HxH : Threads of Ash (Hunter X Hunter FF)

The factory was half-eaten by rust.

Its roof caved inward at one end, leaving beams bent like snapped ribs against the gray morning sky. Wind slid through broken windowpanes, rattling loose shards that clinked like teeth in a mouth too old to close.

Kaito sat inside, spine pressed to a cracked concrete wall, knees pulled tight, shirt stiff with dried blood at the shoulder.

His body ached in a deep, grinding way not sharp like the cut, not bright like hunger but heavy, marrow-deep. He flexed his fingers, wincing as skin pulled over scabs, then let his hand go slack on his knee.

The warmth was still there.

Faint. Flickering. A low pulse just beneath the skin, like something coiled around his bones, breathing slow while he sat still.

Kaito exhaled, thin and shaky.

It hadn't been a dream.

He closed his eyes.

Inhale, long. Hold. Exhale, slower.

Ten.

He didn't know how he knew only that he did. The word floated up like a splintered memory from someplace that didn't exist here. Not Meteor City. Not this life. But it fit.

Ten. Hold the aura in. Wrap it. Protect the body.

He pictured it like mist, like smoke trapped under his skin, like heat pressed close to his surface. His fingers twitched. His toes curled.

The warmth gathered at his fingertips first, a shimmer, a tickle. He almost laughed it was so faint, so silly but he kept his mouth clamped shut, jaw tight, breath measured.

Slow. Hold. Focus.

His skin prickled. His forehead dampened. His ribs squeezed tight.

And then snap the warmth slipped, scattered, fizzled out.

Kaito sagged forward, gasping, head dropping to his knees.

The hunger came roaring back.

His belly twisted hard enough to cramp. His mouth tasted like ash. Spots danced at the corners of his eyes.

He dug fingers into his scalp, squeezing, biting his own lip until the taste of copper hit his tongue.

Idiot.

This wasn't magic. This wasn't free.

Nen burned energy. Real energy. Blood, breath, bone, food and he was running on scraps and hope.

Kaito let himself slide sideways, cheek pressed to cold concrete, watching the dust swirl in a patch of light cutting through the collapsed roof.

His body was too small. Too thin. Too weak.

But the warmth was real.

That meant everything.

Sometime later an hour, or a lifetime a bird landed nearby.

He felt it before he saw it.

A flicker, like someone brushing fingers along the edge of his awareness. A prickle of presence.

Kaito didn't move. His eyes stayed half-lidded, breath shallow.

The bird hopped once, pecked at a rusted bolt, fluttered its wings.

The feeling was so faint, so paper-thin, but it was there a little pulse in the air, a nudge against the quiet space he was learning to hold inside himself.

He wondered, dazedly, if this was the edge of something else.

Not just Ten.

Something bigger.

Later still, as night bled into the sky and Meteor City's horizon turned into a jagged line of smoke and firelight, Kaito crawled onto the roof.

He sat cross-legged on the cracked cement, arms wrapped around his knees, eyes fixed on the flicker of distant fires, the dark shapes moving through alleyways, the hum of a world that didn't care if he lived or died.

He could feel his own aura, small and tired, flickering under his skin like a candle in the wind.

He could feel, just barely, the stronger auras out there raw and wild, leaking from men who fought, drank, screamed, killed without knowing they were burning themselves hollow.

And somewhere beyond them, further still, in places he'd only heard about, were monsters who held that power tight, sharp, precise Hunters, assassins, kings of the underworld.

Kaito pressed his forehead to his knees. His lips moved. No sound came out, but his mouth shaped the words anyway.

I won't stay small.

His fingers curled into fists. His back straightened.

I won't break.

The wind tugged at his hair, ash drifting past like dying stars. His body trembled, aching with exhaustion, hunger gnawing at every hollow. But the flicker inside stayed, stubborn, trembling but unbroken.

Tomorrow he would need food. Tomorrow he would need to fight, to hide, to scrape survival out of the dirt.

But tonight, Kaito sat with his aura his tiny, invisible pulse and made a quiet, burning promise.

He would make it a flame no one could snuff out.