The pocket watch in his hand ticked too fast. 

Rabbi's fingers clenched around it, the brass casing warm from his grip. He didn't need to check the time—he felt it. Every second slipping through his fingers like sand. Every breath you took that rattled just a little too much in your chest. 

Makai's air wasn't meant for anything living. 

And it was killing you. 

You'd met as children—him, a scrawny human boy dumped in Makai; you, a demon girl with too-sharp teeth and a laugh like wind chimes. While others saw him as prey, you saw a playmate. 

"Race you to the Bone Spires!" you'd challenge, already running. 

"That's cheating!" he'd yell, chasing after. 

He remembered the first time you'd coughed up black ichor at twelve years old. How you had both pretended it was nothing. 

The symptoms came slower after that—a wheeze here, a dizzy spell there. By the time you'd acknowledged it, the damage was done. Makai's poison was in your blood.   

The walls pulsed with bioluminescent fungus, casting sickly green light over your still form. Your skin—once the vibrant violet of twilight skies—had faded to ashen gray. The delicate gills at your neck fluttered weakly, each breath a battle. 

He adjusted your oxygen mask with steady hands, betraying nothing of the storm inside him. That was his curse—to feel everything yet show nothing. 

He hated this. Hated the way his chest ached when he looked at you. Hated how the walls he'd built over a lifetime of survival crumbled to dust at your faintest smile. Most of all, he hated the hot pressure behind his eyes that threatened to spill over every time your breath hitched. 

Weakness, some primal part of him sneered. 

Love, his heart corrected. 

"Stubborn," you wheezed, voice barely audible over the hiss of the respirator. "Told you... not to waste time on me." 

He forced a grin. "Since when do I listen?" 

The joke fell flat. The machines beeped. The clock ticked. 

And outside, Makai's toxic storms howled like a living thing.