By the time Kota started thinking of this ruin as "their" building, the days had already blurred.
Morning and not-morning. Light and less light. That was as close as this world came to a clock.
They slept when the howls grew thin and their eyes wouldn't stay open. They woke when their bodies insisted they'd had enough lying on cold stone.
Kota spent the in-between moving.
He picked over the nearby shells one by one, working outward from their first shelter in a slow spiral. Some buildings were empty bones. Others had enough guts left that he could pry them apart for pieces.
He came back with lengths of tubing that still bent without snapping, sheets of the rubber-like stuff he'd found the first day, a few thin, rigid plates that might stop teeth or claws for half a second, and coils of tough fiber he could strip from the less-aggressive vine species.
Aisha spent that time mapping the ground that wouldn't kill them.
She tested plants in careful increments, tongue and lips and that healer's caution Yuki had drilled into her. More often than not, the samples got spat out with a grimace and a muttered "nope." A few passed.
She found a bush near a cracked plaza whose fruit looked like green-flecked stones and tasted like sour salt when cooked over their tiny, makeshift heat-source. Another produced pods whose inner flesh went from bitter to almost sweet if you soaked it in the tank-water for an hour.
They did not go hungry.
Not yet.
On the morning that might have been the sixth or the seventh, Dumpling woke them by falling on Kota's face.
Kota jerked upright with a muffled curse, hands flying to his head. His fingers met cool, slick resistance instead of teeth. Dumpling slid down his cheek in a slow smear and plopped onto his chest, stubby legs flailing.
Aisha pushed herself up on one elbow, hair wild, eyes bleary.
"He likes you," she mumbled.
"He's heavy," Kota said, peeling Dumpling off and setting him on the floor. "And wet."
Dumpling wobbled in place, then flowed toward Aisha instead, oozing up against her hip with what might have been wounded dignity.
She stroked his surface apologetically.
"I think that's his way of saying it's morning," she said. "Or that he's hungry. Or bored. Or all three."
"Then we should talk while we're… morning, hungry, and bored," Kota said.
They ate in the main hall where the light was better, backs to a wall that wasn't currently threatening to collapse, packs and scavenged gear spread around them in a rough circle. Dumpling sat between them like an extra, gelatinous stone, occasionally stretching one leg toward a bit of fruit until Aisha gave in and offered him a piece.
Kota chewed on something that tasted like sour, watery bread and tried to pretend it was breakfast.
"We can't stay here forever," he said when his mouth was clear.
Aisha stared at the chunk of pod she held, turning it over between thumb and finger.
"I know," she said.
"This building is… good," he said, glancing up at the intact sections of ceiling. "Roof. Water. Food close enough. But if that tank runs dry…"
"And if something bigger figures out this place is quiet," she added.
The memory of the distant shape leaping from roof to roof flashed behind his eyes. Huge. Fluid. Wrong in the way that said predator that knew its terrain.
He pushed that down for now.
"We've checked what we can reach easy," he said. "If we want anything better—tools, weapons, clothes that aren't going to rot off us—we have to go deeper."
"Closer to whatever made all this," she said.
"Closer to whatever's still feeding it," he said, thinking of the glowing lines in the stone, the way they'd pulsed when the tank released water. "If there's a way off this world, it's not going to be in the nice, broken shells at the edge."
Aisha sighed, tipped her head back against the wall, and shut her eyes for a moment.
"I was hoping you'd suggest we build a treehouse and declare ourselves the new forest hermits," she said.
"Dumpling would fall out of a tree," Kota said. "He's not built for heights."
Dumpling made a quiet burble.
She opened her eyes again, the joke spent, seriousness settling back in.
"Okay," she said. "Further in. We move during… day. Or whatever this is. Slow. We avoid anything that looks like it could jump further than we can run."
"We pack light," Kota said. "Enough food for… two days? Three? Tank-water in the canteens. Some extra if we can rig containers that won't leak."
"And if we find somewhere better, we don't get sentimental about this place," she added. "We move."
He nodded.
"Deal."
They spent what passed for the rest of the morning turning vine and scrap into something that looked like preparation.
Aisha braided lengths of the tougher, non-poisonous vines together, fingers flying in practiced patterns. Kota added support with strips of the rubber-like material, threading them through to create sling-like backs. By the time they were done, each of them had a crude pack that would sit high on their shoulders and leave their arms free.
They filled them with what mattered.
Food in wrapped bundles. The last of the makeshift bandages. Aisha's small collection of shiny things she'd insisted on keeping—broken chips etched with patterns, a smooth, coin-sized disc of unknown material. Kota's pile of metal: a second, shorter blade he'd hammered from a broken panel edge, a flat plate that might serve as a forearm guard if he strapped it on right.
They topped everything off with water from the tank, each canteen as full as the awkward, cupped-hand method allowed.
When they finally stood at the broken front of the building again, packs settled onto their shoulders, Kota took one last look back.
The shadows inside seemed deeper now that he knew them.
It had been a shelter. A breath. Not a home.
"Let's go before I change my mind," Aisha said quietly at his side.
He stepped out first.
They kept to the path where it made sense and left it where it didn't.
Some streets had become canyons of vine and stone, so choked that even light had trouble getting through. Kota steered them around those, choosing routes with more open sightlines even if they added distance. In places where the old paving still showed, he walked on the cracked slabs rather than the soil that bulged between them. Hard ground felt more honest.
The feeling of being watched never really left.
Once, midway through a block of low, close-built structures, they both froze at the same time.
A shadow crossed above them.
Kota's head snapped up.
On the roofline three buildings over, something moved—a mass of muscle and fur the size of a small car back home, all long limbs and a tail that lashed once like a whip.
It leapt.
For a breath, it flew through open air, arcing effortlessly from one roof to the next. The distance was… impossible. Ten meters? More? It landed without so much as a slipped claw, claws biting into crumbling stone like it was fresh clay. Its body blurred out of view almost at once, swallowed by higher walls and hanging creepers.
Kota and Aisha didn't move until a count of twenty.
"New rule," Aisha whispered, voice hoarse. "If the roof growls, we do not look up."
"New rule," Kota countered just as quietly. "If something can jump that far, we pretend the whole top of the world is lava."
They adjusted their route.
When they had to cross open spaces—plazas, intersections where multiple streets met—they did it at a measured run, not a walk, keeping their heads low, feet light. Dumpling clung tighter to Aisha's shoulder whenever they sped up, his legs spread wide, body smearing a little with the force.
Hours stretched.
The center of the city announced itself not with fanfare but with emptiness.
The buildings fell back from a broad, raised expanse of worked stone that rose a meter above the surrounding streets. Stairs and ramps led up from all sides. The platform's surface was smoother than anything they'd seen since entering the city, the lines between slabs so tight they were almost invisible.
At each corner, something like a pillar had once stood. Now they were stumps, sheared off at differing heights, surfaces melted smooth. From within them, clear liquid still flowed—a steady curtain pouring down into channels cut into the platform's surface, then dripping off the edges into dark grates below.
"The same stuff?" Aisha breathed, eyes on the corner nearest them.
"Looks like it," Kota said. The air near the falling streams felt cooler on his skin.
In the exact center of the platform, a circular basin lay—a shallow pool no wider than a small room. Tank-water fed it from beneath in thin, whispering jets, keeping the surface just shy of overflowing.
Floating in the middle of that pool, supported by nothing Kota could see, hung an orb.
It was as big as his torso, perfectly round. Its surface was… wrong. Not stone, not metal. It looked matte one second and faintly reflective the next, as if it couldn't decide whether it wanted to swallow light or give it back. Faint lines traced over it in slow, shifting patterns—like the runes on the ruins' walls, but deeper, more layered.
The hum of the world pressed stronger here, a low, constant pressure in Kota's bones.
They stopped at the base of the nearest steps.
Aisha's hand found the front of her shirt again, fingers pressing over the faint mark there, as if to keep her own pulse from changing.
Kota scanned the surrounding buildings automatically.
Most were larger structures than those at the edge, faces still mostly intact, upper levels lost in hanging growth and shadow. Their blank windows and yawning doorways stared down at the platform like rows of watching eyes.
It felt like stepping into the middle of a silent crowd.
"Center of town," Aisha said softly. "Center of… something."
"If anything's going to punch us back to Earth, it's as good a guess as any," Kota said.
"Or vaporize us," she said.
"Or that," he agreed.
He put a foot on the first step.
Movement flickered to his right.
The warning didn't come from a sound. It came from the way the air shifted, the faint crack of something pushing off stone.
Kota twisted, hand already dropping to his sword.
A shape sailed out from the ledge of a building that jutted over the square—a long, clean arc that ended with a heavy thud on the platform stones perhaps forty feet ahead of them.
The beast that landed there shook the impact off like it was nothing.
It was roughly Kota's length from nose to the base of its tail, built low and lean. Muscle rolled under a coat of fur so short and fine it looked like polished metal. In the pale, angled light, the coat caught every ripple and turned it into a shimmer—silver, with hints of muted color sliding along its spine when it moved.
Four legs, each ending in a paw that flexed once, claws biting into the stone with a soft scritch. No extra limbs. No exposed bone. No writhing growths.
Its head was held level with its back, ears canted forward, eyes like molten glass fixed on them.
Elegant, Aisha had said once about the predators that showed up in her books, the ones from worlds before Rifts that people had drawn for children.
This one was that word made dangerous.
Kota's fingers closed around his hilt without conscious thought.
"Back," he said, throat dry. "Slow."
He slid his foot off the step, edging back without turning his back completely on the beast. His free hand made a low, urgent gesture toward Aisha.
She had already taken three short steps away.
He pointed with the sword hand this time, angling the blade toward a squat structure to their left whose doorway gaped like a promise of shadow.
"Over there," he said, keeping his voice just above a whisper. "Inside. Stay low. Don't run unless it looks at you."
"Kota—" she started.
"Hide," he cut in, eyes never leaving the animal. "If it follows, don't move. Don't make a sound. Don't be useful. Got it?"
She swallowed.
"Got it," she said.
Dumpling tightened against her neck, his whole body tensing like a muscle.
She backed away, one slow step at a time, then turned and moved toward the shelter he'd indicated, every line of her body screaming the urge not to sprint.
The beast watched her go.
Its gaze flicked once in her direction, then back to Kota, as if making a choice.
It took a step forward.
Even that small movement was quiet, controlled. It could have been stalking something that hadn't already seen it.
Kota rotated his shoulders once, feeling the pull and give of old damage. The wound that had burned there days ago tugged, tight but closed. Not gone. Never gone. But not the raw, ripping pain it had been.
Good enough.
He tightened his grip, set his feet.
His heart had learned something of the hum of this place by now. It beat with it, against it.
The beast coiled.
Kota saw the moment its muscles bunched, power gathering in the lines of its haunches.
He didn't wait.
The second it exploded forward, he turned on his heel and ran, the platform and the silent orb and the watching city blurring at the edges of his vision as the sound of claws on stone knifed toward his back