Graffita Neova's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

The red trail turned a corner, and Hazy stopped. Beyond it the passage sank into thicker black. Graffita felt her wrist ahead, hunting the trapped shapes she'd left behind. But Hazy pressed her back to the wall and would not move. "No," Hazy whispered. "Not deeper. I just came out of deeper." Her green eye shook. The others waited in that dark. Graffita could not carry Hazy toward them and shield her from the black at the same time. She had one wrist, near empty, and it could do only one job. "I can't leave them," Graffita said. "I can't drag you and reach them either." Paws scraped the stone behind her. A smoky shape padded up the red trail. It stood taller than a wolf, dark as the passage itself, with a tail that burned neon at the tip. Two fire-yellow eyes cut through the black. Graffita's hand went cold. She knew the marks pressed into its coat, the bright handprints. "Vandal," she said. "You sent me here." The horned demon had dared her to free the trapped and warned her the door would close. Now he came as a beast, and the beast was calm. "You need light that won't burn," Vandal said. His tail glowed low, a soft neon that did not flare. Hazy did not flinch from it. It was gentle color, not the bright kind that erased shadow-folk. Graffita understood. His tail was a slow lamp. She pressed her wrist to the floor and pulled the last of her dark shade out. She did not paint a line this time. She painted a flower where Hazy stood, a burst of soft petals climbing from black to dim blue to faint pink. Splashed, layered, safe. "Stay in the bloom," Graffita told her. "It won't hurt you. The color climbs slow, like before." Hazy touched a painted petal. Her shoulders dropped. "It's warm," she said. She sat inside the flower and stopped shaking. The gentle light held her. She was anchored, the way Pyra was anchored to the stone. "Now I can move," Graffita said. She turned to the black ahead, where the others waited. But her wrist was spent. She had spread the last of it on the bloom. Nothing was left to lay a safe path for the trapped ones. Vandal stepped in front of her. His burning tail swept the dark. "Then borrow mine," he said. "I light the road. You still have to make it climb." Graffita looked at her empty wrist, then at his glowing tail. Her paint was gone, but his light was not. She could not free the others with her ink now. She would have to free them with his. "Lead," she said, and stepped past the bloom into the deeper black, following the neon tail toward the shapes that still waited.