Not collapsing this time.
Hunting.
I felt the difference before I understood it. The air in the garbage bay no longer pressed down like aftermath. It tightened—focused. The kind of stillness that comes before something decides where to strike.
Yuna rolled instantly to her feet, boots skidding lightly across concrete slick with leaked oil and rot. Her posture changed completely—spine low, shoulders loose, weight balanced on the balls of her feet.
"They're not done," she said. "They want you alive."
My chest tightened.
"Why?"
She didn't answer right away. Her eyes tracked the ceiling, the corners, the shadows where light thinned unnaturally.
"Because you're expensive," she said at last.
The word landed wrong.
Not threatening.
Transactional.
The ceiling creaked.
Metal flexed above us—not the groan of settling debris, but the controlled shift of weight. Something moving carefully, deliberately.
Footsteps.
Not human pacing.
Measured.
Predatory.
Yuna's eyes snapped to mine.
"Kaien," she said sharply. "Use your Spatial Teleport."
My brain stalled.
"What?"
"Your power," she barked. "Do it."
"I—I don't know how!" I shouted back. "I just found out I even have one!"
The ceiling buckled.
A blade punched through the metal from above, carving a glowing line across it—perfectly straight, like the ceiling had been marked for removal.
Yuna swore under her breath.
"Idiot," she snapped. "There's no menu where you select your power!"
"How am I supposed to do it?!"
"Remember the sensation," she shouted. "During the hospital. During the fold. Control your ARC FORCE!"
"What is ARC FORCE?!" I yelled.
She stared at me like she was considering whether killing me herself would be faster.
"Ahh—there's no time to teach you!" she snapped. "Feel it! Do it!"
The ceiling didn't collapse.
It separated.
The glowing line widened into a fault, concrete sliding apart cleanly, chunks peeling free and dropping around us as dust erupted outward. This wasn't destruction.
It was surgery.
I closed my eyes.
Forced myself inward.
That moment—
When the world had skipped.
When sound lagged behind sight.
That pressure behind my eyes. That pull in my chest—like reality had loosened its grip on me and I'd slipped through the gap by accident.
I reached for it.
Something answered—
And fear got there first.
My pulse spiked. My thoughts fractured. Every instinct screamed survival, not control. The sensation slipped sideways, unstable.
The world flickered.
For half a second, my vision smeared—red outlines ghosting over reality like corrupted frames.
Then snapped back.
Fear reached it first—fracturing the alignment before it could lock.
"It won't stabilize!" I shouted. "I can't hold it!"
Yuna clicked her tongue.
"Figures."
She stepped forward.
The smoke came first.
The smoke didn't billow.
It obeyed.
Grey-black strands peeled out of the air itself, not rising but unspooling—thin at first, then thickening as they wrapped around Yuna's forearm. They moved like they knew where to go, responding to the minute shifts in her wrist, her breath.
It condensed without ceremony—
no hesitation, no resistance.
The vapor folded inward on itself, layers collapsing, density increasing until the smoke stopped behaving like smoke at all.
A blade formed.
Long. Slightly curved. Its surface drank light instead of reflecting it, edges shimmering as if the air around them refused to stay intact. The weapon didn't hum.
It breathed.
The concrete beneath her boots cracked faintly as the blade finished stabilizing—pressure settling into the space like gravity acknowledging a new rule.
I stared despite myself.
"That smoke—"
"Same as before," she said calmly.
My jaw dropped.
"That's awesome," I blurted. "I want a power like that."
She didn't look back.
"Survive first."
My lungs burned too hard to argue.
The ceiling exploded inward.
One figure dropped through.
Yuna moved.
She didn't charge.
She stepped.
One foot forward. Weight low. Spine relaxed. Her movements were economical—no wasted force, no dramatic arcs. The blade didn't swing wide.
It passed.
She cut the space beside the first assassin instead of the body.
The body followed the cut.
Blood didn't spray. It separated—clean lines, delayed reaction—like the world hadn't realized yet that something irreversible had just happened.
Yuna was already turning.
Her blade flashed once—
And the body never finished landing.
A second silhouette followed immediately.
Then more came.
Not together.
In waves.
Shadows detached from the ceiling supports, dropping at staggered intervals—three, then two more—each entry timed to overlap, angles calculated to box her in.
They didn't shout.
Didn't signal.
Professionals.
Yuna adjusted instantly.
Her blade flicked—not slashing, not stabbing—redirecting momentum, severing tendons, cutting through joints before weapons finished clearing holsters. One assassin lost an arm mid-lunge, the limb hitting the ground before his scream caught up.
Another tried to flank.
Yuna stepped inside his guard.
The blade passed once.
His body folded backward, cleanly split, hitting the concrete in two pieces that hadn't realized they were separate yet.
Smoke trailed every movement, snapping back into the blade as if unwilling to be left behind.
Gone before it hit the ground.
Then—
Silence.
Not retreat.
Recalculation.
They were probing. Feeding units one at a time. Testing reaction speed, angles, response patterns.
I didn't step forward.
Not because I was frozen.
Not because I was afraid.
Because I understood.
This wasn't a fight I was meant to win.
It wasn't even a fight I was meant to participate in.
It was a fight I was meant to survive watching.
The realization burned worse than pain.
I wasn't being protected.
I was being positioned.
Yuna met them head-on.
Her blade sang.
Not clashing.
Erasing.
She moved like a storm given shape—smoke trailing every strike, feet never quite touching where they should. One assassin lost his arm before he realized the fight had started. The other raised his weapon—
—and followed the line she cut through the air.
I felt it before I saw it.
Movement behind us.
Not one presence—many.
Footsteps echoed down the service corridor, fast and synchronized. The sound stacked unnaturally, like too many bodies trying to occupy the same rhythm.
More silhouettes appeared at the corridor's far end.
They weren't rushing.
They were closing distance.
Yuna glanced once over her shoulder.
Not fear.
Assessment.
"They're rotating units," she said flatly. "Fresh blades."
Her grip tightened on the hilt.
"They can keep this up longer than we can."
I backed toward the exit, heart hammering, legs heavy. The parking bay doors shuddered.
We didn't stop.
Yuna grabbed my collar and hauled me forward before my body could argue.
"Move," she snapped.
The garbage bay wasn't an exit.
It was a funnel.
A reinforced service corridor stretched beyond it—concrete walls streaked with oil and rust, dim emergency lights flickering overhead. Directional arrows pulsed faintly, pointing downward.
Sublevel access.
Underground.
The arrows painted along the wall pulsed faintly—emergency routing, all pointing deeper into the building.
We ran.
Every step echoed too loudly. My ribs screamed with every breath, lungs burning like I was breathing through ash. The pain wasn't fading anymore—it was accumulating.
Ahead, the corridor opened into a vast underground parking structure.
Concrete pillars.
Low ceilings.
Rows of silent vehicles sleeping under fluorescent lights.
Too open to hide in. Too tight to fight in. A space designed to trap sound—and people.
The kind of place sound died in.
The kind of place shadows multiplied.
Yuna skidded to a stop beside a support column.
"Bike," I said.
She nodded.
It was there.
Exactly where I'd left it.
Too perfect.
Too untouched.
Like the world was pretending nothing had happened upstairs.
I swung a leg over, hands shaking as I turned the ignition.
The engine coughed once.
Then roared to life.
Behind us—
The air thickened.
Not pressure.
Not gravity.
Cover.
The lights dimmed simultaneously—not flickering, but dimming, as if someone had lowered reality's brightness slider.
Sound dulled.
Footsteps blurred, softened, then vanished entirely.
Yuna froze mid-step.
Her head tilted.
Not toward the entrance.
Not toward the stairwell.
Up.
Something moved through the shadows above the parking deck.
The air didn't shift toward us—it bent around something else.
Not descending.
Not approaching.
Passing through.
A shape detached from the darkness for less than a heartbeat—tall, undefined, wrong in a way that made my stomach twist.
Yuna's hand twitched toward her blade.
Then stopped.
"…Huh," she muttered.
The pressure lifted.
Light snapped back.
Sound returned.
Yuna didn't move right away.
Her blade remained half-formed, smoke refusing to fully dissipate. The strands curled inward, tense—like they were listening.
She glanced at me.
Just once.
Her eyes narrowed—not in alarm, not in surprise.
In assessment.
"…The presence," she murmured quietly.
Like something she felt.
A faint pressure around my chest—like the air was remembering me from somewhere else. Not heavy. Not painful.
Cold.
Not the kind that comes from absence—
The kind that comes from being noticed.
The shadows receded like they'd never been there.
The pursuit didn't follow.
Not retreat.
Interruption.
Yuna climbed onto the bike behind me.
"Go," she said.
I didn't argue.
The bike shot forward, tires screaming as we tore through parking lanes, up the spiral ramp toward the exit.
The moment we burst into open air—
The city slammed back into us.
Noise.
Light.
Movement.
Normalcy—violent in its indifference.
Wind tore at my lungs as we accelerated down the street, neon blurring past. And beneath the pain, beneath the fear, one thought burned brighter than everything else:
I will protect Renya.
No matter the cost.
Behind us—
Something watched.
Not surprised.
Waiting.
✦ END OF CHAPTER 36 - Hunting Ground ✦