(Theme: The Scientist's New World)
Consciousness returned like a drowning man breaching oily water. Pain first - the deep, grinding ache of recently shattered ribs. Kaito groaned. Cold blue light swept over him. BZZT... BZZT... A drone hovered, insect-like. Bandages shifted like liquid mercury over his torso, constricting with each breath. Shape-memory polymers... military grade. Monstrous. A cold sweat broke on his brow. This shouldn't exist. Not yet. Not ever.
Through the tent flap, soldiers moved in armor that blurred like bad transmissions. They handled cubes unfolding into impossible shapes, rods floating without support. The air hummed with subsonic thrum. Decades? Or... not Earth. The thought landed like a stone. Mary... gone. Home... gone. Even the world... gone?
The flap ripped open. Harsh alien light. Akari stood silhouetted - golden eyes like molten coins, black horns spiderwebbed with cracks. Stunning. Terrifying. Alien. Scientist's eyes cataloged: Horn heat-channels. Feline pupils. Predator's grace. Feline eyes. Cervid horns. Humanoid shell. Walking violation.
GLITCH.
—Amari's finger tapping a bestiary— "Look! Goat horns! Cat eyes! They knew!"—
Dreaming the same nightmare?
A silver pouch hit his chest. "Eat. You bounce back quick for soft meat." Soft meat. Lab rat. Scavenger. He examined his hands - yesterday's claw marks gone. Smooth skin. Unnatural.
Medic's scanner whined. "Accelerated healing! No draconic markers..." Screen flashed crimson: [STEM CELL ACTIVITY: 780% BASELINE]. "...cells eating themselves to rebuild." Optimized biology? Or decay?
Outside, a soldier leapt thirty feet, boots shimmering sickly green. Controlled inertia manipulation. He dropped a ration cube. It drifted down like falling through syrup. Lower gravity. Explaining nothing about the dread coiling in his stomach.
GLITCH.
—Fossil's golden eye snapping open— White light consuming Mary's hand— Her smile—
Did it vomit me here?
Akari's shadow rippled - multiple horned silhouettes writhing before snapping back. Broken. Like him.
He found her at the weapons rack. Plasma rifles hummed beside steel knives. "Your tech is... schizophrenic."
TING. Her horn tapped metal - ice shattering on stone. "Tech fails. Against dragons." She drew a dagger. Its edge fractured light into impossible geometries. "This doesn't."
Kaito's fingers hovered over the fractal edge. It pulsed - a heartbeat of trapped lightning.
"Dragonsteel." Ash and revelation. "Not myth. Not science. The teeth of a god."
Physics screamed. Angles bent wrong. Light fractured unnamed colors. Mary would've wept.
He touched it.
Warmth.
Not metal. Living heat. Rusty's fur going cold. Mary's hand slackening. Death's mocking kiss. He recoiled.
"You forged weapons from divinity," breath raw, "just to slaughter it?"
A whisper cut silence:
"Thank you… for seeing the beast… and holding on anyway."
Kaito's gaze snapped up. Golden eyes held shattered glass - pride, shame, the ghost of a child on a lab table. Then... a flush crept up her neck. Her eyes darted away. Flustered. Exposed.
"I—" Her voice caught. Horns flickered crimson.
"Gear up!" The roar cracked like thunder, armor slamming shut. "Move out in sixty, soft-worlder! Or I drag you by your broken ribs!"
She threw a harness at him - black, reeking of ozone and blood. "For what?!" More dragons? More death?
Above, purple auroras pulsed. Not light. Breathing. A sentient heartbeat staining the sky. Alive. Watching.
Deep in pulsating gloom, midnight wings flexed. Purple eyes tracked Kaito's every flinch. Prey.
ORION'S NOTE: "oh anatomist~ let's see does the shady spectator would meet our beloved MC or the MC will get into another trouble stay tuned for next chapter... :D"