Volume 1 Part 2 Chapter 6
The Thing in the Way
One evening, Fin fluttered directly onto the console.
Not carefully. Not timidly.
He landed hard, claws scraping metal, wings spreading wide as if to make himself bigger than he was. The light from the Engine bled through the thin membranes, outlining every trembling vein. He squeaked once — sharp, urgent — and stayed where he was.
Blocking the way.
Kagen froze at the bottom of the ladder.
For a moment, he just stared.
“Fin,” he said quietly. Not unkind. Just tired. “Move.”
Fin didn’t.
He lowered his head instead, wings lifting higher, body shaking with the effort of holding ground he was never meant to claim. His eyes stayed locked on Kagen’s face, bright and wet and terrified — but unflinching.
Kagen exhaled slowly.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “This isn’t for you.”
The shadows along the walls leaned inward, stretching as if listening.
Fin squeaked again, louder this time, hopping once in place. His wings brushed the console, deliberately blocking the final step. A warning. A plea.
Kagen took a step forward anyway.
Fin barked — sharp, cracking — the sound ripping out of him like it hurt to make.
That stopped Kagen.
His breath hitched, confusion and frustration tangling with something sharper. Older.
“…Not you too,” he whispered.
The Engine hummed, low and eager.
Kagen laughed once — a broken, humorless sound. “Do you know how many times I’ve stood in front of something dangerous to keep it from hurting someone else?”
He gestured vaguely upward, toward the sanctuary he kept running. “Do you know how often I’ve been the thing in the way?”
Fin’s wings fluttered but stayed wide.
Kagen’s voice cracked. “I’m tired of being the barrier.”
The Engine pulsed brighter.
Kagen stepped closer. The heat pressed against his skin, familiar now. Comforting, in the way pain can be when it gives you something to hold onto.
“Just—” he said, swallowing. “Just let me through.”
Fin didn’t move.
He lunged instead — not forward, but up — fluttering directly into Kagen’s chest, his tiny body colliding with Kagen in a desperate, clumsy attempt to push him back. His wings beat frantically, claws scrabbling for purchase.
Kagen staggered half a step.
And something in him snapped.
“Stop it!” he shouted — not at Fin, but at the ache behind his ribs, at the weight of being needed and never chosen.
The Engine roared.
Kagen slammed his fist against its casing.
Not at Fin.
At the promise.
At the hunger that had dressed itself up as purpose.
The world detonated.
Heat tore through the chamber. Metal shrieked. Light collapsed inward instead of out, folding violently around the point of impact. Fin was lifted clean off the console, thrown backward as if the air itself had rejected him.
He hit the scrap pile hard.
Too hard.
There was a sound — something wrong, small, final — as wing bones snapped under the force.
The lights dimmed. The Engine cracked open like a dying star.
Kagen staggered, ears ringing, breath stolen.
“Fin—”
Above the Sanctuary, Renji jolted awake.
Pain flared through his chest as if something had yanked him back into his body. The walls of the cabin rattled. Dust drifted from the ceiling.
Coop lifted his head, growling low.
Confused.
Alert.
And afraid.
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