HxH : Threads of Ash (Hunter X Hunter FF)

Pain was a map.

Kaito traced it fingertip by fingertip, down his shoulder, across his ribs, along the sharp edge of his shin. Every bruise hummed under the skin, every scrape burned faintly in the cold.

But beneath the pain, something else pulsed.

It was faint like a second heartbeat a warmth, a hum, barely there, flickering whenever his breath slowed and his mind quieted.

He sat cross-legged in the shell of an old storage shack, beams broken, walls half-collapsed, ash drifted in like dry snow. His eyes were half-lidded, unfocused, fixed on the way light shivered through the cracks.

Ten. Zetsu. Ren. Hatsu.

The words floated up from somewhere old, deeper than memory. Not from this body. Not from this world. But they pulsed in his chest all the same.

He inhaled slow. Held. Exhaled even slower.

The air tasted like smoke and rust. His stomach twisted, empty. His legs ached from sitting still.

But under all that, the warmth stirred.

Stillness was a weapon.

In Meteor City, stillness meant invisibility. If you didn't move, didn't draw breath too loud, didn't twitch when footsteps passed you survived.

Now Kaito pressed that lesson inward.

He imagined stillness inside his body, a quiet folding of self. He let his mind curl inward, tracing the edges of his skin from the inside out.

Fingertips. Toes. Knees. Shoulders.

A thread of warmth gathered there, faint as dawn mist.

His fingers tingled. His chest squeezed tight, not painful just strange, just full.

He exhaled. The warmth pulsed once. Flickered away.

His body sagged, shaking, sweat cold on his back. His stomach cramped, angry.

But his mouth dry, cracked, bleeding at the corners tugged into something faintly like a grin.

Again.

Night fell.

Kaito crept through the narrow alleys between trash mounds, watching.

Near the fires, older boys clustered fighting, drinking, posturing. They radiated something thick, heavy, electric.

Kaito stood at a distance, half-hidden in shadow, and let himself feel it. Not see, not hear feel.

Aura leaked from them in hot waves, flaring when they yelled, dimming when they laughed, spiking when fists clenched.

They didn't know it. They couldn't see it.

But Kaito could.

And compared to them, his own flicker was a candle under a storm.

Under a sky black with smoke and pinpricked with stars, Kaito sat on the edge of a shattered rooftop, feet dangling, hands wrapped around his knees.

He stared upward, eyes dry, breath slow.

Somewhere, beyond this city, beyond these ash heaps, there were people who wielded this power like a blade. Hunters. Assassins. Monsters.

He was nothing.

A rat.

A candle.

But not forever.

He pressed his forehead to his knees. His voice came soft, rough, barely a whisper.

"I will master this."

His breath fogged faintly in the cold.

"I will not be crushed."

The stars didn't answer.

But something in his chest, under the hunger, under the bruises, under the bone-deep ache, pulsed once, steady.

And Kaito smiled, eyes half-closed, as the city exhaled ash around him.