Chapter Text
She wakes up, gasping for breath, trying to throw up water that isn’t in her lungs.
The ground around her is soaked in blood that isn’t hers, thick and dark and everywhere, and the only thought that pushes through the panic is that this makes sense.
She can’t look at the color red.
The bodies around her are both familiar and not. The body she’s in is both familiar and not.
She dug a hundred and thirty seven graves.
The bodies around her are small enough that it makes her sick in a different way. Adults, too. Men and women. But there are children. There are little hands that still look like they should be holding something soft. There are feet that never had a chance to grow.
Her stomach heaves again, useless. Nothing comes up. Just air and that hot, sour feeling that sits in her throat.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and freezes.
Her skin is pale. Too pale. Her fingers are long and thin. There’s blood in the creases of her knuckles, dirt packed under the nails, and still—still—none of it is hers.
She stares at her hands like they might belong to someone else.
Because they do.
She doesn’t say the name out loud. She doesn’t even know if she’s allowed to. But it’s there, like something lodged in the back of her mouth.
Her eyes are grey, her hair is blonde.
Her eyes are grey, her hair is redredred.
She squeezes her eyes shut.
Her eyes are red.
She looks down at the body of Pairo and feels a part of her scream. It’s raw and wordless and young. It knows this face. It knows the way his smile used to tilt, uneven and warm. It knows the sound of his voice.
The other gazes with heartless apathy.
Pairo’s face is slack. Still. His milky eyes stare up at nothing. There’s blood dried at the corner of his mouth, dark against skin that should still be warm.
She wonders how long it took.
She wonders if he cried.
A memory that is not hers rises — sunlight through trees, laughter, red eyes shining in the dark like something sacred instead of something cursed.
The scream inside her turns into a name.
Kurapika.
It’s not a thought. It’s a presence. A pressure behind her ribs. A grief so sharp it almost feels holy.
She presses her palm against her chest as if she can hold it down.
“You’re too late,” she whispers, though she doesn’t know who she’s speaking to.
The wind moves through the clearing. The smell of iron is everywhere.
She looks at Pairo again.
What will you do now?
Her mouth tilts.
It doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I don’t care,” she says quietly.
Somewhere deep inside the red, something answers back.
She lays beside Pairo’s grave and imagines its her own instead.
The dirt is cold through her clothes. It presses into her shoulder, into her ribs, into the side of her face. She keeps one hand curled against the mound like if she holds it, it’ll stay real. Like if she doesn’t let go, the world won’t move on without him.
What will you do now?
The question isn’t coming from the wind. It isn’t coming from the trees. It’s inside her head, too close, like a thought that wasn’t invited in.
“I don’t know,” she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.
It isn’t her pain.
It’s his.
Kurapika’s grief sits behind her eyes like pressure, like water that wants to spill out, like a scream with nowhere to go. It makes her throat tighten. It makes her fingers tremble.
She hates it.
She hates that it’s real.
She hates that it’s pure.
Because her grief was never allowed to be pure.
She closes her eyes and for a second she expects a hand to grab her hair and shove her face into the floor.
Nothing happens.
Only dirt. Only silence. Only the grave beside her.
She swallows hard.
What will you do now?
Her chest tightens. The pressure behind her ribs spikes, sharp and fast, like Kurapika is about to claw out of her skin.
She presses her palm harder against her sternum.
“You don’t get it,” she whispers. “It won’t fix anything.”
A memory flashes — not hers again. Kurta songs, the sound of a village at night, warmth spilling out of windows. Pairo laughing. A hand grabbing Kurapika’s wrist, pulling him into the light.
She hates it.
“It won’t work. It won’t stop the pain.”
The red in her vision flares, brighter, like the body is reacting before she even finishes the thought. Like Kurapika is.
The presence surges, furious and starving.
Yes.
Yesyesyes.
It hits behind her eyes and spreads down her spine, electric and violent. The red deepens until the world looks dipped in blood. Her fingers curl into the dirt without her telling them to.
Images slam into her—chains tightening around throats, scarlet eyes preserved in glass, spiders crushed one by one beneath a boot that does not hesitate.
Her nails dig into her sternum hard enough to bruise.
There’s almost a sort of beauty in suffering.
As soon as she thinks about it she feels a wave of disgust, and wonders if it’s coming from Kurapika or her.
She yanks her hand away from her chest and stares at the crescent marks in her skin. The marks fade slower than they should.
“Stop,” she says, but it comes out too flat, like her mouth is on autopilot.
The red doesn’t leave her vision, and the presence behind her ribs doesn’t back off. It just sits there, watching, starving, waiting for her to point it somewhere.
She pushes herself up from the dirt, legs shaking, and wipes her face even though it’s dry.
She looks at the graves again—at Pairo’s mound first—and she tells herself she won’t leave them like this.
She doesn’t know where the spiders are yet, but she knows exactly what she wants to do with the eyes when she finds them.
When she steps away, she doesn’t see the thin layer of frost forming where her body had been.
It spreads quietly across the dirt.
Her eyes are grey, her hair is blonde. It grows until it reaches her shoulders and she can’t bring herself to cut it.
It feels wrong to touch it.
Every time she looks at it, she expects red. She expects it to darken, to burn, to betray her.
It doesn’t.
It stays soft and pale and unfamiliar.
Her eyes are grey, her hair is blonde.
A stranger in the wrong body stares back at her in every reflection.
She builds a glass palace around her mind, and fills it with mirrors. Every wall is smooth and clear. Every surface reflects. Nothing hides in it. Nothing sneaks up on her. If something moves, she sees it from every angle.
She stands in the center.
Kurapika stands everywhere else, like a knight protecting his kingdom, a guard that never sleeps.
There are no dark corners. No blind spots. No places where something can grab her from behind.
She won’t be caught off guard again.
The world she’s in is filled with certain people called Hunters. She remembers her—his—parents talking about them. People who walked into places other people didn’t come back from. People who got paid to find things, kill things, steal things, save things. Her—his—parents used to talk about them like they were half-myth, half-real.
She couldn’t stay in that village any longer. With the graves, and the blood that would never leave.
She left at dawn with nothing but a bag and a knife that felt too light in her hand. The path out of the valley was muddy from recent rain, and her boots kept sinking just enough to annoy her. She didn’t look back.
She didn’t need to.
The graves were behind her. The smell was behind her. The silence that didn’t belong in a place full of trees was behind her. If she turned around, she knew she’d see the clearing again, and she knew she’d see red.
So she walked until her legs hurt and her skin felt tight from the cold.
She didn’t have a plan. Not a real one. She just knew she couldn’t stay.
So, Hunters.
It was the only word that meant anything outside the village. The only thing that sounded like an answer, even if it wasn’t a good one.
The first town she reached was small, but it had roads, and people, and noise. She bought food with coins she didn’t remember earning. That part bothered her. Not because it was wrong to take what Kurapika had—he was dead in every way that mattered—but because it reminded her there were still pieces of a life in this body that weren’t hers.
The man behind the counter looked at her hair and then at her eyes. His gaze lingered a second too long.
She ate in an alley behind the shop, sitting on a stack of crates. The bread was stale. The dried meat was too salty. It didn’t matter. Food was fuel. She finished it and wiped her hands on her pants.
A shadow falls across the mouth of the alley.
Then another.
Then a third.
She doesn’t look up right away.
Boots scrape against stone. One of them snorts.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” a voice says. “Thought that was you.”
She chews once more, slow, and swallows before lifting her head.
She doesn’t recognize them, but her body does. For some reason, she recalls the way one of them dropped coins into the dirt and laughed.
“Where’s your little friend?” the thin one asks. “Cripple kid finally slow you down for good?”
Her eyes stay grey.
The fat one grins, nudging the man beside him. “Man, and we don’t even need an old man payin’ us this time.” He laughs, thick and ugly. “Guess we’re just feelin’ charitable.”
They step closer, and the alley suddenly feels smaller.
She sets the empty paper aside. Her hands are steady, but her pulse isn’t. It beats too fast, too loud in her ears. She hates that they can probably see how thin she is. How narrow her wrists look.
The thin one cracks his knuckles. “You goin’ quiet on us?”
“I don’t know you,” she says.
It isn’t a lie. She doesn’t.
But something remembers being shoved. Being grabbed. Being laughed at. It isn't—
She tells herself she’s not back there. She tells herself this isn’t the same.
The thin one leans in, hands on his knees, like he’s talking to a child. “C’mon. Don’t lie. You remember us, right?”
She doesn’t answer.
The fat one steps closer and kicks one of the empty crates. It bangs loud and sharp against the wall. She flinches before she can stop it, and his grin gets wider.
“There it is,” he says. “Knew it.”
Her palms go damp. She slides off the crate, slow, because sitting suddenly feels stupid. Her knife is under her shirt, tucked against her waistband. She can reach it if she has to, but the blade still feels too light. It always feels too light.
She’s aware of her heartbeat in her ears. She’s aware of the way her breath keeps catching halfway in. She tries to pull air lower, deeper, but her ribs won’t loosen.
She backs up until her calves hit the crates behind her. No space left.
The thin one reaches for her hair.
She jerks away so hard her shoulder bangs the wall.
Her vision narrows.
For a second she’s somewhere else. For a second she’s waiting for pain.
Nothing happens. Only the scrape of boots. Only the stink of sweat and beer and old clothes.
“You don’t gotta be shy,” the fat one says, still grinning. “We just want what we’re owed.”
“Owed,” she repeats, because her mouth moves before her brain catches up.
The thin one smiles like she said something funny.
“Yeah,” he says. “You embarrassed us. In front of everybody. Made us look stupid.”
“You broke Kenta’s nose,” the fat one adds, pointing at himself. “Took weeks before I could breathe right.”
She looks at his nose. It’s crooked. Poorly set. She doesn’t remember doing that. Kurapika might, though.
“So,” the thin one says, stepping closer, “we figured you could make it up to us.”
He reaches again, and this time he doesn’t go for her hair. He reaches for her face.
Her back hits the wall.
There isn’t room.
Her hand goes for the knife on instinct, but she’s slow. Her fingers fumble under her shirt and the thin one sees it. His hand snaps around her wrist before she can pull the blade free.
He squeezes.
Hard.
Her breath leaves her all at once.
“Still feisty,” he mutters.
The fat one laughs and grabs her other arm. His grip is thick and hot and wrong.
Her pulse explodes in her ears.
No nononononotagain—
She tries to pull free, but they’re heavier than she expected. Stronger. Her shoulder scrapes against stone and pain shoots down her arm.
Her vision flickers.
The thin one leans close enough that she can see the cracks in his lips. “We’re not unreasonable,” he says. “We just want a little compensation. You know. For the humiliation.”
His hand moves from her wrist to her jaw.
Something in her chest twists.
It isn’t rage.
It’s cold.
It starts behind her ribs and spreads outward, slow and steady. Not heat. Not fire.
Cold.
Her breath fogs in front of her face.
The fat one swears. “What the—”
The thin one’s fingers tighten on her jaw, but then he jerks back with a sharp hiss. His skin sticks to hers for a second before peeling away.
There’s a thin sheen of frost along her wrist.
She stares at it, eyes lidded.
The fat one lets go of her arm suddenly. “You feel that?” he says, voice pitched higher than before.
The thin one shakes his hand like he touched something hot, even though it isn’t heat that spreads through the alley. It’s cold that bites at exposed skin.
She slides down the wall without meaning to.
Her knees hit the ground hard.
The pressure inside her spikes again, sharp and electric. Her heart stutters with it. Her vision washes out at the edges, pale and blurred.
She hears something.
A sound like glass shifting.
Not outside.
Inside.
Her eyes lift on their own.
The world looks clearer.
Too clear.
Every movement in the alley feels sharp. The men’s breathing is loud. The drip of water from a gutter at the end of the alley sounds like a clock ticking.
The thin one takes a step back.
Her vision flashes—
Red.
The alley floods with color, and for a split second she sees them the way she saw the clearing. As shapes. As bodies that can break.
The pressure inside her surges in approval.
Yes.
Her hand lifts.
She doesn’t remember telling it to.
The frost spreads from her fingertips, thin lines racing across the stone like cracks in glass. The wall behind the thin one crystallizes in seconds, white and sharp.
He stumbles, boot slipping on ice that wasn’t there before.
“What is that?” the fat one yells.
She doesn’t know.
She tries to stand and nearly falls again. Her legs feel weak. Her lungs burn like she’s been running.
The thin one lunges at her anyway, desperate and angry.
She throws her arm up to block him.
There’s a sharp sound, but not like bone breaking, like glass.
Ice bursts outward between them. A thin sheet forms in midair and shatters the second his fist hits it. Shards slice across his knuckles and cheek. He screams and jerks back, blood welling bright against the white frost.
She can’t stop staring at it.
Her breath comes in short, sharp pulls. Cold air scrapes her throat. Her hands shake so hard she can feel it in her wrists, but the frost keeps crawling anyway, like it’s not listening to her.
The fat one takes one step forward, then hesitates when his boot hits the slick stone. His eyes flick down to the ice, then back to her. He looks confused for half a second, and then his face twists into something mean.
“Freak,” he spits.
He grabs the nearest crate and hurls it at her.
She throws her arms up without thinking.
The crate hits an invisible sheet and explodes into splinters, like it smashed into a window. The sound is loud enough that it makes her flinch. The barrier cracks and disappears immediately, and the cold stings her forearms like she stuck them in snow for too long.
She doesn’t know how she did that.
She doesn’t know how to do it again.
Her heart is pounding so hard it makes her feel sick.
The fat one curses and tries to charge anyway, slipping on the ice. His feet skid out and he catches himself on the wall, palms smearing across frost. He yelps and jerks back, shaking his hands.
“What the hell is this?” he barks, voice unsteady now.
She presses her back against the stone and tries to force her hands to stop trembling. Her fingers feel numb. The cold is in her bones. She can’t tell if she’s making it or if it’s happening to her.
Her vision flickers again, the edges going pale.
Inside her head, glass shifts.
A presence leans closer behind her ribs, hungry and awake.
Do it.
She swallows, and it feels like swallowing broken ice.
“I don’t want to,” she says, but it comes out quiet. Almost nothing.
The thin one snaps his head up from where he’s crouched. His face is wet with blood and tears. His mouth opens like he’s going to yell again, but then he sees her eyes.
They’re red.
His expression changes so fast it’s almost funny. One second he’s angry, the next second he’s scared shitless.
“Those… those eyes—”
She hates that he knows what they mean.
She hates that the body knows, too.
Her chest tightens. The pressure behind her ribs spikes, and for a moment she feels like she’s going to black out standing up. She digs her nails into her palm hard enough to hurt, just to stay inside herself.
The fat one looks at the thin one like he’s useless. Then he looks back at her. He tries to force the confidence back into his voice.
“You think you can scare people with that?” he snaps. “You think you can—”
He grabs a splintered board from the broken crate and swings it at her like a club. She moves without thinking, and flinches away and throws her forearm out between them like a shield.
The board hits something that isn’t her skin.
A clear wall snaps into place for half a second, and the wood cracks like it slammed into a window. The impact shudders up her arm anyway, numbing her elbow, and the barrier splinters apart into glittering shards of ice that vanish before they can hit the ground.
The fat one staggers back, staring at his ruined weapon like it betrayed him.
She stares too, because she felt it, felt something push out of her like a reflex, like a flinch turned solid.
The alley is freezing now; her breath is smoke and the stone behind her is sweating frost. She tries to pull air, but it catches high in her chest, and her hands won’t stop shaking. The pressure behind her ribs tightens, and the red in her eyes is beginning to burn painfully.
Do it.
Her skin prickles, and suddenly she can feel something under it—like heat without warmth, like pressure pressing outward instead of in. It leaks from her shoulders, her spine, her hands. The air around her distorts, faint and wrong.
The thin one stumbles back again. “What is that?” he whispers.
She doesn’t know. She can’t breathe right. It feels like she’s standing too close to a cliff edge, like one wrong move and she’ll fall out of her own body.
The pressure bursts.
Something tears open behind her ribs, and the cold explodes outward in a ring. The alley walls glaze over in seconds. Frost climbs brick and wood and skin alike. The men scream as the ground locks solid beneath them.
She lifts her hand without meaning to.
Clear panels snap into place around them—thin, curved sheets, forming a rough circle. Not perfect. Not steady. They flicker like they might collapse at any second. She sees herself reflected in all of them at once—red eyes, pale hair, shaking hands.
The thin one runs and slams straight into one of the panels. It cracks but doesn’t break. He rebounds, slipping, hands clawing at air that turns to glass under his palms.
She moves.
Or maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she just disappears from where she was standing and reappears in a reflection behind him. She doesn’t understand how her body crossed the space, only that she’s suddenly there, breath fogging between them.
He turns too late.
Her hand goes to his throat.
Ice blooms from her fingers and spreads fast, climbing his jaw, sealing his scream inside his mouth. His eyes bulge. She watches the frost creep over his lashes. She doesn’t look away.
The heavier one charges blindly and swings at one of the mirrors. It shatters. The crack rips through her skull like a migraine. She gasps, but she doesn’t fall.
She steps out of another panel behind him.
He sees her reflection in all of them and doesn’t know which one is real.
It doesn’t matter.
She presses her palm flat against his back.
The cold moves through him in a single violent pulse. His breath leaves in a white cloud that doesn’t come back.
The mirrors collapse.
The frost stays.
She stands in the middle of the alley, lungs burning, aura leaking from her skin in thin, trembling waves. The men lie still at her feet, glazed over like statues left out in winter.
Her eyes fade back to grey.
The cold doesn’t.