Heat flooded Noctis's chest, confusing, sharp. Temptation coiled there like a snake—sudden and blinding. To feel again. To not live half-numb in battle and fear. To have the weight of his past restored, whole and painful and real. The thought made his fingers tighten on the hilt, made his heart lurch.
But to earn that by killing someone trapped just as surely as they were?
"No." The word came out like a blade striking stone. He shook his head, more to himself than the system. "No. Not killing. Not for that." His gaze drifted back to the pit. "He's human. Or he was, once. Whatever the system says… we're not trading someone's life for my feelings."
Astra swallowed, the tendons in his throat bobbing. "We won't," he echoed softly. "We won't, Noctis. He's like… us. Lost. Stuck. If we kill him now, what does that make us?"
Time unspooled. They stayed by the pit as the day crawled by, light sliding across stone in slow arcs. The sun climbed, then dipped, rays breaking into fractured beams at the cave's edge. Shadows stretched long fingers.
Below, the thing began to stir.
He woke like a wounded animal—jerking, breath jagged, eyes snapping open wide and wild. His hands clawed at the pit walls, fingers scraping bloody paths in the dirt and rock as he tried to drag himself upward. His feet slipped on spike and bone. He fell back, then tried again, over and over, caught between refusal and impossibility.
Noctis listened to that stubborn, wordless struggle, an echo of his own long fights with cages he couldn't see. He eased himself down into the pit with cautious movements, leaving his sword sheathed, hands open in the universal gesture of peace.
"We don't want to fight," he said quietly, each word carrying the weight of his bruised chest. "You don't have to be a monster. You're not alone here. We're human, too."
The thing's gaze snapped to him—a storm of fury, suspicion, and something older, deeper. Pain was etched in every line of his face. He answered with action, not words: a sudden lunge, fingers clawed, nails reaching for Noctis's throat. Noctis rocked back, heart hammering. He didn't strike back. He let the thing's nails rake stone where his skin had been, let the rage exhaust itself against unyielding rock instead of flesh.
Above, Astra watched like a child watching a nightmare rendered real. "I wish he remembered," he whispered, voice frayed. "Remembered being… anything else."
Noctis held the stranger's gaze even as he retreated a step, feeling the rawness behind the anger. The Echoframe could list origins and probabilities, but it could not describe the ocean of unsaid things in those eyes. Old pain lived there, layered and deep. Betrayal. Abandonment. Loneliness. Things Noctis knew too well.
Compassion settled heavily in his chest, not gentle but crushing—an armor he chose despite the weight.
Hours bled away. The thing's movements slowed as exhaustion finally claimed its teeth. Noctis climbed out of the pit, offering food through the bars of roots they'd placed across the opening. The thing turned his head, jaw tight, eyes seething with a refusal that went beyond hunger. He spat, a raw sound tearing from his throat as he shoved the offering away. Yet he didn't strike. Not again. Not yet.
Shadows deepened across the cavern. The cave held its breath, every stone and root a silent witness to the fragile equilibrium between hunter, prey, and something in between.
The quiet that followed was not peace. It was an uneasy truce.
The thing lay restless, muscles coiled even as fatigue forced his body down. His eyes tracked every movement above, measuring distances, patterns, habits. Noctis sat just out of reach, back against the wall, mind ticking through possibilities: ways to contain, ways to reach, ways to keep Astra alive if it all went wrong. Astra lingered close, knees drawn up, watching with a mixture of fear and aching sympathy. He knew monsters. He knew loneliness. Now the two sat together in front of him, wearing a human face.
Finally, Noctis broke the silence. "Astra… your power." He kept his voice low, as if speaking too loud might break something fragile. "You can see dreams. Memories. Maybe we don't need him to talk—not at first. Maybe you can… look. Not to hurt him," he added quickly, seeing the hesitance in Astra's eyes. "Just enough to understand. We keep stumbling in the dark with him. We need light."
Astra's fingers curled into his palms. He glanced down at them, then at the thing below. "If I try," he said slowly, "if I reach too deep… I might see everything. The worst parts. Things he doesn't want anyone to see." He swallowed. "I might not be able to unsee it."
Noctis's expression softened, lined by weariness and a quiet respect. "We don't have another choice that doesn't end in chains or blood. Understanding is the only way we don't become what he thinks we are." He gave a small, tired shrug. "Do it. But gently. If he ever wakes up from this with us still here, he deserves better than to be just… dissected."
Astra nodded, resolve settling over his features like a thin layer of steel. He rose, legs unsteady but heart anchored. Light pulsed faintly beneath his skin, answering his call. He moved toward the pit, each step measured.
He knelt at the edge, close enough to feel the thing's breath stir the air. For a long moment, he simply watched—taking in the scars, the tension still coiled in the limbs, the lines of a face that might once have smiled, once have belonged to a child who ran through forests without laying snares.
Gently, almost reverently, Astra reached out. His palm came to rest on the thing's brow, fingers splayed through the wild tangle of hair. Astral power rose at his touch, not as a flare this time but as a soft, expanding glow, suffusing the space between skin and soul.
The cave began to blur around him. Shadows stretched, sounds retreated down a long tunnel, the smell of damp stone and blood thinning into something distant. Before him, he felt another presence unfurl—raw, knotted, full of sharp edges and buried echoes. A threshold formed there, shimmering, where memories drifted behind a veil of pain.
Astra drew a steadying breath and stepped inward, leaving the physical world behind for a realm of impressions and dream.
Into the place where the thing's life had been carved not in words, but in scars. Into the place where monsters and humans were not separate.
And there, the story stopped, right at the moment when Astra entered the thing's dreams.