Walking through the trees seemed a lot easier when Kai was the one leading. It wasn't out of the ordinary for this to take place, but perhaps the hand lacing through her own hummed a different melody altogether. They made their way down the same path the Blade Breaker had taken to go to the hill right before the Psykicks attacked them.

A tiny little detail she had missed while explaining the heritage of these mountain tops: these dried-up valleys are the history between the folds of the mountains, in the dried blood resting below these drought-brought valleys. Kai's grip fell from her hand as they crossed the coast of the mountain range.

If the power had not already buzzed in her mind, it would have taken every grip now. Moments she stepped on the stones of this mountain, a new form of awakening rose through every part of her body. The tremble of the ancient power lying beneath these surfaces grew as she took another step.

Her body moved on her record. Katyusha faintly remembered Kai leaving her hand right before she walked down the stones. She had artfully avoided taking this route, knowing the impact it would have on her.

But perhaps she was wrong about it. For it only enhanced the beauty of her feelings—the rise and fall of the power growing between her and Kai as time passed by Drowena in her pocket skyrocketed as her hand gripped her Beyblade tightly. The faint light around her was nothing compared to the shock waves in every goose bump scattered across her body.

The mountains and the shapes were perhaps folklore written in a different language by the forefather's of the Witch hunters.

The world of the witches, Ragana Jagers, also known as Witchhuntera, broke a new form of life below the mountains.

The middle of the dried river stood the only portal in the land of South Asia to the parallel world of the Witches. The Shadow World of Katyusha's Rebirth.

A hand joined her wrist, lightly touching her hand, drawing themselves closer. The magic around her broke tenfold as her eyes caught the magenta of her mate's. His eyes spoke a different story, perhaps not as ancient as the magic. But it would tell stories all the times, all the times she had chosen over the world for him. It spoke the language between them. The one that had tied them between the two worlds The only force that repelled her as much as brought her closer to him. The only story that was required of him was just a half-truth for her.

"We should get you out of here," Katyusha said earnestly. Pulling Kai behind her, she started off on the way away from the bridge to her home.

Time might have answered her prayers for a sacred bond between them, but it didn't stop her from questioning her stand between her own people.

Katyusha was still unsure if she wanted to know what happened to them when the people of her world got to know that.

She was in love with the grandson of an elderly, raging, power-hungry bullcrap.

Kai seized her back as she tried to progress forward, pulling her into him.

"Katyusha, can we afford to leave like this?"

He wasn't questioning her; he wasn't showing his guilt for hating her for her powers. He wasnt going to readily hide what he had taken of her or of himself to get to the point they were at.

Katyusha saw through that. She knew what he was asking for. Could she just ignore the fact that someone had attacked them at their expense? At her expense.

She couldn't.

She wouldn't

But she had no choice but to keep this to herself. With time, the play will unfold.

"You ain't going anywhere, are you?"

"Not right now," Kai answered. Not a promise. There didnt exist a promise between them.

"Then let's not ask for anything more than what we see right now. Shall we?" Katyusha turned towards him and said, "I don't want to explain myself to anyone until I know for sure. Kai, help me out. I need your help."

His eyes were on her, the fire still in his gaze. "Name it."

"We need to get to the finale of the competition. I can't risk another team getting into a fight against the Psykicks. I can prevent the biting beast.

And it is me they want. They are going to have it."

"It's given that we will win, Katyusha." The team leader of the world champions spoke, "I will win this time."

"I ain't playing with you."

This brought him to a stop. Katyusha had no time to explain herself to them. It was already less than two weeks into the countdown. She couldn't let the boys prepare themselves against the Psykicks. Not with the way they were working this time.

"I am playing with my brother. I am playing with my home team."

It was past midnight, and the rain was still visible on the land below them.

But the eyes that shone back were anything but cloudy. It was clear. It was clear enough to see the plan forming in her head.

A smirk fell on that gorgeous face. The smile that was fatal, she wanted it to be only preserved for times of her strength. But the grin was of a planner, of a fighter. Someone who, for the first time, looked like he was having fun in the game they were about to play.

"Queen, it seems like you have finally come to the point of planning out the battlefield."

Turning back to the track she was on, she spoke for her team. For their teams. "I will need my brother and his friend to be on the side. I am not sure how much the Psykicks know about my brother and his friends. My bet is they know enough about my brother, but my friends can't perhaps be the suspects yet."

"That is hopeful of you."

Katyusha clicked her tongue and said, "Very, but that's all we got." Her temptation to scratch away her hair to get a clear solution or answer to what was happening was so high that it took everything from her side to stop it from happening.

"We can't really do anything else. Honestly, I have a high suspicion they won't open the power moves or whatever they have if they have anyone except my brother and me on the team. And they can't see you guys coming into play at all either. Because that will end up messing up the whole calculation of them being drained before the fight between our teams. Not that they are."

Kai cut in, "I can't comprehend whatever you are saying now. I lost you long ago."

"Basically, you are going to be Katyusha for Kai in the world championship, so you can slow them down a bit and exhaust them enough to show their real beast potential out in front. So, we can have more ground to cover and a better understanding of what we are dealing with."

"You need us to drain them out?"

"I want you there in general, though. I will need Tyson.

The forbidden smirk was put back on his face. She didn't seem to understand the reason until the hand that had been around her wrist encircled her inner wrist, folding the fingers between her palms as he caught her hand in his own.

"Katyusha is making war plans."

The heat on her cheeks wasn't due to him. It was on the approaching cold winter nights.

Removing the hand from her grip, her ears blazing with unknown sources of heat.

"I have a plan; yes, we can say that. Will it work? I can guarantee you it might fail on me."

Katyusha caught her head in her hand, cupping the back of her neck as best she could. "I DON'T KNOW THEM. HOW ARE WE GOING TO FIGHT?"

"Katyusha, when did you ever know the opponent?"

"Don't ASK QUESTIONS WHEN SOMEONE IS GOING THROUGH A CRISIS."

"I am just stating facts. They have always known about us, but we were always at a loss for information. Nothing changed this time."

"CHANGED HAVE THINGS..."

"I mean, THINGS HAVE CHANGED. That's all."

The night took hold of the conversation. Katyusha and Kai crossed the city market, making it through.

It reminded her of the day Katyusha found Kai in his childhood house, looking lost in his own forbidden city. A city of secrets for both of them.

She knew the difference the city made. The branches curled towards her as the winter season came into play. Late September made the days as extravagant as they were. The year had gone by in the blooming, she wondered as they walked the path of the different houses lined. Looking at the distance, the space between all the houses She now saw a new story between these spaces. The happiness, the sorrow, and the in-between the greetings to the farewells, she sees them now.

Perhaps that's what the future does to you.

Rather than changing the way they were, they changed how they saw themselves. They were still the same, but as children, they were blindfolded.

She relived her life again. She got the opportunity to live again, maybe as a parasite or a leech. But seeing Kai walk with her, the sync of their footsteps She felt that again. The same feeling of maybe it was okay for them to be fine with however they were

He is a bit attached.

She was a bit dead without him.

"The dread of this place, you know, started when I wanted to go back to the self I was before my accident happened," Katyusha said. "I will let you in on a secret, Kai."

Her eyes moistened as she spoke, her truth flowing through her. "I hated the decision I took as a child to come back from death. And definitely not living for someone else. Every part of me hated you in the initial days. Every part when I realised I was nothing in this world without you. It was the same for Jake, but the fact that he didn't have someone to protect didn't cost him his life."

Katyusha didn't look at Kai, not wanting to see the same regret on his face. It was a play of luck that Kai was the one she was given to protect. They should be glad she wasn't with someone she didn't know. But perhaps the fact that she knew him made her life a living misery in the early stages. The fact that she knew this man in every form and that his words hurt her more than she had let on Running away from him had been the only way to save herself from his piercing mouth.

This made her strong enough to travel away from him, even in her weakened state. He was the reason she went and fought against everything in front of her. to prove to herself again and again that she was worth the life she wished for. She wasn't a survivor of death without consequence. For the life of her, she didn't get The fights Kai would never know of The cost of her life, which he had turned away from as if it meant nothing.

It had been a childish decision. Her insecurity grew with time. Until she came face-to-face with her half again, she was already feeling defeated internally. Her being upset with Kai had killed a part of herself. Broke her from the inside.

When she first faced off with Kai, the energy in her veins glowed. It had been the first time she had felt herself change. Her skin had shed, leaving only the smell of want and need. Every pain she had faced by that time craved and twisted for this one power that pumped in front of her. She had wanted him from that moment on.

Somewhere between everything, she had started to see how time had brought her change. She stopped competitive Beyblading, discarding her titles and honour of being one of the best Beyblades. The titles that Tyson would proceed to take from her.

When she returned to her broken town after years, she saw why she had stayed here the first time around. She knew that wherever she was, no matter how many got away from her, she would stay in this ghost town.

Katyusha would return here, searching for her home.

"I had wondered for so long. Why did you return to this town, Hiwatari?" Katyusha asked.

The eyes that looked ahead, now looked dazed by her question; his head wired the question, "The past kept coming back. The problems kept resurfacing. I hated that." He said it with a hint of a smile.

"Is it because of your childhood?"

"Maybe it's because of your childhood here. I think I just reflected on what you felt about this area. My childhood was thrown away the moment I had to go to the camp my grandfather had put up. But I always had the vague feeling of being somehow connected to you." His breathe shaking. "I just didn't want to act on those."

"What changed it then?" Katyusha asked.

"You leaving. When you first left, it felt like a sigh." His words hadn't gotten soft at all, she thought to herself.

"It was the very fact that I didn't have you around that pissed me out. It made me get out of my usual moods, ruining my day after day. It was about the time when Tyson came asking for your city's location." They kept walking, looking ahead.

"I didn't want to give it out. I have known your location for as long as I have known you. But I didn't want them to learn about the past we had together. I hated the past more than anything. I had just come to be fine around you and your powers."

The truth is the harshest, but it is best when it comes from the person causing the pain. Katyusha didn't stop him, even as her eyes started to prick.

"When I came back, I went to my childhood home. Maybe it was like a click, but something shifted. It was in the air. It was everywhere around me, and then—" he paused as if wanting to relive the moment again. "You showed up. The dirtiest form of magic erupted in me. The densest form of living came back to me."

"It felt like I came back from death, you know," Kai said, stopping her by the hand. His other hand caressed away the single tear, which she didn't feel as it dropped. The little heart she held close to her broke as he traced away the crease forming on her forehead.

"I understand you now, Katyusha. I understand them. I understand your reasoning and your dedication to your cause. Your worth is known now. I have forever known it, but in the middle of my own ego, I think it felt more like a backlash to the kind of person I was."

Every part of her wanted to stick by his side, except for the child who had run away from the destruction of that winter camp. The child who knew the pain. That innocent person had gone through suffering, day after day, trying to hold herself up while the only source of her power had left and gone for good. Emotionally and mentally, she had been thrown and discarded in this fast-moving world. The child didn't hear the plea for help; she didn't hear another word from another person to ever turn back and regret what she was made of.

"Your kindness made me wonder how pathetic I was as a human. It made me question, and I didn't like it. I detested the person I had come to become. You taught me that, Katyusha. Your persistence to be yourself in a world, your decision to live for someone else's sake—I didn't understand it because I am not as strong as you are to accept myself as I am. I was scared of you and of being less than you. When I didn't even realise it wasn't you, but it was me."

Katyusha pushed Kai's hand away from her. the emptiness that he had seized from her that day. Turning away from him and noticing how the tears stopped immediately.

"Whatever happened, it was all in the past. We can't do anything about it." The voice that came was ready to fight.

"Katyusha." She could hear the grief reflected in his voice. The same depth as she felt it every second they were apart.

"Kai, this is not the time to unravel something we don't need to. We need to win this competition, and I am not in a position to let this opportunity run against me. One wrong move, and we will all be down the drain."

"This is about me this time, Kai. After fifteen years of living as another person, I want to fight for the child who got thrown down the mountain that day." She saw him flinch, but he didn't stop her. "I will win this for me. For my brother. For the family of my false blood. That's why I said There is a lot more at stake than just us winning. We could be accidentally letting the world know who the Witchhunters are. If the Pyskicks disclose me out in public, if even a flicker of change in my appearance happens in front of the world, It will be risking the whole community, not just me. Things were different when Brooklyn fought against you and Tyson. The difference between you and me is that Katyusha stepped up a ledge, hoisting herself up. "You don't have to protect yourself from someone, unlike me, who is guarding both you and me at the same time. I am standing between and on the borderline of both worlds who are behind me and having it all against me."

"Don't make it sound like we've got nothing to do with it. Like I previously said, Katyusha, you don't need to take the whole world's blame on yourself. It is as simple as it can get."

"Do you not understand what I mean, or are you choosing to just present this as a small business of problems that can be changed with reflection of oneself?"

"I wish I could say that Katyusha-"

"THEN WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT SOUND LIKE IT GOT SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOU?"

The world went silent as her words hung in the air. The coldness of the night or the words that had gotten out of her without another thought. Was it the twitch of his eye muscles or the mist in the air that made her tear up?

Katyusha wondered again and again.