Tatsu's knees hit the ground with a hollow thud. Everything around him was fuzzy and blurry as his jaw hung open, muscles too spent to close up again.
He remembered seeing the pale radiance of a pair of eyes before everything went black.
He couldn't even draw a full breath, with only shallow, ragged gasps escaping his mouth. Heat radiated from his diaphragm, his ribs aching with every forced breath. Even his neck couldn't support itself.
His eyelids felt like lead, a rhythmic thudding behind those amber eyes pounded in his ears, pulsing in sync with his throbbing neck.
His eyes finally began to focus, and they widened in realization.
The ground was bleached and appeared erased, lacking any shadows.
It felt like he was… floating.
“Nnngh!”
He held his breath, his face scrunching in effort when he tried lifting his head, but it felt heavy.
“Nnngh-aagh!”
He finally looked forward.
But in front of him was also bleached. His eyes darted around; it all lacked colour.
A blank canvas.
It felt as if the world lost its edges, like a void.
His breath hitched, and he bit back a pained grunt as he forced his eyes to sweep around him, despite his neck muscles screaming and the weight of his right arm trying to pull him down.
“Tenaro?”
He called out, but the greedy air ate up Tatsu's words before they could travel.
While scouring his surroundings, he planted his right palm on the ground but felt the impact in his shoulder instead of his fingers.
The sound of crackling reached his ears.
Tatsu looked down at his arm; a blue crystallized club encased his limb.
“I-Ice??” his eyebrows shot up to his hairline, pulling the skin of his eyelids back.
He could feel it now; the muscles in his arm bunched and rippled like it had a mind of its own.
He shifted his other hand to the ice and immediately jerked his arm away as he felt the cold instantly seep into his palm.
He looked at his frozen, lively hand. The air was cut by the sounds of small firecrackers as he tried curling his fingers.
“What is happening?”
“You're about to die.”
Tatsu's breath hitched, his head jerking around at the sound.
“Ow!” He held his neck, his muscles screaming louder.
His eyes suddenly caught a small shape ahead of him.
“A face?” Tatsu squinted his eyes, and recognized the shape of a head.
Its skin had a deep, warm honey-brown color, making the flash of its moon-white eyes look like a pair of beacons piercing onto Tatsu's face.
Its jawline was a soft, unbroken curve that tapered into a narrow, rounded chin.
The ripples around its neck made half of its coal-black hair seem to be submerged in thin air.
Strangest of all, there was a circular shape engraved on the forehead that shined. The light bugged awkwardly, a swollen disc that began to deflate on one side.
He couldn't move, a weight pushing down Tatsu's shoulders as he stared at the decapitated head, his eyes filling with recognition.
“I-It's. Y-You.” He whispered between chattering teeth.
“Remember these eyes?”
The head straightened up and a leg stepped out of the wall, the violent ripples causing distortions behind it.
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It moved with deliberate slowness, its dark hair plastering to the skin and clothes, the fabric dampening.
The water cascaded off its shoulders, drops falling onto the invisible ground.
Its bare feet stepped down with a wet thud, which vibrated through the void.
With the spray no longer blurring its edges, the full height finally snapped into focus, water dripping from its clothes and three dangling pieces of separate, long earrings.
“Woah…”
Tatsu was mesmerized by the beautiful figure, forgetting about the pain.
The wet, sleeveless, vibrant navy tunic mapped her tall frame.
The heavy fabric emphasized every curve and swell of her chest and clung to her shoulders.
The gold of her loincloth simmered with a dull, wet luster. The dark blue swirls patterns upon it appearing almost black.
The gold and white of her wrist cuffs caught the light with a sharp, metallic glint.
On her left leg, the white fabric wrap was no longer light and airy; it was a tight binding that mapped the muscles on her thigh, its brightness dimmed by the soak.
Twin gold ankle bands sat low and heavy against her skin. The earrings on her left glinted gold and white reflection coming from the earrings on her right.
“Let's get this over with.” She sighed and lifted her left forearm.
Tatsu blinked.
The lady seemed to get closer. Or he was getting closer.
“Wha…”
The blank ground slipped beneath him as if he were being reeled in by an invisible line.
Each blink brought him closer until the lady was a few meters from him.
Then, she swept her palm and inch above her tunic, and the sudden fabric sighed. Heavy droplets formed from her clothes that raced toward her hand like mercury.
With rhythmic movement of her fingers, circular and unbroken, the water on her arms and legs beaded up and broke free.
The disparate beads collided and fused, bloating into a perfect, trembling orb, hanging suspended in air above her palm. The liquid marble threw dancing caustic patterns across her face.
Tatsu watched with eyes wide as plates, “H-How are you doing that?”
The woman didn't answer, instead, she flicked her wrist, and the liquid marble surged forward, trailing a ribbon of mist as it hunted for his frozen arm.
“Huh?”
His breath barely escaped and he shifted away, his legs ready to spring away, but the water followed his movements, faster than he could see.
It hit like a heavy, wet silk, wrapping around his arm in a suffocating coil that squeezed the warmth out of his skin.
Veins of blue frost raced across the existing surface of the ice.
A violent, crystallined ‘crack’ sounded from his arm–the sound of a thousand microscopic mirrors shattering at once as the liquid stilled.
“Aaaargh!!”
It felt like white-hot needles were being driven simultaneously into his pores, a jagged spike of agony shot upward, anchoring itself deep into his muscles.
Then, his arm went silent, his fingers were heavy, unresponsive wooden pegs at the end of a dead branch.
A violent, rhythmic tremor seized his chest as his heart tried to pump blood into a space that wouldn't take it.
Every breath he drew felt like swallowing crushed ice, and his side hit the ground, shaking aggressively.
The lady folded forward, her hand burying itself in Tatsu's collar, the thumb digging a deep crater in the soft meat beneath his jawline.
“Koff,koff!”
She straightened her knees, Tatsu's spine following the movement, arching until his chin pointed toward the invisible sky.
His feet stuttered across the ground, until the last point of contact snapped, the floor dropping away.
His legs became frantic, disjointed pendulums, his legs weakly kicking the air.
Every gasp was a dry, whistling failure. His left hand clawed at the wrist holding him, his frozen arm dangling uselessly like dead weight.
The woman's free hand rose like a shutter closing, the palm slamming into Tatsu's brow.
Her fingers threaded through his black hair and the light on her forehead brightened as she closed her eyes.
Tatsu felt his body slowly weaken with every second that passed.
*Is she sucking my energy?*
His breath sped up, not knowing what to do, as his vision fractured into a thousand diamonds of light. His chest felt like it was being compressed by an unseen force.The lady's face became a smear of brown as his vision faded.
The searing cold was the first to leave his body, replaced by a treacherous, heavy warmth.
His pulse, once a frantic drum, slowed to a heavy, liquid thud.
Each beat felt like a conscious effort.
Air became a luxury his lungs couldn't afford, each breath was a shallow, scraping ghost of a breath, rattling in his throat like dry leaves.
In the hollow silence of his fading mind, a singular spark of iron-red fire detonated. A volcanic roar of his blood, a sudden, searing current surging outward from his heart like liquid lead.
His eyes snapped open, steam rising from the vaporizing frost-covered arm.
“What–” the woman's eyes widened.
His upper lip curled, revealing clenched teeth, “Grraaargh!”
He wrenched his good hand upward. It moved with the heavy, uncoordinated violence of a closing trap, his fist cutting through the air toward the lady's face.
She snapped her head back, the fist whistling past her cheek by a hair's breadth.
She recoiled as if she'd touched a stove, her iron grip on Tatsu's throat instantly disappeared.
He dropped like a stone, his right knee hitting the bleached ground with a thud.
“You…” the lady trailed off.
Tatsu's body folded, fingers digging into the raw, bruised ring around his neck as if trying to pry an invisible force away.
“Ghak – hukk!”
The sound was a dry, splintering rattle. He buckled, his forehead nearly touching the floor, his chest heaved in violent, uneven jolts.
“Hhh-wheeze… huff… ghrr.”
A jagged, metallic cough tore from his lungs– “Hack-ack!”– sending a fine spray of crimson-flecked mist onto the white drifts beneath him.
The hacking subsided into a low, vibrating growl that seemed to come from his marrow rather than his throat. The heat from his body started to cool down, a puddle beside him now as he slowly swiveled his head upward.
The woman stood paralyzed, her arms hung stiffly at her sides, fingers splayed as if her palms still stung from Tatsu's unnatural heat.
She didn't loom. She just… watched.
Her gaze was pinned on the puddle beside him and watched as a bead of meltwater raced down Tatsu's arm.
Her jaw didn't set in hostility– it loosened.
She looked down at her palms, then back at the kneeling boy, her eyes wide and shimmering with a sudden, frantic clarity.
She remained rooted to the spot, calmly staring back at Tatsu's unblinking glare.
“Could it be..?”
