"How do guests without wings get up there?" Hana asked, her voice flat as she surveyed the height.

Kulu didn’t look at her. He stared straight ahead, his jaw tight. "We do not receive guests."

The answer was blunt, but the reality was unavoidable. She didn’t need to fight anyway, so it didn’t matter.

But if she wanted that battery, she had to get to the summit and she had just the wingman for it.

Kulu turned toward her, his large, powerful wings rustling as they unfurled. The red feathers caught the light, looking like flickering flames.

"Hold on," he muttered. It wasn’t a request but a warning.

Before she could respond, Kulu stepped into her space. He didn’t do it with the possessive heat of Caspian or the suggestive grace of Raiden. This was functional—and deeply uncomfortable for him. He hooked one arm under her knees and the other around her back, lifting her as if she weighed nothing.

Hana’s bare feet dangled in the air. She didn’t wrap her arms around his neck; she kept her body stiff, her fingers gripping the silver fabric of her own dress. She could feel the hard muscle of his chest and the frantic, drumming beat of his heart.

He was terrified—not of the height, but of the proximity to the woman who had just dismantled his pride. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

He acts like I’m going to suddenly eat him. Hana thought, finding it almost amusing.

With a sudden, powerful snap of his wings, Kulu leaped from the ledge.

The world dropped away and Hana felt the stomach-flipping rush of gravity before the upward surge of his wings caught the air.

The wind whipped her hair across her face, and stung the shallow cut on her cheek. Kulu flew with a desperate, jerky energy, his breathing heavy in her ear.

They ascended the tiers of the cliff, passing the lower pipes and cables of the bunker complex. Up close, the ’spine’ of the facility looked even more decayed, with thick ventilation grates rattling in the mountain wind.

Hana observed it carefully, but didn’t have the chance of a longer observation as Kulu finally landed hard on a high, secluded plateau, the talons of his feet scraping the stone.

Then, without wasting time, he set her down immediately, and stepped back as if her skin had burned him.

"This is the Great Nest," he said, avoiding eye contact with her and gesturing toward a wide archway draped in heavy, white feathers.

The air here was different. It didn’t smell like the fresh, biting wind of the peaks. It had a sharp, metallic tang—the smell of burnt dust, perhaps.

Hana didn’t wait for Kulu to recover his breath or give her directions. She walked toward the entrance, her bare feet silent on the cold stone. As she pushed through the feather curtain, she was first hit by the blue pulsing light of something close to a harsh radiation.

The chamber was a natural dome, but the floor had been leveled with flat stones.

And in the corner, sitting in a crude stone box with the lid cracked open, was the source of this radiation blue light. It flickered like a dying star, casting long, jumping shadows against the cave walls.

Hana stared at it, her heart racing. This was it, the fusion cell.

Then, the system chimed, displaying a notification before her eyes.

> [SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: PRIMARY OBJECTIVE DETECTED]

> Item: Aegis-7 High-Output Fusion Cell (Series 4)

> Condition: Critical Containment Breach. The internal stabilizing glass is cracked.

> Status: Leaking ionizing radiation.

> Repairability: 82% (Requires specialized tools found in an Aegis Corp Bunker).

> Warning: Prolonged exposure within 5 meters will lead to cellular degradation.

I think I can work with that, Hana thought. She had always been good at fixing stuff, so if there were tools to help her fix the fusion cell, then she just had to follow the manual.

Hana’s eyes finally shifted from the pulsing box to the bed of furs. She saw the Chief—a once-mighty predator reduced to a weeping mass of raw flesh. To him, it was a ’hissing god’. But to her, it was a broken machine killing its owner.

The chief’s wings were bandaged in grey, blood-stained cloth, but his face and hands were the real horror—the skin was an angry red, peeling away in jagged strips.

That’s what happens when you try to possess things you have no knowledge about. Hana thought hatefully.

"Kulu..." a raspy, weak voice came from the furs. The Chief struggled to lift his head, his eyes cloudy. "Why... have you brought a land-crawler here?"

"I’m Hana by the way so don’t go ahead and give me nicknames." Hana quickly said, folding her arms.

The chief furrowed his red brows, not pleased by this situation and then he looked at the fusion cell that he revered as a divine relic, not knowing it was the very thing that was killing him.

"She should not be here. The stone... It is angry today."

"It is not angry, Chief," Hana said, her voice cutting through the heavy air. She didn’t sound scared; she sounded like she was looking at a broken piece of plumbing and she knew just how to fix it. "It is just broken. And if you keep it in this room, it will finish eating what’s left of you."

​The Chief let out a raspy, wet cough, his bloodshot eyes trying to focus on her silver dress.

"You... speak of the Heart... as if it is a common beast."

​"Well, that’s because it is," Hana replied. She looked at Kulu, who was hovering near his father, looking back and forth between the dying man and the glowing box with pure terror.

​"Kulu," Hana said sharply, snapping him out of his daze. "I told you I was going to take the curse away and I wasn’t lying. But to do that, we have to move that thing out of here. I won’t touch that thing with my bare skin, and neither will you."

​She scanned the room, her analytic mind working fast. Her eyes landed on a heavy leather hide draped over what looked like a ceremonial rack. It was thick, likely from a mountain bison or a similar beast.

But it was just what she needed.

​"That hide," she pointed. "Grab it. Wrap it around the stone box. If we do this, we can manage to seal the poison from biting while we take it out."