Gilded Ashes-Chapter 267: Safe... Mostly.

It wasn’t visible from ground level the way a wall was visible.

From up here, it looked like a vast, transparent dome of distortion wrapped around the city. Not glass - something more subtle. It warped the world like heat over stone. Rain struck it and slid away, bending in lines that didn’t match wind.

It was a normal Eon field, sure. But not like anything Raizen had ever seen.

It felt wrong to even call it an Eon field, like calling the ocean "a puddle."

This was massive. Stable. And strong enough that reality itself bent around it.

Near the tallest crown, leaves levitated. Not floating like they were caught in wind, or like that cube did earlier. Floating like gravity completely forgot them.

Raizen stared so hard his eyes watered.

His mind tried to measure it, tried to imagine the output, the control, the calibration. But it couldn’t.

This wasn’t skill. This was an entire tier above him. Maybe even above mastery.

He turned his head slightly.

Far in the distance, through breaks in cloud, he thought he saw Neoshima - a faint glint of grey and steel on the horizon, tiny and far, almost unreal.

Just seeing it from here made his chest ache. Ukai was enormous. The world was enormous. Bigger than anything he could have imagined.

And he had been climbing branches like a fool thinking he understood the scale of anything.

Beside him, Hikari floated in the same stunned silence. Her hair was damp, her cheeks flushed from laughter and excitement, eyes wide and reflective. The coldness she’d worn earlier was gone. Up here, she looked like the girl Raizen remembered - the one who saw the world like it was something to adventure into, not something to endure.

Enya’s laughter softened. Just for a moment. like even she respected the view.

Then gravity remembered they weren’t exactly leaves.

The apex passed, and they started falling. Fast.

The drop came with a breathless rush that made Raizen’s stomach twist again, but this time he didn’t panic. He’d learned Enya’s style, she wouldn’t let them splatter.

Because she still needed them alive to enjoy everything, right?

Enya snapped her hands forward like a child reaching out for a hug. Vines answered immediately.

Not just one, like before - a whole network.

Smooth ramps grew from branches, curving like slides, slick with rain but somehow stable and smooth. A vine caught Raizen’s waist and guided him onto the first ramp. He hit it bottom-first, slid down, then launched off the end into open air.

Another vine caught him mid-flight, swung him sideways, and placed him onto a second ramp that curved dangerously downward like a wave. He slid again, jumped, somehow landed safely, slid, got swung again.

It was insane.

But it was amazing.

Raizen’s body started to move with it. He bent his knees on impact, adjusted his center, used the slides like he used walls and rails in the arena. He even caught himself enjoying the logic of it.

Hikari was behind him, following the same route. He heard her soft laugh again - shocked, delighted, and cute at the same time.

She was having fun.

...And Raizen hated how much that made him smile.

Enya guided them in a wide arc around the city. Not on the streets - above them. Wayyy above them.

A loop of flight, swings, ramps and slides that traced Ukai’s round shape like Enya wanted to show off her home. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Raizen saw the academy below, smaller from this angle, its labyrinth halls hidden inside living structure. He saw the marker near the center, the carved symbols, the terraces. He saw the healed burn - the place that used to be black and scarred now coated with glossy resin, already looking healed enough.

He saw the ceremony crowd again, still circling, still smiling through tears, still doing their thing. He saw the great trunk, and the building fused into it where the Echelon met, half hidden under branches and glass.

And for a moment, Raizen almost forgot the terror of Elin’s report, the wrongness of reality, the rule Eon refused to break. Up here, everything was just wind, rain and movement.

Then Enya flung them toward the city center again. The vines guided them down in dangerous, clean drops, each catch controlled, each ramp perfectly angled.

Raizen’s boots hit a final slide, then he launched off the end and landed on wet stone. His knees bent to absorb the impact. His ribs complained again, but he stayed upright.

Hikari didn’t. She stumbled out of her last catch, momentum carrying her forward, and for a second it looked like she would fall flat.

Raizen tried to catch her automatically, one arm around her back to steady her, the other -

At least that’s what he planned. But the impact was faster and stronger than he anticipated.

Her hands grabbed his shirt by reflex, and she fully collided into Raizen, hard enough to completely knock him over.

Raizen gave the cement a not-so-gentle caress, falling directly on his back. Hikari’s weight pressed on him, making his chest hurt even more.

They froze. Hikari’s face was inches from his.

She quickly rolled off, laying next to him on the cold ground. Her eyes were narrow, then widened, then she let out a sound that wasn’t annoyance. It was laughter. Her full-hearted laughter, just like Raizen remembered it.

Raizen tried to hold it in, but failed miserably. His laughter came out rough and disbelieving, like his body didn’t know how to process what just happened.

They leaned their heads towards each other for a second, while still on the ground, laughing too hard to stop.

Enya landed beside them like a cat - no stumble, no heavy breathing, like she did this a hundred times.

(Safe to say... She might have done this more than a hundred times.)

With a light hop onto the stone, knees bending slightly, she straightened like she didn’t just throw herself and two more people into the sky. She looked very pleased with herself.

"See?" Enya said proudly. "Safe... Mostly."

Raizen wiped some drops of water from his face and stared at her like she was an entire problem wrapped in a child.

Hikari laughed again, then inhaled sharply like she realized how soaked she was.

The three of them stood there for a moment - rain still falling outside the field’s boundary, the city still roaring with ceremony noise, the air still warped above them.

And Raizen and Hikari were both... Stunned.

Enya glanced down at herself and made a small, annoyed sound.

"Tsk - the side of my shirt’s ripped..." she muttered.

Raizen blinked. "That’s what you care about?"

Enya shrugged. "It was my favorite..."

She tugged at the torn seam, then shrugged again, immediately over it. "Whatever, I can probably fix it."

Hikari’s laughter faded into a breathless smile. She looked at Enya, then at Raizen, then back at Enya.

"You’re insane" she said, and this time there was some heat in it.

Enya beamed. "Thank you!"

Raizen exhaled slowly, still trying to calm his heartbeat.

The adrenaline drained out in waves, leaving his limbs heavy, his ribs sore, his clothes damp and cold.

But his mind kept replaying the highest moment.

The warped field.

The floating leaves.

The distant glimmer of Neoshima.

And the fact that a thirteen-year-old girl just dragged them through the sky like toys.

Enya looked between them like she expected praise. Or maybe like she expected them to scold her.

Raizen couldn’t even find the words. Hikari couldn’t either. They just stood there in the city center, rain-slick stone beneath their feet, white ceremony noise not far away, the world still too big and too strange.

And above them, the field shimmered faintly, still warping the sky.

Raizen swallowed. Hikari’s breathing slowed. Enya hummed, pleased with herself.

All three of them looked upward - and Raizen still unable to decide whether what just happened was the most fun he’d had in weeks...

...Or the clearest sign yet that Ukai was full of people who could break the world while carelessly laughing.