Chapter 51: The Red-Lit Streets

Kizawa is a ghost.

He moves through the red-lit streets of Torchlight not like a man, but like a weapon that has been given a single, final command. He is a phantom in the smoky, Miasma-tinged air, a blur of dark clothing and cold, blue-white rage. The chasm in his soul has not just consumed his grief; it has burned it away, leaving only a cold, perfect, terrible vacuum. A vacuum that is now filled with a single, absolute purpose: revenge.

He is not walking. He is hunting.

"Kizawa, wait!"

I am Erima. I am the pragmatist. I am the one who is supposed to be in control. But I am scrambling, my body a symphony of agonizing bruises, my quiver light, my mind struggling to process the sheer, alien wrongness of this place. I am limping, trying to drag Yogawa, who is still half-catatonic, while also keeping an eye on Hachiro.

"Kizawa, damn it! We need a plan! We need to think!"

He does not slow. He does not turn. His voice cuts back through the red gloom, a low, gravelly thing that is no longer his.

"The plan is forward. The plan is him."

"Him? Him who?" Yogawa gasps, stumbling over a thick, root-like cable that runs across the street. "We do not even know where we are! This city- the architecture- it is madness!"

He is right. This is not a human city. The buildings are not made of wood and stone; they are grown. They are massive, petrified fungal structures, bulbous and spiraling, connected by swaying, treacherous rope bridges. The "street" is not a street, but the uneven, ridged back of the colossal stalagmite that forms the city's foundation.

And the light. The light is the worst.

It comes from Miasma-torches, thick bundles of glowing red moss tied to posts, that burn with a smokeless, oily, sickly light. This red glow casts everything in a hellish, bloody monochrome. It makes the air thick and hard to breathe. It reveals everything and nothing.

Shadows here are not just shadows; they are holes. They are patches of absolute, ink-black nothing that the red light cannot penetrate. My eyes, so used to the dark, cannot make sense of it. I cannot tell if a shadow is a three-foot puddle or a thousand-foot drop.

"Kizawa!" Hachiro pants, his voice raw. He is holding his shattered arm, the green chi-splint a guttering, faint light. "My chi... I am empty. The spell... the fall... it drained me. I cannot fight. I cannot even heal!"

"We are all empty," I snap, my voice sharper than I intend. I am terrified. My logical mind is screaming at me that we are in an indefensible position, hopelessly compromised. "Yogawa, your grimoire. Now. Give me anything. A map. A shield. A light."

Yogawa fumbles with the latch, his hands shaking. "I- I do not know this place! The book- it is a human text! This is... alien. The very geometry is wrong. I cannot read the air here. The magic... it tastes like ash... and terror..."

"USELESS!" I snarl, snatching the book from him. I flip through the pages, but the script is just meaningless scrawls in this terrible light.

Thwack.

A sound. Sharp. Wet.

I freeze.

"What was that?" Hachiro whispers, his eyes wide, pupils swallowing the red.

Kizawa stops.

He did not hear it. He felt it.

He is twenty paces ahead, a dark silhouette against a backdrop of fungal towers and red smoke. He raises one hand, a silent command for us to stop.

He tilts his head.

He is listening. Not with his ears. With his rage. With the vacuum inside him.

The city is not empty. We are not alone.

I finally hear it. A scuttling.

It is a sound that should not exist. It is the sound of too many legs, of chitin on stone. It is coming from above us, from the shadows on the roofs.

"Kizawa," I whisper, my voice a thread. "We are exposed."

"Get. Inside." His voice is a low growl. He does not look at us. He is scanning the rooftops, his twin blades held low, ready.

I look at the nearest building. It is a bulbous, dark-red structure, its door a simple, leather flap. It smells of mold.

"In there?" Yogawa hisses, his face pale green in the red light. "It- it is a death trap!"

"It is cover," I snap, shoving him toward it. "Hachiro, go. Now."

Hachiro, his face a mask of pain, stumbles toward the door. Yogawa follows, whimpering.

I turn back to Kizawa. "KISAWA! MOVE!"

He is still not moving. He is waiting. He wants them to come. He wants the fight.

"You insane, stubborn FOOL!" I hiss. "You are not a one-man army! You are tired! We... we need you! I... need... you!"

That makes him flinch.

The word... need.

It cuts through the rage. It reminds him of her.

He takes one, slow, reluctant step backward toward us.

And the world explodes.

A shape detaches itself from a shadow on a roof. It is not one thing. It is many.

It... is... a Hunter.

But not like the ones before. This is not a quadruped.

It is bipedal. Tall. Thin. Its limbs are like needles. It is a creature of obsidian chitin and raw, pulsing red muscle. It has no head, only a cluster of glowing red eyes on its thorax.

It lands on the street between Kizawa and us.

It unfolds itself to its full height. It is twelve feet tall.

A Stalker.

The scuttling sound was a distraction. This was the trap.

It turns its cluster of eyes not at Kizawa.

It looks at me. At Hachiro. At Yogawa.

It sees the weak.

"Kizawa..." I breathe, my hand dropping to the empty space where my bow should be. I lost it in the fall.

I am unarmed.

The Stalker hisses. It raises one of its needle-thin arms. The arm ends in a three-foot blade of serrated bone.

It targets Hachiro. The weakest link.

It lunges.

It is impossibly fast.

"NO!" Hachiro screams, throwing up his one good arm.

He is dead.

Clang.

A sound so loud it hurts. The sound of steel on bone.

Kizawa is there.

He is not a man. He is a blur. He is a flash of blue-black motion.

He is not between us and the monster.

He is between the monster and Hachiro.

He crossed twenty feet of street in a microsecond.

His twin blades are crossed, blocking the Stalker's killing blow.

The force of the impact is so great that the stone beneath Kizawa's feet has cracked.

He is shaking. Not from fear. From effort. He is empty. He is tired.

But he is the ANCHOR.

"Get... inside," he grunts, his voice a low strain, his muscles locked against the Stalker's fury.

The Stalker hisses, surprised. It did not expect this. It pushes harder.

"GO!" Kizawa roars, his Will flaring to life. A faint, cold blue light shines from his blades. His chi. He is burning the dregs of it.

I grab Hachiro. I shove him and Yogawa through the leather flap.

I tumble in after them.

I land hard on a floor that is damp and soft.

I turn to look back.

I see Kizawa. He is a demon of blue light and shadow.

He breaks the lock. He twists, ducks under the Stalker's arm.

He is a dancer. A dancer of death.

His blades are a blur.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

He is not cutting the chitin. He is parrying the monster's other limbs. It has four arms.

It is a whirlwind of serrated bone.

He is outnumbered. He is outmatched.

He is losing.

The Stalker screeches, a sound that shatters the air. It is furious.

It stabs with all four limbs at once. A flurry of killing blows.

Kizawa cannot block them all.

He twists, his Will flaring bright blue.

He dodges three of them.

The fourth one connects.

It is a glancing blow. The bone-blade slashes across his back.

I see his shirt shred. I see a spray of dark blood in the red light.

He stumbles.

He falls to one knee.

"KIZAWA!"

My scream is lost in the Stalker's shriek of triumph.

It raises its main killing arm high over its head. It is going to impale him.

This is it.

He is going to die.

I lunge forward, my hands empty. I do not care.

THWACK.

A sound. A different sound.

The Stalker freezes.

Its killing arm stops mid-swing.

It shudders.

A long, black shaft is sticking out of the center of its red-eye-cluster.

An arrow.

My arrow.

The Stalker gurgles. It twists, looking for the source.

I am not holding a bow.

I am standing in the doorway, my arm still outstretched.

It was in my boot. My last one. A holdout.

I did not shoot it.

I threw it.

Like a javelin.

My logic. My panic. My desperation.

It worked.

The Stalker stares at me, its many red eyes dimming.

It opens a mouth I did not know it had.

It hisses one word.

"Flame..."

And it collapses, a clatter of chitin and bone.

Silence.

Kizawa is still on one knee, his head bowed. His sword is in the dirt.

Blood is pouring from his back.

"Kizawa...?"

He does not move.

He just slowly topples over sideways into the dust of the red-lit street.

He is unconscious.

He is alive.

"Hachiro," I bark, my voice shaking. "The wound. NOW. YOUR CHI."

Hachiro stumbles out, his face a mask of terror and awe. "You... threw... it..."

"HACHIRO!"

"RIGHT!"

He skids to a stop next to Kizawa. He presses his one good hand to the gaping wound on Kizawa's back.

A faint, sickly green light appears. Hachiro is trying to heal him.

"It is not enough," Hachiro gasps, his own energy failing. "He is empty! I am empty! I cannot close it!"

"Yogawa!" I roar, dragging Kizawa by his shoulders, back into the dark house. "Your book! Medical! ANYTHING!"

Yogawa is frozen, staring at the dead Stalker.

He is muttering.

"It... spoke," he whispers, his eyes wide with a new terror. "It... spoke our language. It said... 'Flame'."

He looks at me. Not at me. At my... hair.

The silver... and... gold.

"It... was... not... talking... about... a fire, Erima."

It... was... talking... about... MIZUKI.

The scuttling.

It is back.

It is not one.

It is a dozen.

I hear them on the roof above us.

I hear them in the street.

They are all around us.

The Stalker's death shriek was not a cry of triumph.

It was a beacon.

"Barricade... the door," I whisper, my voice numb with dread.

Yogawa looks at me, his face crumbling. "It is a leather flap..."

We are trapped. We are wounded. We are empty.

And they know we are here.