The words came too smoothly. Too rehearsed. A bitterness rehearsed like a monologue.
"Do you think he'd feel sympathy?" the man continued, stepping forward just enough for the visor to catch the torchlight. "Spare you? Because you trained him?"
Hikari said nothing. His jaw flexed, but only once.
He didn't understand why this instructor cared. Why now? Why this?
None of them ever spoke like this unless there was something else building on top.
"Is it not my right to dream?"
The words came before he could stop them.
The instructor laughed. A short, unpleasant sound.
"No," he said. "What you're doing isn't dreaming." He took another step forward. "It's weakness. A performance. You think you're above this place—above what it takes to survive. But I see right through it."
His voice sharpened, dripping now.
"You're a coward. Trying to cheat the inevitable with fake alliances."
Something stirred behind Hikari's sternum. Not heat—yet. Just a shift. A tension, quiet and deep. I get your mad, at whatever it is. But seriously, I'm not in the mood.
He stepped forward once. Then again.
Closed the space between them like a door quietly shutting.
"You watch me every day," he said. His voice was low now, almost a whisper. "You know what I'm capable of."
He didn't blink. Didn't raise his voice.
"And yet you invent stories. A version of me that's easier to hate. One that fits the lesson you want to give? Did I do something to offend you?"
The instructor stiffened. "All of you, your cattle. For whatever reason you think you're above everyone here."
Hikari leaned in—barely. Just enough for his voice to thread the air like a needle.
"I could kill you," he whispered. "Before your heart even realized it should stop beating. And you know it."
The visor didn't move. But something beneath it did.
Hikari stepped back, smooth, controlled. The tension fell from his shoulders like breath. His gaze turned cold. He was done. He'd hoped that could at least scare him enough to get him off his back.
It had the opposite effect.
"But you won't," the instructor spat. A little too fast. "You know the price of words like that."
His hand shifted, drifting toward the device strapped to his chest.
The tension flared again—hot, abrupt, and fast this time.
Hikari didn't flinch. But the heat built in Hikari's chest—fast, rising. Not rage. Or loss.
The instructor's voice dropped. Measured. Threatening.
"I could end you for that. Or one of your little friends. That wouldn't be hard."
He knew the instructor had been venting his own frustrations. Still, the blood near his shoulder almost evaporated from the heat.
But I can't let you feel comfortable making threats like that. A power trip like this would mess my whole situation up.
And it wasn't just him being targeted now.
Flames kissed the tips of his fingers.
The instructor's body locked. His voice thinned with disbelief.
"You dare activate without permission?" He stepped back slightly. "And threaten me?"
It had been years since a kynenn challenged a superior. Longer since one burned. And this one hadn't seen it coming.
The flame danced dangerously near Hikari's sleeve. Had it been ordinary cloth, it would've already caught.
The instructor's hand snapped toward his communicator.
Then—
"He's sorry!"
A voice cut through the smoke—sharp, sudden, human.
Elara.
She stepped from the shadows, voice firm but edged with panic.
"I don't know what happened, but he's sorry. It won't happen again."
Her presence broke the line.
The instructor backed off—still seething, still shaken. Hikari knew it was over. They were both in an unauthorized area. Meaning no real consequences could follow.
"He better be," the man snapped, already retreating, breath still unsteady.
And then he was gone.
–––
The first one didn't scream.
His throat closed before his body struck the floor. Ribs gave. Fingers twitched—just once—before stillness claimed the rest. Blood seeped into the cracks between concrete tiles, threading through them like veins.
Kamo stepped over the body without pause.
Nagitsu followed, two steps behind. Slower. He stopped when a second guard gasped—a wet, broken sound, as if breath were trying to crawl out through splinters. The man couldn't have fought back even if he'd seen them coming.
Nagitsu looked at him. Just looked. His face shifted. There were too many things trying to settle at once. None did.
Kamo didn't look at all.
"Keep moving," he said.
Nagitsu gave the body one last glance. Not shaken. But not indifferent either. Then—eyebrows raised, head tilted—he muttered with a wry flick of the mouth:
"Anything you say, boss." Absent of genuine obedience.
The corridor ahead was long, quiet, and unlit. The torchlight had gone out, and the shadows had moved in to stay. By time they'd made it through, bodies were leaned against the walls, spilled onto the floor like the building itself had exhaled them.
Most were gone.
A few were still trying to catch their last breath. Fūregen's voice cracked through Kamo's comm. The voice was low, dry, unbothered:
"Bring back as many as possible. However you need to."
The door to the next wing had already been gently blown inward. Not a single one had been shut. Not really. These halls hadn't known closure in years. Kamo passed through the frame. The room beyond was broad and gray. Light clung high on the walls in flickering brackets, weak flames embedded in concrete, like they'd been buried alive. There were no windows. No slits. No way to see out, or in.
The walls were carved. Some markings shallow, others carved so deep they seemed to bleed shadow. Symbols. Numbers. Or maybe just the noise of desperate minds with nothing else left to cut.
Kamo didn't slow.
He didn't look long. Didn't care for the meanings. From beyond the next door came voices. Quiet. Strained. Edging toward hope without knowing how.
"We're saved!" someone said, nearly a yell.
Kamo tilted his head, just slightly. Then he moved. He crossed the room like it owed him an invitation. Boots silent against stone. Shoulders steady.
He stopped near the chairs. Rested a hand on one, light and loose. Like he was pausing for air, though he hadn't been out of breath. Nagitsu came up behind him, less emotionally moved than he had been seconds ago.
He scanned the arrangement—the chairs, the distance to the door, but more importantly what his ears could infer from the room ahead.
His fingers twitched once, reflexive. Then stilled.
"They must've heard us coming," he murmured.
Kamo stepped through first. And silence followed him in.
The kynenns were already spread out—
Some by instinct, others by the invisible order that forms when no one wants to be the odd one out. Most stood. A few crouched behind benches or bulkheads, not hiding, more like animals fighting the urge to react.
None looked afraid.
But fear didn't always wear its own face.
Some had weapons, many of them lowered. A few remained empty handed. The beat of takton danced just beneath the skin of most, some flickering faint and unstable, like it didn't quite belong to them yet.
One at the center—a girl—stood mid-breath.
Kamo swept the room with one glance.
Not hurried nor curious. Just… thorough.
Then he spoke.
"You aren't necessarily saved."