EXO

She raised a trembling hand to her temple. The movement was slow, deliberate, like a ritual she’d performed a thousand times. Her fingertip pressed in — and a thin golden thread slid from her temple, alive and quivering like a nerve torn out of her. It coiled around her fingers as she drew it longer just like she did before, her pupils dilating with each inch. She pressed it to her chest. Her body shuddered, lips parting with a sound halfway between a gasp and a laugh, and a moan…

“Juno…” The name slithered from her mouth, and the air around them felt hotter, thicker. “Ever since you fell into my arms, I knew you were mine. Made for me.”

Her smile trembled — too wide, too soft to belong to a human face.

“Your memories…” Her fingers squeezed the golden thread until sparks dripped from it. “The way the rain smelled where you came from. The sound of night insects. The feeling of soil beneath your bare feet. The heat of a morning sun you thought would always be there. All of it inside you. All of it inside me now.”

She pressed the thread harder against her heart, arching like she might break herself in half. “It feeds me,” she whispered, voice shaking. “It fills me. Every detail you remember is a feast, every flicker of your old world a breath I can’t live without. Do you know what you’ve given me? Do you know what you’ve made me?”

Petals began to push out of her skin — not just blossoms but tiny roots, veins of pale tissue curling across her arms, up her throat. They trembled with each word like something breathing inside her.

“My savior.” Her outstretched hand trembled as though with hunger.

“My child.” She curled her fingers into a fist, nails drawing blood, the flowers drinking it.

“My love.” She opened her hand and a single blossom bloomed, wet and alive, its color flickering faintly like memory itself.

She stepped closer, voice a hiss now, intimate and terrifying.

“I need you, Juno.” The words left her mouth like liquid droplets, their substance slowly corrupting my mind.

“Not your body. Not your heart. You. Everything you remember. Every echo of a world that no longer exists. Every soft sound, every taste, every shadow. I need to be inside until nothing else is left.”

The flowers split wider, spilling faint gold light.

“I love you,” she breathed, voice breaking into a tremor of pleasure and need.

“I love you, Juno. I love you so much I could crawl through every piece of you until there’s no room for you anymore. Only me.”

Juno's breath shuddered, "Autumna..." he began hyperventilating, unable to control his breath, his emotions.

Two sharp claps cracked the silence. The sound echoed off the rusted walls, sharp, decisive.

Rilke flexed her fingers. Her gloves came alive, black veins of light stitched across the fabric, humming with power. She patted her chest once, and her whole body shimmered faintly, gravity shifting around her like invisible tides.

“One Mississippi.”

Her weight all but vanished. Her boots barely touched the ground as she bounced back, then forward, body light and springing like air itself.

Autumna’s voice continued, sliding over the walls like oil.

“Juno… it doesn’t matter that you know now. It doesn’t matter what you saw. You’ve always been mine. You will always be mine. With me, you’ll never suffer again—”

“Two Mississippi.”

Rilke’s feet tapped the ground in rhythm, boxing hops smooth and quick. Her eyes didn’t leave Sylvi’s body — no, not Sylvi. Not anymore.

Autumna’s grin stretched wider. Her hair fell across half her face, that single gold eye boring through the strands like a brand.

“I will be the only god when we return. No more false kings, no more seasons. Only me. And you, Juno. Prosperous. Eternal. Together.”

“Three Mississippi.”

Sweat prickled down Rilke’s temple. Her left glove flared — she brushed her thigh in passing, dropping her own density further; she was practically floating.

Autumna tilted her head, petals spilling from her collarbone like blood blooming backward. “A shame you had to find out this way… but don’t worry, my love. It will all end soon.”

“Four Mississippi.”

Her body coiled tighter.

She brushed her chest with her left hand, and suddenly the weight inside her core all but disappeared. Breath left her lungs faster, her body vibrating with speed.

Autumna’s voice cracked with heat, obsession dripping like tar: “Then the both of us can ha—”

The air detonated.

A blur of black and gold ripped through the space between them, fast enough to distort the room’s seams. Metal screamed, dust flew, petals scattered.

It wasn’t Rilke that attacked Sylvi.

It was Exidus.

The blow landed square against her chest, and the impact cracked the air like a cannon. Autumna’s body launched backward, her feet tearing shallow furrows into the blood-slick floor before she smashed against the far wall. Metal warped around her, petals and sparks scattering in a violent bloom. She staggered, hair whipping over her face, a thread of gold still twitching between her fingers.

Exidus didn’t move to chase. He stood, every motion exact like the machine he was, already knew its purpose. His head tilted, faint mechanical clicks echoing inside the silence. Then his voice rolled out, colder, flatter than before, modulated into something that felt less human. “Large amounts of anomalous energy detected.” He shifted abnormally. “EXO signature confirmed.”

He lifted his hand, fingers curling into a claw, sparks crawling across his gauntlet.

“Commencing neutralization mode.”