Rainwater burst apart beneath courier turbulence overhead as Yukinae stepped sideways along the outer hospital roots with her hood half-fallen from her head and a dismantled communicator clenched beneath one arm.
Another board screamed through the upper channels above her.
Too close.
The compressed wind rattled loose droplets from the canopy hard enough to sting her face.
Runa X never stopped moving.
Not for storms.
Not for exhaustion.
Not for girls sitting awake beside unconscious sisters all night wondering how much borrowed time cost in a city built vertically enough to forget the ground existed.
The massive trees supporting the district disappeared upward into mist and electrical haze, their trunks wide enough to swallow entire farming terraces within the bark itself. Suspension bridges wrapped around them like woven veins while freight lifts crawled slowly between the roots carrying medicine crates, machine components, and exhausted workers beginning another cycle beneath the rain.
Everything here moved with purpose.
Even the silence sounded operational.
Yukinae lowered herself beneath one of the larger support roots near the hospital entrance and spread the communicator pieces carefully across her lap. Tiny screws lined beside her boot in neat rows while exposed wiring glimmered weakly against the pale grove lights overhead.
Old habit.
If something broke—
she opened it.
Her fingers moved automatically through the internals despite the ache sitting behind her eyes. The relay chamber had cracked near the lower conductor plate during the journey north. Bad damage, but not fatal. The current should still distribute if the stabilizer bridge held properly.
Should.
Yukinae adjusted the damaged connector using a maintenance pin before pressing the side switch.
Static crackled softly through the speaker.
Then died.
Her jaw tightened.
Again.
She reopened the casing farther this time, exposing the relay lines beneath the fractured plate while rain tapped quietly against the bark overhead. Around her, the hospital grove continued functioning with infuriating normality. Healers crossed illuminated walkways carrying glowing record slates beneath woven light-lanterns while patients moved through treatment halls built directly into the living wood itself.
Nobody slowed.
Nobody looked devastated enough.
Mira still wasn't awake.
And the world kept operating anyway.
Yukinae pressed the communicator switch a second time.
Violent static exploded from the speaker.
A distorted breathing sound followed.
Not real.
Just damaged audio struggling through broken circuitry.
Even so, her stomach twisted painfully.
For a moment—
memory replaced the grove around her.
Rain against old rooftop panels.
Warm workshop lights.
Mira sitting cross-legged beside a dismantled engine with grease smeared across both cheeks pretending she understood repairs better than she actually did.
"You missed the stabilizer pin," Mira had declared proudly while holding the completely wrong component.
Yukinae almost smiled.
Almost.
The feeling vanished quickly enough to hurt.
She swallowed hard and looked back toward the hospital entrance where pale blue healing sigils pulsed softly behind translucent bark screens. Through the shifting lights she could barely make out silhouettes moving around Mira's chamber deeper inside the grove.
Stable.
The healers loved that word.
Stable meant breathing.
Stable meant expensive.
Stable meant nobody promised anything.
Her fingers tightened unconsciously around the communicator casing.
"Aunt Earsala…"
The words barely escaped her throat.
Rain answered instead.
The exhaustion hit harder after that.
Not sudden.
Not dramatic.
Just heavy.
Like her body had been balancing too much weight for too long and finally stopped pretending otherwise.
A courier board ripped overhead hard enough to shake the entire upper branchline.
Yukinae looked up instinctively.
The rider dropped through the wind channels between the colossal trunks with impossible precision, leaning low while silver stabilizer lights flashed beneath the board before vanishing into the market layers deeper inside the city.
Fast.
Controlled.
Certain.
Her eyes followed the movement longer than necessary.
Then drifted slowly back down toward the broken communicator.
Cheap stabilizer coil.
Thin relay bridge.
Poor heat distribution.
Bad engineering irritated her enough to briefly drown out the grief.
Automatically she reached into her jacket for spare wiring.
Empty.
Of course.
Most of her tools had been abandoned weeks ago beside the road after the attack.
The memory surfaced violently this time.
Dark trees.
Rain.
The crossroads.
Something moving wrong inside the night itself.
Light erupting through the storm.
Pain.
Yukinae's hand clenched sharply around the communicator before she realized what she was doing.
The cracked casing sliced into her palm immediately.
She hissed softly and pulled back.
Blood welled across her skin.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
Once, wounds like this barely lasted minutes beneath the regenerative current flowing naturally through her body.
Now the cut lingered.
Sharp.
Ordinary.
Human.
Yukinae stared at the blood longer than necessary before wiping it against her sleeve.
"I hate this…"
Not the injury.
Not even the pain.
The slowness.
The weakness.
The constant feeling that her body no longer remembered itself correctly anymore.
Heavy footsteps approached nearby through the rain.
Yukinae looked up immediately.
A young man carrying two damaged courier boards beneath one arm slowed near the lower root path beside her. His dark work jacket hung damp against his shoulders while grease stains marked both gloves and sleeves. One of the boards sparked faintly near the rear stabilizer housing every few seconds.
His eyes shifted toward the dismantled communicator.
Then toward the blood on her hand.
"You're bridging the relay wrong."
The statement arrived casually.
Like discussing weather.
Yukinae blinked once.
"…What?"
"The feedback current's looping through the lower plate."
He shifted the damaged boards higher against his shoulder.
"That connector's too thin to stabilize the charge."
Yukinae stared at him for a second before looking back down at the communicator.
He was right.
Annoyingly right.
"You repair boards?" she asked carefully.
"Mostly crash damage."
He lowered one of the courier boards onto the root beside her.
The underside assembly was wrecked badly enough that Yukinae noticed the imbalance immediately. Bent rear fins. Hairline fractures near the drift stabilizers. Probably intake damage too if the vibration pattern matched the sound she heard earlier.
The stranger noticed where her eyes settled.
"You saw the pull?"
"The rear alignment's uneven."
The answer came automatically.
Then she added:
"…Your intake vents are clogged."
That earned her a proper look.
Interested this time.
"Huh."
Rain continued falling softly through the canopy while transport lights drifted between the massive branches above them like distant stars trapped inside the forest.
The stranger crouched beside the damaged board and loosened one of the side panels.
"You work on your own gear?"
"Sometimes."
"You're not from Runa X."
Not really a question.
Yukinae hesitated briefly before shaking her head once.
"No."
The answer felt smaller spoken aloud.
The young man glanced toward the hospital grove entrance while adjusting the damaged stabilizer assembly.
"Family in there?"
Yukinae's chest tightened instantly.
"My sister."
Something in his expression shifted afterward.
Not pity.
Understanding.
Which somehow felt worse.
"Medical costs here are brutal," he said quietly.
Yukinae almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because hearing someone say it out loud made the entire situation feel painfully real.
Instead she looked back down toward the communicator spread across her lap.
"I just need work."
Another courier board thundered overhead somewhere above the mist.
The stranger followed the sound briefly before looking back toward her.
"You ride?"
"Not professionally."
"Still counts."
He extended one grease-marked hand toward her.
"Dagan."
Yukinae stared at the hand for a moment before shaking it carefully.
His grip felt warm.
Solid.
Real.
"Yukinae."
Dagan nodded once toward the communicator.
"You're still bridging the relay wrong, by the way."
For the first time in days—
something inside her reacted faster than grief.
Irritation.
Sharp enough to feel alive.
"…I know that now."
The corner of Dagan's mouth twitched slightly.
Then stopped.
His attention shifted upward suddenly.
Not toward the courier lanes.
Higher.
Toward the hospital canopy itself.
Yukinae noticed the change immediately.
"What?"
Dagan didn't answer right away.
Around them, the movement inside the hospital grove had slowed.
Not stopped.
Hesitated.
Workers along the upper walkways were looking upward now too.
A strange vibration rolled softly through the roots beneath Yukinae's boots.
Deep.
Mechanical.
Wrong.
The lights inside the hospital chambers flickered once.
Twice.
Then every healing sigil across the grove dimmed simultaneously.
Conversation died instantly.
The rain suddenly sounded louder.
One of the nearby healers pressed a hand against the bark wall beside the entrance as glowing fractures spread briefly beneath the living wood before vanishing again.
"What was that…?" someone whispered nearby.
Another vibration followed.
Stronger this time.
The colossal tree beneath the hospital groaned somewhere deep inside its core.
Not natural movement.
Pressure.
Yukinae felt it immediately afterward.
That sensation again.
The same impossible wrongness from the crossroads.
Cold.
Ancient.
Watching.
Somewhere high above the mist-covered canopy—
something moved.