Campus sirens wailed in loops around the campus as security herded students off the Humanities quad. Fire alarms flashed crimson in every window.
Eathan and Chewie cut through the back path without a word. He travelled light—barcode scanner on a wrist strap, talisman strips in a zip pouch, battered backpack. Beside him, Chewie fell into step, breaker seals fanned between her fingers. The Chi-You blade was collapsed into an innocuous fishing rod tube across her back.
“Fire panels tripped on three floors,” she said, watching a guard re-route a line of undergrads. “Rift’s playing DJ.”
“Good. Means no witnesses on the roof.” Eathan checked the wind, then the flow of traffic. “We cut right.”
They slipped past a barricade while a guard chewed out a sophomore about vape detectors. Chewie snorted softly. Weeks of drills around Area 003 had sanded their edges smooth. After thirty subway mezzanines, fifty-two alley mouths, and a laundromat portal that tried to eat socks, she didn’t have to ask what he needed anymore.
“Blueprint?” she asked anyway out of habit.
“Know this building.” Eathan shook his head. He didn’t bother pulling [Ledger Tap], instead jerking his chin toward the staircase door.
[Auspicious Aura] pricked his skin toward the roof. The cement steps hummed, thin siren-whispers riding the rails. They took the stairs two at a time. Chewie laid silence wards on each landing. One each for hip height, ankle height, and eye height. Her pace never slowed this entire time.
“Three minutes before security loops back.”
“At most,” Eathan said.
At the final turn, he paused. Memory tapped—fake Emily Lutin lunging with pink pupils, honey-sweet breath turned venom, his own heartbeat a trapped rabbit. He breathed once, and the memory slid back where it belonged.
They hit the roof door. Locked. Behind it, his [Calamity Radar] pulsed a dark amber.
“The power of finals week.” He sighed, listening to the weight of it. “Panic spikes with a drop of caffeine and heartbreaks in the library. It’s a whole psychological banquet.”
“Cancel finals,” Chewie said as an enforcer of justice.
“From your lips to the registrar.”
He set his backpack down, already signalling with a tilt of his wrist. She fell into the pocket to his left, stacking two more silence wards—one high, one ankle level.
Eathan ripped open his pouch, then fed the [Receipt Printer] with fast hands.
“Copper Scrubber Roll.”
Every item in this world was associated with some kind of affinity, a pattern of association one could grasp with enough practice and knowledge. With the [Receipt Printer], Eathan had long familiarised himself with these items bring their potential into manifestation.
A peel of receipt flashed gold; he slapped the talisman across the doorframe. Grounding chains spidered through the metal, sinking conduction lines into the hinges.
“Rock Salt, one pound.”
Another seal thumped to life and powdered itself into a gritty ring across the threshold.
Chewie nodded with brief approval. She knelt and slid three stabilizer seals into the stairwell’s pressure points, creating a triangular fence that temporarily blocked off mortal perception. The air tightened, signalling that the first containment setup was complete.
The two exchanged a look.
“Ready?”
Eathan stepped aside.
Chewie kicked.
A single movement, and the lock surrendered in sparks. The door swung out, and the outside scene hit them with a whiff of wind. Hidden from mortal vision, wind-twisted banners had fused with paper flyers the size of their heads into a veiled dome that hovered above their heads.
The veil convulsed, and hundreds of silky moths squished against each other. Their wings were oil-sheened, white powder falling like dissipated chalk.
Resting at the very peak of the dome was a crack in the sky. Eathan narrowed his eyes, his vision keening into the figure slowly emerging from it.
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It was a wispy figure, humanoid with a mouth too wide. Unlike the previous succubus-fey he encountered, which had taken Emily’s human body as its host, this one was in its original spirit form. The succubus-fey had its limbs flailing in the air, while the other half of its body still merged with the rift crevice. Its mouth opened and closed like a dysfunctional zipper, more paper moths pouring out every passing second.
It wouldn’t take long for the creature to rip free from the dome entirely.
“I’ll hold the mouth!” Eathan said, shielding himself from the moths.
“Don’t get kissed,” Chewie said, already gone.
Her “fishing rod” hissed open, blade locking with a crisp click. Her first step cut a dozen moths clean, second step checked another dozen, third step split another two dozen down the thorax. Wing-dust blew back in a sparkling halo, already moving to reattach themselves into new moths.
[Receipt Printer (Lv. 4): Burst Mode] has been Activated!
36x Quick-Bind Seals deployed
3 Qi Token has been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (831 → 828)
While Chewie was fighting off the moths, Eathan had launched three dozen talismans from the [Receipt Printer]’s Burst Mode. The seals glued onto the mouth of the crevice like Mister Jin Chan’s slime residue. Without waiting, he then whipped out a lantern wick roll from his pouch and printed out more mid-range seals on the fly, receipts stuttering out into sharp glyphs on a talisman.
He tossed it; a line of cold flame licked the roof’s rim, snapping corners into place.
“Jawdropper Gummies.” He fanned a cone, releasing electric ripples that wobbled the swarm’s aim. Several minor moths pinwheeled into the salt ring and overcooked into smoke.
[SYSTEM] NOTIFICATION:
[Calamity Radar ω: Deep Scan Mode] has been activated!
30 Qi Tokens have been subtracted from your [PROFILE]! (828 → 798)
Immediately, a ten-second countdown appeared on his HUD, followed by high-definition thread-maps bleeding across his vision. Patches of amber representing moth clusters, crimson at the top of the dome, and charm lines knitting the veil into the building’s bones.
“Three feeders!” He called, tracing the glowing outline of the crimson lines that marked the major fuel sites of the unfolding rift. “Vent shaft, lightning rod, drain spout.”
“Copy.”
Chewie slid low, blowing up a cluster of paper moths with her blade before dashing through the flames. She slapped a talisman on the vent collar, pivoted, then immediately planted the second near the rod’s base. Ripping past another swarm of attacking moths, she ghosted straight towards the drain with the third seal.
They settled into their groove. Eathan broke the moth formations and aimed at stabilising the rift crevice; Chewie closed sentences. Moths dived into diverted currents and found steel waiting. The hive tightened, angry.
“One left!” Chewie hollered over the flapping moths.
The moment those words left her mouth. A screech reverberated throughout the dome like a baseball bat against metal. Chewie flinched and lost her balance while Eathan hurled over, his ears ringing from the sound waves.
Then, the succubus-fey rose fully.
It was only a second, but long enough. Tearing apart the dozens of talismans with its corrosive fangs, it emerged with a face that mirrored the cloud-smeared sky. And from the surface of that porcelain face, something rippled.
Before both Eathan and Chewie could register, a second mouth had opened from the succubus-fey’s chest, crammed with old paper tests. Ink leaked from its hollow eyes in slow tears. When it spoke, it was in the precise cadence of Professor Adoir from Algorithms:
“Eathan Lin. You are behind on projected deliverables. Extra credit is available in exchange for your next six months of sleep.”
“…What the hell?”
A chill prickled Eathan’s back. He caught a glimpse of the succubus-fey’s sharp fangs, and Emily’s laugh—wrong and sweet—brushed the edge of memory. He did not look at the face anymore.
He anchored his breath on fours, immediately moving back into formation and keeping his gaze locked on the thread-map. He counted the beat of Chewie’s movements: one-two-hold, one-two-cut.
“It’s about to attack!” Chewie said.
As if on cue, the succubus-fey flapped its paper wings, and countless paper moths shot out from its action, shooting towards them like missiles. One of the moths landed right on one of the feeder sites, burning the sealing talisman Chewie had planted there into ashes.
“Tch.” The eleven-year-old narrowed her eyes, dodging another qi-torrent the succubus-fey’s wings threw her way.
“Not this time.” Eathan popped the pouch again, thumb already selecting the next two seals.
A fortune-cookie multipack slid from his sleeve into his palm. A quick live-scan with [Receipt Printer], and two seals spun out like gold leaves, one locking around his chest, the other slinging across to Chewie. The two talismans pulsed in tandem as the succubus-fey hurled a volley of paper moths at them; the moths struck an invisible barrier, sparks of qi breaking into powder.
The succubus-fey hissed, annoyed at losing its hold. It lunged forward almost immediately again, mouth snapping open grotesquely wide. Countless fresh waves of paper moths exploded outward, surging like a storm of fluttering blades.
[Receipt Printer (Lv. 4): Burst Mode] has been Activated!
1 Qi Token has been subtracted from your [PROFILE] (798 → 797)
Eathan thumbed the trigger, and immediately, another dozen talismans burst from the scanner, orbiting Chewie and himself like synchronized satellites—half defense, half offense. The moth swarm crashed against the glowing talisman barrier, pushing forth for a beat longer before dissipating into smoke.
“On you now!” Eathan said, coughing from the dust.
Chewie smiled sharply. She took his signal like a baton pass and blurred forward. The Chi-You blade snapped from the disguised rod, unfolding into its full shimmering obsidian.
At the same time, the succubus-fey launched a spear of corrosive ink towards her, but instead of dodging, Chewie cleaved her blade downward in a swift arc. The tip punched straight through the spear and into the succubus-fey’s mirrored torso. Ink and fluttering exam sheets burst from the creature’s second mouth, scattering charm threads like torn spiderwebs.
“Damn the exams,” she spat, ripping free through the moth cloud.