[LOCATION: OUTSKIRTS OF SECTOR 12 – FORGOTTEN RIDGE]
The wind smelled like smoke and damp earth. Clouds hung low like mourning veils.
Nel staggered, barely able to walk. Her side was stitched with blood, her vision clouding at the edges. She leaned against a stone pillar — once part of an old communications relay, now a grave marker to forgotten tech and forgotten people.
She didn't know how far she'd crawled after Rune let them go. Lin had gone back underground to find an exit route, trusting Nel could reach the rendezvous.
She hadn't. She'd collapsed here instead, bleeding and alone.
And that's when she heard it — the sound of a blade drawn softly from its sheath.
Nel turned.
Yumi Kisaragi stepped from the fog. Alone. Her black coat tattered at the sleeves, one Reactor seal broken and trailing wires.
Silent.
Dead-eyed.
But aiming her sword straight at Nel's throat.
---
[DIALOGUE – CONFRONTATION]
Nel didn't move.
"You going to kill me, Yumi?" she asked softly. "Or just haunt me like a ghost?"
Yumi said nothing at first. Her hands trembled faintly.
"You're the reason," she whispered finally, "that he looks at someone else."
Nel coughed. "He never promised me anything."
"That's the difference," Yumi said, stepping closer. "I would've died just for the chance. And I did. Over and over again, in training, in missions, in the places no one else would go. For him."
Her blade wavered. Her jaw clenched.
Nel held her gaze. "He didn't ask you to do that."
"I know!" Yumi screamed. "But I did it anyway! I became something else. Something... sharper. So maybe he'd look at me the way he used to look at her. At Rune."
Nel exhaled.
"What did they do to you?"
Yumi's eyes flickered — guilt blooming under the anger. Her Reactor band sparked faintly with fractured energy.
"They promised I'd matter. That I'd be the one who ended the threat. That you were the threat."
"And do you believe that?"
Silence.
Yumi lowered the sword — slightly.
Nel's voice cracked. "You don't have to keep doing this."
Yumi stared at her for a long time.
Then she spoke — quietly, but with that familiar steel.
"I don't know who I am anymore without the mission."
"You're still someone who can choose."
Yumi's hand twitched.
Then her sword fell from her grip, clattering against the stone.
She collapsed to her knees.
---
[TWIST – SEVERIN'S AMBUSH]
The sound came too late — a surgical slicing hum. The whisper of a mono-blade breaching flesh.
Yumi jerked.
Blood spattered across Nel's face.
Behind them, Severin stood in his obsidian coat, goggles glinting red beneath his hood. His scalpel-like blade dripped with blood. His smile was calm, almost pleased.
"She was never going to follow through," he said casually. "Our Choir predicted as much."
Nel screamed.
Yumi clutched her side, falling onto her back. The wound glowed with poisoned resonance — the kind that unraveled nerves.
"You bastard—!"
Severin vanished into smoke, satisfied.
Nel crawled to Yumi's side.
Her blood soaked the wildflowers that grew between broken relay tiles. Lavender. Skyblossoms.
Yumi's breath rasped. Her lips trembled.
"I wasn't... supposed to die like this."
Nel shook her head furiously, trying to seal the wound with what little medtech she had. "Stay with me. Lin's coming."
But Yumi coughed blood.
"It's okay," she whispered. "It's better... better this way."
Her hand searched for something.
Nel gave her the katana.
Yumi held it, faintly smiling.
"Tell him... I tried."
Then she gripped Nel's hand, pulling her close.
"Don't let him break like I did."
Her fingers twitched once.
Then stilled.
---
[SCENE TRANSITION – NIGHTFALL ON THE HILL]
The wildflowers swayed in the breeze, bathed in orange firelight.
Nel stood over the pyre, sword in hand. Yumi's body lay atop the stacked wood, wrapped in her own coat, surrounded by the flowers she once trained beside.
Nel struck the match.
The flames caught slowly. The fire didn't roar — it sang.
A soft hum of smoke and regret.
She stood alone until the stars came out.
Then footsteps.
Lin appeared through the mist, his coat torn, eyes wild with panic.
He saw the flames.
He saw the katana in her hands.
He stopped.
His voice caught. "No…"
"She saved me," Nel said, without looking.
"She turned on them?"
"She remembered who she was."
Lin's face crumpled — a war of guilt and sorrow.
He approached slowly, kneeling beside the fire.
The two stood in silence, mourning.
The katana sat between them.
Nel finally asked, "Did you love her?"
"I think... once," Lin murmured. "But not like she needed."
He looked up at Nel. "And you?"
Nel didn't answer right away.
Instead, she held the katana out to him.
"She wanted you to carry this."
He took it — reverent. Careful. As if it might still burn him.
Then he whispered, "She always burned brighter than I deserved."
---
[FINAL IMAGE – NIGHT SKY OVER THE RIDGE]
The pyre dimmed.
The katana glinted faintly in the moonlight, tucked against Lin's back.
Nel sat beside him — closer than before. Still bleeding, still breathing.
Together, they watched the smoke rise.
And far in the distance, something stirred in Nocturne's shadows.
---
TO BE CONTINUED...