Chapter 35: Before

Mio

She woke to the taste of blood and three glaring notifications.

[LEVEL UP: 14]

[LEVEL UP: 15]

[LEVEL UP: 16]

Fuck off, not now.

[+15 Unallocated Points]

Her cheek pressed against cold gym floor. The world sideways and wrong.

[HP: 23/1,540]

The number floated in her vision. Red. Flashing. She’d seen it lower before. In the cathedral. In the incursion where everything went wrong.

She was still alive.

Why?

The last thing she remembered was pulling the daemon into Kaito’s slash, the daemon grabbing Kaito’s blade. The steel groaning in its grip. Then her vision had gone gray at the edges, and the hole in her gut had finally caught up with her.

She’d passed out.

How long?

She turned her head.

The gym was ruins. Floor cratered. Bleachers twisted.

The incursion’s dim light cast everything in gray. The air smelled like copper and something sweeter underneath. Divine blood, already drying.

And in the center of it all: the daemon.

Dead.

She knew because of the color. The golden glow that had poured off it, the divine pressure that had made her want to kneel. Gone. The corpse was gray now. Hollow. Already beginning to crumble at the edges.

No bloom.

The daemon was dead, and there was no bloom. No flower of stolen life waiting to be absorbed. The window had closed while she was unconscious. However long that had been.

She’d missed it.

[Reservoir: -30,000]

Still in debt. Still starving. And now the biggest kill of her life was rotting ten feet away, worthless.

At least she got the experience for it.

But the bloom…

No. Focus.

The incursion was still active. She could feel it — the wrongness in the air, the way the walls breathed.

The daemon was dead, but something was keeping the space folded.

She forced herself to move. Arms first, followed by her legs. She pushed herself up from the floor, every muscle screaming. Something wet and warm ran down her stomach. The wound had opened again.

[HP: 19/1,540]

There it was: the core.

It pulsed beneath the daemon’s corpse. A sphere of condensed light, cracked and dimming. Dying, but not dead.

She crawled to it. Pressed her palm against the surface.

It shattered.

[INCURSION CLEARED]

[Grade: – C]

The walls exhaled. The wrongness drained out of the air. Reality stitched itself back together, seam by seam.

She collapsed onto her side. Breathing. Just breathing. Done. The objective was done.

It’s all over now. I’m coming home Nana. Wait for me—

Then she remembered.

The boy who tried to kill her, and almost did.

He was slumped against the far wall. A hole in his chest where something had gone through and come out again. His sword lay on the floor beside him, stained dark. Blood pooled beneath him, spreading slow.

His health bar was a sliver. Less than one percent.

His eyes were closed. His chest was still.

Dead too. They killed each other.

But his fingers twitched just then.

Mio crawled. It felt familiar. Only this time, nothing was there to play with their food.

The distance was maybe fifteen feet. It took her two minutes. Every inch was fire. Every breath was broken glass. By the time she reached him, her HP had dropped to fourteen.

[HP: 14/1,540]

His eyes opened.

“Oh.” His voice was wet. “You’re alive.”

“So are you.”

“Not for long.” He coughed. Blood flecked his lips. “Lung’s gone. The blade nicked something important.”

She looked at the wound. He was right. The blood pooling beneath him was too dark, too thick. Internal bleeding. Organ damage. He had minutes.

“Kill me.”

Mio blinked. “What?”

“I’m dead anyway. Too much blood.” He coughed harder. “Do it. Or it goes to waste.”

“What the hell are you—”

“Thirty thousand.”

The number stopped her cold.

How much am I worth?

About thirty thousand.

She’d asked him that. Back at the Bureau. Back when she was trying to understand the math of her own starvation.

A B-grade delver. Fully integrated. All that strength compressed into a single human body.

Thirty thousand Reservoir.

[Reservoir: -30,000]

The math worked.

If she killed him—consumed him—the bloom would be worth thirty thousand. She’d be at zero. Debt cleared. Free.

Her hands started shaking.

HUNGRY.

The voice came from somewhere deep. Somewhere she’d been trying to ignore since the cathedral. Since she first tasted a bloom and felt her whole body sing.

DO IT.

Gaian’s gift. The thing that had saved her life and ruined it in the same breath. The thing that made her look at a dying man and see numbers instead of a person.

DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.

She could feel it now. The pull. The gravity of his dying body. Every cell in her screaming to take, to feed, to survive. The hunger didn’t care about Aoi. Didn’t care about guilt. Didn’t care that he was the only person in the world who understood what it meant to lose her.

FEED.

Her fingers closed around the hilt of his blade. The one where his blood pooled.

TAKE.

She pulled it free.

KILL.

The steel was lighter than she expected. Cold.

DO IT.

Kaito watched her. His eyes were clear. Calm.

“If you’re going to do it,” he said, “put some force behind it.”

DO IT. DO IT. DO IT. DO IT.

Mio screamed.

The sound tore out of her throat, raw and ugly and human. She raised the blade over her head.

And threw it across the room.

The steel clattered against rubble. Spun once, twice, then went still.

The hunger didn’t stop.

It never stopped.

But she wasn’t listening anymore.

She slumped against the wall beside him. Shoulder to shoulder. The motion cost her two more HP.

[HP: 12/1,540]

“You’re incredibly stupid,” Kaito said.

“I know.”

Neither of them moved. Neither of them could.

Mio caught her breath; what was left of it anyway.

“Do you miss her?”

The words left her mouth before she could stop them.

Kaito’s head turned. Slow. Like it cost him something.

“Aoi,” Mio said. “Do you miss her?”

His eyes found the ceiling. The real ceiling now — cracked plaster and fluorescent lights, half of them shattered.

“Every minute.”

“Me too.”

The silence stretched. Dust motes floated in the dim light.

Kaito looked a lot like Aoi had. Before everything.

His hand moved. Slow. Found his pocket.

The hair clip. Silver, bent from the fight.

He pressed it into her palm.

Mio’s fingers closed around it.

“She would have hated this,” Kaito said. His voice was fading. “Both of us. Dying in a school.”

“Yeah.”

“She always hated school.”

Mio almost laughed. It came out as a cough. Blood on her lips.

“We both did.”

“Might as well tell you I lied.”

“About what?”

His eyes drifted shut.

“That day.” Kaito’s eyes stayed closed. “She said, ’Mio’s my best friend. I’d do anything for her, you can count on that.’”

He took another breath.

“Do with that what you will.”

Mio’s head thumped back against the wall. The concrete was cold. Her blood was warm. Everything else was fading.

She closed her eyes too.

[ENGINE: OBJECTIVE — COMPLETE]

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