The wind was iron-laced.
It scraped through the cracked scaffold pillars and clattered chains that never stopped singing. They dangled from everything—walls, wrists, skyhooks. In Chain Sector 7, even the dust was branded.
Raifu's boots hit the concrete with dull rhythm. One-two. One-two. His steps echoed into the soul-measuring silence, the kind of silence that hovered just before a system broadcast or a scream. He should've returned to the dorm bunk three hours ago. Instead, he kept walking. Moving like a man whose shadow was unchained from his body.
Above, the black sky bled red from the forge chimneys. The stars didn't come here.
A name beat in his chest like a slow drum: "Anaka."
His bonded. The girl with broken fingers who once danced for him without music.
Gone.
Taken by enforcers for "ritual evaluation" and "womb testing." That's what they called it when they ripped bonded females from work camps and vanished them. Three days ago, they took her. And Raifu had heard nothing since.
They told him to forget.
They didn't realize how deep movement burned inside him.
He rounded another rusted corridor, past a surveillance mirror, and ducked low to avoid the perimeter drones. The guards thought this zone was abandoned. Most of it was. But Raifu remembered something from when he was a child: a stairwell beneath the old refinery. A place no one cleaned. A place forgotten even by pain.
That's where he found her.
Anaka wasn't moving.
Her body was slumped against the bonewall like a torn tapestry—blood blooming across her dress in dull spirals. One eye swollen shut. Her legs twisted at unnatural angles.
But her lips were moving.
She wasn't breathing, not really, but her lips kept trying to form a rhythm. Some song without sound. Something she remembered deeper than thought.
Raifu fell to his knees. His callused fingers cupped her face. The dust was already drying her tears into salt lines.
"Anaka—" he choked. "I'm here. I came."
Her eye fluttered open. One. Then two. Then—
"Rh—rhy…" she tried. Her breath trembled like it had too many sharp edges. "Rhy-thm…Raif…"
"Shh," he whispered. "No rhythm. No movement. Just hold still. I'll get us out. I'll—"
But she was trying to lift her arm.
Three fingers twitched in a pattern. Thumb, middle, pinky. One… two… pause… One-two.
He recognized it.
It was the first combo they ever practiced as children. When they would mimic martial drills in the mud, pretending to be heroes before they knew what heroes cost. She was playing it in the air.
Even now.
Even dying.
His own fingers responded without thought, sketching the counter-motion. A defensive weave. A soft spiral flow. One… two… pivot.
Their hands connected.
And then the air pulsed.
Only for a blink. A ripple. But Raifu felt it. Something in the silence shifted—as if time hesitated. Like the world waited for the third beat.
But it never came.
Because that's when the guards arrived.
They didn't speak.
They dragged him back into the red-lit plaza where slaves were made and unmade. Metal structures loomed like unfinished gods. Anaka was gone now. Her body dumped. Her rhythm, cut.
Raifu didn't scream. He walked where they pointed. His spine straight. His heartbeat matching the footfalls. He had memorized pain already.
What he wasn't prepared for was his parents.
Bound in chain-cradles. Kneeling before a tribunal pyre.
And standing behind them, blade drawn, was his brother.
Kassian.
The one who used to sneak bread into Raifu's hiding spot during curfew. The one who taught him how to wrap his fists with threadclothe before sparring.
Now draped in a black enforcer's coat. Eyes empty. Soul-path brand glowing on his neck.
Raifu took a step forward and felt his stomach cave inward.
Kassian didn't blink.
The sword came down twice.
There was no rhythm to the kills. Only silence.
Raifu collapsed to his knees as the scent of blood overtook the wind.
That's when the guards moved in behind him. Shackles readied. The execution would be public.
He didn't care.
He knelt in blood that used to be family, staring at his brother's hands. They didn't even shake.
Then—something clicked in his mind. A small part of him cracked open.
And something darker slipped through.
Thum-thum… Thum… thum-thum…
His heart started beating out of time.
Rhythm returned.
In his pulse. In his breath. In the twitch of his right heel.
One… two… delay… reverse… three.
The combo lived.
Unbidden.
Instinctual.
Somewhere in his marrow, movement remembered itself.
He rose as the guard reached for him, and as his shackled arms whipped upward, the air bent.