Astreya

The heart dissolved into ash. So did the pain. Not all of it, but enough.

She could still feel the hunger. Still feel the blood.

But her body no longer screamed.

And for the first time in days… she moved without fear.

Another door slammed open.

Shouting. Footsteps. Two, maybe three. One running.

She stepped into the open, blade in hand. Her eyes were flat. Distant. Nothing behind them but purpose.

The first man raised a crowbar.

She stepped in. Drove the dagger into his thigh. Twisted.

He shrieked. Dropped. Didn't get back up.

The second swung wide. Panic, sloppy. She ducked beneath it and drove the blade up beneath his jaw. His blood misted the ceiling.

Ten minutes. That was the window.

Her breathing slowed. Her steps grew heavier. But the blessing hadn't faded yet. She could still fight.

She had to.

Shouting rose from the far hall, this time louder, sharper. Directed. Armed.

Then the click of safety switches.

Guns.

She moved to cover. A broken desk. A toppled shelf. Not enough, but better than nothing.

Footsteps thudded closer. Three, four… maybe five. A leader barked orders. They'd seen the bodies.

She leaned out, just a glimpse—and nearly took a bullet between the eyes.

The metal hissed past her temple, shattering a light fixture. Sparks rained. Concrete dust filled the air.

[Blessing of the Sun-Eater: Active]

› Power Surge: 6 minutes

"Six minutes," she murmured. "That's all you gave me?"

She shifted behind the desk. Breath slow, heart steady, blade warm in her palm.

A voice barked from the hall: "I saw her move! She's still alive—check it!"

They thought they were in control. They still thought she was prey.

Another crash of boots. A curse. Metal scraped against tile, one of them kicked something aside. She could hear them now, clearer. Panicked breath. Poor footing.

She moved.

Not silently. She didn't need to be. She rose and stepped from cover with all the calm of a rising sun.

The first one saw her, wide-eyed, pointing a pistol with both shaking hands.

"Sh—!"

She didn't let him finish.

The blade punched through his stomach. Not fast, not elegant, just final. His mouth opened like he might say something else, but he only sank down, folding in on himself with a whimper.

Someone screamed.

Another man lunged from behind a shelf, swinging a length of pipe like it might matter. He shouted something. Rage or fear, it didn't matter.

She caught his arm mid-swing.

There was no grace in it, just the sound of bones giving way beneath her grip. He shrieked, dropped the pipe, tried to pull back.

She drove his head into the wall.

He dropped without a sound.

The others backed up fast. Two of them, older, unshaven, their eyes darting between the bodies on the floor and the blood on her hands.

"Jesus Christ," one muttered. "She's not—she's not normal—"

The other raised a handgun. Shaking. Clumsy.

He fired.

The shot cracked past her. Close, but wide. It hit a stack of crates behind her with a dull thud.

She kept walking.

He fired again.

This one hit.

Her side flared with heat—a white stab of pain. But she didn't stumble. The wound was already trying to close, flesh twitching over the impact like it was arguing with the bullet.

She moved faster.

The man screamed something. Turned to run. She didn't chase.

She advanced.

He tripped on something. Maybe a body, maybe a cable—and went down hard. His gun clattered away.

He turned. Hands up. "No, please—!"

The blade answered for her.

[Power Surge: 2 minutes]

The warehouse fell quiet again.

Just breathing. Hers. Heavy, but even. 

She looked down at the bodies. At the ruin they'd made of her. Of others. Of time she couldn't get back.

Her hands didn't tremble.

The pain in her side still burned, but it no longer controlled her. It was just part of the shape of her now, just another thing to carry.

She walked.

Back through the halls, past overturned chairs and broken tables, until she reached the outer loading dock. The metal door groaned open under her hand.

And the world outside… was different.

Cracks stretched through the sky. Thin, bright lines like broken glass letting through the wrong kind of light. The air shimmered, bent around itself. In the distance, something howled. A wet, gurgling sound that didn't belong to anything she'd ever learned to fear.

She stared up at it.

No awe. No surprise.

Just quiet understanding.

Something had changed.

And she had too.

-

???

The air stank of ozone and blood.

Cracks still shimmered above the street, warping the sky like heat off broken glass. Goblins lay in heaps. Some crushed, others still twitching.

She was panting.

One arm hung limp, bleeding freely from the bicep. Her other hand was caked in green and red. Her knees ached. Her ribs might've cracked.

But behind her—

A child. Crying.

She shifted her weight. Square stance. Heels off the ground. Elbows close.

Another goblin lunged.

She sidestepped. Sharp. Clean.

Her shin crashed into its ribs. A crack.

It dropped. Didn't rise.

[System Notification]

Sponsorship Initiated: ["The Bloom Beyond the Spiral"]

› [Shard of Spiral Endurance]: Duration | Temporary

The flicker didn't register at first.

She blinked sweat from her eyes. Her injured arm still hung useless, but the tremor in her legs began to still. The ache didn't vanish but it stopped dragging her down.

She stepped forward.

Something screamed.

Not a goblin this time. Taller. Hunched. Wrong. It crawled from the rift like a mistake given claws—long-limbed, eyeless, with a tongue that dragged behind it like a leash it had chewed free from.

People ran.

She didn't.

The child behind her made a small sound.

So she advanced.

Not fast. Not reckless.

Each step landed solid. Anchored. As if the ground moved to meet her.

The creature lunged.

She leaned in, caught the first swipe on her injured side and drove her elbow into its throat. It flailed. She didn't. Her body remembered the form even when her mind was water.

Jab. Hook. Knee. Turn.

Something coiled beneath her skin. Not foreign. Not divine.

Familiar.

Like a drill she'd run a thousand times before, but now it bit deeper. Cut cleaner. Not stronger, truer.

Her foot crashed into its knee. Bone gave.

The thing dropped. She dropped with it. Drove her elbow down again, hard enough to rattle her own spine.

It twitched once. Then went still.

She rose, slower this time. Breathing shallow.

-

ASTREYA

She wasn't looking for anyone.

The observation disc hovered beside her, its surface dim. Other Constellations were watching the gates, the chaos, the numbers. She'd grown bored of it. 

But then something shifted.

Just a… pull.

A thread of motion in the dark, like something twisting toward bloom.

She turned.

A new crack had opened. Small. Urban. Already stained. Smoke curled from the edges, and goblins tumbled through in a scramble of teeth and rusted steel.

Nothing unusual.

Except—

There.

A mortal. Moving.

She wasn't glowing. She wasn't armed. She didn't radiate potential the way some did. But there was a clarity to her stance. A stillness before the strike.

Elbow in. Weight balanced. Strike—crack.

Another goblin down.

Then another.

Blood ran down the girl's arm in rivulets. Her breathing was labored. And still, she stood between the monsters and the child behind her.

Astreya tilted her head.

"…Why aren't you running?"

The girl didn't answer. Couldn't have. She was mortal. Fragile. Hurt.

But something in her posture said it clearly enough:

Because someone has to stand here.

Astreya's fingers hovered over the interface. She didn't know why.

She wasn't seeking Contractors yet. Sponsorship was a waste on the edge of collapse. You could pour miracles into a bleeding wound and it still wouldn't sing.

But—

[Sponsorship Initiated]

Sponsorship Initiated: ["The Bloom Beyond the Spiral"]

› [Shard of Spiral Endurance]: Duration | Temporary

The thread descended.

Astreya didn't remember pressing confirm.

She just watched as the shimmer brushed the girl's shoulders. Nothing grand. No wings. No fire. Just a flicker. A breath of stability. Of stillness.

And the girl moved again. Weaker now. But no longer teetering.

Astreya stepped closer to the disc. The fight had changed.

The goblins were gone. Or dead.

Something else was coming through.

It pulled itself out of the rift with limbs too long, bones too soft, a dragging tongue and eyes it didn't have. A creature malformed by the gate, mutated from whatever weak thing it had been before.

It shrieked.

People ran.

The girl advanced.

Her injured arm hung useless. Her ribs strained. But her feet never faltered. Her strikes weren't wild, they were practiced. Remembered. Refined.

Astreya leaned forward, both hands on the disc now.

Jab. Hook. Knee.

The creature screamed. One of its legs snapped.

The girl followed it down. Elbow. Crack.

Stillness.

Then silence.

Astreya stared.

The System chimed.

[System Notification]

› Error: Shard retrieval failed

› Reason: Merge Detected

Her orb stirred beside her, voice even.

"She took it."

Astreya blinked. "What?"

"The mortal. Her pattern was already forming—incipient, but self-woven. The shard you granted was only meant to stabilize her for a moment. But her body didn't release it."

"…She merged with it?"

"She made it her own. Not by will. By resonance."

The orb paused.

"Your power didn't awaken her," it said softly. "She did. You just… helped it find shape."

Astreya looked down again. The girl had collapsed to one knee, breathing hard, clutching her side—but still between the child and the world.

A small spiral flickered faintly at her shoulder.

Almost like a mark. Almost like a seed.

Astreya exhaled.

"…Huh."

She wasn't looking for anyone.

But maybe… something had found her anyway.