HxH : Threads of Ash (Hunter X Hunter FF)

The ground cut.

Every step left a red smear.

Kaito's feet pressed over shards of glass, rusted nails, bent screws, but he didn't flinch. His skin had hardened, callused over months of barefoot wandering. Pain was background noise, as constant as the stink of burning plastic.

Above, the sky was a ceiling of brown smoke, lit here and there by the dull orange pulse of distant incinerators. Behind Kaito, the echoes of shouting, metal crashing, bottles breaking. Ahead, the mountain of trash climbed higher a spine of dead machines, twisted rebar, bags of rot.

He crouched low. A small hand brushed aside scraps: a broken fan blade, a snapped-off doll's head, a plastic bottle with half an inch of oily water. Jackpot. He snatched it up, unscrewed the cap, sniffed. Drinkable. Barely.

A voice barked in the distance young, male, sharp. Kaito ducked instinctively. Not here. Not seen. Not now.

They were wolves, the older kids.

He watched them from under a rusted metal drum, eyes narrowed, fingers wrapped around his knees.

There were four today: Shiru, the fastest; Tama, the loud one; Kosha, who always had a pipe in his hand; and Len, thin and twitchy. They circled a burned-out car frame, arguing over something food? Clothes? A scrap of wiring? Kaito couldn't see.

What he could see was the pattern.

Shiru circled left. Tama leaned forward, shouting, drawing attention. Kosha flanked. Len always waited. Always. Until someone else struck. Then he darted in to finish the job.

Kaito watched them the way a rat watches bigger rats. Careful. Quiet. Learning where the teeth were.

It was supposed to be a safe path between the metal spine and the old dumping pit. No one came here. Too steep, too unstable.

But today, there were voices.

Kaito froze mid-step. Gravel crunched under his toes.

A flicker of movement to the right. Shiru. To the left. Kosha. Behind a snort, Tama's voice rising.

They weren't looking at him, not yet. They were circling someone else smaller, maybe, or slower. But Kaito was too close now, and when Kosha's eyes flicked past the fight, they landed on Kaito's thin shape, half-hidden in a tangle of cables.

"Hey," Kosha called, voice sharp.

Kaito didn't think. He ran.

The ground tilted under his feet. Rocks shifted, clattered down the slope. His breath hitched in his throat. A sharp laugh behind him, but no footsteps they weren't following. He was too small. Not worth it.

Still, he ran.

Down the slope, past the pit, through a gap in rusted fencing, heart punching his ribs. When he finally stopped, crouched behind a collapsed shack, his legs were shaking. His arms too. But not from fear.

From something else.

A buzzing under the skin.

Like static. Like a thread pulled too tight.

He pressed his palm to his forearm, felt the warmth there not skin warmth. Something deeper.

His chest heaved. His eyes burned.

What was that?

That night, Kaito sat under the overhang of a collapsed billboard, knees pulled to his chest, chewing on a strip of stale bread he'd scavenged near the outer camp.

Above him, the sky was bruised black and gray, but through a rip in the smoke, stars blinked faint, cold, sharp.

His fingers brushed his arm again, where the strange warmth had lingered. He didn't have words for it yet. But his mind, the part that remembered another world, whispered:

Aura.

Not just knowledge. Not just memory. Something in his blood, his breath, his bones. Something waiting.

He tore off another piece of bread, stuffed it into his mouth, chewed slow. His stomach cramped around it, like it was remembering how to eat.

In his chest, the hunger twisted. But not just for food.

For more.

For something beyond these ash heaps and rusting bones.

For something waiting under his skin.