Akiko watched Raya disappear back into the facility's upper levels, following Sten toward the crew stations where the engineers kept spare pressure suits. Her silhouette was calm even in the harsh industrial lights, movements steady with purpose. Watching her go left a hollow stretch beneath Akiko's ribs, like something vital had been pulled too far away.

They were about to descend into a heat-scarred wound in the moon's crust, and Raya would be with her every step. No more standing behind. No more watching from the safe edges.

And that meant no margin for error.

Akiko flexed her claws, feeling the sharp tremble of magic just beneath her skin. She needed something, some edge, to handle the heat, to keep the vent from turning their expedition into a funeral.

Nothing too flashy. Just efficient. Controlled.

She let out a slow breath, tail twitching in an arc behind her. Then she found a quiet shadowed corner near a dormant diagnostic console and sank down onto her haunches, weight settling back on her heels as she steadied herself with one hand. Her eyes slipped half-lidded, retreating inward.

The world peeled back.

Her inner space welcomed her with its familiar hush, a vast dark plane underfoot, cool and smooth, stretching toward the infinite.

Above, stars wheeled in silent spirals, bright pinpricks scattered across a deep void.

Near her floated her core, a nimbus of blue-white flames that drifted and licked at the air without ever consuming it, its pulses synced to the faint rhythms of her own heart.

Takuto sat nearby in his fox shape, small and immaculate, snowy fur catching the glow from her core. His eyes regarded her with that careful, analytical patience that had become its own brand of comfort.

Around them hung drifting panes of data, readouts from her System. Essence Layer thresholds. Skill progression. A dozen half-complete frameworks for spellforms, each twitching and reconfiguring as if uncertain of their own logic.

Akiko paced across the black surface. Every so often she reached toward one of the spellform matrices, trying to overlay it with a direct channel to her mana core, to tease out something that might siphon heat from an environment instead of feeding it.

Each attempt fizzled, the matrix fracturing into hissing strings of null code before shattering entirely. Tiny sparks rained down into the void, winking out.

"It shouldn't be this hard," she muttered, throat raw with frustration. "It's heat. It's just… another expression of energy. I can make fire dance in a vacuum, burn without fuel. I should be able to redirect it, drain it, do something."

Takuto tilted his head. His tail curled neatly around his paws, but his voice, still that soft mechanical timbre, came with a ghost of concern.

"Your foxfire does not manipulate energy in the way you believe. It adds. Always. It injects intent at the cost of system entropy. It burns because you will it to, not because it follows natural conservation."

Akiko stopped pacing, fur ruffling along her ears. "So what? You're saying I can't cool things off because I'm… too good at breaking the rules in the other direction?"

"In a sense." Takuto rose, stepping lightly across the void until he stood beneath her foxfire core. Wisps of flame curled down toward him, tugged by some quiet affinity.

"It violates both energy conservation and entropy constraints simultaneously. It injects energy into systems spontaneously, without any external source. This energy emerges in the most statistically disordered form possible, heat and chaotic motion, because your magic does not enforce structural ordering. It simply adds."

Akiko's stomach twisted. Her mind flashed unbidden to the cold white strands she'd once ripped from Karn's creature, how they'd tried to rewrite her core from inside out. The memory left a phantom ache in her chest.

Akiko swallowed, feeling her core flicker uneasily above them. "So that's why I can't just flip it. Draw heat out instead of pushing it in."

"Precisely. Extracting energy from a system to reduce its entropy, to make it colder, more ordered, is the direct inverse of what your mana is tuned to accomplish. Your foxfire compels systems toward greater disorder by supplying energy. Cooling would require removing energy to enforce order, something fundamentally incompatible with your magical architecture."

He tilted his head, blue eyes dimming in a slow blink.

"It is why the ice-aspected essence nearly overwrote your core. It attempted to rewrite your very method of interacting with reality. Your system rejected it, externalized it, preserved your identity, at the cost of losing that capability."

Akiko scrubbed her hands through her hair, claws catching briefly in the roots. Her tail lashed behind her, nervous, unsettled. "So I'm stuck. I can't brute-force this."

She pressed her claws against her temples, breath hissing out between her teeth. The starry void stretched around her, indifferent to her frustration. Her core pulsed lazily, as if mocking her failure.

Takuto's voice broke the silence, calm and infuriatingly precise. "You are not without options. Your affinity limits your direct thermal manipulation, but we could explore a harmonic field overlay, tuned to extract kinetic micro-vibrations from the vent strata and diffuse it along—"

"Stop." Akiko's eyes squeezed shut. Her claws dug in just shy of breaking skin. "Takuto, that's gibberish. You're… smarter than me. I know that. You've got all the equations, all the models. But I can't follow it like that. That's not how my magic works."

A faint pause. Then: "I am aware. I had hoped a structured approach would provide clarity."

"It doesn't. It's just more noise."

Her shoulders hunched. The foxfire in her core dimmed, threads unwinding with her concentration.

She raked her claws through her hair, then let her arms drop limp. The admission came out ragged, bitter.

"I need Kaede. Or… the ghost of her you pulled up before. Even if it's just my own memories wearing her face."

Takuto's ears flicked. There was something almost sympathetic in the small cant of his head.

"Do you consent to a deeper mnemonic overlay?"

Akiko closed her eyes. "Yeah. Do it."

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The void rippled. A subtle wave pushed outward from Takuto, sending the drifting System panes into gentle spirals. Her core flared brighter, shedding streamers of pale blue flame that curled downward like ink in water.

Then she felt it. A hush, a stilling, as if the space was holding its breath. From that darkness, a figure stepped forward. Slender, clad in the flowing robes Akiko remembered from their old world, dark hair tied high, eyes bright and amused in a way that always made Akiko's stomach twist.

Kaede. Or close enough to hurt. Last time, that smile had nearly broken her. But she was ready this time.

Akiko clenched her jaw. She forced the breath through her lungs in a slow, deliberate exhale. These weren't her sister's eyes. They were reflections. Hers, maybe. Or Takuto's best approximation of who Kaede had been. Either way, they weren't real. Not truly. Not the Kaede who had placed a hand on her shoulder when she couldn't stop crying. Not the Kaede who—

No. Not now.

She raised her chin and shoved down the ache, burying it behind the familiar armor of purpose.

No greetings. No pretense. She wasn't here for comfort. She was here for clarity.

Akiko's claws flexed. Her tail lashed once behind her.

"I thought… maybe I could just brute-force it. Draw the heat out of the vent, turn it cold enough to survive. But Takuto says my magic's tied to entropy. It pushes systems toward chaos. I can't order heat into ice. I can't even pull it away without wrecking the balance."

Kaede's head tilted slightly. "Of course not. You have a fire-aspected core, same as I do."

Akiko's breath snagged, startled. "Wait, you…?"

Kaede's mouth curved in that rueful, small smile Akiko remembered too well. "Why do you think my gear was so full of external foci? Why every serious piece of gear I crafted used elemental cores, siphons, containment matrices? Ice was always a discipline I shaped from without, not from the spark inside me. My core would've burned through a raw ice shaping in seconds."

Akiko's shoulders sagged, tail drooping. "So I wasn't crazy for failing. I just… I didn't know. You never… taught me that part."

Kaede's eyes softened. "No. I didn't. And that's on me. I thought there'd be time. That I'd guide you once your core stabilized, once you chose a path. I didn't expect…"

She lifted a hand, gesturing lightly to the space around them. "…all of this."

Akiko scrubbed a claw across her brow. "So I'm stuck unless I figure out how to externalize it, the same way you did."

"Not stuck. Just challenged. You already have an ice aspect sealed into your suit's weave. From Karn's creature, right? It's a potent focus. Dangerously so."

Akiko winced. "It almost overwrote me. I survived by forcing it into the suit's exo layer. Now it just sits there, half-awake."

"Then that's where we start," Kaede said, stepping close. Her presence radiated a soothing chill, entirely at odds with the foxfire light flickering between them. "You can't reshape your core. But you can bind that aspect properly. Carve containment runes into the suit's mana lattice, anchor its instincts so they serve your will instead of overriding it."

Akiko let out a strangled laugh. "Containment runes. Kaede, that was your art. I remember watching you scribe them on your reliquaries, your staves. But I don't know the glyphs by heart. I never learned."

A fleeting shadow passed through Kaede's eyes. Something haunted, brittle. "Because you never needed to. And because I never forced it on you. Now… I only have what you remember. What your mind can piece together from scraps of old lessons, half-heard lectures, and glimpses by the fire."

Akiko's claws dug into her palms. Her throat ached. "So we're guessing."

"We're building," Kaede corrected gently. "From first principles. You remember enough of my work to fake the broad strokes. I can help shape it. Help you test the chains so they don't snap under strain."

Akiko swallowed hard, then nodded once. "Alright. Show me how we start."

Kaede's smile was small and fierce all at once. "Good. Now pay attention. This is going to hurt your pride and your brain in equal measure."

Lines of light unfurled from Kaede's fingertips, forming hesitant sigils that twisted and buckled. Akiko stepped forward, claws crackling with uncertain foxfire, and together they began to sketch new bindings into the air.

It was slow. Messy. Full of long silences and Kaede's soft corrections. But it was theirs.

The last rune snapped into place with a delicate shiver of light, locking across the phantom diagram floating between them. It glowed once, then settled, leaving the void strangely darker. Quieter.

Subskill Acquisition (Magitech Integration): Cryogenic Field Projection– 65.7% milestone achieved.

Akiko let out a shaky breath. Her claws flexed, trailing harmless arcs of foxfire. "That's it then. Should hold."

Kaede didn't smile this time. Just watched her with that deep, knowing calm that she always had. "It should. But be careful. Those bindings are clever, but fragile. Like you."

A soft laugh cracked out of Akiko, breathless and bitter. "Yeah. Figures you'd still get the last word."

She hesitated. Her fingers twitched at her sides, uncertain, curling and uncurling. There was so much she could say, wanted to say, but the words felt treacherous. Too much warmth, and she'd start pretending this was really her sister. Too little, and it would feel like betrayal.

She settled for the impossible middle.

"Thank you. I don't… I don't know if it means anything to you, being what you are. But you helped me. And I'm grateful."

The words caught on something raw in her throat.

This wasn't Kaede. Not really. But the echo of her was close enough to cut. And worse, part of her wanted to believe that if she just said it right, if she just meant it hard enough, then maybe the echo could become real.

Kaede's eyes softened. "It does mean something. Even to a ghost made from your guilt and your grief."

That nearly shattered her.

Akiko's throat worked. Her vision blurred. She couldn't say more, not without unraveling.

So she simply dipped her head, a bow stripped raw of pride, and let her claws curl tight, holding herself together by sheer force of will.

Kaede lifted a hand, hovered it over Akiko's shoulder like she might rest it there, then pulled back. The light in her outline was already starting to fade, edges unraveling into drifting sparks. "Take care, little fox. Live enough for both of us."

And then she was gone. The void settled around Akiko like cold ash. Her core pulsed once, lonely and bright.

Akiko stood there a long moment, staring at where Kaede had been. Then she straightened, and turned her focus inward to the new lattice of runes stitched through her suit's mana weave.

There was work to do. And no more ghosts left to hold her hand.

Drawing in a slow breath, she felt the cool weight of her inner space slip away, the starry void replaced by hard metal beneath her boots, by the too-hot, too-thick air of the geothermal facility. Her claws flexed, testing. No spike of instinctual panic. The runes were holding.

She scrubbed a hand over her face. When she lowered her hand, Raya was there.

The sight made something tight loosen just a little. Even if, she winced, Raya was almost completely swallowed by the battered orange pressure suit she'd wrestled from the engineers. Its composite plating and thick seals bulked her up, a heavy helmet obscuring every nuance of her expression behind a polarized faceplate.

The walk toward the borehole felt like descending into a beast's throat. They passed through a series of heavy safety hatches, each one older and more heat-scorched than the last. Warning glyphs and battered caution panels glared at them, systems straining to keep the worst of the geothermal fury contained.

By the time they reached the last bulkhead, Akiko could feel the air thinning, taste scorched metal on every breath.

Raya was watching her, concerned but silent. Trusting.

Akiko sucked in a steadying breath. Then she focused inward, brushing her awareness against the new containment lattice woven into her suit's weave. Frost bleeding light at its limits answered, spilling in delicate tendrils across the black plates. The ice essence surged outward, its raw instincts tempered by the runic binds. The heat in the chamber retreated, chased back by a shiver that bit to the bone.

Subskill Acquisition (Mana Manipulation, Adept): Runic Containment Structure – 8.4% milestone achieved.

System Update: Essence Layer Modified

— [Frost-bound Core] unslotted from Essence Layer.

— 1 Essence Slot now available.

— Passive enhancements removed: [Physical Strength +0.3x base]

—Essence Layer Modification Lockout: 24 hours

System Update: Equipment Added

— [Frost-bound Core]: Cooling Aura active.

Akiko staggered. The power in her limbs ebbed all at once, exosuit load-bearing algorithms flickering. She flexed her fingers, slower now.

She narrowed her eyes at the System display.

"Wait… lockout?" she muttered. "Why? It's my System. I should be able to modify it whenever I want."

Takuto's voice chimed calmly. "Essences are not inert. Even bound, they retain instinct. Modify too frequently, and they grow… unruly. They must relearn their place."

Akiko exhaled, tasting cold metal on the air. "Great. Now my upgrades come with attitudes."

She huffed in frustration and set it aside. There were more important things to deal with still.

Turning back to Raya, she could see her reflection in her partner's helmet. Distorted, ghostly, foxfire twisting behind her eyes.

"Alright," she murmured. "Let's go save the Hold."

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