I flicked the stone—harder this time.
Clack.
"…You're so dramatic," I said. "Aren't you meant to be my negative side?"
"I am correct. And if you classify 'sensibility' as 'negative' then yes, I do."
"Annoying."
"That means it's working."
I groaned, dragging my hands down my face. "Fine. Fine. I won't enslave Sunny. Not right away."
"Not at all."
"We'll negotiate."
He hissed through his teeth.
Before he could lecture, I cut in, "Look, Sasrir, I'm bored. Out of my mind. You can handle looming stoically for twenty months, but I'm human. Humans do poorly with waiting. We start… improvising."
"You throw rocks at walls and whistle off-key," he corrected.
"Exactly. And that gets old. Fast."
He stared at me for a beat longer, then sighed—a sound like a thousand rotting doors creaking open at once.
"There are ways to pass time without putting the future at risk," he said. "You could train."
"I did train. Yesterday."
"You worked for fifteen minutes."
"It was a concentrated fifteen."
"You took a nap afterward."
"A powerful nap. Mentally enriching."
He made a noise that bordered on a groan. "Now I understand how our parents must have felt for sixteen years."
"And just like them, you love me anyways."
"…I tolerate you."
"High praise."
Despite everything, he stepped closer—close enough that his presence cast a faint, comforting shadow over me. "Just… keep a lid on things, alright? You know you can trust me," he said quietly.
I smirked, tipping my head back so I could see the overcast sky. "I trust you more than anyone else in this world Sasrir, even more than myself."
I tossed another stone.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
And for a little while, the only sounds were falling pebbles and the broken whistle of someone who really had nothing better to do.
I had just drawn back my arm for another throw when Sasrir froze.
Not visibly, because he didn't move like a normal person to begin with—he simply went perfectly, utterly still. The shadows under his feet tightened with a low shiver, coiling inward like a creature scenting blood.
I didn't need the warning.
"…What is it?" I asked, already letting the stone drop from my hand.
His head tilted, ever so slightly. Listener mode. His awareness spread out into the darkness like ink in water.
Something was coming.
"Movement," he murmured. "Northeast. Heavy. Wet. Not human."
My relaxation evaporated. All the harmless banter, all the lazy whistling… gone. It was like someone snapped a cord inside me and replaced everything with cold, disciplined instinct.
Justice had activated.
I stood up, dusting off my palms, the weight of the Dark City settling differently on my shoulders. "Distance?"
"Within five minutes."
Of course it was.
I stepped away from the ledge, eyes narrowing at the drowned streets below. The Dark City liked to hide things—liked to mask sound, warp light, and twist shadows.
But even here, some monsters were too large to hide well.
And I soon saw it.
A ripple at first. Then a bulge in the murk. Then—
A form emerged from the half-collapsed alleyway, dragging itself forward with slow, deliberate weight. Water dripped from its hunched shoulders in steady rivulets, like it had crawled straight out of a submerged cavern.
It was tall. Taller than me, taller than Sasrir's humanoid form by a head or two. Its limbs were long, gaunt, and uneven—as if they'd grown at different speeds and never quite matched. Slick veiny skin stretched taut over a skeletal frame, webbed at the elbows and knees, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat under sludge.
Its head—
…was wrong.
Too wide. Too smooth. No eyes.
Just a slanted ridge where a face should have been, twitching as if sniffing for prey through nonexistent features. Its mouth hung half-open, jagged teeth jutting outward at crooked angles, like pieces of shattered bone shoved into raw gum.
It made a sound.
A wet, bubbling croak that echoed off the drowned stone.
Sasrir exhaled softly. "Drowned Ghoul," he said. "A large one."
I grimaced. "Ah, I hate these fucks. They're always so smushy."
"Do not underestimate it."
"I wasn't planning to. I've learnt that the hard way, remember?."
The creature lurched forward—slow but purposeful. Wretches hunted like blind crustaceans: by vibration, by heat, by the scent of living flesh. It would pinpoint us any second.
I checked my footing, shifted my stance, felt my heartbeat steady into that familiar pre-fight rhythm. Banter was gone. Whistling was gone. The Forgotten Shore had its fun, but combat was a line I never crossed carelessly.
"Alright," I murmured. "Plan?"
Sasrir's shadows slid around him like ink gathering into a blade. "I distract. You finish."
"Fine. Fine. Let's kill the thing before more show up."
The Drowned Ghoul raised its head—if you could call that bulbous slab a head—and let out a shrill, shuddering cry, the kind that vibrated in your ribs and made the ruined city itself sound like it was groaning.
Then it charged.
Water splashed, stone cracked, and the air filled with the reek of something long dead yet stubbornly moving.
I stepped forward to meet it, Steel Memento in one hand and the Unshadowed Crucifix in the other.
Even bored people have priorities.
The Wretch lunged—fast. Much faster than anything that rotted and smelled like that should be.
I stepped sideways just as its clawed arm smashed into the wall behind me, stone exploding like brittle sand. Shards scraped my cheek. If that hit me squarely, I'd be pulp.
Sasrir was already moving.
His form unraveled into a streak of living shadow, slicing across the creature's legs. Tendrils lashed upward, hooking into its tendons and dragging hard. The Wretch staggered, shrieking.
Good. Opening.
I darted in, sword already burning with essence.
It swung blindly, catching only empty air as I slid beneath its reach. Its claws carved a deep gouge into the pavement where my head had just been. A hair slower and I'd be missing half my torso.
I slammed mmy blade into its ribcage.
Bone cracked. Skin split. The creature spasmed, jerking sideways with a horrible garbled howl—half water, half something like a choking child.
It thrashed wildly.
Too wildly.
One of its limbs whipped out and clipped my shoulder—just a graze, but enough to spin me and leave the blade embedded in the monster's side. Pain flashed hot down my arm. If that had been direct…
"Move!" Sasrir barked.
I didn't need the reminder.
I ducked under another swipe, slipping behind the creature as Sasrir's shadows dragged at its spine, wrenching its posture open. It tried to twist toward me, but its head couldn't quite rotate this far.
Good.
I didn't give it a chance to learn how.
I summoned a second sword-longer and thinner this time-and drove it into the gap between its shoulder blades hard. Essence flowed like a burning flood, bursting through brittle bone. The creature convulsed violently, limbs shuddering as its spine gave with a wet crack. The Enchantment activated, drawing upon the creature's death throes to grow stronger.
It collapsed forward, gasping like a drowning animal.
Not dead. Not yet.
These things never died politely.
I grabbed its twisted head, braced my feet, and slammed it into the stone.
Once.
Twice.
The third hit cracked the skull. Dark fluid splattered across the pavement like spilled ink.
The fourth made it stop moving.
I stood there for a moment, panting. My hand throbbed. My shoulder screamed.
Sasrir re-solidified behind me, wiping stray droplets of monster gore off his sleeve with the air of someone swatting dust from a coat. "You were almost hit."
"I noticed," I muttered, rolling my shoulder and hissing at the ache. "Thing swung like it wanted to fold me in half."
"It nearly did."
"Yeah, yeah. I'll add it to the list of things trying to murder me."
I nudged the corpse with my toe. It didn't twitch. Good.
Fast. Brutal. Over.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast-Drowned Ghoul]
But another few seconds of carelessness, and I'd be the one on the ground, dripping into the cracks.
Sasrir looked toward the ruined street. "There will be more."
"Always is," I said, shaking the blood off my hand. "That's why we kill fast and leave faster."
We exchanged a glance.
Then we vanished into the Dark City before the next thing found us.
By the time Sasrir and I made it to the gates of Bright Castle, the sun—or whatever paled light filtered in over the ruined walls—was dipping low. My shoulder no longer throbbed from the Ghoul back in the Dark City, already healed by the Rejuvinating Bloom, and I heard voices ahead that I recognised-or one of them, at least.
Kai.