Tap, tap-tap—

Tik, tik, tik…

From the corridor to the manual console came two braided sounds, like rain chasing hail. The first was a rush of footsteps. The second was tiny and slow, nearly drowned by the echo.

Tik, tik, tik…

Faint as dust, that sound kept threading on, and the runner in front finally glanced back. Magan saw Kabos pull phosphor chips from his pocket, dropping them as he ran, leaving a faint tail of glow in the lightless hall like a line of fireflies.

“What… is that?”

“Little guides. So we don’t have to check the map at every fork on the way back.”

Kabos kept tossing, his hands a scatter of sparks. He paused half a beat when he saw Magan’s face.

“Hey, hey, what’s with that look? Don’t be like big brother Hos, jinxing us with ‘this is pointless.’ Bad omen. I’m not planning to die a hero here!”

Magan slowed half a step, then said, warm as banked coals, “You should’ve stayed with them. Safer together.”

“You can’t squeeze that vent. Miss Mira’s charging the Firestone. Barni’s still hurt. If I don’t come, who pulls the lever?”

“I can detour. There should be another way—”

“—Nah, brother, this is the best option.” Kabos cut him off, voice clipped like wire. “And it’s just a lever. We’re coming back.”

He said it, then kept tossing glow-chips. Under his breath he repeated it, like a mantra held between teeth. Yeah. We’re coming back…

Seeing his stubborn heat, Magan’s gaze softened like snow under sun.

“No wonder your parents named you that. It fits you.”

Kabos—“the Optimist” in the Imperial tongue. Kabos had spilled that meaning by a campfire one night. He bared his teeth now, a strained grin, and let out an awkward grunt.

“Don’t. They named me that to tell me to let it go, quit fighting my brother since the second son gets no inheritance. Damn it, can you believe it? I wasn’t even born and they’d decided I’d be worse than him!”

He barked his anger like a spark into dry leaves, swore he’d slap them in the face with this job when he got back, then looked at Magan.

“Speaking of names, why ‘Magan’—‘Hemp Stalk’? That a handle?” He eyed the man whose muscles bulged past the armor like roots through stone. “We don’t have many big guys who can match you.”

At “big guy,” Magan’s gaze slid aside like a shadow. “…I wasn’t always like this.”

“Oh? There a story?”

“No story… honestly, it’s like yours.” Magan ran the numbers in his head. “In your people’s units, I was five pounds at birth. Smallest of my year.”

“Huh?? You built this the hard way?”

Kabos’s face went solemn with respect, then the light in his eyes dimmed a notch.

“You’re too hardcore, brother. Man… I don’t deserve a ‘like yours.’”

“No. It is like yours.”

Magan’s voice landed like a stake. The certainty in it jolted Kabos. He parted his lips to ask what he meant—then Magan’s wolf ears twitched.

The glow-chip Kabos had just dropped gave a tiny crack, like ice breaking.

In the next heartbeat, Magan’s crossbow came up. Wind sang sharp, and the mechanism thunked like a heart’s stop.

“Uwaaa!”

Black blood splashed Kabos’s cheek like ink. A lump of lawless flesh flickered into being beside him, twitched once, then collapsed on the steel. Magan shoved him forward with a hand like a battering ram.

“Move! The Spawn are on us!”

Kabos finally snapped back. He fired a brace of bolts into the empty-looking hall ahead and behind, carving space like a scythe. Nothing blocked the way. He tore forward.

These damned things really haunt you like hungry ghosts!

In the few seconds he cursed, Chaos Spawn boiled from drains and pipes like rot from cracks. Far too many for the two of them to hold.

Lucky for them, the Spawn had only just fixed on their position. No ring had formed. They ran and shot, retreating like reeds before a flood, and pushed on.

They brushed death more than once, shoulder to shadow, but the goal drew nearer like a lantern in fog—

Until they hit a narrow bridge.

Bridge was generous. It was a crude iron plate, a leftover from early Magma Forge work. No rails to catch the fall. Just a thin skin of steel, too narrow for Kabos and Magan to pass side by side.

Kabos looked down into the black below, a mouth with no teeth and no end, and his heart clenched like a fist. Spawn pressed behind. No time to think. He shut his eyes, ready to sprint across in one breath.

A white blade of light stopped him cold.

A hand yanked his shoulder. Heat washed his face with a killing sting. He’d seen that breath before—dragonbreath. One step more, and he’d have been half a man, the rest ash.

“Holy—!” Kabos swore, breath ragged as torn cloth.

Magan was quick, and pulled him back from the cut. One good, one bad news burned in the air. Good: that dragonbreath was just a stray lash from the distant fight. Soul Devourer Sormaidon wasn’t free to hunt them yet. Bad: the breath had swept the bridge right before Kabos.

And this bridge had no will to withstand dragon fire.

A huge bite was missing, severing steel from steel. The plate hadn’t fallen at once, but waves of warp ran through it like heat over dunes. It groaned with metal fatigue, and trembled worse when formless flesh crowded on.

“Quick! We have to jump!”

Magan shouted, voice a hammer on iron. Kabos stood there like stunned prey, eyes locked on a gap of at least ten meters.

Molten iron, bright as coals, dripped from the cut, falling and bursting into sparks when it kissed obstacles. Those fireflies lit the abyss a heartbeat at a time, but never the bottom.

Kabos watched those weak sparks die in the dark, and swallowed a stone.

Jump… that?

No. Impossible…

The denial shot up at once, a weed through cracks.

What rose in him was six years old and small. He wouldn’t hand his toy to his brother. His brother grabbed his collar and hung him on the garden hook outside the window, the one for potted plants, swaying like bait over teeth.

Twenty years later, he still felt that day—his feet were ten, maybe more, meters above the ground, and he didn’t even dare shake. One hard sob, and the wool collar might tear with a pop, and he’d hit the earth like meat thrown from a cart…

Kabos’s breath went wrong. He stepped back. Drunk or not, he’d told the truth that night. He still feared heights. Put him on a high ledge and his knees turned water, his sight snowed over.

In that blink of white noise, he missed the shimmer crawling up the bridge pillar like heat haze.

“Hey!!”

By the time Kabos reacted, the ripple had topped the gap and bloomed, filling his sight like a dirty tide—

The next instant, a thud, a roar, and two wet rips struck as one.

Kabos sat down hard, numb as frost. His hand crossbow slid to the edge of the plate. He didn’t look, because warmth spread across his clothes—hot, wet, sticky as syrup.

Magan’s blood.

Magan stood in front of Kabos, a spike that had been invisible punched clean through his belly. Painted red, the barbs and sawteeth showed their nightmare grin.

Magan spat blood, clamped his bleeding mouth, and roared. He drove his spear forward with a butcher’s certainty, pinning the Chaos Spawn through. The lawless flesh sizzled and showed itself, then he smashed it with a single fist off the bridge. It fell into the bottomless night like a curse.

Only then did Kabos grasp what had happened.

“Ma—Magan!”

He scrambled up. His hands shook so hard he almost knocked his crossbow into the void.

He put down the Spawn that chased from behind, bolts thudding like nails in wood. Then he caught Magan as the man sank to one knee. The state was bad—ruin bad. The Spawn died, but as it fell the barbed spike tore out of Magan, hauling a gush of blood and ragged meat with it.

Kabos’s mind went blank, a slate in rain. He lifted his hand crossbow by reflex, guarding like a scarecrow, and babbled to soothe himself. “We—we’re fine, brother, we’re fine! There’s only one way in. I can hold this alone… yeah, we’ll be fine—”

“No.”

Magan shook his head, and each word leaked red from his mouth. His eyes locked Kabos like iron. He grabbed Kabos’s arm and shoved the map into his hand.

“You have to finish the mission.”

“B—but…”

Seeing the wobble in Kabos’s eyes, Magan hardened like quenched steel. He gripped and yanked, a sudden heave before Kabos could argue.

The next second, Kabos landed on his butt on the far side of the gap.

“Magan!”

Kabos stumbled up, but the gap stopped him like a cliff.

On the other side, Magan pushed to his feet, braced on one knee. The wound bit close to the pelvis; even that small motion was a mountain. Jumping was a dream.

Yet when his eyes met Kabos’s, his blood-red mouth curved, a thin smile in a storm.

“I told you. We’re the same…”

He set a hand to his chest.

“Noble, exile. Human, Nacha Tribe… we all ended up in this team. So…”

By then, Kabos’s nails had carved his palms, and iron filled his teeth with a bloody taste.

“I’ll finish it! Wait for me here! I’ll come back for you!”

He knew each second of doubt insulted his brother’s resolve. He didn’t let Magan finish. He pressed hand to chest in salute. His hand shook, but he used his loudest voice to cut his last wish clean, then ran into the dark beyond the bridge with tears and snot burning his face like rain.

Hearing his footsteps fade, relief loosened Magan’s features. He hummed a soft answer, though Kabos could no longer hear.

Then he turned, set his spear once more, and faced the Chaos Spawn surging across the bridge like a night tide.