Fever-bright sunlight bleached the world beneath it. A cold sweat trickled down Ren’s neck as he balanced on the stationery shop’s fractured roof. The air shimmered and warped, drawing dust upward. A flick of his wrist, and gravity’s pull slackened. The children’s collective breath cut through the quiet, their faces frozen in awe.

  “Hold on to each other,” he murmured. The city dropped away as they hung suspended between buildings. The next rooftop rushed up to meet them. Their descent ended in a whisper of dust, the children stumbling as their shoes found purchase on loose stone. The smallest boy tripped. Reina caught him by the shoulders.

  Sunlight flashed off glass teeth where office windows had shattered. Between the buildings, military helicopters lay on their sides, rotors twisted. His attention drifted toward the coast where the bay shimmered through the haze, its surface a cold mirror beneath the bleached sky. The mall stood at the water’s edge, the dome cracked but intact.

  She followed his line of sight. “They have to be there.”

  “They are,” he said. Ren measured the gap to the next building. Six meters of open air, twisted metal reaching up from below. He faced the children, his gaze hardening. “Not a word about what you just saw. Understand?”

  A sigh escaped Reina as she crouched beside the smallest child, tugging loose threads back into place. “What he means,” she said, her voice soft, “is that his… powers stay between us. He’s like a superhero.” She stopped there, meeting each child’s eyes in turn. “Can you keep a secret?”

  The older boy nodded first, quick and sure. The others followed, eyes clear of questions. Children of the aftermath didn’t need lessons on silence.

  A hero.

  Each jump drained him further. Small, precise uses of mana. The Mizuhana Terminal sprawled below. Reina’s fingers found his forearm, steadying herself against him as much as him against her. “You feel like ice.” She whispered in his ear.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Her frown deepened.

  * * *

  Stale air hung in the mall, thick enough to taste with each breath. Haruka covered her mouth with her sleeve and followed Sakura down the dim corridor. “Sorry for the mess.” Sakura motioned ahead. “There were plans for this place—checkpoint, shelter—but the generators couldn’t keep up. Now it’s just… half-alive. Or half-dead.” A generator coughed somewhere deeper in the building before settling into a labored rhythm.

  “When did you get here?”

  “Two days ago, give or take.” Sakura’s expression stayed neutral as her fingers traced the wall, guiding them into a wider concourse. “There was a rescue team at the start. Police, too. Most of them left to escort civilians here. They… never made it back.”

  “Guys, she doesn’t look good,” Haruto said.

  Satsuki had slumped against the wall, her complexion ashen under the pulsing light. When she caught them watching, she forced a smile that faltered. “Nothing wrong with me,” she rasped.

  “Right. And I’m the emperor. Here, drink.” Haruto pressed his canteen into her palm.

  They emerged into what had once been the Mizuhana Mall’s heart, a vast atrium gutted by disaster. From the second and third floors, tattered paper snowflakes twisted in faint air currents, whispering through the gaps in the shattered skylight.

  Amira hugged her arms to her chest. “Is it really safe? How can we be sure they won’t get us here?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Safe? Nowhere’s safe, girl. What we have is close enough. Radios and alarms scattered through the outer corridors keep the infected chasing echoes instead of us. It’s how we’ve lasted this long.”

  “Playing with fire,” Shion said.

  Sakura nodded. “We are. Those traps and alarms cost lives to put up. But without them, we’d have all joined the dead days ago.”

  Shigure shifted beside her, but one sharp look from Amira silenced him. Haruka noticed the rifle in his hands—the one Mr. Takemori used to carry. She drew a slow breath, unwinding one knot at a time in her shoulders. “If this place was supposed to save people,” she asked, “what went wrong?”

  “Simply put, we were too late. By the time anyone organized a response, the infection had already reached the department wing. We sealed the evacuation tunnels after finding infected in the maintenance shafts. And without enough power, our best way out is useless.”

  “The monorail?”

  Sakura nodded. “Airport’s at the end of that line. One of our people came from there. He’s some big shot, said the rest of the military is holding the island with evacuation flights leaving. You must have seen the contrails. If we get power back to this sector, that line becomes our lifeline.”

  “So that’s the plan?”

  “If we’re lucky.”

  She thought of her mother.

  “She’s really here?”

  Sakura’s expression softened. “She is.”

  “And she’s… okay?”

  “As okay as any of us. Which isn’t saying much.”

  Haruka blinked rapidly, fighting the sudden sting in her eyes. “I thought—” She steadied herself. “After everything that happened, I never thought I’d see Mom again.” Midori’s fingers found hers.

  Their path wound through a maze of overturned benches and sandbags. Survivors huddled under blankets, watching them pass without a flicker of curiosity left. Sakura swiped a keycard at a STAFF ONLY door, ushering them into what had once been an employee lounge. The harsh glow of a single bulb threw long shadows across a handful of people.

  “Naomi, you’re back—” Aki rose from behind a table strewn with maps, gray-streaked hair escaping a messy ponytail, eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Mom!” Haruka crossed the room and gathered her in. The hug crushed the air from Haruka’s lungs; for a moment the noise, the fear, the rot of the world all disappeared.

  “My girl,” she whispered into her hair, voice trembling. “My sweet baby girl.” They clung to each other until her knees threatened to give. When they finally separated, Aki brushed tangled hair from her face, fingers pausing at the bruise on her cheek. “You’re safe now,” she said.

  Midori shifted closer, unsure whether to interrupt. “Uh, hi. Mrs. Sumire.”

  “Oh. And look at you two!” Aki’s smile was weary but warm.

  “Ma’am,” Kuro said with a nod, “it’s been a while.”

  Her mother’s eyes flicked toward Satsuki, noting the feverish sheen to her skin. “The pharmacy has beds. Get her there before she passes out. You can go with her.” Haruto nodded and slipped beneath Satsuki’s arm, leading her out. At the far wall, Amira murmured something in Shigure’s ear; whatever she said made his jaw tighten. “We’re all down to our last threads,” Aki said. “Another few days, and there won’t be anything left.” The certainty in her tone made Haruka’s stomach knot.

  “Mom...?”

  “Don’t worry about it right now, Haru,” Aki whispered, squeezing her hand. “Eat something first. Rest.”

  “What about Dad and Grandpa, are they here? Are they—”

  “Please, Haru. Later. I promise”

  Static crackled from Sakura’s radio, followed by a voice sharp with urgency. “North rooftop— we’ve got movement! The flares worked!” Everyone crowded toward the monitor, its feed flickering through static. Figures emerged, silhouettes moving across the roof bridge beneath the crimson smear of a flare. The image sharpened—two figures guiding three smaller ones behind them.

  Lilly made a sound, “Reina!”

  * * *

  The entrance barricades hastily shoved aside. Through the narrow passage, Haruka spotted them, haloed by dusty sunlight. Reina, fingers wrapped protectively around a small palm, a little girl with dirty cheeks, eyes darting across unfamiliar faces. Ren followed, at his side walked two boys, one taller than the other.

  Her sister’s name tore from Lilly’s throat again as she pushed through the crowd. Reina barely had time to let the child go before Lilly collided with her. They crumpled together, clutching so tightly it was hard to tell who was who. Haruka watched her mother move toward Ren with the grace of someone long used to tending the wounded. Her expression hovered between grief and joy. Her hand settled on his shoulders.

  A small smile tugged at his mouth. “You’ve seen better days.”

  Something unspoken passed between them, an understanding tempered by years. Haruka caught the look and remembered how her mother had always treated Ren differently: patiently, always cautious, like he was something breakable. Grandpa had once sworn he’d never take another apprentice after the last one quit. Yet Ren had walked through the door, barely twenty, and somehow changed his mind.

  His eyes caught hers, and she realized she’d been staring too long. He dipped his chin slightly. She felt her lips curve without meaning to. “Welcome back,” she mouthed.

  Hope, thin as morning light, slipped through the cracks.

  Ren’s gaze swept the survivors.

  “Where’s Fujimori?”