Where the wind takes cero the wind hero

Sable tears out of the wind-current, claws skidding on stone as the floor buckles under her.

She hurls herself at the dark fissure in the wall and vanishes into it, fur brushing broken rock.

For one heartbeat she looks back. One eye is hers, one burns blue, and the sight cuts through the dust.

Cero's wind curls after her, then thins as the crack swallows her shape and the loose slab above groans.

The courtyard shivers, stones grinding inward, and the fissure drinks the last of Sable's fleeing silhouette.

Cero steadies his shaking breath and commits, slipping to the fissure as the stones groan behind him.

He ducks under the hanging slab and drops into the crack, the blue glow licking along the broken walls.

Dust rains over his shoulders as he lands hard in the hidden passage, dagger low, eyes cutting after Sable.

Ahead, Sable braces in the dark, one side of her face still wolf-sharp, the other straining back toward itself.

Behind Cero, the fissure creaks wider, and the courtyard begins to pour rubble into the opening.

Cero presses a hand to his own chest, feeling the steady, human rhythm of his heart against his ribs. The blue light pulses in the distance, but his own veins remain clear and quiet.

The words leave Cero cleanly, but the cost lands at once, a sharp sting in his shoulder wound as he takes a steadier breath. The passage answers with a low drift of dust from the ceiling, and the blue glow paints the stones between them.

Sable lowers her head, wary but listening, her blue eyes fixed on him. The wolf shape holds at the edges of her body, yet her weight settles instead of springing.

Cero keeps his footing beside the narrowing passage, dagger still ready, while rubble trickles behind him. The glow in his shoulder flickers faintly, then steadies to a dull pulse.

Cero keeps his dagger low and gestures past her, toward the darker bend in the passage. The blue light in his wound flickers under his skin, answering his words with a faint, uneasy pulse.

Sable rises from her crouch, slow and careful, and turns her head as if weighing his breathing as much as his meaning. Dust drifts around her muzzle and settles on the broken stone.

She edges one pace back from him, giving him space instead of pressing close. The blue glow in the passage steadies, and the rubble at the entrance settles with a small, final scrape.

Cero stares at the pulsing blue light beneath his skin, the rhythm of his own heart now matching the erratic, cold thrum of the ruin. The infection is not a distant threat, but a part of him.

Cero forces his gaze down, away from the moonlit slit above. The pull eases, and the blue pulse in his shoulder settles into a dull, aching throb.

Sable lowers her snarling head and inches closer, the blue gleam in her eyes dimmer now. Dust drifts between them in a slow, pale veil.

Cero's grip tightens on the dagger, but he does not raise his face. The ruined passage stays tight around them, the hidden stones faintly lit from within.