Eito

The ground lurched beneath them as reality itself buckled.

"Go!" Hina's voice cut through the rising hum of static, sharp with urgency.

They sprinted from the observatory, wings clutched tightly, weaving through collapsing debris and the disintegrating remains of the junk zone. The system's purge rippled out in waves. Buildings fractured midair, memory fragments dissolved into smoke, and corrupted data rained like ash.

It was not just the world falling apart. It was Eito.

His vision blurred, edges of reality curling in on themselves. Familiar pathways twisted into impossible loops, sounds fragmented into broken echoes. The air buzzed with the telltale signs. A forced reset, targeted and cruel.

"No..." Eito staggered, clutching his head. Memory fragments rushed in. False classrooms, endless static, the same loop resetting again and again in his room.

"Eito!" Hina grabbed his wrist, pulling him to a stop beneath a half-collapsed structure. Her grip was firm, grounding.

"It's... happening again," he gasped, eyes wide and unfocused.

Hina's heart clenched. She had seen this. The prelude to a complete breakdown, the same method the system used on anomalies it could not delete yet. Twist their memories, fracture their minds, turn them into hollow shells before reintegrating them as obedient code. It was the most violent type she had seen.

"Listen to me," she said, voice low but steady. Her hands cupped his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "You are still here. You are still you. Remember? The grayscale girl. That night while you were listening to the radio static. Me on the rooftop."

Eito's breathing was ragged, but her touch, warm and real, anchored him. His vision steadied, the fracturing slowing.

"You will not become one of them," Hina whispered fiercely. "Not while I am here."

For a moment, the world held its breath. Then, the static surge passed.

"Thanks," he managed, the weight of near-erasure heavy on his voice.

"Come on," Hina said, helping him upright. "We're almost out of time."

Together, they pushed forward. Two fragile figures beneath a sky collapsing into shards, clutching their imperfect wings and what hope remained.

The junk zone twisted unnaturally around them, fragments of forgotten buildings hanging suspended in midair like shattered glass caught in a glitch. The sky pulsed with static veins, widening cracks tearing through the simulated firmament.

"Stay with me," Hina urged, keeping her hand tight around Eito's wrist as they navigated the crumbling remnants of the sector.

Eito nodded, his heart still pounding from the close brush with oblivion. "I'm trying," he muttered, teeth gritted.

The further they ran, the more distorted the world became. Pathways looped into themselves. Doorways led to empty voids. Faint echoes of old memories buzzed at the edges of Eito's mind like gnats. Whispers of classrooms, fragmented conversations, and glitched reflections of his past selves drifted in and out of sight.

Hina never faltered. Her eyes scanned ahead, sharp and calculating. She guided them through the chaos with a certainty born of experience and fear. Eito could see the tension in her shoulders and the quiet desperation beneath her composed exterior.

They ducked through a collapsing alleyway. Its walls flickered between concrete and raw code and emerged onto a stretch of fractured rooftops.

Below, the junk zone rippled and dissolved, entire sections falling into digital voids. Above, corrupted clouds peeled away to reveal the raw, incomplete structure of the simulation: black scaffolding and flickering grids hanging like exposed nerves.

"It's worse than I thought," Hina whispered under her breath.

A heavy silence settled between them as they continued. The broken skyline stretched endlessly. Memories of others' failures they saw earlier, of those who tried to escape before, was etched into the wreckage.

Feathers drifted past. Grey, tattered, artificial. Some caught in the static winds, others crumbling to dust.

"We are not going to end up like them," Eito said, surprising himself with the conviction in his voice.

Hina glanced at him and for once allowed a faint smile to break through. "No," she agreed. "We are not."

Together, they pushed on, toward the crumbling horizon, toward whatever fragile hope their unfinished wings could carry them to.