Tsukia's POV

The campfire hissed and spat, sending long flickering silhouettes crawling up the trunks around us. For the first time in years, the mountain's usual cold didn't seem to reach me.

It stopped at my skin instead of burrowing into my bones.

I perched on a split log, a stick balanced in my hand, a white sugar cube or what they called a "marshmallow" speared at the end.

Watching it blister and turn golden in the heat held me in a quiet trance.

"Don't let it catch, Kia! Rotate it," Jasmia teased, her laughter bright and curious.

The nickname felt strange in my mouth. Kia.

I nudged the marshmallow into my mouth. It was overwhelmingly sweet and cloying enough to make my teeth ache but somehow, it tasted like calm.

Maybe Lori had been right. Maybe not every human deserved the monsters I had imagined in my dreams.

"So..." Jasmia leaned forward, chin resting on her hand.

"Lori says you're gifted, but your magic seems... different. What is it? Some kind of alien thing?"

My throat tightened. The sweetness in my mouth curdled into something heavier. I stared at my hands tucked inside my sleeves, as if I could hide them.

"I... I don't really know," I admitted.

"She's right to be careful," Lori said, his voice steady and low.

He prodded the embers with a stick. "I've felt it, Jasmia. It isn't like our kind of potential. Ours feels like stepping into a river you can ride. Hers... it's like staring into an abyss. Even the smallest move seems to bruise her body under the strain."

Jasmia's grin faltered. "Is it that dangerous?"

"I'm an abominable bad-luck charm," I whispered before I could stop myself, the cruel words from my old village slipping out.

"When I use it... my surroundings get hurt. Or I do."

The wood popped. For a moment, that sound was the only thing between us and a silence that could have swallowed the night.

Lori stood, breaking the tension.

"Enough gloom. Watch this."

He stepped into the firelight with his palms open.

The flames didn't simply die down-they bent and slithered like water responding to a hand.

The fire drew itself into thin red ribbons, arcing toward him and curling across his skin as if it belonged there. His eyes flared, twin rubies igniting in the dark.

"He can eat it, breathe it, wear it," Jasmia murmured, pride in her voice as she briefly rested a hand on my shoulder. "He's a real fire-type. Pure control."

A hot twist of envy knifed through me.

Lori moved with his power like a practiced dancer. I moved with mine like I was chained to something starving and clawing from the inside.

"Let's go inside," Lori said, the glow in his eyes fading back into ordinary brown.

He led the way, pushing open a door that revealed a house mostly sunk into the earth-more like a hidden dugout than a home.

"Welcome to your new home, Tsukia!" he announced as we stepped inside.

"Home?"

The word landed softly, like something I hadn't realized I was missing. My chest tightened, and my eyes burned unexpectedly.

The place was larger than I expected-spacious but warm, the kind of shelter carved carefully beneath the hillside.

A small part of me-old, paranoid, trained to distrust safety-whispered trap.

But when I sank into the softness of real blankets, that voice quieted.

I must have been more exhausted than I realized. I closed my eyes and drifted off before I even finished thinking about it.

Morning arrived in a single disorienting blink.

I jolted awake, disoriented. For a second, I couldn't place where I was-the dream of a man named Lori and a girl named Jasmia still clinging to the edges of my mind.

Then my fingers brushed unfamiliar sheets.

The realization hit me: I wasn't on the mountain.

My stomach flipped.

"A new day, I guess..." I muttered, as the certainty settled in that this wasn't a dream. I... trusted humans. For the first time.

Sunlight spilled through the window like a spotlight.

I stood awkwardly, hair tangled into a mess as I shuffled to the mirror.

Puffy eyes. A deep scowl. Skin even paler than I felt inside.

"Ugly..." I grumbled, splashing cold water over my face to shake off the heaviness.

Downstairs, the kitchen smelled like coffee. Jasmia was already there, cradling a steaming mug.

"Morning, sunshine! Want some coffee, Kia?" she asked.

"Sure."

The nickname made heat rise to my cheeks.

She handed me a cup. For a moment, we just sat in quiet morning stillness, letting the silence settle gently between us.

Lori burst in next, holding an iced coffee and that usual breathless energy that always felt like the start of chaos.

"What's up, girls! We're going to the supermarket later. We need supplies-and Tsukia definitely needs clothes that don't scream 'girl from a mountain,'" he said with a grin.

"Do we even have money?" Jasmia asked, skeptical.

Lori gave a sideways smile. "I borrowed it from people who didn't deserve it."

"YOU STOLE IT AGAIN!" Jasmia snapped, equal parts exasperated sister and mock outrage.

I watched them like someone looking into a sunlit room through frosted glass.

Lori only laughed, then winked at me.

"Don't mind her. She's cranky because I friend-zoned her for ten years."

"LORI, SHUT UP!" she shouted, her face turning the same shade as his flames as she stormed out in mock anger.

Lori chuckled. "Be ready by 1:00 pm, Tsukia. We're hitting the market."

I nodded and retreated to my room.

The hours passed in an uncomfortable stillness. The kindness from the morning lingered-and it made me feel exposed.

Vulnerability was dangerous.

I needed to get stronger.

I sat on the floor, breathing slowly, focusing on the scarred skin of my right wrist.

Just one hand. Keep the leak under control.

My breathing slowed until it was almost nonexistent.

Dark veins crept across my skin like ink bleeding through paper. A black haze gathered at my fingertips. The pressure inside me felt heavier than lead.

My ears rang. A thin line of blood slipped from my earlobe. I ignored it.

A small ceramic vase sat on the nightstand, bright flowers still inside.

Lift.

A low scrape echoed in the quiet room as the vase shifted. Then, the atmosphere thickened, turning dense and cold around the ceramic. It didn't just lift-it hung there, defying gravity by a mere three inches.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding, a small, smile breaking across my face.

It worked.

Then everything tilted.

Pressure spiked inside my chest-hot, sharp, unbearable. I tried to release it, but the force didn't stop.

It fed.

The petals dulled. Color drained from the flowers in seconds, turning gray and brittle before collapsing into dust. The vase cracked-fine, spidering fractures spreading across its surface.

Then the world broke, a white flash exploded through my vision.

For a moment, I wasn't in my room.

I saw a woman-impossibly tall, radiant, with obsidian wings stretching across the sky like thunder given form. She felt like a goddess... or a memory I had lost.

"Find the source..."

The voice wasn't heard-it was felt. Pressed into my bones.

Pain tore through my skull as I screamed in agony.

My hands flew to my head as the vase shattered into a thousand pieces across the floor.

I collapsed, gasping, the room spinning in jagged fragments of light and shadow.

Silence returned like a curtain dropping.

Only my ragged breathing remained... and the faint tink of porcelain settling on wood.

"What... was that?" I whispered into the empty room.

The taste of blood was the first thing Tsukia noticed. It was warm as it seeped steadily from her nose and ears, falling in slow, rhythmic drops that splattered against the wooden floorboards beneath her.

"Find the source..."

The winged woman's voice still echoed deep inside her mind, lingering like a wound that refused to close.

The door to her room suddenly burst open. Lori and Jasmia stood in the hallway, their silhouettes framed by the dim light behind them. Tsukia was slumped against the bed, trembling faintly, her hands stained with the ink-black residue of her power.

"Are you okay?" Lori rushed to her side and cupped her face gently, his voice urgent. "Kia, talk to me!"

Tsukia did not respond immediately, still distant and unfocused, as if her mind had not fully returned. Meanwhile, Jasmia knelt beside the shattered remains of the flowerpot, staring at the shriveled, ashen petals before slowly shifting her gaze back to Tsukia. Her eyes widened slightly, revealing a fear she tried hard to hide.

It was a strange sensation for Tsukia-to see people genuinely shaken by what she had done.

"I lost control..." Tsukia whispered at last, her voice fragile and sharp like breaking glass.

"It felt fine at first. I was holding it properly, but then the weight changed. I didn't understand how to stop it anymore," she added in a low, unsteady tone.

Lori did not pull away. Instead, he took a small towel and gently began wiping the blood from her face with careful movements, as though afraid she might shatter.

"It's okay," he said softly. "You're not alone anymore."

"You wouldn't believe it if you saw it..." she muttered under her breath, leaning slightly into his touch despite the voice in her mind urging her to pull away, warning her of trust.

"Next time," Lori said, his tone suddenly brightening as he forced a lighter energy into the moment, cutting through the heaviness. "We'll train together. No more solo disasters, okay?"

He finished wiping her face, then handed her a tissue before gently patting her head.

After Lori and Jasmia finally left her room, Tsukia immediately went to shower, preparing herself for the shopping trip later in the day. Yet even as the water ran through her hair and the cold spray touched her skin, her thoughts remained fixed on the winged woman. She still could not tell whether what she saw was real or a hallucination born from her unstable power.

As she stood under the water, she quietly resolved to understand herself more seriously from that moment onward.

"Alright, let's move!" Lori announced brightly, his energy sharply contrasting the heavy silence that lingered from the morning.

Tsukia did not immediately follow. Instead, she focused on pulling on her leather gloves, tightening them carefully over her knuckles. She hoped the physical barrier might help contain the "leak" within her body-that strange necro-violet pulse she still struggled to control.

With her hands tucked into her pockets and her hood pulled low over her face, she finally followed them down the dusty path leading toward the market. The sky above stretched wide and clear as they walked.

In the distance, standing jagged against the horizon, was Jamana Mountain.

Tsukia slowed her pace without realizing it. Her gaze lingered on the faraway peaks. That place had been called her "home," or at least what she had been told to call home. Years of isolation made it feel less like a place she belonged to and more like a ghost of something that once existed-familiar, yet completely unreachable.

Jasmia noticed her slowing down and gently looped her arm through Lori's, pausing in the middle of the path as if to pull Tsukia back into the present. For a moment, none of them spoke.

Then Jasmia finally broke the silence.

"You know... Lori mentioned he wants to find more friends with potential," she said lightly, her tone deliberately softer than the heavy thoughts weighing on Tsukia.

"So we can enter the Tasukai Association."

Lori looked up at the sky as if the sunlight itself was calling him forward. His expression changed-not just a smile, but something closer to conviction, almost like a man possessed by a dream he could already see unfolding.

"If we get in, we can finally explore the world beyond these borders. That's the goal, Tsukia!" he said.

He exhaled slowly afterward, as though speaking the dream aloud made it feel closer, more real.

The walk into town took another twenty minutes. The quiet dirt paths gradually gave way to noise, movement, and life as they approached the market. The smell of woodsmoke and livestock drifted through the air, growing stronger with every step.

By the time they reached the corner store, the heat of the sun had already begun to bake the streets.

Inside, the transition was immediate and uncomfortable. The shop was cramped, the air thick with stale tobacco and the sharp, chemical scent of floor wax. The cool shade was a relief, but the narrow aisles forced them to walk almost single file.

They moved slowly as they gathered supplies-meat wrapped in wax paper, bundles of slightly wilted vegetables, and other necessities.

Jasmia, however, was clearly distracted from practicality. She excitedly grabbed several packs of cream-filled cookies from a shelf, holding them like treasure. It was a shared comfort between her and Lori, something small but meaningful in their otherwise difficult lives.

"Tsukia, look! This would be perfect for you," Jasmia chirped suddenly, pulling a black over-the-knee dress from a metal rack that groaned under its own weight.

Tsukia hesitated, then let out a small, rare chuckle as she reached out to feel the fabric. It was sturdy enough. After a moment, she added it to their growing pile, along with a few more practical pieces, while Jasmia continued grabbing things with increasing enthusiasm, clearly ignoring any sense of budget.

Stepping back outside felt like walking into a wall of humidity. After a short wait at the checkout, they finally left the store, stepping onto the porch under the harsh sunlight.

Lori immediately looked down at the long receipt in her hand, eyes widening.

"Wow... being a hero is expensive," she muttered, flicking it with mild frustration.

They had not even taken ten steps down the sidewalk when the atmosphere shifted completely.

The casual noise of the street died out, replaced by an uneasy silence. From a nearby alleyway, five men stepped forward. Their heavy frames blocked the path entirely, cutting off any clean escape.

They were not soldiers, but street thugs-the kind who preyed on the weak without hesitation. The leader, a man with a jagged scar across his throat, cracked his knuckles slowly as he studied them.

"Nice groceries, kids," he sneered.

"Hand over the bags and wallets, and maybe we won't break any bones today."

"Why would we do that?" Jasmia snapped immediately, sparks flickering faintly in her hands before Lori raised an arm to stop her.

"Quiet, little girl," the leader barked sharply.

In the next moment, Lori stepped forward. His expression hardened completely as flames began to lick at his palms.

The leader only smirked. Raising his hand, he condensed the surrounding humidity into swirling, pressurized spheres of water.

"Fire can't defeat water, boy," he said confidently.

He struck first. Lori met him head-on with a burning fist, but the man shifted fluidly, his body turning into a liquid blur as he extinguished the flames with a dense wall of water.

The fight quickly turned into a stalemate, but it was clear Lori was losing ground. His attention kept flickering back toward Jasmia and Tsukia.

"Jasmia! Kia! Get back- I'll handle this!"

Before he could finish, a blast of high-pressure water struck him square in the chest. The impact sent him flying backward, slamming into a stone wall with a sickening crash.

He collapsed, coughing blood, his head bleeding from the impact.

"Don't underestimate water with fire," the man sneered as he stepped closer.

"SHINJI!" Jasmia screamed.

For the first time in Tsukia's life, something inside her cracked-not just anger, but something deeper. The Disaster inside her recognized the threat before she even fully understood it.

Then the world didn't feel like it broke.

It shifted.

For Tsukia, everything went unnaturally quiet-as if sound itself had been pushed underwater. The air no longer felt like air, but something denser, heavier, as though reality had gained weight around her body.

Her vision blurred at the edges.

Not darkened.

Distorted.

Like the world was being seen through cracked glass.

The voices around her stopped making sense, not because they disappeared, but because they no longer belonged in the same "layer" as her thoughts.

Lori's voice reached her from far away, muffled, distorted, as though he was shouting through layers of glass.

But Tsukia wasn't fully gone.

She was still there.

Watching.

"I'm a fool..." Lori thought faintly, expecting the final blow.

But it never came.

Instead, the man hesitated, stepping back with a pale, horrified expression.

"What... what is that?" he whispered.

Lori forced his eyes to focus.

And he saw her.

Tsukia was no longer the girl he had shared popsicles with.

The ink-black veins beneath her skin didn't just spread-they organized themselves, forming patterns that looked less like corruption and more like a structured seal breaking open. Her hair lifted weightlessly, not as if underwater, but as if gravity had forgotten it.

She vanished.

One moment she was ten feet away.

The next, she was standing over the man.

She lifted him by the throat with one hand as easily as if he weighed nothing at all.

"Who are you?" he choked, as his gang scattered in terror.

Tsukia tilted her head slowly. Her nails extended into jagged obsidian claws. For a brief moment, her gaze shifted toward Lori, and he thought she might strike him too.

Instead, she reached out and touched his cheek.

Her touch was freezing.

"A friend..." she whispered, her voice hollow, like wind echoing through an empty cave.

The man, panicked, spoke into his phone, his voice shaking violently.

"Help! Someone-contact the Government! There's a monster-"

At the word Government, Tsukia's aura changed instantly. The black energy around her turned into a violent, blood-red storm.

The phone disintegrated before he could finish.

A jagged spear of dark energy formed in her hand.

What followed was not a fight.

It was to punish.

Again and again, the spear moved until there was nothing left to recognize.

Blood painted the pavement, but Tsukia did not blink. She just stood there.

"Humans are foolish..." she murmured, her voice vibrating through the ground.

"STOP!"

Tsukia's voice suddenly broke through the storm inside her mind.

But her body did not respond.

She was trapped inside herself, watching from somewhere distant as her own hands moved without permission.

The voice inside her was no longer whispering.

It was roaring.

"TSUKIA!"

Lori's voice finally pierced through the chaos.

The darkness collapsed like a falling tide. The spear dissolved into smoke.

Tsukia stumbled backward, staring at her blood-stained hands as her breath broke apart in panic.

"Kia!" Jasmia cried, pale and trembling.

Sirens began to wail in the distance.

Lori forced himself up despite his injuries. Jasmia's hands glowed as she hastily stabilized his wounds.

"Tsukia, let's go!" Lori urged.

But she could not move, as he picked her up instead and ran with him. Just as blue and red lights crested the hill.

Tsukia's POV

The silence of the basement was a lie.

Even though we had hidden ourselves away after the mess at the market, the air still felt like it was vibrating with something unspoken.

Lori and Jasmia had already fallen into a restless sleep after we returned around 5:00 PM, but I couldn't close my eyes. My skin felt too tight, too aware, so I retreated to my room and locked the door.

I needed to wash away the sensation of blood from my hands, as I can still feel my hands vibrating when I had struck the man's body eighty-three times.

But the moment I pulled off my stained shirt, a sharp, persistent itch flared between my shoulder blades.

It wasn't normal irritation.

It felt like something was trying to break through from beneath my ribs.

I turned toward the mirror, twisting slightly to look over my shoulder.

My breath hitched.

Dark obsidian veins had spread outward from my spine, spidering across my back in a jagged, unnatural pattern. They weren't just markings as they were raised, dense, and felt more like cold metal embedded under my skin than flesh.

"I'm not human anymore..."

The thought echoed in my mind with quiet finality.

"Maybe I never was."

I reached back hesitantly, fingertips brushing the hardened ridges. The moment I pressed them, a sudden surge of static electricity shot through my body.

The room blurred.

The walls of my bedroom dissolved into fragments, like broken glass reflecting memories that weren't mine.

And then I saw her again.

The woman with towering wings and iridescent chakra glowing on her forehead, standing like a silhouette of blinding light against a vast, dark sea.

"Aile..." she whispered, her voice soft like a distant bell.

"You have risen well."

My hand lifted instinctively, reaching for her, desperate to confirm she was real. The air around me grew cold as if responding to her presence.

Then I felt it-a gentle touch on my cheek.

I forced my eyes open through the haze, squinting against the strange light.

She was there.

Close.

Cradling my face with an expression that felt almost... familiar. Maternal, even.

The chakra on her forehead shimmered like shifting starlight.

I reached up with my left hand again, trembling, needing to feel her, to prove she wasn't just another fracture in my mind.

"No, no, darling..." she said softly, her voice like silk wrapped around steel. "Not yet. It isn't time."

She gently caught my wrist and lowered my hand with care that didn't feel human.

"I'll see you again..."

Before she could finish, everything vanished.

I was suddenly standing on the surface of a vast, silent ocean beneath a brilliant moon. There was no wind, no sound, no trace of her.

Only stillness.

When I turned, a single white door stood in the middle of the water, glowing with an intense, unnatural light.

Without thinking, I stepped toward it.

As the moment I crossed through in-

I suddenly woke up.

I was back in my bed, gasping for air, but the nightmare hadn't ended as I looked down and froze in horror.

Long black thorns had erupted from my forearms, twitching as though they were extensions of my own nerves, alive and searching.

With a panicked surge of will, I forced them down.

They withered and sank back into my skin until only faint black traces remained.

It wasn't a dream.

"Aile? You still alive in there?"

Lori's voice came through the door, followed by heavy knocking that shattered the silence.

I scrambled out of bed and threw the door open.

Lori stumbled back immediately, his face flushing deep red.

"O-oh! Hi. You slept until 10 PM. I thought you'd turned into a statue," he said, scratching the back of his head.

"I'm fine," I replied, forcing a tired smile.

"Good! Because it's time to get stronger," he said, his eyes lighting up instantly.

"The world isn't going to wait for us to be ready. Meet us in the yard!"

The door clicked shut, leaving the room suddenly quiet. I stood there for a moment, the command still ringing in the air like a fading bell.

My hands were shaking-not much, but enough that the fabric of my sleeves felt like sandpaper against my skin. I tried to smooth the wrinkles, my fingers fidgeting and tugging at the threads until my knuckles turned white.

I couldn't get her out of my head. The winged woman.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the curve of those feathers, the impossible weight of her presence. It was a memory that felt too big for my mind to hold, drifting back into focus the moment I tried to think of anything else.

I don't even remember walking down the hall. I just remember the sudden, sharp bite of the cold as I stepped outside.

***

As we stood at the very edge of the river behind the base. The roar of the rushing water was relentless-a steady, low growl that seemed to vibrate in my very bones.

The wind was just as aggressive, cutting through the clearing and tangling my hair across my face in messy, stinging knots. The world felt violent and wide, and for the first time, I felt incredibly small standing against it.

Lori held a wooden practice stick, but my hand instinctively went to the hilt of the black blade I had carried since infancy.

"You know..." Lori said, curiosity breaking through as he stared at it.

"I've never seen a blade like that. It doesn't look like it was forged by any smith I know."

"It has a pulse," Jasmia added quietly, narrowing her eyes.

I slowly unsheathed it.

The blade was matte-black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it. Ancient symbols ran across its surface, shimmering faintly like oil on water.

Oath of Beyond's Darkness.

Or OBD, as I called it.

My adoptive parents said I was found as a kid with this sword lying beside me, as if it had been waiting.

A swordsmith once offered a fortune for it, claiming it was forged from "Black Blood Diamonds," a relic from a forgotten age-something meant for a rampaging god, not a discarded child.

My eyes drifted to the dark red hollow pearl embedded in the crossguard.

A thought settled in my mind.

If I am a disaster... then maybe this sword is one too.

Because we appeared in the world at the same time.

I focused.

Black veins crawled up my arms, but this time I didn't resist them. I guided them.

I fed the energy into the hilt.

The pearl responded immediately, glowing faintly as it absorbed my power. A wave of dizziness hit me as it drank deeper, but I held on.

The blade ignited with a cold, dark aura-flames that did not burn, but swallowed light itself.

Then the sword trembled violently.

A sharp crack echoed over the river.

The blade split.

Instead of one sword, I now held two perfectly balanced obsidian blades.

I swung once and a massive, invisible force erupted forward, six trees in the distance were severed instantly, falling apart in perfect silence before crashing into the ground.

I stared at my arms.

The black veins were gone.

All of it had been absorbed into the twin blades in my hands.

"Whoa..." Lori breathed, his practice stick slipping from his grip.

I looked at the swords, then up at the sky.

The woman in my dreams had said the same thing again and again.

Find the source.

And for the first time, I wondered maybe the source wasn't something inside me.

Maybe it was already in my hands.

A strange feeling rose in my chest as it was not fear or confusion, but something closer to resolve.

For the first time, I felt like I could bite back at the world that had been swallowing me whole.