By the time Aisha came back with water, Kota had already slipped under.
Exhaustion dragged him down fast—pain, blood loss, and whatever the orbs had done to his mind finally collecting their due. He didn't dream. Or if he did, he didn't remember any of it.
Light woke him.
Thin bands of pale glow cut through cracks in the ruined ceiling, striping the floor. The familiar smell of dust, stone, and their own stale sweat hung in the air.
Kota blinked, then pushed himself up on an elbow.
His shirt was gone. His skin felt cool and a little tight, like it had been scrubbed clean. The dried blood that had caked around his nose and eyes last night was gone too.
He glanced down. Jeans still on. Belt still there. He exhaled, tension he hadn't admitted to himself easing from his shoulders. This was not the time— or the place— for his brain to go anywhere else.
He rolled carefully onto his side.
Aisha lay a short distance away, curled on her makeshift bedding. Her breathing was slow and even, lips parted slightly. Her hair was a mess, strands fanned out and catching the light in uneven clumps from where she'd dragged her fingers through it.
Kota stood, stretching cautiously. His muscles complained, but nothing sharp lanced his side. The ache in his ribs was a dull pressure now. His head, though—that was another story. A fog of leftover impressions pressed at the back of his skull.
I have to get control of this, he thought. Or I'm not surviving anything.
He slipped through the narrow passage that served as their doorway and stepped outside.
The city was quiet in that eerie, half-alive way he was starting to recognize. Purple sky overhead. A faint, sour breeze wound through the broken streets, stirring dust and the leaves of strange plants.
One such plant grew a few paces from their shelter—broad, waxy leaves climbing up a broken slab, swaying gently as if breathing. When Kota looked at it, really looked, something in it seemed to look back.
The warmth in his core twisted.
Information slammed into his mind.
Pothos. Old classification name. Hardy. Spreads through cracks and abandoned structures. Difficult to fully eradicate. Exhibits low-grade environmental awareness but no hostile response. Not dangerous without external influence.
The facts arrived in clean, clipped fragments. Each one drove a spike of pain behind his eyes.
He stayed with it anyway, teeth gritted, until the pounding in his skull forced him to look away. Sweat beaded along his spine and at his temples. When he glanced down, his shirtless torso was already sheened with it.
The doorway scraped softly behind him.
"Kota?"
He turned.
Aisha stepped out, blinking against the brightness. Her clothes were rumpled from sleep, her already-cut shirt slipping crookedly on one shoulder, the makeshift hem uneven where she'd torn it for bandages days ago. Her hair stuck up in odd directions, knots catching on her fingers as she tried to smooth it. Her Shorts unbuttoned and slipping down ,her waist revealing pink and white undergarments.
Her smooth stomach was bare to see, as this would make any guy crazy.
He looked away on instinct, heat prickling at his ears. "Aisha."
She paused mid-rub of her eyes, a slight smile while her face heated up, the expression small but real.
"It's just us on this planet, you know," she said, voice still rough with sleep. Her face beet red while trying to play it off.
He snorted, not trusting himself to say the first thought that jumped into his head.
"I'm still on this planet," he answered instead.
That shut her up for a moment. She made a face, then tugged at her shirt and waistband, quickly straightening both like she'd just remembered her own state.
He wondered—not for the first time—what, exactly, had gotten into her since they'd arrived here. The torn clothes had started practical. They were still practical. But she was a lot less self-conscious about… everything… than when they'd first stumbled through the Rift.
She stepped closer, coming to stand beside him, shoulders almost touching as she followed his line of sight to the plant.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "It looked like you were… I don't know, training with your sword without the sword."
He let out a slow breath.
He could lie. Say he was stretching. Blame it on headache. But the way she was looking at him—worried and stubborn and not going anywhere—made the lie stick in his throat.
"I'm… testing something," he said. "The orb upstairs did more than just knock me out."
Her expression sharpened instantly. "What do you mean?"
So he told her.
About the phrase that had carved itself into his mind—Treacherous Mind, skill learned. About how, when he focused on things now, information crashed into his head: names, functions, weak points. About the way it felt like being stung inside his skull every time it happened. About not knowing how to start it or stop it.
He didn't mention the glimpses of gods and demons and impossible names. Not yet. Those images were too raw, too big, and he barely had words for them himself.
Aisha listened without interrupting, her brow furrowing deeper with every sentence.
When he finished, she stood there for a moment, mouth slightly open.
"A skill," she repeated at last. "Like… a labeled function? That you didn't have before the orb."
"Yeah."
"And it forces information into your head when you look at things."
"Yeah."
"And it hurts."
"Yeah."
She blinked a few times, then huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"That's… terrifying," she said honestly. "And—okay, a little amazing, but mostly terrifying."
"Leaning heavily toward terrifying from where I'm standing," Kota muttered.
She chewed her lip, thinking. "Maybe we should move," she said finally. "Get your mind off it. A little exploration might—"
She stopped, realizing what she'd said, and a short, embarrassed giggle escaped her. "Okay. I didn't mean that as a pun. But still. If we sit here and you just stare at things until your brain leaks out your ears, that's worse, right?"
He considered it. She was right about at least one thing: focusing on the pain wasn't helping.
"Fine," he said. "But I need to figure out how to control it eventually."
"We'll figure it out," she corrected. "You're not doing this alone."
She turned back toward the shelter. "I'll grab your sword."
While she disappeared inside, Kota looked at the plant again.
This time, the rush of information was weaker. Just a trickle.
Pothos. Minor alchemical applications. Base component for low-grade restorative mixtures—weak healing solutions when properly processed and combined.
The words slid through more slowly. The pain that followed was still there, but muted—a sharp throb instead of a full spike.
When he looked back a third time, nothing new arrived at all. Just a plant. Just leaves moving in the wind.
Interesting, he thought. First time, it hits hardest. After that… less. Like something's being stored, not repeated.
Aisha reemerged, sword in hand, Dumpling perched sleepily on her shoulder. She tossed Kota the weapon with both hands like it was heavier than it looked. He caught it without thinking, the familiar weight steadying.
"North side today," she said. "We've stayed mostly south and central. Maybe there's something useful we've missed."
"Or something that wants to kill us," he said.
She gave him a small, crooked smile. "That too. But if we're going to die, I'd like to at least die slightly more informed."
"Comforting."
They set out together, following a cracked street that curved toward the northern edge of the visible ruins. The buildings here were lower, more scattered, many half-melted or fused with strange growths. In the distance, the city seemed to thin toward what might have once been fields or some kind of open infrastructure.
Kota let his eyes skim surfaces rather than lock onto them, trying to keep the worst of the skill's reactions at bay. Even so, glimpses slipped through—a collapsed wall that would fall completely with one well-placed strike, a stretch of road where the ground under the dust had hollow pockets better avoided.
His head throbbed in a slow, resentful rhythm.
"Over here," Aisha called suddenly.
She stood beside a small structure half-sunken into the ground, its front made of the same glasslike material as the tower they'd climbed yesterday. Unlike most of the others, this pane wasn't shattered. Fine lines had been carved into it—symbols etched in a circular pattern, faintly iridescent in the purple light.
Kota stepped closer.
The moment his gaze fixed on the carvings, the world narrowed.
Pressure-driven. Repulse-focused. Runic amplification. Localized amuletic array.
A primer of sorts, his mind supplied. Converts incoming force into outward shock. Radius—short. Delay—minimal. Designed as a barrier trigger.
"Stop!" he shouted.
Too late.
Aisha's hand brushed the outer edge of the rune circle.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the carvings lit.
Light raced along the lines in a sharp, white-blue flash, tracing the circle and diving inward. Dumpling flattened himself against Aisha's neck, fur standing on end.
The air kicked.
A Resonance shockwave slammed out from the glass, invisible but brutal. It hit Aisha full-on, lifting her off her feet and flinging her backward like a rag doll.
She flew.
Kota watched, helpless, as her body traveled—five, ten, fifteen, twenty feet—before hitting the ground with a heavy thud and sliding across the dust.
"AI—!"
His voice ripped itself out of his throat, breaking halfway through her name.
Dumpling was gone from sight, lost in the blast.
His mind shattered into panic.