Kurobane drifted through the empty corridors, each step heavier than the last. Less than forty-eight hours, just enough time to make peace with never seeing the open sky again, never filling his lungs with air that didn’t carry the metallic tang of blood. No helicopters would appear on the horizon. No soldier would breach the perimeter. Their single remaining option was barely worth calling hope.

  Is this really how I die? With everything in my life as fucked up as it is? His feet scraped across the floor as he passed abandoned storefronts, their windows dark.

  “This isn’t the time for explanations!” The voice pierced through the fog in his thoughts.

  “Haru, wait—you’re not thinking—”

  They burst around the corner, nearly slamming into him. Haruka jerked to a stop, chest heaving. Midori’s exhausted face went slack with surprise. He trailed several steps behind her, palms raised as if approaching something wild and dangerous.

  Kurobane glanced from Haruka’s flushed face to Midori’s worry-bleached one, and something constricted inside his chest. He saw them at twelve years old—racing into Kigan’s foaming waves, Haruka collapsing into the sand laughing, Midori extending the last popsicle. Sleeping bags arranged in perfect triangles, bicycle wheels flashing in summer light.

  “You look good,” he said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. “I always figured you’d end up together. It seemed… right.” He somehow meant it, but bitterness bled through.

  “The world’s ending, and that’s where your head goes?” Haruka narrowed her eyes.

  Even in the dim light, he couldn’t help admiring her—the curve of her jaw, the rebellious strands of her bangs refusing to lie flat. Another precious memory surfaced: fifteen-year-old Haruka on his bedroom floor, her face pulled tight in that serious way that always made his stomach flip. “If neither of us is married by twenty-five, we should just marry each other!” she’d declared. He’d laughed then, never daring to admit how often he revisited that promise afterward.

  A furnace lit inside him—rage at their closeness, at an apocalypse that had stolen everything except his most painful feelings. He forced it down.

  “Look,” Midori said, pointing to the abandoned food court, “we could sit over there. Maybe clear the air?”

  Kurobane braced for Haruka to object, but she didn’t. So they drifted to the food court, where upended chairs surrounded tables glazed with grime and old rainwater. He took the seat across from them, watching as Haruka and Midori settled in side by side.

  Silence stretched, thick as the air before a storm. Midori broke it with a humorless laugh. “Remember when you said things would only get worse? Turns out you were being an optimist.”

  “I didn’t mean to jinx us.”

  “The world is ending, but right now we’re still alive, we have this moment.” Midori’s hand rubbed the back of his neck, tension carved into the gesture. “It’s strange, growing up together like we did, and somewhere along the way, talking became the hardest thing.”

  “We’ve watched people torn apart. But sure, let’s talk about how hard conversation is.”

  Midori stared down at the scratched tabletop. “When it comes to the three of us… yeah.”

  Kurobane started to argue—then shut his mouth.

  He was right. It was hard.

  Midori traced a water stain with his fingertip, then lifted his head. “What happened with Yuka… I didn’t even know her that well, but watching her die after everything we survived together… I can’t shake it.” His gaze moved between them, searching for shared grief.

  Kurobane’s eyelids fell shut, as if he could block the image behind them. The knife’s weight flashed in his hand. That wet slip.

  “None of it should’ve happened,” Haruka murmured. Something cold lived behind her eyes, sharper than sorrow. She rose abruptly. “I need some air.”

  “Haru—wait, we haven’t—”

  She stopped him with a small, firm gesture. “I changed my mind. Now isn’t a good time.” Her footsteps faded down the dim corridor.

  Midori collapsed into his chair, fingers raking through his hair. Kurobane couldn’t stop staring down the hall she’d vanished into. He was selfish, pathetic, desperate. The world was ending, strangers were dying by the thousands, and still he orbited her.

  “Midori...” His oldest friend lifted his head, exhaustion etched deep. “When they ask for volunteers to clear the station tomorrow, stay behind. Just this once, let someone else carry the weight. Don’t be a hero.”

  Kurobane saw the protest forming and knew it wouldn’t change anything. The distance between them yawned wide and unbridgeable.

  * * *

  Moonlight filtered through the shattered dome overhead, casting a pale glow across the mall’s indoor trees. On one of the benches, Ren sat with his neck tilted back, eyes fixed on the sky beyond the ruined ceiling.

  At least the sky is the same. Since arriving in this world, that thought had been his single comfort. The sun and moon and stars remained unchanged. Silent witnesses to the life he’d lost, and the one he’d stumbled into. He flexed the fingers of his remaining hand, the movement stiff with strain. His attention drifted to where his arm ended abruptly, a jagged memory carved into flesh.

  It had been just another wound when he first arrived here, one more scar among many. But now, beneath fractured glass and silver light, the absence throbbed. Memories crashed over him: his mother’s final smile before the pyre. Blackbarrow swallowed by flames. And underneath it all—the ache. Mana draining, bit by bit. When the last of it vanished, he knew what would follow.

  He clenched hard enough for tendons to stand out. What was the point of hiding anymore? The prophecies, the throne, the endless bloodshed. All meaningless here. Even if she—even if Evelyn lived, what did it matter? Maybe she’s changed… Maybe I was never meant to be here, but I’ll fight for them anyway. He exhaled, shoulders sinking. Tetsuya wouldn’t die on his watch. “I know you’re there,” he breathed. “You might as well join me.”

  Leaves rustled behind him. He turned and found Reina standing at the garden’s edge, framed in a beam of silver light. She crossed patches of shadow and silver, settling close enough that he felt the warmth of her arm beside his. “I looked for you after they told us about tomorrow.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Aki wanted a word.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “No. Not this time.” She leaned closer, concerned. He let a smile reach his eyes. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “The color’s gone from your face.” Her fingers hovered before settling lightly on his sleeve. “I’m scared, Ren. For you.”

  Her features blurred with others—a face he’d loved once. “Do you want me to tell you where I’m going?”

  She nodded.

  “Before I do,” he said, “I need you to promise me something. Promise me that you won’t do anything reckless while I’m gone. That you won’t follow me. No matter what happens. That you’ll wait for me.”

  She nodded again—slower this time. “I promise.”

  “I told you I was from another world, but that isn’t telling you much, is it? Hanashiro Ren isn’t even my real name. It’s Kaelren. Kaelren of Blackbarrow. But most knew me by another name. Kaelren, the Demon King.”

  * * *

  Outside her room, Haruto had fallen asleep against the wall, his body folded inward with his head on his knees, a blanket over his shoulders. Even in sleep, his fingers remained hooked around the chair leg, as though he’d fought to keep watch until exhaustion finally claimed him.

  With the care of someone approaching a minefield, Kurobane stepped past him and eased the door open. Moonbeams sliced through a crack in the window, casting pale bands across the floor and catching on Satsuki’s figure. She lay alone on the thin mattress. “Hey,” he murmured. “Am I bothering you…?”

  Her gaze stayed fixed on the window. “Isn’t the moon beautiful tonight?” She said, the words drifting from her lips.

  Something in her tone—a distance—sat wrong with him. As if she stood on the opposite side of a widening chasm. He circled the bed, his footsteps unnaturally loud in his ears. When her face came fully into the light, his breath vanished.

  Her left eye had clouded over entirely: a milky white orb threaded with red veins. Her skin, once warm and bright beneath electric blue hair, had turned the color of old paper. When she tried to smile, he saw dried flecks of blood crusted at the corners of her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Looks like I’m infected.”

  The world outside went on. Wind stirring, distant sounds echoing faintly. Inside this room, inside him, everything stopped. He stood rooted to the floor as something fundamental in him began to crack apart.

  “Hayami told me what’s happening. Too much infected blood at the school.” A pill bottle rattled in her weak hand. She traced the bottle’s edge with her thumb. “They said these would make it painless.” The last word broke as it left her tongue.

  “No… No. No, no, no—” He didn’t remember closing the distance, only that suddenly he was kneeling beside her bed, hands shaking as he lifted her arms, checked her wrists, tilted her head to examine her neck, pushed back her pants leg to check her ankles, searching desperately for a wound that didn’t exist. “There’s no bite mark. No scratch. Nothing. How can you—? It’s wrong! This isn’t fair!”

  Her fingers, cold and trembling, brushed his hand and stilled him. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek—light as a butterfly. He collapsed against her, forehead pressing into her lap as silent, violent sobs wracked him. Her fingers moved through his hair, tracing gentle circles as his tears soaked through the thin blanket. “Kuro, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to take my own life,” she whispered.

  His voice splintered. “There has to be another way.”

  “What way?” A sound escaped her, a broken laugh swallowed by a sob. “Wait until I’m biting at your throat?” Her voice thinned to a fragile thread. “The infection’s been spreading for a while now… there is no other way.”

  She lifted her hand and cupped his cheek, guiding his face up until he was looking directly into her mismatched eyes. In the dim silver light, he saw it: a terrible, aching peace beneath the fear—just like Yuka.

  “Kuro, if I asked you to, would you kill me?”

  * * *

  The title split open a seal he’d kept shut for years. Suddenly he was a child again, sprinting beneath dappled sunlight through the grove’s ancient trees, his mother’s laughter weaving with birdsong while his father pointed out which herbs to gather. Then, fire.

  It swallowed the sacred grove. Fire turning every tree into a torch. Through the smoke, a figure in gleaming armor. “Skitter away, insect.”

  Ren forced his eyes closed, dragging himself back to the present. “Where I come from, magic isn’t fantasy. It’s as real as you and me. As tangible as flesh and bone.” She looked like someone witnessing snowfall for the first time—awed and bewildered in equal measure. “My world had no glass towers reaching for the clouds. No lights powered by invisible currents. We had something else. Mana. It flowed through everything, raised empires from dust and returned them to ash just as easily. A skilled mage,” he said, lifting his palm, “could bend the elements. Shape flame. Command storms. Call the stone beneath our feet to rise.” He stopped, searching for the words buried under a lifetime of silence. “I told you I was different. I was born with a… mutation. Where others channeled through staves and tomes, I absorbed it.”

  With a slight flick of his finger, a flame the size of a firefly bloomed above his palm. Reina startled—then leaned in, transfixed. The tiny flame painted warm light across her face as she hovered her fingers near it.

  “Amazing...”

  “These are just remnants. Without both hands to shape the flow, I’m a painter with broken brushes. Weaving requires gestures,” he said. “They guide the mana. Without it, most spells are wasteful. And I can’t afford to waste anything anymore.”

  “So then, how did you do all of...?”

  “Gravity,” he went on. “That’s my gift. Every mage has one.” He raised one finger.

  Reina’s body lifted clean off the bench. “Ren!” she gasped, flailing as her feet left the floor.

  A laugh escaped him as he lowered his hand, setting her down as gently as falling snow. “Manipulating gravity costs me almost nothing,” he explained. “It’s the one thing I can still do freely. Even with one hand.”

  Her voice thinned to a whisper. “These… reserves you mentioned. What are they, really?”

  He looked down at the space between them. “My body needs mana the way it needs food, water, the air we breathe. Back home, it was everywhere. In the trees, the animals, the rocks. But here, there’s nothing. I’ve been living off what I had when I arrived, and that wasn’t much.”

  “And if you run out…?”

  “I’ll die.”

  She inhaled sharply, panic flooding her expression. Her hands flew to his shoulders. “That’s what she asked you to do, isn’t it? She wants your magic. Ren, you’ll die, you’ll—”

  “Reina.” His hand covered hers, steady despite the weight of everything he’d said. “Aki doesn’t know. And I’ve already made my choice. I want to do this. I won’t sit by and watch anyone else slip away.”

  His thumb stroked slow circles over her knuckles. Her trembling eased beneath his touch. This time would be different. “I was a child when they came. A man in polished gold armor stood over me while my home burned to cinders and everyone I loved screamed their last breaths. He could’ve ended my life with a single strike. Instead, he watched me crawl through the ashes… and he let me live. That mercy,” he said, “was the cruelest thing ever done to me. I devoted the rest of my life to vengeance.”

  He drifted past the garden, past this world entirely.

  “Renfield made me.” The words carried a lifetime of weight. “I wore the title of Demon King all the way to the heart of his Holy Kingdom, where Saint Renfield waited.” He spat the title. “After years of dreaming how I’d make him pay… when I finally got the chance… he told me the truth, and I...” He swallowed hard. “I live that day every time I close my eyes.”

  He stared down at his remaining hand, turning it slowly as though searching for answers in the lines of his palm. “I realized neither of us had ever really been in control. Evelyn and I… we were just pieces on someone else’s board.”

  “You and Evelyn were…?”

  “Two sides of the same coin, you could say. She, the radiant Hero. I, the dreaded Demon King.” A humorless twist pulled at his lips. “Though ‘Kaelren the Pretender’ fits better in the end. When the old man found me, after everything… I found myself at war with ordinary days. The small things. I kept one foot in the grave of my old life, refusing to fully step into this one. Living like that has worn me down… and, that’s the truth, Reina. All of it.”

  Tears clung to her lashes, threatening to fall with each blink. She lifted a hand to his face, leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were soft and warm. Heat unfurled in his chest, every heartbeat a confession he didn’t have words for. His hand slid into hers, fingers tightening. She pulled back just enough to breathe, their foreheads resting together, their breaths mingling.

  “Come back to me.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  The door clicked shut behind him with a soft thud. Haruto still slept against the wall, the blanket slipping from one shoulder. Kurobane stopped long enough to pull it back into place. The hallway blurred at the edges; the knife hung from his hand. Tremors crawled from his fingers up his wrist. Fresh blood—warm, so warm—painted his skin and the metal.

  No one else could do what he’d just done.

  No one else would.