Steel screamed in the street.

  Garth’s arms trembled from the impact, boots sliding over grit and dried blood. He’d fought Heroko before—sparring, shoulder to shoulder, laughing through bruises—and none of those memories matched the man in front of him now.

  Heroko didn’t fight like someone trying to win.

  He fought like someone trying to erase.

  A low slash came in. Garth pivoted and caught it on the edge of his guard. Shock punched up his bones. His shoulder flared. He tasted iron and realized he’d bitten his tongue.

  “Stop,” Garth rasped—not because he thought it would work, but because he couldn’t stop himself from trying. “Heroko. Look at what you’re doing.”

  Heroko’s face didn’t change. His eyes stayed calm, empty in a way that turned Garth’s stomach.

  “It’s not what I’m doing,” Heroko said softly, like correcting a student. “It’s what’s happening.”

  He came again—fast, clean, effortless.

  Garth teleported.

  The world snapped.

  One moment he was in the street. The next he was ten paces away behind an overturned patrol car, air colder against his sweat. The jump tore at him the way it always did when he was tired—like stepping through a doorway made of needles.

  Heroko didn’t even look surprised.

  He turned his head slowly, as if following a familiar song.

  “There you are.”

  Garth’s jaw clenched. He’s tracking me.

  He teleported again—onto a rooftop, down an alley, then out past the town’s edge where pavement gave way to scrub and scattered rock.

  He landed wrong.

  His knee buckled. Pain flashed white-hot. He went down on one hand, breath sawing, vision pulsing.

  He didn’t teleport again.

  He couldn’t.

  The ability was there—he could feel it like a muscle, like a door under his ribs—but it refused to open.

  Footsteps crunched behind him. Slow. Unhurried.

  Garth forced himself upright, shaking legs obeying on spite alone.

  Heroko stepped into view at the mouth of the scrub path, sword still in hand, blood drying dark along the blade. Wind tugged at his cloak. Desert light sharpened his profile until he looked carved from something older than stone.

  Garth lifted his weapon anyway, arm unsteady. “If you’re going to do it,” he said, voice rough, “do it.”

  Heroko stopped a few yards away.

  For a long moment he only watched Garth. Not like prey. Not like a target.

  Like a memory.

  “You’re hurt,” Heroko observed.

  Garth barked a laugh that turned into a cough. “No thanks to you.”

  Heroko’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile. “You used to be harder to hit.”

  Garth narrowed his eyes. “You’re stalling.”

  Heroko tilted his head. The gesture was almost… familiar. “Maybe.”

  Garth braced for the end—one clean cut, one final swing.

  But Heroko didn’t raise his sword.

  He let the tip dip toward the sand.

  “You will always be my friend,” Heroko said, and there was no mockery in it. Only certainty. “That doesn’t change.”

  Garth swallowed, throat tight. “Then why—”

  Heroko’s gaze drifted past him to the horizon, where the desert stretched on—endless and indifferent.

  “Because you don’t see it yet,” Heroko said quietly. “But you will.”

  Garth’s fingers tightened until they ached. “You’re letting me live.”

  Heroko’s eyes returned. For the first time there was something like interest there—as if he were studying what kind of wound mercy would make.

  “I am,” he agreed. “Consider it… a gift.”

  “A gift?” Garth spat. “After you slaughtered—”

  Heroko cut through him, gentle and cold. “After the world slaughtered what I loved.”

  Garth froze.

  For a fraction of a second something cracked through the emptiness—pain so bright it almost looked like it could burn the dark away.

  Then it vanished.

  Heroko took a step back.

  “Destiny,” he murmured, like an answer to everything. Then, as calmly as he’d arrived, he turned and walked into the desert. Wind swallowed his footprints almost at once.

  Garth stood trembling, not sure what hurt worse—his injuries, or the fact that Heroko could have ended him and chose not to.

  As Heroko disappeared, one thought caught and wouldn’t let go.

  He hesitated.

  Or maybe Garth was just desperate enough to call it that.

  Garth didn’t know how long he limped through the scrub. Time became pain, breath, and grit grinding between his teeth.

  He was halfway convinced he’d collapse before reaching anything resembling shelter when cold mist brushed his cheek.

  He stopped.

  The air dropped a few degrees, sharp enough to turn his sweat clammy. He turned, weapon half-raised.

  A man stood behind him, hands open at his sides.

  Young—maybe not much older than Garth—but his presence made the night feel like a winter morning. Pale hair. Pale eyes. A faint shimmer of frost clinging to the edge of his coat, as if it wanted to become armor.

  “Don’t swing,” the man said calmly. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be ice.”

  Garth stared. “Who are you?”

  The man nodded toward the distant town like it was beneath his notice. “Chad. Union.”

  Garth’s expression tightened. The Union was… complicated. Allied when it suited them. Ruthless when it didn’t. They didn’t offer anything without a reason.

  Chad’s gaze flicked to Garth’s bleeding side, then to his uneven stance. “You can barely stand. Stay out here and you’ll bleed out—or get scavenged by something worse.”

  Garth swallowed. “Why do you care?”

  Chad’s eyes went to the desert. “Because if Heroko is loose, it stops being your problem. It becomes everyone’s.”

  He took a slow step forward. Frost formed under his boot and vanished as he lifted it. “I can offer shelter. Nothing more. For tonight.”

  Garth weighed it: trust a Union Asterbound, or die alone out here with pride intact.

  He exhaled through his nose. “Fine.”

  Chad nodded once, like he’d expected it. “Come on. My place isn’t far.”

  Chad’s home was a low structure built into a ridge, half stone and half reinforced metal—hidden from the road, shielded from wind. Inside was warmer than it looked. Not cozy. Functional. A single lantern burned on the table. A kettle simmered. The air smelled faintly of herbs.

  Chad guided Garth to a chair and slid a bowl toward him.

  “Eat,” Chad said. “Then we talk.”

  Garth took it mostly because his hands were shaking. He ate in silence, feeling heat spread through him like a slow return.

  Chad watched with the patient focus of someone used to reading storms.

  When Garth finished, Chad spoke. “You fought him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you lived.”

  Garth’s eyes narrowed. “Only because he let me.”

  Chad’s expression didn’t change, but the frost at his hairline shimmered faintly—his body reacting to the idea of mercy coming from a murderer.

  “Interesting,” Chad said.

  Garth leaned back; the chair creaked. “Don’t romanticize it. He’s—he’s gone.”

  “Gone men don’t spare enemies,” Chad said. “Gone men don’t leave loose ends.”

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  Garth stared at the lantern flame, jaw tight.

  Chad continued, steady. “Tell me what you know. Not rumors. Not what your HQ wants to believe. What you saw.”

  Garth’s fingers curled. “He said it was destiny. That we take our paths. Like none of it matters. Like killing—” He swallowed. “Like killing is just a step.”

  Chad’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Destiny is the word people use when they don’t want to admit they made a choice.”

  Garth looked at him sharply.

  Chad didn’t blink. “But there’s more. Heroko’s signature has changed. The Union has been tracking vavic anomalies tied to those fragments.” He paused. “We call them keys.”

  Garth’s stomach tightened at the term. “Keys to what?”

  Chad didn’t answer directly. “What did he have with him? Anything unusual?”

  Garth thought of the way the air seemed heavier around Heroko, the way his presence felt like a stain. Then a memory surfaced—brief, half-noticed in the chaos:

  A staff strapped along Heroko’s back. Dark—wood or metal, hard to tell. It had looked wrong. Not just a weapon.

  A conduit.

  Garth’s throat went dry. “A staff.”

  Chad’s focus sharpened. “Describe it.”

  “I only saw it for a second,” Garth said. “But it was there. Like it belonged to him now.”

  Chad nodded slowly, as if confirming something he’d already feared. “The Soul Staff.”

  Garth blinked. “The what?”

  Chad leaned forward. “Some call it the Sole Staff. Same sound, different meaning. Doesn’t matter. It’s an artifact. It amplifies. It anchors. It can… bend someone’s direction if they’re already cracked.”

  Cold slid into Garth’s chest that had nothing to do with Chad’s power. “You’re saying it’s controlling him.”

  “I’m saying it’s involved,” Chad corrected. “The staff doesn’t create darkness out of nothing. It draws out what’s already inside. It makes a path feel inevitable.”

  Garth’s jaw clenched. Images flashed—Heroko’s calm voice, the warmth that didn’t fit his hands, the bodies he left behind.

  “The staff didn’t kill his wife,” Garth said, low. “But it might be feeding what that did to him.”

  Chad held his gaze. “Then what will you do?”

  Garth looked down at his hands—scraped, bruised, still trembling. He remembered the word gift.

  He thought of Mino—powerful and terrified—and the Armageddon project spreading like infection across maps.

  He thought of the red dots.

  He looked up. “I need to break it,” he said. “Or steal it.”

  Chad nodded. “Yes.”

  “If I can take the staff away,” Garth continued, thinking aloud now, “maybe… maybe what’s left of him can breathe. And if not—”

  He didn’t finish.

  Chad’s voice stayed quiet. “If not, it gives you a way to kill him.”

  Garth’s stomach twisted, but he didn’t deny it.

  Chad stood. “Then you’ll need help. Information. A plan. The Union has eyes where your HQ doesn’t.”

  Garth’s gaze sharpened. “And what do you want in return?”

  Chad’s mouth twitched, humorless. “The staff.”

  Garth stared.

  Chad spread his hands. “Not to use it. To lock it up. To keep it away from whoever’s moving the pieces of Armageddon.”

  Garth held his stare a long moment, weighing the risk.

  Then he nodded once. “If I get it, it goes to the Union—under lock.”

  Chad inclined his head. “Then rest. We start at dawn.”

  Garth let himself sink back, pain and exhaustion washing over him in a wave.

  But beneath it, something hard formed.

  Heroko had spared him.

  Now Garth would take away the thing that made Heroko feel inevitable.

  The rail yard squatted at the edge of town like an old scar—rusted tracks, broken warehouse doors, shattered windows catching moonlight in jagged teeth.

  Taco approached without hurry.

  Her bow rested in her left hand, an arrow already nocked. On her hip hung her strangest weapon: a wide, heavy serving dish she’d stolen from a diner months ago. It looked ridiculous until you noticed the dents.

  She slipped through a gap in the chain-link fence and followed the shadow of a freight car. Voices rolled out of the main warehouse—laughing, arguing, the sound of people who believed nobody could touch them.

  Taco narrowed her eyes. “We’ll fix that.”

  She drew.

  The first guard dropped without a sound, an arrow through his throat before his brain could register danger. Taco caught his weight and lowered him to the gravel.

  The second guard turned at a scrape.

  Taco threw the serving dish.

  It cracked into the side of his head with a brutal clang. He crumpled. The dish spun, wobbling—and Taco snatched it out of the air like it belonged there.

  Inside, the gang didn’t realize they were dying at first.

  Taco moved fast, clean, and angry—arrows hissing through the dark, the dish smashing knuckles and jaws when anyone got too close. She didn’t trade words. She didn’t warn them.

  They’d had warnings. The world was full of them.

  By the time the warehouse finally went quiet, bodies lay among crates and stolen goods. Candles guttered in the drafts, throwing long shadows over the mess.

  Taco stepped over a spilled bag of cash and followed a muffled sound—weak, repeating, like someone trying not to be heard.

  A side room.

  The door was locked from the outside.

  She kicked it once. The latch gave.

  Inside, a neko sat chained to a pipe. Thin. Bruised. Eyes wide with the kind of fear that had learned not to scream. Torn clothes. Skin marked by old cruelty.

  Taco’s jaw clenched until it hurt.

  “It’s okay,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

  They flinched anyway, pulling back against the chain, ears pinned tight.

  Taco crouched, slow and careful, making herself smaller. “Hey. Look at me. You’re safe now.”

  The words tasted wrong. Safe was something people said in stories.

  Their gaze flicked past her—to the bodies, to the weapons—then snapped back. A tremor ran through them.

  “Can you unlock this?” Taco asked softly.

  A shaky nod.

  Taco took a key ring off a guard and worked the lock until it clicked. The chain slid free with a soft clatter.

  They still didn’t move, like their body didn’t trust freedom.

  Taco offered her hand—not too close, not forcing it.

  After a long second, they took it.

  Their skin was cold.

  “I can get you somewhere,” Taco said. “Somewhere with people who won’t do this to you. But you get to choose. Okay?”

  A fragile nod.

  Taco helped them to their feet and guided them outside into the night air. The neko winced at the open sky like it was too big.

  Taco kept herself between them and the warehouse, scanning the shadows as they walked.

  After a while, the neko whispered, barely audible, “Why?”

  Taco didn’t pretend she had a clean answer.

  “Because nobody came for you,” she said quietly. “And I’m tired of that being true.”

  She led them toward the roads and the faint lights of safer neighborhoods, pointing them toward help—any help she could find without dragging them into another fight.

  When the neko disappeared into the distance, Taco turned back the way she’d come, bow in hand.

  Her town was still full of evil.

  And she wasn’t finished.

  Morning at HQ felt too normal.

  That was the unsettling part.

  Mino woke in a small room with clean sheets and a blanket that smelled like detergent instead of smoke. Sunlight spilled through a narrow window. Somewhere down the hall, someone laughed—an ordinary sound that made her chest ache.

  She sat up slowly, half expecting her hands to glow.

  They didn’t.

  Relief came first.

  Then the thing beneath it—the presence like an ember buried under ash, patient and awake.

  Mino swung her legs off the bed and froze at a knock.

  Before she could answer, the door cracked open and Zach leaned in.

  “Morning,” he said, like mornings still meant something.

  Mino stared. In daylight he looked even more tired—dark circles under his eyes like he’d slept in pieces. But his expression was careful. Kind.

  “You really came,” Mino said, voice small.

  Zach opened the door the rest of the way. “Told you I would.”

  Her throat tightened. “Where’s Garth?”

  Zach’s expression shifted. “Out.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Something in his look said he respected the pushback. “He went after Heroko again.”

  Mino’s stomach dropped. She remembered Heroko’s smile. The streetlight shattering. The way he’d looked at her power like it was a toy he wanted to pry apart.

  “Is he okay?” she asked.

  Zach hesitated just long enough to make her heart pound.

  “I don’t know yet,” he admitted. Then he cleared his throat and changed gears—gentle, but firm. “But right now, you’re here. And you’ve got something inside you that doesn’t care how old you are.”

  Mino’s hands curled into fists. “I’m scared of it.”

  Zach nodded once. “Good. Fear keeps you careful. Now we’re going to make you capable too.”

  He stepped aside and gestured down the hall. “Come on. Training room.”

  Mino followed, heart hammering, hood up out of habit even though nobody in HQ had stared at her ears yet.

  The training space was wide, padded walls and reinforced flooring. Targets at different distances—metal, rubber, sensor-lit. Practice weapons on racks. The place smelled faintly of sweat and disinfectant.

  Zach walked to the center and turned to face her.

  “First rule,” he said. “You don’t switch it on with anger.”

  Mino blinked. “But that’s the only time it—”

  “I know,” Zach said. “That’s why it’s dangerous. If rage is your only switch, anyone can control you just by making you angry.”

  The idea landed cold in her stomach.

  Zach stepped closer, voice lower. “What happened at your house would make anyone explode. But if you want a life after this—if you want to make sure you don’t hurt the wrong people—you learn to turn it on without losing yourself.”

  Mino’s eyes stung. “How?”

  Zach tapped two fingers against her chest. “Breath. Focus. And naming what you feel instead of drowning in it.”

  Mino scoffed weakly. “That sounds like therapy.”

  Zach’s mouth twitched. “It’s survival.”

  He picked up a small metal disc and tossed it to her.

  Mino caught it.

  It vibrated faintly—like it was tuned to vavic.

  “Don’t blast,” Zach said. “Just push. Like you’re sliding a cup across a table.”

  Mino stared at the disc, then lifted her free hand.

  Nothing.

  She frowned and concentrated harder. A faint glow gathered at her fingertips, then flickered out.

  The ember inside her stirred, impatient.

  Mino’s breath quickened. “It’s not—”

  Zach lifted a hand. “Slow down.”

  Mino tried again, jaw tight.

  Still nothing.

  Frustration rose—hot, familiar. The ember flared with it, hungry and eager.

  Light crawled over her fingers.

  Zach’s voice cut through it. “Mino. Say what you’re feeling.”

  Mino swallowed. “I— I feel—”

  The glow brightened.

  Zach didn’t step back. He held her gaze, steady as a wall.

  “Name it,” he said.

  Mino’s voice shook. “I feel… helpless.”

  The word rang through her like a bell.

  The glow faltered.

  Zach nodded. “Good. Again.”

  Mino blinked hard. “I feel… angry.”

  The glow surged.

  Zach’s tone stayed calm. “Good. And under the anger?”

  Mino’s breath hitched. “I feel… scared.”

  The light steadied—no explosion, no collapse. Just present.

  Zach’s eyes sharpened with approval. “There. That’s control. Not perfect. But real.”

  Mino stared at her hands, trembling. The light was there, but it wasn’t tearing the room apart.

  Zach pointed at the disc. “Now push.”

  Mino inhaled slowly, holding the feelings by their names instead of letting them swallow her.

  She extended her hand.

  The disc slid an inch across the floor.

  Mino’s eyes widened. “I did that.”

  “Yep,” Zach said. “Again.”

  Mino pushed.

  The disc slid farther.

  A small smile tried to form—and guilt lunged for it, like she wasn’t allowed to feel proud when so much had been taken.

  Zach seemed to see it anyway. “You’re allowed to get better,” he said quietly. “Getting stronger doesn’t betray what you lost.”

  Mino swallowed hard and nodded.

  And for the first time since the fire, she believed—just barely—that she might be more than a walking accident.

  Somewhere deep inside her, the ember shifted again.

  Listening.

  Waiting.

  But for once, Mino wasn’t alone with it.