The abandoned temple smelled of ozone, blood, and old dust.

  Kiba stood with his sword resting against the ground, breathing deeply. Beside him, Koneko chewed a cookie with her usual precision—ritualistic, almost meditative—while staring at the exact spot where Kaelan had collapsed.

  She wasn’t watching Rias perform the ritual. She wasn’t watching Issei cry over Asia.

  She watched that point on the floor.

  “I don’t like it,” she said at last.

  Kiba tilted his head.

  “His aura?”

  “What he does with it.” She bit into the cookie. “It’s not normal magic. It doesn’t smell like a known Sacred Gear. But it’s not absence of power either.”

  Kiba nodded slowly.

  “When we fought Dohnaseek… I felt something external. Like someone was pushing from outside my own system.” A pause. “My reflexes aligned to a frequency that wasn’t mine.”

  “Yes.” Koneko did not look at him. “Same.”

  Silence.

  Wind stirred the charred leaves from the fight.

  “Does it bother you?” Kiba asked.

  “That it worked? Or that he didn’t control it?”

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  “Both.”

  Koneko finished the cookie.

  “The second more than the first.”

  Kiba understood the distinction. A power that works is a resource. A power that works without its owner choosing it is something else—closer to an accident than a skill. And accidents in active territory carry costs not always paid by the one who caused them.

  “Koneko…” he said quietly. “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

  She answered without hesitation.

  “Yes.”

  “To us?”

  “To everyone.” A brief pause. “To himself too.”

  Kiba looked at her.

  “Because he can’t control his power?”

  Koneko shook her head slightly.

  “Because he can’t control his emotion.” Her golden eyes remained fixed on the place where Kaelan had fallen. “And when emotion leads without control… monsters come out.”

  The echo of those words lingered.

  Kiba understood she wasn’t speaking only about Kaelan.

  He softened slightly.

  “He’s not a bad person.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Koneko brushed crumbs from her uniform with precise movements. “I said he’s a disaster.”

  “Do you think we should tell Rias?”

  “She already knows. She felt it before we did.”

  Kiba glanced at Rias—serene, precise, carrying the weight of the night in a way that looked effortless but wasn’t.

  “So Kaelan is on her radar.”

  “And on Sitri’s.” Koneko stood. “That’s better.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at him.

  “Because power without a visible owner is an invitation. And there are things worse than Rias or Sitri that could answer that invitation.”

  Kiba processed that in silence.

  He thought of Raynare—how she had screamed, how she had trembled, how something inside her had reacted to Kaelan in a way no known combat protocol explained.

  He thought of Rias’s eyes when she saw Kaelan unconscious.

  He thought of Sona’s cold gaze when she claimed him.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked at last.

  Koneko took a second.

  “Watch him.”

  Kiba smiled faintly.

  He knew what that meant in Koneko’s emotional language. It wasn’t surveillance. It was something closer to quiet protection—the kind exercised from a distance, without announcement, without asking anything in return.

  “Then we’ll do it together,” he said.

  Koneko nodded.

  Pause.

  “But he’s still annoying.”

  “That part doesn’t change,” Kiba confirmed.

  And for the first time all night, they stood in silence without the silence weighing anything down.