The radio tower was dead.
Kairo stood at its base, chest heaving, eyes scanning the jagged steel bones of what used to touch the sky. It jutted upward from the charred earth like a broken fang, its rusted ribs held together by vines and time. The wind howled through its hollow frame, carrying static whispers.
He pressed his fingers to the exposed wiring of the old transceiver, still warm from his latest attempt to spark it back to life. It buzzed. Fizzled. Then silence.
Yui's voice had come from here.
He was sure of it.
Faint and fractured, like a memory underwater, but unmistakable:
Kai… ro… under… the—bone… mountain… don't… trust… the—
Then screams. And the sound of cracking glass.
He should have turned back. Found shelter. Rested.
But Yui was alive. Somewhere.
The world had taken too much from him already.
Kairo lowered himself to one knee beside the scorched panel and reached into his jacket, pulling out a small rectangular crystal etched with old runes. It hummed with dormant energy—a "whispercore," once used to store transmissions from the Age of Voices.
He pressed it into the transceiver's core port. It clicked.
The tower pulsed. Once. Then again.
A faint blue light traveled up the twisted frame and blinked near the apex. The machine wheezed and sputtered like something waking from a nightmare. And then, in a burst of static:
"System… unlocked."
Kairo blinked. "That was... functional?"
A holographic glyph flickered in front of him—an old-world interface projected in blue flame. It outlined a map. Coordinates. And one phrase burned into the air like a brand:
BONE MOUNTAIN: VAULT SIGIL 7
He barely had time to memorize it when the sound of boots on ash caught his ear.
Kairo turned fast, hand on his spear, eyes narrowing behind the fox mask.
A group emerged from the treeline—four figures in piecemeal armor. Shard-hunters.
The lead was a woman draped in cloth dyed with blues and golds, her left hand wrapped in wire and bone. Her eyes shimmered like mercury, and her mouth curved into something between amusement and threat.
"Well, well," she said. "I thought I felt a pulse out here. We've been tracking that signal for weeks."
Kairo didn't move. "Back off."
She laughed lightly, motioning for the others to hold. "You're just a scavenger. Maybe a cursed one. But that signal—thatis Shard-tech. You wouldn't even know what you found."
"I know enough," he said quietly. "It's mine."
"No," she replied, stepping closer, the dust parting around her boots like fearful spirits. "It belongs to the Shardbound now."
Before he could speak, the world turned sharp.
A blade of glass whistled past his cheek.
Kairo dropped low, kicked ash into her path, and rolled behind a rusted support beam. The second hunter lunged. Kairo countered with his spear—scraping metal, twisting angles. The shaft caught the man's forearm and sent him staggering.
He couldn't take them all.
Not head-on.
His hand dipped into his side pouch, fingers brushing one of his last smoke petals. He crushed it, whispered a word in the old tongue—taught by Yui in a forgotten winter.
"Kuthra."
The flower ignited in smoke and shimmerdust.
Kairo vanished in the haze, dashing through shadows, breath steady, footfalls silent.
He was gone before the hunters could regroup.
He didn't stop until he reached a crumbled train station nestled beneath a rocky hill. A battered statue of a child holding a torch loomed above the platform, its eyes eroded by acid rain.
Kairo ducked into the station's shell and slumped against the wall, finally breathing. He removed the fox mask and stared at the cracked screen of his stolen datapad.
The map still glowed.
Bone Mountain. Vault Sigil 7.
His next step.
He looked down at his hand—shaking.
Not from fear.
From the memory.
That brief flash when the Hollow Stag died. Yui, dressed in red. Chained in darkness. Reaching for him.
He wasn't hallucinating.
She was calling to him. Through the monsters. Through the magic. Through the ruin.
And if she was still alive…
Then whatever waited in Bone Mountain had answers.
Kairo closed his eyes and whispered her name like a promise.
"Yui… I'm coming."