The warm London air hit him like a wall.

Daylight. Actual daylight, the real kind, with edges and warmth and the distant sound of birds that had somehow survived the apocalypse.

It stung his eyes after days underground.

They emerged from the dungeon entrance, a crack in the earth between two displaced Ashwood trees in what had once been a residential street.

The buildings around them were half-consumed by Integration growth, walls split by roots, rooftops punctured by crystalline formations that caught the sun and scattered it in prismatic bursts.

Nyx pulled her hood up immediately, wincing at the light. The trainers scuffed against the broken pavement as she found shade beneath an awning that had survived the apocalypse by virtue of being too stubborn to fall.

Vesperine stepped out of the fissure and stopped.

She stood in the full afternoon sun, the light falling across her white hair and dark gown, her horns casting twin curved shadows on the broken road.

Her ember eyes swept the ruined street, the trees, the distant shimmer of a Safe Zone dome, and the vast rift still hanging in the sky above London.

For the first time since her summoning, something crossed her face that was not disdain.

It was recognition.

"So," she said, very quietly, to no one in particular. "It has begun here as well."

Finn looked at her. "You know what this is?"

Her eyes came back to him. The recognition vanished behind composure so quickly he might have imagined it.

"You may address me as Your Grace," she reminded him, as though the last forty minutes had not happened. "And no. I know nothing that would be useful to you. Not yet."

She brushed a fleck of ash from her sleeve and began walking toward the next Safe Zone, four paces ahead of them, as though she had always known where it was.

Nyx stared after her from the shade of the awning.

’Bearer.’

’Yeah.’

’I am going to have words with the System about its definition of "compatible."’

Finn watched Vesperine’s retreating figure, the gown trailing over rubble and broken glass without snagging once.

He thought about the First Trial that was a few days away. He thought the words she had said — It has begun here as well — and the look on her face when she’d said them, the one she’d hidden so fast.

She knew more than she was letting on, without a doubt.

’We’re going to be fine. I’m sure there’s a lot we can learn from her.’ he said through the bond.

’Your optimism,’ Nyx replied, watching Vesperine navigate the broken street with the posture of someone attending a garden party, ’borders on mental illness, Bearer.’

He smiled.

’I’ve been told.’

[Time remaining on First Trial countdown: 3 Days, 22 Hours, 14 Minutes.]

☼☼☼

They made it four streets before the first attack.

Finn had been counting.

The long, deliberate pauses in which Nyx and Vesperine did not speak to each other, did not acknowledge each other, and radiated so much mutual contempt through their respective bonds that his chest felt like a contested border between two nations who had never signed a treaty and weren’t planning to start.

Nyx walked close to his left. Closer than usual, in fact, her shoulder a permanent fixture against his arm. Every few steps she would glance past him toward Vesperine with the kind of expression normally reserved for finding a spider in one’s shoe.

Vesperine walked four paces ahead.

She hadn’t been invited to take the lead. She had simply done it, the way she did everything.

The afternoon sun had dipped behind the rift, and the light that filtered through the inverted mountains above London had taken on a strange amber quality, like late autumn in a place that had never had seasons.

’Bearer.’

’Mm.’

’She is walking ahead of us.’

’I noticed.’

’Ahead. As though she is leading.’

’She might just like being in front, Nyx.’

’Yes. That is precisely my concern.’

He bit back a smile.

The city around them had changed since they’d gone underground. The Integration had continued its work in their absence. Entire blocks had been swallowed.

A church on the corner of what had once been a high street had been consumed from the inside out by crystalline growth, its steeple now a jagged spire of pale blue mineral that glowed faintly when the wind touched it.

The pavement was cracked in long arterial lines, mana veins pulsing beneath the tarmac like the city had grown a circulatory system overnight.

And there were fewer people.

That was the thing Finn noticed most. The first time he and Nyx had walked these streets, there had been survivors everywhere, shell-shocked, stumbling, crying.

Now the roads were empty. Either people had retreated into Safe Zones, or they hadn’t made it to one.

He didn’t think about the second option for long.

’Bearer,’ Nyx said again.

’If this is about Vesperine walking in front—’

’It is not. Two o’clock. Behind the post office.’

He didn’t look. He’d learned that lesson early. Instead, he slowed his pace by a half-step and let his peripheral vision do the work.

There was a shape in the rubble, crouched low behind a wall of collapsed brick. Grey-green skin. Long arms. A jaw that hung too far open.

[Fractured Ghoul — lvl 9]

A single one.

Finn felt the tension leave his shoulders almost immediately. He’d killed one of these with Nyx back when they were level five, bleeding and exhausted.

Now he was level eighteen. This was barely a speed bump.

’Nyx, would you—’

She was already gone.

[Shadow Step activated.]

The ghoul had approximately one and a half seconds to register that something had changed about the shadow behind it before Nyx materialised at its flank, both daggers drawn, and opened it from collarbone to hip in a single, fluid motion.

It didn’t even scream. It crumpled sideways into the brick pile it had been hiding behind and went still, its HP bar emptying in a cascade that Finn didn’t bother watching to the end.

[ENTITY DEFEATED: Fractured Ghoul — lvl 9]

[Experience Gained.]

[Experience Gained (Bond Share).]

Nyx reappeared at his side. She hadn’t broken stride. The daggers were already sheathed, and she was adjusting her hood with the casual air of someone who had just swatted a fly.

’Done.’

’I was going to say "would you like me to handle it."’

’Were you? How selfless. I shall endeavour to wait next time.’

She would not.

Ahead of them, Vesperine had not stopped walking. She had not turned. She had not, as far as Finn could tell, registered that a fight had occurred at all.

She simply continued down the centre of the road, stepping over a fallen road sign with the measured grace of someone descending a staircase in a palace, and said, without looking back:

"Adequate reflexes. The footwork needs refinement."

Nyx’s bond grew hotter for exactly one second.

’Bearer.’

’No.’

’I did not say anything.’

’You were about to.’

’I was going to observe, calmly and without prejudice, that if she critiques my footwork one more time, I will show her what my footwork looks like when it ends at her—’

’Nyx.’

She exhaled slowly through her nose. The bond settled back to its usual simmer.

They kept walking.