The first gate taught her body to stand. The second would teach it to last.

Breath was the lungs and the core. A practitioner of the Second Gate could fight at full intensity for hours instead of minutes.

Pain stopped being a distraction. Breathing stayed even under strain. Wounds bled slower because the body learned how to compress around them.

Combat endurance tripled. Internal bleeding slowed. Cold and heat affected the body less. A Second Gate Iron-rank could survive in environments that would kill a First Gate Crusader of equal rank.

"There will be no morning classes tomorrow," Kareem said. "Breath demands a clear mind. Rest tomorrow morning."

However, Sarah had other plans for the rest.

"You are taking your sister out," she informed Kenji at breakfast the next day. The phrasing made it clear that the matter had been decided without his input. "She has been in this house for three days. The world outside the wall exists. She will see it before the Spire."

"I had work," Kenji protested.

"You have a sister. The work waits." Sarah turned to Ayla. "Wear something comfortable. Your brother has a poor sense of how to plan a morning, but he will manage. He is not allowed back into this house before three in the afternoon."

Ayla nodded, her cheeks bulged with food. After breakfast, Kenji led her to a garage Ayla had not yet seen. T

he space was larger than the main house’s foyer. Lines of vehicles stood polished and waiting. Cars she recognized from morning windows. A few she did not.

At the far end, a row of motorcycles.

Kenji walked past the cars and stopped at one of the bikes. Black. Lean. The kind of machine that suggested it had been ridden hard and maintained well. He handed her a helmet.

"Watch how I sit. Do the same. Your arms go around my waist. Do not let go when I accelerate. Do not lean opposite to me when we turn. If I lean, you lean. Same direction. Same angle."

"Why?"

"Because the bike will fall otherwise."

"Do you use the First Gate?" she asked in a genuine tone.

Kenji choked for words. "Yes, I suppose," he finally said.

The engine started. The sound landed louder than she had braced for. Vibration traveled through her thighs before the bike had moved.

Her hands tightened around Kenji’s waist on instinct. The bike rolled out of the garage. The estate gates opened.

The road beyond the wall stretched wider than she had pictured from the upstairs windows.

Then Kenji opened the throttle.

The wind hit her like a wall. The world stretched sideways at the edges of her vision. Buildings rushed past.

The sky overhead moved at a pace she had never seen the sky move before. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade because she did not know what else to do with her face.

Inside her mind, she was screaming. This is so cool.

The sensations were all wonderful to her. The vibration. The smell of the city moving past her at sixty kilometers per hour.

The press of her own body against another body for the first time without an intent to kill.

Kenji felt her grip tighten and her cheek press into his back. He knew this was her first experience.

That was why he didn’t give her a helmet to wear yet, so she could fully experience the ride.

For the length of one long avenue, she simply held on and felt the world arrive. He took the long route through the Inner Walls.

The towers Ayla had only seen from the dining room window unfolded around her at street level. Glass facades. Wide pavements. Trees in geometric arrangements.

A fountain at a roundabout where the water had been dyed gold for some festival. People walked in colorful clothes, smiles on their faces.

Her pupils tracked everything with interest. At one point, Kenji had her wear a helmet. It was a half-open model under the jaw. Kenji slowed at one red light. He glanced back without turning fully.

"Is it loud?"

"Yes."

"Too loud?"

"No."

The light turned green. He opened the throttle again. After half an hour, the city began to change. The towers shortened. The pavements narrowed. The trees stopped.

The road surface roughened. The signage shifted from polished metal to hand-painted boards.

They passed through a gate that was taller than the Hayashi estate gate but built without its decorative flourishes.

It was a working thing, manned by guards in dull armor. The guards recognized the bike. They did not stop it.

Beyond the gate, the city changed again. The Outer Walls. Lower buildings. Closer together. The smell of food cooking in open stalls.

The smell of rust. The smell of something burning that nobody in the area had decided to put out yet.

People moved with their shoulders tighter than the people in the Inner City. Their eyes shifted faster. Their hands stayed closer to their pockets.

Ayla filed everything. A child sat in a doorway with a ration bar in his hand and his back against the door frame.

His clothes did not fit him. His feet were bare. He looked up as the bike passed, and his eyes were the eyes Jaxon had described in his memories of his early childhood.

Empty in a way that did not match his age.

Ayla tightened her grip around Kenji’s waist without realizing she had done it. Jaxon’s memories were affecting her as she went through his experiences.

It was strange, almost like her own life. The streets narrowed further. Some of the people who noticed the bike turned to watch it pass with expressions that were not friendly.

"They do not like you here," she finally said.

"Correction: They do not like the Inners here."

"Why?" Ayla questioned, gazing past the hostile people to his side profile.

Kenji didn’t answer her. He had no exact answer for that. From the eyes of an Inner, it was because they were jealous of them.

But from the point of view of the Outers, they hated Inners because of the discrimination. Both answers were debatable and it was not exactly clear which version was the truth.

"Where are we going?" Ayla changed the topic. She wasn’t exactly curious about their hostility, though she wondered where Kenji was taking her.

"To see an old friend."

"Yours?"

"Ours," he muttered.

The bike pulled into a small open courtyard at the back of a row of low buildings. The buildings had the look of structures recently repaired.

New paint over old plaster. A water pump that worked. A small awning that threw shade across a wooden table. Five people stood under the awning.

Ayla recognized them all.

Kael. Broader through the shoulders than she remembered, with a fresh cut across his forearm carrying the clean edges of a healer’s work.

Elara. Leaner, hair shorter, standing the way she had stood on the platform before the Hobgoblins came.

Sora. A clean white robe. The small staff she had carried in the tunnel resting against the table.

Jaxon. No scorch marks. No blood. No fear in his shoulders. The smile of a boy who had recently slept eight hours straight for the first time in years.

And a little girl. Five years old. Hair messy. Eyes too big for her thin face.

Mia.

The five of them turned at the sound of the bike. Their faces lit up. "You came."

Ayla fell silent. The greeting did not match anything she had prepared for. Their memories had been tampered with by her own hand.

To them, she was the savior who had carried four unconscious bodies out of an Apocalypse tunnel.

None of them remembered the chamber on the platform. None of them remembered her splitting open and consuming the Hobgoblins one brain at a time.

None of them remembered the small massacre that had earned her their five new traits.

She had never expected to see them again. She glanced up at Kenji in confusion.

’Why did he bring me here?’

Kenji cleared his throat as he removed his helmet. "They called me to meet you before they immigrate to another city."

"Oh." Ayla glanced at the five faces under the awning. "Other city? Where? Why don’t you all immigrate to the Inner City here?"

The Outers exchanged a glance. Kael answered. "Wudou. On the Middle Eastern continent. There are no tunnels there. No gate to the Crusade. It is peaceful."

"It is also peaceful here."

She said it with genuine confusion. Kenji elbowed her in the ribs. "If a tunnel break occurs, every registered Crusader in the Inner City is required to support the response. Tunnel breaks happen here. They do not happen in Wudou."

"So?" Ayla blinked in surprise. "Without tunnels, how can you all level up? I remember you all saying you are not coming to the Crusade."

A silence settled around the table. Kael drew a long breath.

"We are quitting Running."