I looked at her and hated that my eyes did the thing eyes do when looking at someone you don't want to lose. "Yeah?"
"You told me you trusted me in front of nobles," she said, voice catching around the word. "Say it again."
"Alma," I said, "I.."
The wall exploded. Not shattered, exploded.. stone outward in a ring like a blooming flower made of shrapnel and dust. I dove, Rhea's arm across my shoulders and we rolled in a slurry of water and pain.
When the gray cleared enough to be fear again, something stood where the wall had been.
Tall and horned. Its horns curved back and then forward, as if there's grown around the idea of catching the sky. It wore a clock of dark fire that didn't burn the air so much as stain it.. embers drifted off it like thoughts it didn't need. In its fist it held a blade, long and blunt as a butcher's answer to a prayer and as it rested the flat against the floor the stone hissed.
The part of me that catalogued enemies like a player scanning a bestiary tried to flip to the correct page and found the book on fire.
Alma went rigid…Not a flicker "Not Imperial," she said "Not dragon, not ward born." Her pupils dilated like a camera swallowing light. "That is…Eiji, Don't…"
Rhea put herself half in front of me, which I hated because noble gestures get people killed. "Identify," she barked, which is what soldiers says to make the world behave.
The figure lifted its head. Its eyes weren't eyes. They were two deep coals that remembered being stars. It looked last Rhea like she was a fog and pinned me like I was a map it had been trying to read.
It said my name. "Eiji."
Hearing your own name from a stranger who isn't a stranger is a special kind of wrong. My stomach tried to open a trapdoor in my hips.
"How," I said.
It stepped forward.. its cloak flowed like a night river. The blade moved with it,lazy the way a storm cloud moves. "You don't know me," it said, as if we were sharing a joke it had written.
Rhea's stance changed a hair. She'd seen enough killers to know which ones didn't waste muscles. "Back," she told me without turning
Charlotte's soldiers slammed into the hall we'd left,their shouts bouncintkff stone… Then stuttered,confused as they saw what had arrived between us and them. For one breath everyone in the empire agreed on something, we were all in over our heads.
Charlotte's voice,faint but cutting, drifted down the tunnel like perfume. "Bring me his system and leave him something to regret with."
The horned thing's head tilted like a question mark learning to move itself. It reached up… My heart tried to escape through my ribs. But it didn't swing at us.
It pressed its palm to the wall beside it, stone bubbled, melted and then… a glyph burned there. Not imperial,not guild. A mark like a burned-in loop, a figure-eight eating itself.
Alma sucked in a breath that wasn't breath. "Kernel sign," she whispered. "That's …that's my.." she choked,glitches,came back. "Eiji, don't let it touch me."
The horned fighter drew it's palm away. The glyph glowed a moment longer,then cooled like a memory does when you don't feed it and then turned back to me.
"Found you," it said and for a second it's voice didn't something voices shouldn't.. overlapped itself,deeper and younger, two threads that tied a knot in my sense of rightness. "Come."
"No," Rhea said and it was the kind of no you can set a house on.
It looked at her again. If it had a mouth, I think it would have smiled. It raised the butcher-blade one-handed, point sloping toward the floor like it didn't need points to make points, and then it did swing…down, not at her, not at me,but at the walkway in front of us.
Stone split… From us to the far wall.. in a seam that breathed steam, a line so precise it felt rude. The crack gulped, water surged into it and went somehow I didn't want to imagine. Our footing went from questionable to letter of resignation.
"Move," Rhea hissed, hauling me sideways as the walkway's edge crumbled like pastry left in a bath. The horned figure didn't hurry. It stepped across the new fault as if it had invented gravity and was bored of it.
Behind, the first of Charlotte's soldiers made the mistake of thinking bravery scales… He screamed and charged forward. The figure didn't even turn. It flicked it's blade backward in a lazy arc that met steel like scissors meet thread. The guard fell in two clean pieces. The others learned, trembling.
Alma's voice shredded. "He's… it's.. reading out bond. It's…hungry for it."
"For our bond?" I panted. "What does that even mean?"
"It wants me." She said it flat and small, and that scared me more than the blade. "It wants what I am. My kernel. If it takes me apart, it can…wear me." A stutter of white noise. "Please Eiji…"
Rhea must have heard the way I breathed get name because she reached back without taking her eyes off the enemy and squeezed my wrist once. "I'm here..just focus."
The figure took another step. The water in the cistern lurched, slapping the stone like it was trying to climb out. The glyph it had burned earlier flared once, like a heartbeat out of time. My UI jittered.. The countdown hit [06:12] and then stuck for a beat, as if the number itself had been grabbed.
"Eiji," it said and there was affection in the way it said the syllables…affection, like it had been practicing not to care and was tired of pretending. "You're late."
"For what?" I demanded. My voice did not sound like a man who had ridden a dragon. It sounded like the same kid who used to mute chat when they made joke about my name.
"For the merge," it said and the word doesn't belong to mouths. It belongs to code and cults.
"Over my dead…" Rhea's started.