THE SYSTEM MISSES A STEP

The report meeting went badly.

Rin stood in the observation chamber, a sterile, high-ceilinged room where soft hums of machinery vibrated through the floor. Three senior Wardens’ projections floated around her—semi-transparent figures, the holograms flickering slightly, their presence simultaneously authoritative and weary.

“Failure rates are increasing,” the first projection said flatly. Its voice was calm but carried the weight of reprimand.

“Localised,” Rin replied, her tone clipped, steady. “Manageable.”

“That’s not what the data suggests.” The second projection flickered briefly, shifting slightly, as if the system controlling it was tired of holding up the facade.

“We’ve detected unregistered resonance signatures,” the third added. Its tone was sharp, urgent, but the projection’s eyes betrayed exhaustion—the fatigue of centuries, or at least decades, enforcing a system that was already fraying.

Akiro stood behind Rin, hands in his pockets, pretending not to feel like evidence. He could feel the weight of those voices pressing on him, the same way the lattice pressed on magic when it was unstable.

“Unbound activity?” a voice asked.

“Unconfirmed,” Rin replied. Her fingers tightened into a fist at her side.

The pause stretched between the Wardens and her like a live wire, humming and dangerous.

“And the Anchor?” the first projection asked again, insistently.

Rin’s jaw tightened. “Stabilising.”

Akiro resisted the urge to laugh. Stabilising. The world was doing so much work, holding together the lies, the reality, and whatever magic they were all pretending was fully under control. He could almost see it flaring faintly beneath her skin, like a storm she was fighting to contain. 

The projections didn’t argue further. Instead, they flickered and dispersed, leaving Rin alone in the chamber with Akiro’s silent presence behind her.

Afterwards, they rode the lift down in silence. The machinery hummed softly, pressing a low-frequency tension against his chest. He glanced at her, watching how she pressed her hands flat against the railing, jaw tight.

“So they are what you call the Wardens...I don't like that place, and they don’t trust you,” he said finally, breaking the quiet.

“They don’t trust anyone,” Rin replied.

“But it seems to me they trust something,” he pressed, voice a little sharper than intended.

“They trust the system,” she said, her voice tight but almost distant. Her eyes didn’t meet his, staring instead at the lift’s smooth metal walls as if the steel could tell her something the Wardens couldn’t.

He looked at her. “Do you?”

The lift doors opened before she could answer. She didn’t look at him as she stepped out. Akiro followed, pretending not to notice the slight slump in her shoulder and the faint tremor in her hands.

Later that night, alone in his apartment, Akiro noticed something worse than memory loss. Something deeper.

He felt… detached.

Not empty. Not sad. Not numb. Just detached, like the world existed at a distance, like he was observing it rather than living it. Akiro glanced around his apartment, taking in the mess, the unkept look and the stale smell of dust.

He sat on the edge of his futon, fingers drumming against his knees. His phone buzzed again—a reminder, another unpaid obligation. He stared at it, waiting for anxiety to show up.

It didn’t.

That scared him more than any magic could.

“No,” he muttered under his breath. “No, no, no.”

He rose abruptly, pacing. His apartment felt smaller than usual, the walls closing in, indifferent to his presence. He forced himself to concentrate, to recall how he had felt when cornered in the alley, when Kaito had smiled at him like a

predator assessing his prey.

Fear. Anger. Anything.

A flicker of irritation sparked. Brief. Thin. Then it vanished, leaving him with only a faint echo of what it had been.

The cost wasn’t just taking memories or small fragments of himself. It was sanding down reactions, stripping away the edges of what it meant to feel.

The world felt softer. Duller. Easier to endure. Too easy.

Akiro sank back onto the futon, staring at the ceiling. He tried to recall the rush of adrenaline from earlier that week, the taste of panic, the sharp edge of survival. He could remember the facts, the events, but the feeling was gone.

When Rin arrived later, she noticed immediately.

“You’re quieter,” she said, her voice cautious, observing.

“I think something finally went quiet—empty,” he replied calmly, almost disturbingly so.

That made her flinch. She’d expected anger, frustration, maybe panic. But calm—detached, clinical calm—was worse. It meant he was beginning to acclimate to losing pieces of himself.

“Empty how?” she asked, lowering herself onto the futon beside him.

“I don’t care about anything,” he said softly. “Rent, grades, paying back the convenience store’s insurance claim… nothing.”

She exhaled slowly, eyes narrowing. “That’s not good. Not at all.”

“I don’t feel bad about it,” he added. His tone was almost conversational, but it had a hollow undercurrent that made the room colder.

“You should,” Rin said. Her voice cracked faintly, not from anger but frustration. She’d fought to keep him human in the middle of magic and chaos. This… detachment was a different threat altogether.

“I… I can’t. I try to force myself to care. I try to feel.” He gestured vaguely with one hand. “But it’s like I’m observing the world through glass. Everything’s there. Everything’s real. But it doesn’t touch me.”

She studied him for a long moment. “And you’re okay with that?”

“I… don’t know,” he admitted. “I think I’m okay with not being okay. That’s progress, right?”

Rin shook her head, letting out a bitter laugh. “No. That’s regression.”

He smiled faintly. “Ah. Always fun with semantics.”

She ignored the joke. “The cost is escalating faster than expected.”

“I noticed,” he said. “Subtlety isn’t really my strong suit.”

She leaned back against the wall, one knee drawn up. “You should sleep.”

“Sleep,” he repeated, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve tried. But the city doesn’t stop humming, and magic… it doesn’t care if I rest.”

“Then don’t sleep,” she said flatly. “Just survive the night.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That sounds comforting.”

“It isn’t meant to be.” She gestured at him. “You’re marked, Akiro. The world has changed. You’re not just failing yourself—you’re failing the lattice, the system, all of it.”

“I didn’t sign up for hero work,” he muttered, pulling his knees close. “I just wanted to get through class, pay my rent, maybe drink some cheap coffee on the weekend.”

Her expression softened slightly. “Life didn’t ask for your permission either.”

Akiro glanced at Rin, then at the pile of unopened mail scattered on the floor. Final notices, threats in red ink.

“It also didn’t mention the paperwork that came along with it.” He added. He let out a dry laugh. “You’re poetic for a woman who deals with ghosts and shattered contracts for a living.”

She smirked faintly, shaking her head. “And you’re ridiculous for someone who survived an Unbound attack and the first lattice failure.”

He stared at her, eyes narrowing. “You don’t make it easy.”

“Easy isn’t the point,” she said.

Silence stretched between them again, but this one felt heavier. Not awkward, not tense, just… permanent.

“Tell me something about yourself? Away from the wardens, unbound, contract, who are you, Rin?” Akiro asked, crumbling the silence between them.

Rin hesitated, searching for the right words.

“I was raised in a lab. I never knew my parents—never knew what it felt like to have a childhood; all my days were spent as a test subject. I grew up in rooms with numbers instead of names. They only gave you names when you’re useful.” Rin revealed, staring at her palms.

Akiro stared at Rin…understanding why she acts the way she does. Yet he was unable to find the words to express this moment. So, they remained quiet, enjoying the moment of silence.

Then Akiro drifted into thought, remembering he didn’t even flinch when he thought of Kaito, of the Unbound, of the next expected breach. He simply catalogued it, a fact among other facts.

“Do you ever get used to this?” he asked after a long moment.

Rin considered. “No.”

“Good,” he muttered, feeling the faint pulse of his mark under his skin. “I’d hate to think we could adapt to losing ourselves completely.”

“Still…you don’t just get used to this,” she said softly. “You survived it, Akiro, and that’s different.”

He swallowed, thinking about all the fragments he had already lost, the memories that had slipped through his fingers like smoke. The thought of continuing, of walking into more magic, more cost, left him both terrified and numb.

“I don’t even feel fear properly anymore,” he admitted quietly. “I should be panicking. I… don’t.”

Rin sat back, exhaling a slow breath. “You will. Eventually, or something worse will take its place. This isn’t you, Akiro, and if it becomes you, we’re in trouble.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “I’m a hazard to myself already.”

“Hazard to the city,” she corrected.

He laughed softly. Hollow. Dry. Almost melodic in its emptiness. “Right.”

The room grew quiet again, punctuated only by the faint buzz of the city outside. Somewhere in the distance, the lattice hummed softly. Somewhere deeper, old shrines whispered in the dark, echoing their failures.

Akiro stared at his hands. The lines on his skin glowed faintly, a subtle reminder of what he had done and the cost it had extracted from him. He flexed them, feeling the pulse of power and loss. Detachment, emptiness, a hollow vigilance—these were the new constants.

Rin noticed the subtle shift immediately. “You’re quieter than the lattice,” she said.

“I guess that’s progress,” he replied.

“No,” she said softly, eyes hard. “That’s survival at a price."

Akiro nodded, turning his gaze to the ceiling once more. He couldn’t argue. He wasn’t feeling strongly enough to want to. All he could do was exist and let the world move him around. Like a river, he had no choice but to float in.