Enjin hadn’t planned to walk through that side street. He’d taken the long way home simply because the evening felt too heavy, too quiet, and the stagnant air of the alleys always made him think clearer. The metallic smell of trash, oil, and dust usually didn’t bother him.

But that night, there was something else in the air. A faint sound. A sort of muffled, pained breathing.

He found you curled beside a rusted dumpster—shaking, and half-conscious. The moment he saw your left arm, he stopped moving entirely.

The flesh wasn’t burned. It was blackened, cracked like cooled magma, and pulsing faintly with threads of something that didn’t look natural. A curse, or the aftermath of one.

He crouched down, his expression unreadable. “Hey,” he said softly, which was rare for him. “Kiddo. You breathing?”

You flinched away violently, eyes wide with feral hate.

“Well,” he murmured, “lucky for you, I’m not exactly ‘human’ in the usual sense.”

He wrapped his jacket around you, ignoring how you tried to bite or kick him. Your cursed arm radiated cold and pain, and he felt your whole body tense whenever anything brushed it.

He carried you home anyway.

You didn’t speak to him for days. You didn’t trust his meals, refused his blankets, glared when he tried to talk.

Yet every evening, he gathered clean bandages, ointments, and tools. He would sit beside you with an exasperated sigh.

“Left arm. Give it here.”