"Aim me?"
Aiko's voice was flat, deadened by the sheer, crushing weight of their situation. She looked at Zara, this sharp, silver-haired Reaper who was her enemy, her savior, and now, apparently, her drill sergeant.
"You heard me," Zara said, her arms crossed. Her gaze was intense, analytical. Like a scientist studying a particularly volatile and interesting chemical reaction. "That power you unleashed back there? That wasn't a parlor trick. That was a force of cosmic significance."
"It was a panic attack with special effects," Aiko retorted, the sarcasm a thin, cracked shield.
"It was a weapon," Zara corrected, her voice sharp. "An untamed, undirected weapon. You shattered celestial law with pure, chaotic emotion. Do you have any idea how rare that is? How valuable that is?"
Aiko stared at her. Valuable. Like a uranium deposit. Like a strategic asset. Not like a person.
"And Kael is out there, fighting an army of those things and a council of angry gods, to protect that asset," Zara continued, her words like chips of ice. "He bought us time. I, for one, refuse to waste it by sitting around and weeping. We are going to figure out how you did that, and you are going to learn to do it again. On command."
"And what if I don't want to?" Aiko challenged, a spark of defiance flaring. "What if I don't want to be your living bomb?"
Zara took a step closer, her silver eyes hard as diamonds. "Then Kael's sacrifice was for nothing." "Then the Nox get what they want, they use your power to shatter the Veil, and every reality, including this one, drowns in eternal darkness."
She leaned in, her voice a low, dangerous whisper. "And you and I will have the profound displeasure of dying together in a strange, forgotten world, knowing we failed."
Every word was a perfectly aimed blow. Zara wasn't trying to comfort her. She was trying to forge her. And the terrifying part was, it was working.
The image of Kael, standing alone against the darkness, flashed in her mind. His last, desperate promise. I will find you. He was fighting. He was suffering. For her.
The thought of his sacrifice being meaningless was more painful than any alternative.
"Fine," Aiko said, her voice raw. She pushed herself up, away from the cold comfort of the stone wall. "Fine. You want a weapon? You've got one." Her eyes met Zara's. "What do I do?"
A flicker of something, surprise? respect?, passed through Zara's eyes before being extinguished. "Good."
She gestured to the center of the ruined nave. "You start by reaching for it. Deliberately." "Forget the ambient energy. You said this place was dead, empty. That's perfect. It means there's no interference."
"Your power didn't come from the outside, Aiko. That surge came from inside you. From the paradox of your binding. From your own soul." "Find it. Touch it. Now."
Aiko walked to the center of the church, the dust of ages crunching under her boots. The colored light from the shattered windows painted her in hues of blood-red and bruised-purple. She closed her eyes.
She tried to do as Zara said. She turned her senses inward, searching for the wellspring of power she'd unleashed. But all she found was a hollow ache.
The grief for Kael was a gaping wound in her soul. The fear was a cold, coiling serpent in her gut. The connection to the binding was a thin, painful thread stretched to its breaking point.
"I can't," she whispered, her eyes still closed. "There's nothing there. It's just… quiet."
"Liar," Zara's voice cut through the silence. "I can feel it from here. It's simmering under your skin like a caged star. You're just afraid of it."
"I'm not afraid!"
"Aren't you?" Zara challenged. "You're afraid of what it costs. You're afraid of what it makes you. You're afraid that if you touch it again, you'll lose what little part of yourself you think you have left."
She was right. God, she was so right.
Aiko's hands clenched into fists at her sides. Think of him. The thought was a command.
She focused on the thread. The thin, painful, beautiful connection to Kael. She let herself feel the agony thrumming through it. His pain. His desperation. His fight. He was burning his own essence, second by second, holding back the tide.
And she was standing here, in a dusty church in the middle of nowhere, feeling sorry for herself.
The self-loathing was a spark. The anger at the Nox, at the Council, at the entire unjust cosmic order, was the kindling. And the fierce, desperate love for the stubborn, self-sacrificing Reaper who chose her over everything…
That was the fuel.
Something inside her shifted. It wasn't a floodgate opening. It was a sun igniting.
Aiko gasped, her eyes flying open. The air around her crackled. The dust motes dancing in the light began to glow. A faint, multi-hued light began to bleed from her skin, a chaotic swirl of red and gold and violet.
"There it is," Zara breathed, her voice tight with awe.
"I feel it," Aiko whispered. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. It felt like holding lightning in a bottle made of glass.
"Don't just feel it," Zara commanded, her voice sharp, pulling Aiko back from the edge. "Control it. It's a part of you. It's a muscle. Flex it."
"How?"
"Focus. Give it a purpose. Don't let it just radiate. Push it. Shape it." "Imagine a single point in front of you. Now, push all of that energy toward that one point."
Aiko focused on a broken stone at the foot of the altar, ten feet away. She took a deep breath, and with a guttural cry that was part effort, part pain, she pushed.
It wasn't a beam of light. It was a wave of pure, kinetic emotion. The air between her and the stone warped, shimmered, and then a shockwave, visible only as a distortion in the air, slammed into the target.
The stone didn't just break. It didn't just shatter. It disintegrated. It turned to fine, gray dust that puffed into the air and then settled.
Silence.
Aiko stared, her chest heaving. She had done that. With her mind. With her feelings.
"Holy… shit," she breathed.
Zara was silent for a long moment. "Okay," she finally said, her voice strained. "So the raw power is there. That's… good to know." "But it's crude. A sledgehammer. Useless in a real fight. You'd exhaust yourself in seconds."
"We need finesse. Control." "Again."
For the next hour, or day, or week—time had no meaning in this strange, forgotten world—they trained. Zara was a relentless, merciless instructor. She made Aiko move the power, shape it, hold it. She had her try to form a shield. It lasted for half a second before collapsing, leaving Aiko dizzy and nauseous. She had her try to form a blade, like Kael's. The energy wouldn't hold the shape, instead erupting from her hand like a chaotic, beautiful, and utterly useless solar flare.
Every attempt drained her. Every failure fed her frustration. The only thing that kept her going was the thread. The constant, painful reminder of Kael's fight. As long as he was fighting, she would too.
"It's not working," Aiko gasped, slumping to the floor, her body trembling with exhaustion. "I can't… I can't make it listen. It's too wild."
"That's because you're trying to command it like a soldier," Zara said, circling her. "But it's not a soldier. It's a storm. You don't command a storm. You become the eye of it. You find its center and you guide it."
"What is its center?" Aiko asked, her head in her hands.
"What did you feel, right before you disintegrated that rock?" Zara asked.
Aiko thought back. The anger. The fear. The love. "Everything," she whispered.
"No," Zara said. "Not everything. There was one emotion that fueled the rest. One feeling that sat at the very core of the explosion. What was it?"
Aiko looked up, and the answer was there, stark and simple and terrifying. "Love," she said. "For him."
"There you go," Zara said, a grim smile touching her lips. "That's your center. That's your focus. Everything else is just noise. The binding, your power… it's all anchored to him."
"So to control it…"
"You have to control that," Zara finished. "You have to hold onto that feeling, that core of your power, without letting all the other chaotic emotions—the fear, the grief, the rage—overwhelm it."
It sounded impossible. To feel the purest, most powerful emotion she had ever known, without feeling the pain that came with it.
"Try again," Zara commanded. "Find the center. Hold it. And this time, don't try to make a weapon. Just… let the energy flow. See its shape."
Aiko closed her eyes again. She was so tired. So empty. But she thought of Kael. Of his impossible, suicidal bravery. She focused on the feeling. Not the pain of his absence, but the warmth of his presence. The memory of his hand in hers. The look in his eyes when he had chosen her.
A soft, golden light began to glow from her chest. It was warm. Gentle. Steady. It wasn't the chaotic, multi-hued storm from before. This was different. This was pure.
She opened her eyes and looked down. The light pulsed with her heartbeat, a soft, steady rhythm. She could feel the power, immense and overwhelming, but it wasn't raging anymore. It was… waiting. Listening.
"Good," Zara breathed, her voice filled with a new kind of awe. "Now you're getting it."
The golden light grew brighter, spreading from Aiko's chest to fill the entire church with a warm, gentle glow. It felt like hope. It felt like home.
It felt like Kael.
And as the light reached its peak, bathing every broken stone and shattered window in its warmth, the air in front of the altar began to shimmer.
Aiko's head snapped up. Zara drew her blade instantly, her body tensing.
It wasn't the violent, tearing rift from before. This was a gentle parting of the veil. A space folding in on itself, clean and precise. A perfect, circular gateway opened, and through it was not the chaos of the vortex, but the familiar, dusty silence of the church.
It was a mirror. A gateway looking back into their own space.
And then, a figure stepped through.
It was a woman. She was beautiful, with long, dark hair that fell like a silken curtain around a face of impossible grace. She wore a simple, white dress that seemed to ripple, as if it weren't entirely made of physical fabric. Her eyes… her eyes were the color of a winter sky, filled with a sorrow so ancient it seemed to predate time itself.
She looked at the golden light emanating from Aiko, and a flicker of something—recognition? pain?—passed across her features. Then her gaze shifted, moving past Aiko, past Zara, to the empty space where Kael should have been.
Her lips parted, and she spoke a single word. A word that held the weight of centuries of love and loss. A word that made the golden light in Aiko's chest stutter and turn to ice.
"Kael?"
It was her. The face from the memories. The voice from the rift. But she wasn't a ghost. She wasn't a memory. She wasn't a flickering image in a void.
She was solid. She was real. She was here.
Yuki.