The mist hummed with static, faint echoes of lightning still crawling through it.
The koi skimmed just above the ground, Levitate trembling under his fins, bubbles scattering outward like scouts. Each returned broken impressions—blurred outlines, the scrape of stone, fragments of sound. Then—familiar pulses. Brandon. Frostwing.
Faint. Fading.
The bond flared, thin but unbroken. It carried urgency like a scream with no sound.
Brandon and Frostwing were cornered.
—
At the cavern's mouth, Brandon knelt with his spear wedged across the entrance, the haft braced against raw stone like the last rib of a cage. Frostwing loomed behind him, feathers in tatters, her breath ragged, her good wing spread in a curtain of frost. Together they had forced their way here, but the swarm had waited for them.
Lightning Bees packed the opening, their bodies glowing yellow, wings vibrating with murderous patience. They did not rush. They pulsed, filling the cave with the hum of inevitability. They knew the prey inside had nowhere left to run.
Brandon's arm twitched uncontrollably. Frostwing's talons gouged into the floor. They were out of time.
—
The koi slid closer, every fin straining. And then—memory struck.
The toilet stall. His human body hunched and soaked, water dripping from hair and uniform, laughter jeering on the other side of a locked door. He had sat there frozen, too afraid to open it, too weak to answer, praying for rescue that never came.
He had drowned in silence that day.
But Brandon and Frostwing would not drown here.
Not while he still had scales to bleed.
Never again.
—
The bond surged. Frostwing's aura brushed him, a spark of cold resolve barely clinging. The System chimed:
[Hybrid Condition Met: Frostwing within range]
[New Hybrid Technique: Icy Bubble Pop — available]
Instinct rose before thought.
The koi inhaled and forced his body to burp. But not flimsy air spheres—these were shells rimmed with frost, bubbles thickened by Harden and threaded with Frostwing's breath. They spilled into the swarm, wrapping around bees mid-flight. Lightning met ice; wings froze; their shrieks crackled into silence as the bubbles hardened around them.
The cavern mouth filled with trembling glassy orbs, each holding a Lightning Bee thrashing in vain.
Brandon's eyes widened. Frostwing stilled, awe flickering through exhaustion.
The koi's Blood Scales flared crimson, pulsing with his vow. He clenched his will.
Every bubble burst.
Pop.
The sound came not as one but as a chorus—hundreds of tiny detonations, shards of frost exploding outward. Wings cracked. Bodies snapped. Lightning died mid-discharge. In the space of a heartbeat, the living wall outside was gone, reduced to husks strewn across stone and ice.
Silence followed. A silence so deep the drip of melted frost rang like bells.
—
The koi sagged, blood and water mingling along his edges, every fin trembling. Yet something fierce burned inside him. He had not only saved them—he had broken the chain that once bound him to helplessness. The boy who had cowered behind a stall door was gone. What remained was a creature who refused to leave those he loved at fate's mercy.
Brandon staggered forward from the cave, his spear dragging against the ground. He dropped to one knee beside the koi's cracked bowl, lifted it with both hands, and held it steady. He did not speak at first. He only pressed his palms around it, warm, firm, unshakable.
Salt touched his hands—sea water, or tears. Neither man nor fish could tell.
Frostwing lowered her head, a wreath of frost circling the rim of the bowl like a crown offered in gratitude.
For the first time since stepping into the mist, the world was quiet. Not safe, but quiet. Quiet enough to breathe.
The koi let himself sag into Brandon's grip, one thought thrumming like iron through the bond:
Not weak.
Not useless.
Not a burden.
Together, the three of them lifted their gaze upward, toward the clouded peak that still waited.