For a while, the boy kept rambling on and on about the mall's stores and hidden gems. Yuma was bored out of his mind. His attention kept drifting to the strange-looking people around them, wondering if any of them might be conduits.
Each time he looked closer, disappointment settled in.
They were just normal people.
By the time the boy finally stopped talking, Yuma checked his phone—and froze.
It had been 2 p.m. ten minutes ago.
His eyes widened at the screen. He needed to meet up with Keisuke and Akira.
Now.
Taking a look around, Yuma realized he genuinely had no clue where he was. For a moment, he thought he would have to wander around lost again. Then he remembered the short, strange-looking kid who seemed to know the mall like the back of his hand.
Turning back to the boy, Yuma flashed him a smile.
"Hey... I appreciate the tour... but do you know how to get to the middle of the mall?" Yuma asked, just as softly as he had the first time.
The boy looked at him with wide eyes and smiled. He nodded vigorously, then walked past him without saying a word, clearly expecting Yuma to follow.
Yuma hesitated at first, thrown off by the silence, but once the boy started getting too far for comfort, he followed.
The boy led him to a fountain, where Akira and Keisuke were sitting on the ledge, waiting for him. Once they were close enough, Yuma tapped the boy's shoulder and thanked him before closing the small gap between himself and the others.
Akira noticed him first.
"Did you find Aymar?" Akira asked, hope hidden beneath his stoic tone.
"Nope..." Yuma replied, already knowing that if Akira was asking, then he hadn't found him either.
Keisuke, however, didn't say a word.
He was staring at the boy.
The boy was staring back.
Keisuke nudged Akira's arm with his shoulder, subtly pointing him out. Yuma turned and followed their gaze.
"Oh, him? He gave me a 'tour'... Of course, I didn't find who I was looking for..." Yuma clarified, even though no one had asked.
But Keisuke had an entirely different reason for pointing the boy out.
"Yeah, well..." Keisuke whispered to the other two. "I'm pretty sure you found him. He's been staring ever since you mentioned Aymar's name."
Yuma took a closer look at the boy, squinting.
Suddenly, he didn't look like the naive, sticky-fingered little tour guide Yuma had met earlier.
His eyes were sharp now—sharp enough to carry the unmistakable intent to hurt someone. He didn't even seem like a boy anymore. It was as if something deadly had stepped into his skin.
The boy turned fully to face them, his arms twitching as if he were preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Yuma hadn't noticed before, but his eyes were pitch black, as if they swallowed light instead of reflecting it. Endless black wells surrounded by white. Dark circles hung beneath them, making him look like he hadn't slept in days.
"How do you know my name?" Aymar asked coldly, his voice carrying a practiced finality.
"We went to search for you," Akira responded, matching the coldness in his tone.
"Tryna kill me?" Aymar immediately assumed.
Despite asking it as a question, he had no intention of trusting a single word from them.
Akira, on the other hand, didn't seem interested in convincing him. Something about Aymar set off alarms in his head. He was already prepared to handle him, but before anything could happen, Keisuke cut in as the voice of reason.
"No! We're here for the opposite, actually. We want to save you!" Keisuke said, desperately trying to convince him.
Aymar's eyes bounced between the three boys, still unconvinced. Akira's guarded stance only made his suspicion worse.
Still, he seemed to decide against fighting.
Glancing at the crowd around them, he paused before his shoulders lowered, and he turned away.
The boys stared, a little thrown off by his sudden change in mood.
"Where are you going?" Keisuke called out.
"You may as well follow me. I'd rather we didn't do this so publicly," Aymar said, gesturing to the small crowd beginning to form.
Without much choice, the boys followed him to a section of the mall under construction. After a brief pause, Aymar lifted the tape and walked through.
Darkness immediately swallowed him whole.
Akira grabbed Yuma and Keisuke by the shoulders, stopping them from blindly following.
"Wait," he whispered calmly.
Yuma and Keisuke looked at him, confused. This was the guy they wanted, so why was Akira stopping them?
"Something's off about him..." Akira muttered, his eyes trained on the spot where Aymar had disappeared. "I can't detect his presence whatsoever. And his eyes... something about them..."
Yuma had noticed his eyes, too.
So had Keisuke.
Akira was making valid points, but Yuma's need to get Killian back overpowered the logic he usually trusted Akira to provide. Without another word, he stepped into the dark.
Keisuke followed him, unwilling to leave Yuma alone.
Akira sighed, accepted Yuma's silent rejection of his warning, and followed after them. A faint flow of ice gathered around his hands, ready to sharpen into a weapon at any moment.
The moment they crossed the tape, the darkness swallowed them whole, too.
Yuma squinted as blinding light suddenly flooded his vision, cutting through the pitch-black darkness.
The place they stepped into was surprisingly well furnished, set up almost like a camp.
A food court table sat in the middle of the space, two chairs tucked around it. Half-eaten fast food lay scattered across the surface. A couch—probably stolen from a furniture store outside the mall—had been shoved against the wall, its sale tag still attached to the arm. In front of it, a TV rested on its own box, as if the box were being used as a stand.
Aside from that, everything else was simple. Two sleeping bags lay side by side like beds, and a few bean bags were scattered through the empty spaces between the couch and the TV.
Yuma inspected one of the bean bags while Keisuke walked around the small space, astonished that it even existed. Akira stood quietly, eyeing every corner and searching for any exit beyond the darkness cloaking the area from the rest of the mall.
A sudden cough cut through their inspection.
All three turned.
"A bit rude to analyze someone's living space... don'tcha think?" Aymar said.
Akira turned and saw Aymar standing behind him. Aymar walked past him, placing himself between the boys and the rest of the hideout.
"How... How's this possible?" Keisuke asked immediately.
Aymar looked at him, and for a second, the sharpness in his eyes softened.
"My ability..." Aymar paused, unsure how to continue with these strangers.
"You're a conduit like us?" Yuma asked as soon as he stopped.
Aymar turned to Yuma with wide eyes, shocked that they were like him.
"Uh, yeah..." Aymar stumbled out. "I'm the darkness conduit."
Akira's face tightened.
"That doesn't exist," Akira said, his suspicion growing rapidly as they continued to talk.
"Actually, no! There are two new ones formed," Aymar said, waving his hands frantically as he tried to explain.
Akira's suspicion finally snapped into action. Ice formed in his hand, sharpening into a knife as he took his stance.
Aymar was beyond suspicious.
Aymar's gaze dropped to the knife, and his panic exploded into frantic rambling. It was a stark contrast to the killer eyes he had only a moment ago.
"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! I'M BEING HONEST! TEN YEARS AGO, THE FIRE CONDUIT FOUGHT THE AIR CONDUIT, AND TWO WERE FORGED! ME AND THE LIGHT CONDUIT!" Aymar shouted, trying to convince Akira not to fight.
Akira's guard stayed up, but the mention of the royals gave him a reason to hesitate.
Lowering his arm slightly, he kept the knife visible and his eyes trained on Aymar.
Yuma and Keisuke had been frozen through the entire standoff. When Akira lowered his arm, they both released the same breath at once.
Yuma looked at Akira, wondering why he was letting himself believe Aymar so quickly despite his previous stubbornness.
Akira looked back at Yuma, practically reading the question on his face.
"He wouldn't know about the royals if he were lying," Akira explained without being asked.
"Meaning something he said is true."
Yuma shifted his gaze to Aymar, watching him catch his breath with one hand pressed to his chest. He was clearly relieved the potential fight had ended so quickly.
"Wait," Yuma said, latching onto something from Aymar's desperate rambling. "You mentioned the light conduit?"
"Yeah... Daya... th—"
Before Aymar could finish, blinding light erupted through the space.
A second later, he was launched across the room.
As Yuma's vision cleared, a girl stood where Aymar had been.
She was beautiful, with a lean, powerful build that made her presence impossible to ignore. Her chestnut-brown hair flowed just past her shoulders, and her piercing yellow eyes locked directly onto Akira, who was still reeling from the blinding light of her entrance.
She stood just barely taller than him, but her stance made her feel much bigger.
Taking a couple of steps closer to Akira, she finally spoke. Her voice was calm—too calm, like she had practiced hiding her anger.
"Aymar. Who are these people?" she asked sharply.
From a dark corner, Aymar groaned quietly.
"Why'd you hit me if we had intruders?" he groaned.
The girl didn't entertain his question. She simply waited for him to answer.
Catching the memo, Aymar sighed.
"They're like us... conduits..." he replied, still reeling from the impact of her hit. "God, you need to stop punching me out of nowhere..." he muttered under his breath.
The girl didn't take her eyes off Akira. More specifically, her gaze was locked on his hands.
Akira finally straightened and returned her stare.
The two locked eyes, trapped in a silent stalemate of mutual suspicion.
Keisuke rubbed his eyes and looked between them before noticing where she was staring.
"Akira, the knife..." he weakly pointed out.
Akira looked down at his hand and dismissed the blade. It burst into flakes of ice before disappearing completely.
The moment it did, she stepped back and walked toward Aymar. Once she reached him, she looked down, forcing him to look up at her.
"What did I tell you about bringing people here?" she pressed.
Aymar waved her off and tried to walk past her.
Daya lightly punched the back of his head, more like a scolding than an attack.
Grabbing the back of his head, Aymar immediately whined.
"YOU VIOLENT GIANT!" Aymar shouted, exaggerating the pain.
She rolled her eyes before settling down on a nearby bean bag.
"That gorilla is Daya..." Aymar sighed, deflating when she refused to react to his dramatics.
Yuma, Akira, and Keisuke stared at the duo, all silently reaching the same thought.
This is what Killian is afraid of?