She looked up at him, her eyes wide with the certainty of death.

"Will you kill me too?"

Voi studied her. He looked at the fear vibrating in her frame. He looked at the survival instinct overriding her grief.

"No," he said.

She exhaled sharply, a sound like a sob. "Why?"

"Because you are afraid," he said. "And fear means you are still negotiating with life. You still believe there is something to lose."

She backed away slowly, step by agonized step, never taking her eyes off him. Then, she turned and ran. She scrambled up the slope of the basin, slipping on the loose gravel, forcing her legs to carry her away from the hollow white figure.

Voi watched until she disappeared beyond the rise.

No dot appeared on his skin. The equation had balanced itself.

SCENE IV – DISTANT PRAGNA OBSERVATION

Far above the land, beyond the reach of the naked eye, a high-altitude surveillance drone altered its course. Its camera array pivoted, the lenses adjusting focus with a mechanical whir.

Kilometers away, inside a facility buried beneath the grey earth, the air was cool, recycled, and smelled of ozone. Rows of terminals hummed with the processing of data.

On a large display, the thermal signature of the basin was rendered in shades of orange and blue. Four heat sources had been detected. Now, three were fading into the background temperature of the ground. One was moving rapidly away. One remained static.

"Movement confirmed," an analyst said. His voice was bored, the tone of a man reading a grocery list. "Sector 4, Grid 9."

"Identification?" a supervisor asked, not looking up from a tablet.

"Subject correlates with Pika profile. Alpha-class. Visual confirmation: White hair, red blade."

"Engagements logged," a second analyst reported, typing rapidly. "Three casualties. One survivor. The subject sustained multiple ballistic impacts prior to the engagement. Biometrics indicate no reduction in combat efficiency."

"He's still moving," the first analyst noted, watching the white dot on the screen traverse the grey grid.

"Direction?"

"Outward," came the answer. "Always outward. Moving away from the populated zones. Heading toward the Dead Sectors."

The supervisor paused. He looked at the screen, watching the digital representation of Voi Dione. A glitch in the perfect grey system. An equation that refused to balance.

"Let him walk," the supervisor said. "He is cleaning the trash for us."

No interception order followed. The drone leveled out, returning to its patrol loop. The data was archived. The deaths were categorized as 'waste disposal.'

SCENE V – CONTINUATION

Voi walked until the sky dimmed further.

Night had lost its meaning in a world without stars, but the light weakened, turning the grey world into a deeper, suffocating charcoal. The temperature dropped, the wind picking up an edge that could cut through skin.

He stopped at the edge of a shallow ridge and looked out over the empty land.

The bullet holes in his body had stopped bleeding. The flesh had knit together with the slow, unnatural resilience of his kind, leaving behind puckered white scars to join the others. He felt the stiffness in his shoulder, the tightness in his side, but he did not feel the ache.

Behind him, the dead man at the checkpoint lay cooling. Behind him, the survivors' convoy was now a tomb. The woman was running into the dark, carrying the heavy burden of her survival.

Structures would rise again. Orders would be enforced. Pragna would build walls and laws. Violence would be justified with new language, sanitized and filed away in reports.

None of it mattered.

The Pika stood in the silence, a singular dot in the infinite grey. He adjusted his grip on the red sword, feeling the cold steel against his palm. He stepped forward, down the ridge, into the black.

And continued forward.