching through the metal where he'd just squeezed out. The wall groaned under the force. Sharp ends pierced fully through and dragged downward, shrieking against steel, sending a shiver through the frame of the building.
The creature slammed into the interior side with a dull, heavy impact. Dust puffed out of the cracks. The wall dented inward.
It was trying to force its body through.
No time to think.
No time to stand there staring at his own blood.
Kota shifted the weight on his left shoulder, adjusting his grip. Three copper spools—dense, heavy metal—dug into his flesh, the strap biting hard into muscle.
He could drop them.
He should drop them.
Marcus needs them.
I told him I'd bring them back.
His jaw tightened.
Kota turned and ran.
Not wildly, not blind with panic. His movements were tight, purposeful—stripped of anything wasted.
He cut across the broken lot outside the warehouse, boots finding solid patches of ground almost automatically. Rain fell harder here, seeping through holes in the fractured roofing, turning every shallow dip into a slick trap. His injured shoulder protested with every step, each jolt sending a hot, searing throb up his neck and into his skull.
Breathe.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Don't think about the claws.
He forced himself between leaning walls and stacks of crushed crates, choosing the narrowest routes. The beast might be able to punch through metal—but it was big. Those long limbs needed space to swing.
Distance first. Then hiding.
Then home.
The dark area wrapped around him like a lung with half its breath held. It was quieter this far from the safer slum streets; sound didn't travel cleanly. Distant metal groans and drips of water felt muffled, smothered.
Behind him, for a few seconds, he heard only the rain.
Then—faintly—metal screamed again. Something heavy hit the inside of the warehouse. Another impact. A twisted echo.
No more claws scraping near the exit.
Either it was trapped, or it had decided pushing through the gap wasn't worth the effort.
Or it was finding another way out.
Kota didn't turn back to check.
He moved through the jagged maze of ruined transit stations and collapsed warehouses, twisting through half-remembered paths from previous runs. His mind filed landmarks automatically: a buckled rail line, a collapsed roof, an overturned cargo hauler slowly rusting into the ground.
The closer he got to the safer parts of the outer slums, the more color bled back into the world: scraps of graffiti clinging stubbornly to crumbling walls, makeshift tarp roofs strung between buildings, the faint hum of distant generators.
The pain in his shoulder gnawed at him like something with teeth.
By the time he reached the first set of faded warning markers—old signs bolted to leaning poles, their paint nearly erased by rust—his breathing had gone shallow and uneven. Not from the run. From the effort of holding himself together.
He found a narrow alcove between two stacked housing containers and ducked in, shielded from most of the rain. The air smelled like damp fabric and old oil.
Only then did he allow himself to really look at the wound.
He braced his back against the cold metal wall and set the copper spools down carefully, one by one, until the weight was finally off his left shoulder. Without their pressure, his right side flared in fresh protest, exposed and unbalanced.
He peeled his shirt away from the gash.
The fabric stuck.
When it finally pulled free, hot agony lanced through him. Blood had clotted in chaotic shapes along the torn edges, forming gummy, dark lines. The cut ran from the top of his shoulder down toward the outside of his upper arm, deep enough that he could see darker tissue beneath pale, shredded skin. The flesh around it was swelling, bruised already, discoloration spreading beneath the surface.
Kota exhaled through his teeth.
Not life-threatening.
But it hurt like hell.
Every small movement tugged something that didn't want to be moved. The shoulder felt heavy, weak, as if the entire arm had been soaked in lead and set alight.
He tore his gaze away.
"Stop staring at it," he muttered to himself. "Fix it."
He reached up with his left hand, gripped the sleeve of his shirt at the shoulder seam, and yanked. The first pull did nothing but twist the cloth.
"Come on," he hissed.
He braced his boot against the wall for leverage, grabbed the sleeve with both hands—ignoring the way it stretched his injured side—and pulled until the fabric tore with a rough, ugly rip.
The pain blurred his vision for a moment. A white flash passed behind his eyes.
He waited for it to recede, breathing slowly, counting heartbeats.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
He wrapped the torn sleeve around his shoulder as tightly as he could, fingers working clumsily. Each time the cloth brushed the torn skin, a fresh pulse of fire shot along his nerves, but he kept going. Pressure first. Stop the bleeding. Don't give the cut room to open wider.
The makeshift bandage wasn't pretty.
Neither was the wound.
But the bleeding slowed.
That was enough.
Kota tied a knot one-handed, teeth clenched around the fabric to hold it in place, then released it slowly, testing. The cloth dug into the raw edges, but that was the point.
He leaned his head back against the container for a few seconds and closed his eyes.
He could almost see it—not the creature, not the claws, but the way its head had tilted.
Like it hadn't decided yet what he was.
Like he was something it hadn't seen before.
His jaw tensed.
Stop it.
You got out. You're alive.
He pushed off the wall.
He didn't let himself linger on the message the pain tried to send. He didn't give room to the tremor in his hands, or the way his heart was still drumming too hard in his chest.
He bent, gritted his teeth, and hefted the spools back onto his left shoulder.
Marcus needs these.
If I come back empty-handed, what was the point?
He stepped back into the rain.
The deeper he moved into familiar territory, the more life stirred. Voices lingered at the edges of hearing: someone arguing over scrap prices, a baby crying from inside a stacked container home, the clatter of makeshift carts rolling along cracked pavement.
The "dark area" sat behind him like a closed mouth.
Inkto Town's outer slums opened ahead.
By the time Marcus's workshop came into view—wedged between two support-strutted husks of old buildings, its open doorway bleeding light and sparks into the wet air—Kota's right arm felt halfway numb and halfway on fire. The bandage had soaked through in an uneven oval of red.
He paused outside the door, catching his breath. The metallic tang of his own blood mixed with the sharper scent of oil and heated steel.
He pushed the door open.
The familiar hammering noise inside stuttered once, then continued in rhythm. Marcus stood hunched over the same mechanical frame as earlier, torch in hand, welding mask down.
Kota took two steps inside.
The sound of his boots on concrete must have been different this time. He was slower. Heavier.
Marcus finished his weld line, let the torch hiss to a quiet, then lifted the mask with one hand.
"Kota—"
He stopped.
For a heartbeat, his eyes simply fixed on the copper spools, as if ready to say something about him overdoing it, ignoring orders.
Then his gaze tracked down.
Saw the way Kota was holding himself slightly crooked.
Saw the blood.
Marcus's eyes widened, dark irises almost swallowed by the white.
He dropped the mask. It clanged against the worktable.
"What—"
Kota tried to shrug with his good shoulder. The motion sent a fresh sting through the wound. "Got the spools."
His voice came out hoarser than he intended.
Marcus closed the distance in three long strides.
"Hold still," he snapped, one hand already reaching for Kota's arm, the other reaching to take the weight from his left shoulder.
Kota let him relieve the burden. The absence of weight made his knees feel weak for a second. Marcus guided him toward a clearer section of the workshop, away from stray tools and sharp scrap.
The big man's face had gone hard around the edges, all the relaxed sarcasm burned away.
"What happened?" Marcus demanded, setting the spools aside with more gentleness than he was currently showing Kota.
"Low-tier," Kota answered. "Old warehouse. It was… bigger than usual."
He looked down at the floor, at the droplets of diluted blood patterning the concrete where he stood.
Marcus's hands hovered for a moment, big fingers surprisingly careful as he reached up to peel back the half-soaked makeshift bandage.
The cloth resisted, then came away with a sticky sound and a fresh pulse of red.
Yuki is going to kill me, Kota thought distantly.
Marcus inhaled sharply through his nose.
The wound gaped under the workshop's harsh lights, all raw color and torn lines where the claws had split skin like cheap fabric. The flesh around it was puffy, darkening at the edges into deep violet and sickly yellow.
"If this is what you call 'not that far,'" Marcus said, voice low and tight, "then I never want to see what you think is 'serious.'"
Kota tried for a faint smile. It didn't quite land.
"It's not… that bad," he said. "I wrapped it. Blood slowed."
"That's not the point," Marcus snapped. He caught himself, exhaled slowly, and his voice dropped. "You're bleeding. Something with claws did this to you. That makes it my problem."
He grabbed a relatively clean rag from a nearby shelf, pressed it against the wound more firmly than Kota had dared to.
An involuntary hiss escaped between Kota's teeth.
Marcus's jaw tightened at the sound, but he didn't loosen his hold.
"Can you walk?" he asked after a moment.
"Yes."
"Any dizziness? Blurred vision?"
"Just… hurts."
Marcus studied his face, watching his pupils.
He nodded once.
"Then we're going home," he said. "Now. Yuki's better at patching people up than I am. And Aisha…" He shook his head. "She'd never forgive me if I let you bleed out on my floor."
Kota opened his mouth to argue—about finishing the job, about the spools, about not making a big deal out of it—but Marcus had already grabbed a torn, mostly-clean shirt from a pile and tied it over the rag to hold it in place.
The makeshift wrap dug into raw flesh.
Kota bit back another noise and swallowed it.
Marcus grabbed the copper spools with his free hand, hoisting them as if they weighed nothing, and guided Kota toward the door with the other, one big palm braced lightly against his back to steady him.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a steady drizzle. The slum air felt cooler, the sharp edges of the day scraped down by the storm.
They walked in silence for a while.
Kota focused on not favoring his right side too visibly, on not stumbling. Every step made his shoulder pulse. It felt like something hot and corrosive had been poured under his skin.
"You're not going back there," Marcus said abruptly.
Kota stared straight ahead. "For a while," he said carefully.
"Not for a while," Marcus corrected. "Not at all. Not alone. That area's worse than it was last season. You felt it. Don't lie."
Kota hesitated.
He had felt it—the heaviness in the air, the way sound had crawled instead of traveled, like the dark zone itself was thinking about closing in.
"Felt… different," he admitted. "Wrong."
Marcus's expression darkened.
"Rifts are problems in the rich zones," he said quietly. "Out here, they're rumors. But every time the Domains screw up something near the boundary, places like that warehouse change. You don't go near it alone. Not again."
Kota didn't answer.
He couldn't say yes and mean it.
If I don't go, someone else has to.
If someone weaker goes, they might not come back.
He kept walking.
By the time they reached the stacked housing block where Marcus, Yuki, and Aisha lived, the sky above the slums had settled into a dull, mottled gray. The rain had slackened to a thin mist, beading on metal and dripping from makeshift awnings.
The stairwell inside creaked under their combined weight.
Marcus opened the door at the top without knocking.
The small home smelled like tea, detergent, and something vaguely herbal. Warm. Lived-in.
Aisha sat at the narrow table in the main room, a thick, worn book open in front of her. A pencil was tucked behind one ear; loose strands of dark hair had escaped her tie and framed her face. Her eyes were skimming lines of text, lips moving faintly as she traced words under her breath.
Yuki knelt in the corner, sorting through a crate of supplies—bandages, cleaned cloths, little jars of ointment with hand-written labels.
The moment the door thudded shut behind them, both women looked up.
Aisha's eyes landed on Kota.
Her pupils widened.
The color drained from her face, then rushed back in a quick flush.
"Kota," she breathed, half-standing, the chair legs scraping the floor.
Her gaze traveled from his face to the makeshift wrap on his shoulder, the dark stain spreading through the cloth. Her hand flew to her mouth. The loose pencil behind her ear slipped and fell to the table without her noticing.
"Marcus," Yuki said sharply, her tone cutting clean through the room's air. "What happened?"
"He decided to take a tour of the dark zones," Marcus said, not bothering to soften it. "Found something that didn't feel like letting him go."
Kota tried to paste on a reassuring look. The best he managed was tired.
"I'm okay," he said. "Just… a scratch."
Aisha moved anyway, fast, crossing the space between them in three quick steps. Her hand hovered near his uninjured arm, as if she wanted to touch him to confirm he was real but was afraid it would hurt.
"That is not a scratch," she said, voice trembling at the edges. "That's— you're—"
Her eyes glistened. She blinked hard, lashes clumped by gathering moisture. A small tear slipped free anyway, trailing down her cheek.
"Kota," she said again, softer this time. "Your birthday is in a week."
He blinked, thrown by the shift.
"What?"
"In a week," she repeated. "You're turning fifteen." Her throat worked around the words. "You can't die before then. That would be—"
She inhaled sharply, as if the thought physically hurt.
"That would make me extremely sad."
It was such a simple, almost childish way to phrase it that, for a moment, the pain in his shoulder dimmed.
Kota stared at her, at the tears she was trying not to shed, at the firm line of her jaw fighting to hold steady.
He managed a small, crooked smile.
"I'll try not to ruin your plans," he said quietly.
Yuki had already crossed the room. Her hands were clean, movements precise as she untied the outer wrap with practiced care.
"Sit," she ordered, voice firm but gentle. "Table. Now."
Kota obeyed. Marcus pulled out a chair for him with one hand, setting the copper spools down in the corner with the other.
As Yuki peeled back the blood-soaked cloth and the improvised rag beneath, the full state of the wound was revealed again under better light. Aisha winced visibly, one hand pressed against her own shoulder in sympathetic reflex.
Yuki didn't flinch.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she examined the edges, the depth, the direction of the tear. She pressed around it with gentle fingers, testing for foreign fragments.
"Any dizziness?" she asked. "Nausea?"
"No."
"Good." She exhaled slowly. "It's bad, but it missed anything vital. Claws went shallow instead of deep."
"Shallow?" Kota echoed, incredulous.
"For a beast that size?" Yuki said. "Yes."
She stood and crossed back to her supply crate, pulling out a small pouch and a stack of folded cloth.
"This is going to hurt," she warned calmly, returning to his side.
"It already hurts," he muttered.
"More," she clarified.
He didn't ask what was in the pouch. The smell answered the question when she opened it—a sharp, bitter, almost metallic herbal scent that stung his nose.
She dabbed some of the dark paste onto a cloth and pressed it gently to the wound.
Fire exploded under his skin.
Kota's muscles locked. His uninjured hand grabbed the edge of the table hard enough to make the wood creak. Spots danced at the edges of his vision.
He forced himself not to pull away.
"This will clean it," Yuki said, voice steady. "Better to scream now than rot later."
He didn't scream.
But a low, strangled sound crawled out of his throat, halfway between a grunt and a choke.
Aisha stood just behind Yuki's shoulder, fingers twisting the hem of her shirt. Every time Kota flinched, her own shoulders tensed.
Marcus lingered near the door, arms folded, eyes following every movement with a stormy intensity. The usual easy sarcasm was gone; this was the expression he wore when the world outside reminded him it was trying to take what little he had left.
After what felt like an eternity measured in burning seconds, the worst of the sting faded. The herbs left a dull, throbbing ache in their wake, heavy but clean.
Yuki wiped away excess paste gently, then threaded a thin, sterilized needle with practiced efficiency.
"You're stitching it?" Kota asked, watching the glint of metal with mixed dread and resignation.
"You tear that much skin, you bring it back together," Yuki replied. "Or it pulls wider every time you move. Hold still."
He held his breath as the needle pierced the torn flesh at one end of the wound. A different kind of pain—sharper, smaller, but insistent—followed each pull of the thread as she drew the edges together.
Her hands were quick but careful. Each stitch was small, tight. She paused occasionally to clean blood away or add a bit more herbal mixture.
It wasn't a healer's work from the high districts, with sterile equipment and synthesized gels.
But it was good.
Kota watched Aisha instead of the needle.
Her eyes stayed on his face now more than on the wound, as if gauging his reactions second by second. Each time his jaw clenched, she seemed to absorb some of the tension herself.
He wondered, briefly, what his parents would have said, seeing him like this.
They'd told him to be careful, once.
They'd told him to avoid the dark places at the edge of town.
They'd gone into a Rift anyway.
They hadn't come back.
The memory tasted like ash and static.
He swallowed it down.
Minutes stretched, then finally Yuki tied off the last stitch, snipped the thread, and cleaned the area one final time before wrapping it in clean, layered bandages that hugged his shoulder and upper arm snugly.
"It will scar," she said. "But you'll keep the arm."
"That's… fair," Kota said, exhaling a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"Don't stretch it," she continued. "No climbing, no lifting heavy scrap, no fights with anything bigger than a rat. If you tear the stitches, I'll make you regret it."
"Yuki," Marcus said mildly, "he just nearly lost his shoulder. Maybe threaten him later."
Yuki gave him a brief, tired smile.
"Threats now mean less work later," she said.
Kota managed a faint chuckle that turned into a wince halfway through.
Aisha finally exhaled, a shaky sound like a held breath being released.
"Thank you," she whispered to her mother.
Yuki touched her arm lightly before turning back to the crate to clean and store her tools.
Kota sat in silence for a few moments, the bandages warm and tight against his skin. The worst of the pain had settled into a deep, heavy throb that felt like it was pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He could feel every individual stitch when he shifted, like tiny anchors holding him together.
"You should rest," Yuki said without looking at him. "Go lie down."
Kota nodded.
He stood slowly, testing his balance. The room tilted for half a heartbeat, then righted itself.
Aisha stepped back to give him space, then moved as if to follow.
He hesitated.
"I'm… sorry," he said quietly, words meant for both her and Marcus and Yuki. "I made you worry."
"You're allowed to make us worry," Yuki said from the corner. "You're ours. That's how it works."
Marcus grunted once, a small nod standing in for words he didn't seem ready to say out loud.
Aisha wiped the dampness from the corners of her eyes with the heel