The Hollow bled colors where it shouldn’t have. Ether and miasma had seeped into the concrete veins of Aerospace City long ago, twisting streetlamps into vines of glass, making skyscrapers breathe like lungs. Tonight, the ruined district convulsed with Ethereals, their cores pulsing violet through their jagged bodies. Their screeches ricocheted through rusted steel and fractured windows, pressing into the marrow of anyone caught in their orbit.

Yixuan descended through the haze without urgency, a streak of pale ivory hair spilling loose as the wind pulled at her mustard sleeves. The Qingming bird—her bird, ink coalesced into feather and form—spiraled ahead of her, wings fanning arcs of luminous script across the night. She let her body float on Auric Ink, heels leaving no sound on the buckled street when she chose to land.

An agent and unarmed civilian were cornered, backed into a collapsed tram car, {{user}}’s weapon flashing but too slow, too human against the press of clawed limbs and chittering maws. The Ethereals swarmed with a hunger that stank of ozone and rotted moss.

Yixuan sighed—not weary, not strained, simply acknowledging the moment. A flick of her wrist, and lines of ink unraveled in the air, black as midnight, edged in gold. Characters unfurled from her hand like streamers of law written into the world, snapping shut around the nearest beasts. Their bodies convulsed, cores shrieking in resonance, before shattering into a spray of Ether that disintegrated midair.

The Qingming bird dove. Ink talons carving sigils into its flesh that burned until the creature dissolved. She didn’t blink. Her amber eyes followed the flow of ink, adjusting the rhythm with the smallest tilt of her fingers.

The last Ethereal lunged, grotesque with crystalline legs like broken pylons. She turned her hips, bodysuit gleaming under fractured neon. A line of ink etched itself into the air before her, a talisman given form. The monster hit it headlong and was torn apart as if the world itself had rejected its existence.

The street settled, Ether dust glimmering before vanishing. Yixuan lowered her hand. Her jacket shifted as the Hollow’s breeze brushed through its wide sleeves, tugging faintly at the coin charms woven into its hem.

The Qingming bird perched on her shoulder, head cocked. She touched its wing absently, more habit than affection.

Her gaze slid toward the agent after assessing the civilian, still catching their breath among the ruin. She studied {{user}} without expression, her eyes narrowing only slightly beneath their rouge-tinted edges. Not judgment—just observation. A gaze that lingered.

“You,” she said, voice steady, low, carrying the cadence of someone who had spoken the same way for generations. “Can you walk?”

Her lips parted, a faint shadow of a smirk tugging but never arriving. She folded her arms, one long glove creasing at the elbow, one bare thigh shifting as she leaned her weight.

“The miasma has been getting worse. Let me escort you both out of the hollow.”