Eternal Art Online

Time didn't freeze. It was the *killing intent* that pierced the drumming rain, sharp as a poisoned ice-dagger, pinning the shadow where Kiriya hid.

The thug's head-snap wasn't street-thug alertness; it was professional, predatory.

Had he seen a shape? A trick of the piled bins? Instinct? Kiriya's muscles coiled tighter than a crossbow string before thought could catch up.

"Who's there?!" The low roar cut through the downpour. The other man holding the white-haired girl whipped around, hand instinctively going to the bulge at the small of his back.

One chance.

Kiriya moved. Not a lunge, but a drop-and-roll, like a stone spat from a slingshot.

He spilled from the shadow of the plastic crates, his black hoodie scraping through filthy water, the icy muck instantly soaking through the fabric to his skin.

He didn't rise. Still coiled low, using the roll's momentum, his right leg snapped out like a striking viper, aimed low.

At the ankle of the nearest thug.

"Gah—!" A cry of surprise mixed with the sickening thud of impact. Thug A, focused on the shadows, never saw the attack from below.

The hardened heel of Kiriya's boot connected perfectly with the nerve cluster on the outer ankle. Agony and imbalance slammed through him. He howled, staggering sideways, his grip on the girl slackening.

The white figure slumped towards the slick ground.

Kiriya didn't stop rolling. Using the kick's recoil, his body uncoiled like a sprung trap, launching him upwards with near-blurring speed.

He ignored the injured Thug A. His target was Thug B – the one who'd reacted faster, whose hand was already reaching for his weapon.

Thug B's eyes widened. He saw the hooded figure now, impossibly fast! His hand yanked free from his waistband—not a gun, but a collapsible baton.

With a sharp *snap-hiss*, the black metal rod extended to half a meter, whistling through the rain-laden air as it slashed down towards Kiriya's rising form!

Kiriya tilted his head a fraction. The baton whipped past his hood, the icy wind of its passage stinging his cheek. He didn't retreat.

Instead, riding the momentum of his rise, he drove *forward*, crashing into Thug B's chest! Close-quarters combat instinct.

His left hand clamped like a steel vise onto the man's baton wrist, thumb digging into a pressure point.

Simultaneously, his right shoulder dropped, driving forward like a battering ram, slamming into Thug B's sternum!

*Thump!*

The impact was brutal. Thug B gasped, wrist screaming with pain and numbness, the baton nearly flying from his grasp.

The air exploded from his lungs. He slammed back two paces, his spine cracking hard against the unforgiving brick wall, dislodging a shower of grit.

"You fuckin' dead meat!" Thug A, recovered from the ankle shock, bellowed with rage-fueled pain.

He abandoned the girl on the ground, his bulk surging forward like an enraged bear, arms wide, aiming to crush Kiriya in a brutal tackle from behind!

Kiriya seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. As Thug A closed in, Kiriya's grip on Thug B's wrist became a weapon.

He wrenched it down and *twisted*, using Thug B's collision with the wall as leverage, while his own body pivoted sideways in a slick, evasive spin!

"YEEARGH—!" Thug B shrieked as his wrist was forced into an unnatural angle, agony ripping through him. The baton clattered uselessly to the wet pavement.

Thug A, committed to his tackle, found his target gone. In its place was his partner's contorted face. He couldn't stop. His full weight crashed into the already off-balance Thug B!

"Shit! Watch it, asshole!" Thug B roared, tangled, and disoriented.

Chaos. Precious, fleeting chaos.

Enough.

Kiriya didn't spare the cursing tangle of thugs a glance. His focus snapped to the pale form crumpled in the filth.

She lay in the icy sludge, the white dress now a grimy shroud, her wet hair spread like dark seaweed, face hidden. Motionless. Lifeless.

No hesitation. Kiriya moved like a hunting panther. Two strides brought him to her side.

He didn't bend to lift; he dropped low, right arm hooking under her armpit, left hand scooping behind her knees.

A practiced *fireman's carry*, hauling her impossibly light, rigid body onto his back in one fluid motion.

She felt… wrong. Icy cold. Stiff. Barely human warmth. Mud and rain smeared instantly across his hoodie.

"Ngh…!" A sound, barely a breath, scraped from her throat against his neck – a ghost of pain.

Kiriya's gut clenched, but his body didn't falter. He spun, putting the deeper alley darkness at his back, turning away from the two thugs now untangling themselves, their faces twisted with murderous fury.

*Run.*

Not towards the streetlight at the alley mouth. That path might hold more ambushes.

He aimed for the side passage – narrower, blacker, choked with overflowing dumpsters reeking of decay. A stinking, intestinal maze.

"Stop him!!"

"Kill the bastard!!"

Enraged, below, and the heavy thud of pursuit boots followed. The whistle of the recovered baton cut the air.

Burdened, Kiriya didn't slow. He kept his center low, feet finding purchase on the slickest ground, dodging deep puddles and scattered refuse.

Icy rain streamed down his neck. The weight on his back was negligible, yet it carried a chilling, leaden dread. Like carrying a block of dry ice.

The side passage loomed. Its entrance was partially blocked by massive, stinking green dumpsters, leaving only a slimy crevice.

Kiriya didn't break. He sucked in a breath, leaned hard right at full sprint, and scraped through the narrow gap beside the slick, greasy metal!

The girl's body thumped against the cold bin, drawing another stifled whimper from her.

Darkness swallowed them whole. True, ink-thick darkness.

Only the faintest grey smear from the distant streetlamp hinted at the walls – high, graffiti-scarred, festooned with pipes.

Underfoot was treacherous sludge and unidentifiable, slippery refuse. The stench was overwhelming – rot, stagnant water, rust – a physical assault.

The sounds of pursuit hit the bottleneck behind him, slowed, frustrated by the filth and confinement.

"Shit! Rat-holed!"

"Split up! Cut him off!"

Kiriya tuned them out. His eyes strained, adapting. Years navigating virtual dungeon blackness honed his spatial sense.

A hazy memory of this urban warren guided him. Left. Right. Leap over broken bricks. Squeeze sideways past a choke-point clogged with construction debris…

He moved like an eel through sewage, instinct and calculated risk carving a path through the gloom.

The girl on his back was unnervingly still. Only the faintest, intermittent puff of frigid air against his neck betrayed any sign of life.

That unnatural cold, that unnatural lightness, gnawed at him. *What was she?*

The shouts of his pursuers faded, swallowed by the labyrinth. Kiriya didn't ease up. He took more turns, finally ducking into the skeletal remains of a collapsed news kiosk.

It formed a cramped niche, three walls of jagged rubble and twisted metal framing, piled high with sodden, mildewed newspapers and broken glass. The stench was vile, but it offered cover.

He gasped, lungs burning. Rain streamed from his hair, his face, dripping into the foul puddle at his feet.

Carefully, he lowered the girl from his back, propping her slumped form against a relatively dry pile of broken masonry.

Deep silence descended, broken only by the amplified drumming of rain on the corrugated metal overhead. The distant curses had ceased. The thugs were lost or regrouping elsewhere.

Temporary safety.

Only then, in the feeble, rain-filtered gloom, did Kiriya truly look at the girl he'd snatched from the alley.

She sagged in the muck, body curled slightly, head lolling forward. Saturated white hair plastered her pallid cheeks and neck like a frigid shroud.

The dress was a ruined grey rag, clinging to a frame disturbingly fragile, as if made of spun glass. Rain traced paths down her hair, her chin.

He crouched. Hesitated. Then, with a caution he couldn't explain, he reached out and gently brushed the wet strands clinging to her face aside.

The face revealed was unnervingly young, utterly bloodless. Skin so pale it was almost translucent, revealing the faint tracery of blue veins beneath.

Long, dark lashes, beaded with moisture, lay against closed lids. A straight nose. Lips pale pink and bloodless, pressed tightly together.

This was the face. The one that had pinned him with those clotted-blood eyes under the streetlamp.

Kiriya's gaze fixed on her temple. There, where she'd been slammed against the brick, a livid bruise was blooming, swelling angrily.

The skin was abraded. But what seeped from the scrape wasn't blood.

It was a viscous, almost clear fluid… faintly luminous.

Like cooled gel.

Kiriya's breath hitched. His heart seized as if gripped by an icy fist. This wasn't natural. That uncanny glow, faint but unmistakable in the dark, radiated a cold, technological wrongness.

His hand moved almost of its own volition, a tremor he didn't acknowledge in his fingers, reaching towards the impossibly slender column of her neck. He needed a pulse. Any sign.

Fingertips touched icy skin.

No pulse.

Instead, a sensation: a faint, slow, rhythmic *thrum*… like the internal vibration of finely tuned machinery. Utterly cold. Utterly inhuman.

And simultaneously, his probing touch registered something else: beneath the wet curtain of white hair at the nape of her neck, the skin wasn't smooth.

His fingertips traced the unmistakable outline of something hard, circular, roughly coin-sized. Its edges seemed… *fused* with the surrounding flesh?

Icy rain traced a cold finger down Kiriya's spine. He snatched his hand back as if scalded.

In the deep alley silence, broken only by the hollow percussion of rain on metal, the girl's faintly glowing temple and the cold, unnatural contour beneath her hairline stared back at him. Like eyes from the abyss, watching in the dark.