The walk to medical was quiet. Tense. The kind of quiet where no one wanted to make it worse.

By the time they passed through the outer hatch, it was just Akiko and Raya. The others had dropped away one by one, unspeaking.

Akiko reached the hatch and stepped through.

The medbay's white lighting struck her like a slap. Harsh and sterile after the dim grays of the rest of the ship. The room was utilitarian: narrow beds, bolted cabinets, everything strapped down and scrubbed clean.

She moved to one of the bunks and sat heavily. Her tail hung limp over the edge like a frayed rope.

Raya entered a moment later, sealing the hatch behind them with a soft clank. She didn't speak. Just went to the cabinets and began pulling supplies. Every motion crisp, focused, distant.

Akiko watched out of the corner of her eye. Raya was channeling herself into the protocol, holding tight to something structured. Akiko understood that too well.

She leaned back against the wall, ears twitching at every creak of hull, every distant footstep. Her thoughts spiraled. Kara's anger, Joran's disappointment, Quinn's clipped silence. And now quarantine. Contained. Cut off.

She looked down at her hands. Flickers of foxfire danced weakly between her claws. Her mana was crawling back, but still uneven, still wrong.

Her gaze drifted to her leg. The tingling had faded, but so had the hum that should've run through her body. The absence sat heavy in her bones.

She didn't notice Raya approach until she was kneeling beside the bunk.

"Akiko," Raya said quietly. "I need to see the damage. All of it."

Akiko didn't move at first. But after a breath, she nodded once and triggered the suit's retraction. The outer layer peeled away from her chest, exposing the bruised and lacerated skin beneath.

The area just below her ribs was mottled with red and purple, a dark smear where the conduit had struck. Shallow tears glistened along the impact site, still weeping blood despite the suppressants.

Raya's hands hovered. "This might hurt."

Akiko gave a noncommittal shrug. "Not my worst today."

The words didn't land with the usual bite. Just tired.

Raya cleaned the wound in silence. The antiseptic burned, but Akiko said nothing. Only the twitch of her tail betrayed the pain.

She kept her gaze fixed on the ceiling, jaw tight.

It wasn't just the pain. It was letting someone else see it, see her, this exposed. Even if it was Raya.

Especially because it was Raya.

Raya's fingers brushed her ribs as she adjusted the dressing. Gentle, but methodical.

She finally pulled back and exhaled. "That's the worst of it. I'll check your leg next. Lift it up."

Akiko obeyed without argument, lifting her injured leg onto the bunk. The skin was discolored but had lost the shimmer of active mana.

"It's healing," Raya said after a moment. "But I need to monitor it. We don't have any tools to deal with it, so we need to keep eyes on it to catch it early."

Akiko nodded, silent.

She slept lightly that night, the kind of uneasy rest that came in fragments.

Shallow breaths, ghost-pains, the sterile hush of the medbay never fully quiet. By morning, her body still ached, but the urgency had faded into a dull throb.

Raya kept things methodical, clinical, checking vitals and logging notes, her usual wit subdued but intact. Isolation had settled around them like dust. A rhythm was beginning to form.

Akiko sat cross-legged in the center of the medbay the next morning, the lights dimmed to a low amber hum.

Her breath was steady, hands resting palm-up on her knees, but focus eluded her.

The foxfire wouldn't come, not cleanly. Every time she reached for it, something tugged sideways. Like her own magic was flinching from her touch.

She closed her eyes and let herself drift inward.

The hum of the Driftknight faded. The world fell away. And she stood alone in the space within.

Her inner world had once felt balanced. Structured, if not ordered. A hovering core of light suspended in the darkness, threads of her magic running outward like roots. Strange, but hers.

Now? Cracks had formed. They spiderwebbed across the floor beneath her feet. Black, jagged lines in the smooth stone of her mind.

She knelt beside one. The edges shimmered faintly, as if something inside them was still alive.

She reached toward it. It pulsed. Something coiled beneath the surface. A wrongness that didn't belong, but had started to.

"What the hell..."

"Self-repair sequence ongoing," said a voice.

She turned.

The fox sat at the edge of the nearest fracture, its white fur unblemished, eyes reflecting her core light in twin mirrors. It tilted its head slightly, as if to say, You should've noticed sooner.

Akiko frowned. "Healing? That's not what this looks like."

"Infection site destabilized. Mana lattice restructured," the fox said without moving. "Damage response engaged. Defensive process ongoing."

She crouched beside one of the cracks. Silver light now pulsed faintly through its edges. Familiar, but altered.

"That's... me?"

"Compatible with source signature," the fox replied. "Adaptation consistent with baseline heuristic: survival."

Akiko's jaw tightened. "I didn't give it permission."

The fox flicked its tail. "No explicit command detected. Behavior suggests autonomous corrective action."

Akiko's gaze snapped to the fox.

"It's rewriting me," she said.

"System input accepted. System output evolving." A tilt of its head. "Identity flux detected, not yet terminal."

She stared at the fractures. They pulsed again. Softer this time, like breath.

"Why am I seeing this now?"

"A meditative state was entered. Subconscious framework became accessible."

Akiko looked at the glowing threads of silver and infection tangled together.

She didn't like what it implied. But she couldn't look away.

The threads faded. Light bled away, and with it, the presence that had lingered just out of sight. She surfaced slowly, awareness rethreading itself into flesh and pain and memory.

The medbay lights had dimmed again. Another cycle passed. Day or night, she couldn't tell. Isolation blurred the hours.

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No ship's chatter. No crew movement. Just the low, humming air system and the occasional beep of medical gear she had never asked Raya the purpose of.

Akiko sat upright on the bunk, shoulder against the wall. The wrap across her chest itched, and everything beneath it throbbed with a slow, insistent ache.

Raya had adjusted the dosage earlier. It dulled the worst of the pain, but not the tension beneath it. That was rooted deeper.

Across the room, Raya sat cross-legged in a padded chair meant for visitors. She'd pulled her knees up and set a scanner in her lap, but she hadn't looked at it in a while. Just watching her breathe, Akiko could tell, she was still turning things over in her head. Still trying to make sense of what they'd walked through.

The silence stretched until it felt like pressure.

Akiko spoke without thinking. "Did I ever tell you about the thunderwood groves in the Reaches, back in my old world?"

Raya glanced up, eyes catching the light. "No. But I'd like to hear."

"They grow silver-veined leaves. They shimmer when you lie near them." A faint smile tugged at her mouth. "I told one I wasn't afraid."

Raya's brow lifted. "That sounds like a poor life decision."

"It was." Akiko leaned her head back against the wall. "The trees didn't like being lied to. So they summoned a storm to chase us. Not metaphorically. A real one. With claws."

Raya blinked, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Of course they did. And who exactly is us in this story?"

"Me and Kaede. My sister."

"Older?" Raya asked quietly.

Akiko nodded. "She was the one who usually kept me from getting eaten."

There was a pause as the memory rose, Kaede's hair plastered to her cheek from the rain, the spark of her sigils lighting up between tree limbs, the way her voice had steadied when Akiko had started to panic.

"She dragged me out after I tripped on a root and nearly got lit up. Burned half her coat doing it. We ended up in a broken shrine. She carved a grounding sigil into the old altar stone and held it over us until the storm passed."

Akiko closed her eyes, just for a moment. "When it was over, she told me I owed her a new coat. I said she could bill me when we got back."

She let the silence settle, but Raya didn't speak. She just watched her, the scanner forgotten, her expression softer now.

Akiko cracked one eye open. "What?"

Raya's voice was gentle. "You don't talk about your world much. You must miss her."

"I don't usually talk about it," Akiko said, voice low. "The old world. There's too much guilt wrapped around it, too many ways I think I failed. But lately... I've been afraid the details are slipping. And if I stop speaking them, I might lose them completely. Like none of it was ever real."

A silence fell between them again, but this time it was easier.

Akiko didn't look at her directly. "Do me a favor?"

"Hmm?"

"If I start forgetting, remind me."

Raya didn't hesitate. "Of course."

Her words lingered longer than the silence. Akiko didn't reply. She just let herself sit with it. The stories, the memories, the ache of a life left behind. They'd kept her anchored for now. But something else was still buried deeper.

Something she didn't want to ignore anymore.

She exhaled slowly, eyes closed, and reached inward.

Her inner space responded more easily this time, stabilized since the cracks had stopped spreading. Her mana core floated steady in the dark, glowing soft and pulsing slow. Threads of light extended outward in every direction. Familiar. Alive.

Except one.

She turned her focus toward the thread leading to her right leg.

There was no glow. No pulse. Just a faint haze, like a power line humming without current. The limb was present, but dimmed, like it had gone gray in a world of color.

A whisper of static ticked at the edge of her consciousness.

"Flow disruption persists," came Takuto's voice. "Reconnection support available upon request."

Akiko didn't open her eyes.

"No," she said softly. "This is mine to fix."

Especially after what she had seen before in her inner space. She wanted to ensure she was the one who fixed it.

Silence. Then Takuto's presence withdrew, respectful and distant.

She took a breath. Then another. And pushed.

Mana flowed from her core like blood from a slow wound, winding down through her center and toward the muted limb.

At first, it slid easily. Eager, even. But as it reached the boundary, something shifted.

Pressure met her. Rejection.

Her body flinched in response. A sharp spike of pins-and-needles burst through the connection, like the whole limb had gone to sleep and was waking up too fast. But there was something else beneath it. A deeper discord.

The limb didn't want her.

It fought the mana like a foreign body. The conduit twisted, twitched. Her own nerves recoiled from the touch. The mana rippled and broke against a wall that shouldn't be there.

She had done this. She had cut it off. And now it remembered.

Her breathing quickened. Sweat gathered at her temple, but she didn't stop.

She forced herself deeper into the feeling. Into the fracture. Her mana surged again, pushing harder. The ache flared. Her thigh locked. She gritted her teeth as fire licked through bone and muscle.

The limb trembled. Then, without warning, something gave way. The resistance cracked like a shell, and her mana slipped through.

Pain flared sharp. Then... warmth. Slow and unfamiliar.

The limb didn't welcome the mana, but it accepted it. Cautiously. Like a stranger returning home with the wrong face.

She opened her eyes with a sharp inhale, chest heaving. Her whole leg ached, but it was alive again. She could feel the current now, raw and stuttering but there.

"Circulatory flow reestablished," Takuto noted from somewhere distant. "Synchronization incomplete. Adaptation in progress."

Akiko leaned back against the bulkhead, letting her head rest against the cold metal.

She flexed her toes. They still felt like hers. Rough at the edges. But hers.

She closed her eyes again.

And whispered, "Welcome back."

The cramped medbay felt smaller with each passing day. The hum of the ship, the sterile air, the constant awareness of containment.

It gnawed at Akiko's nerves. She paced often, tail flicking behind her, while Raya busied herself with scans and inventory updates.

One evening, as Akiko sat perched on the edge of the bunk, idly turning her depleted mana necklace over in her fingers, Raya finally broke the quiet.

"You're going to wear a trench into the floor at this rate."

Akiko smirked, ears twitching. "What else is there to do? It's not exactly a luxury resort."

"You could teach me something," Raya said, glancing up from her tablet. "About magic. Unless you'd rather sulk for the rest of our time here."

Akiko blinked. Then, with a faint smile, she nodded. "Alright. But if I'm teaching, I'm meditating too. Double duty."

She slid off the bunk and settled onto the floor, legs crossed, hands resting on her knees. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, chasing stillness.

Kaede's voice echoed from the corners of memory:

"Magic flows with intent, Akiko. But first, listen. Let the world get quiet."

The process wasn't clean. Her thoughts pulled at her: Kara's disappointment, the infection's echo, the cold coil of uncertainty in her chest. But she breathed through them. And slowly, the flicker of foxfire returned, soft and steady between her palms. The sapphire in her necklace glowed faintly, like it was remembering its purpose.

Notice:

Skill Layer Integration: Restored

Neural strain parameters normalized. Progress tracking resumed.

Sync Reintegration: 98.6%

Passive Adaptation Algorithms online.

The words slid through her awareness like a whisper.

Akiko's eyes didn't open, but something inside her did.

A quiet breath escaped her lips, and with it, the ache she hadn't known she was holding.

The feeling was subtle, like a limb long asleep beginning to tingle back to life.

Continuity.

Something inside her had been muted, fractured since the facility. Now it slid into place with a quiet, perfect inevitability.

She exhaled slowly. Foxfire curled between her fingers like it had been waiting.

"Does that really help?" Raya asked, watching from her cot.

Akiko cracked one eye open. "Helps me. But you can't just watch. You've got your own spark to figure out."

Raya glanced down at her faintly glowing fingers, hesitant. "I don't even know where to start."

"Start by stopping," Akiko said, gesturing to the floor with a smirk. "Magic, especially new magic, reacts to emotion. Step one is calm. No glowing unless you want glowing."

Raya reluctantly sat beside her, mimicking her posture.

"And how do I get calm?" she asked.

"Breath first," Akiko said, her tone softening. "Close your eyes. Don't reach for it. Let it be. Like... water settling after a ripple."

Raya frowned, but obeyed. At first, the golden shimmer clung to her skin, stubborn and twitchy. But Akiko coached her patiently, guiding her through focus exercises. Each day, the glow dimmed just a little more, until Raya could suppress it on command.

In time, they moved to simple control drills: conjuring light, extinguishing it, shaping it into purpose.

One evening, Raya stared at her hands, brows furrowed. Then, no light. Just stillness.

"I... did it," she murmured, half in disbelief.

Akiko grinned. "Told you. You've got a good teacher."

Raya rolled her eyes, but the warmth in her smile didn't fade.

The days settled into a rhythm: meditation in the mornings, magic practice in the afternoons, and long, quiet evenings.

They told stories, when the mood allowed. Akiko spoke of her old adventuring party. Of Kaede's lessons, half fond, half heavy. Raya offered glimpses into her life on the Driftknight, stories filled with routine and restraint, but also the occasional spark of mischief.

One evening, as they lay on their respective bunks, Akiko caught Raya staring at her glowing mana necklace.

"What's it like?" Raya asked softly. "Having that kind of power... feeling it all the time?"

Akiko was quiet for a long moment. Her fingers brushed the sapphire's surface.

"It's... part of me," she said finally. "But it's not always easy. Sometimes it's overwhelming. Sometimes I don't know if it's me using the magic, or the magic using me."

Raya nodded, thoughtful. "I think I'm starting to understand that."

By the end of the second week, the change in both of them was obvious.

Akiko's foxfire had regained its strength, her control sharper than it had been in years. She no longer paced the medbay in frustration. Her meditation left her grounded, her magic moving like breath.

Raya, too, had grown. Her golden glow no longer sparked at random. She could summon and suppress it with intent. It had become a tool, not a burden.

But for all the progress, Akiko still carried it. The guilt. The weight of what she'd done. What she might still ruin.

She thought of the Sovereign. Of Kaede. Of the crew she could lose if she slipped again.

That night, as they prepared to sleep, Raya broke the quiet.

"You've done a lot for me these past weeks," she said. "But you're still carrying something. When are you going to let it go?"

Akiko turned her head, ears flicking.

"When I stop screwing things up."

Raya frowned but didn't push.

Instead, she said softly, "You're better than you think you are, Akiko. Maybe it's time you start believing it."

Akiko didn't answer, but the words lingered with her as she drifted toward sleep, the soft hum of her mana necklace pulsing gently against her chest.

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