Earlier.
In the monitoring station, Mr. Ace watched on the screen Shin Jin had left active. Multiple angles showed the chaos: Shin Jin's mirror-images clashing with Jean, the trio vanishing into the undercroft passage.
His bandaged hands rested on the console, perfectly still. He had expected the breach. Had even subtly altered the patrol logs to ensure their path was clear.
He had not expected Jean Vouré's personal intervention.
That complicates things, he thought, a rare flicker of frustration stirring beneath his bandages. The righteous inquisitor was never part of the script.
On the screen, Shin Jin fought with the desperate grace of a man who had already lost. Mr. Ace watched him for three long seconds. He could still sever the connection. Could let the chaos bury the truth a little longer.
His hand hovered over the console.
The trio's blinking tracker dots moved deeper into the catacombs—the labyrinth he himself had digitally "unlocked" for them.
He hesitated.
Then, with a quiet exhale that wasn't quite a sigh, he pressed a sequence of keys. A private channel opened, its tone a soft, insistent hum.
A calm, expectant voice answered immediately. "Report."
"Shin Jin has committed treason," Mr. Ace stated, his own voice flat. "He aided the students' escape from Section 7B with stolen documents. Jean Vouré intervened. The subjects are now in the eastern catacombs."
A soft, thoughtful hum came through the speaker. "The labyrinth?"
"Yes."
"Good. Monitor their stress levels. And Ace?"
"Master Yuusha?"
"Do not help them again."
The channel closed.
Mr. Ace's hand remained on the console for a long moment before pulling away. On the screen, the three dots moved deeper into the unknown.
...
"We need to keep moving," Piers said. He pulled out the journal again, the pages now crumpled and stained. "But first—Noir, you need to know what this says. All of it."
"Piers, there's no time—"
"We MAKE time." His voice was fierce, desperate. "Because if Yuusha catches us and you don't know what he's trying to do, you'll have no defense. You'll just be a rat in his maze."
He traced the morse code with his eyes, translating rapidly.
"Subject's Anchor—the crimson fabric—confirmed as primary emotional tether. Its removal accelerates detachment from baseline humanity." Piers's face was pale. "He's dismantling you."
"To make me what?" Noir asked.
Piers scanned the journal. "A 'vessel.' He's trying to trigger a 'Terminal Manifestation'—a state where you're spiritually hollow. He thinks he can control what fills the void." Piers pointed at a line. "He's cross-referencing Founder Edna's sealed work here. An entity she just calls 'E—'."
End, Soo Ah realized with a chilling certainty.
Piers looked up, the horror dawning. "He's not experimenting blindly. He's following an old, forbidden blueprint. And you're the test subject."
Soo Ah stood. "Then we find Edna's work on how to stop it."
"Unfortunately, the universe begs to differ," Piers said, as footsteps echoed in the distance.
They froze, listening. The footsteps continued for a few seconds, then stopped. Silence.
"Guards?" Soo Ah whispered.
"Maybe," Piers said. "Or maybe someone else who knows these tunnels."
"Let's go," Noir said, standing. "Now. Before they get closer."
They left the chamber, choosing a passage that sloped downward. Older stone here, rougher. Pre-cathedral construction. The air smelled different—less dust, more mineral. Like they were getting deeper into the earth's bones.
The passage opened into a larger chamber, and Piers stopped so suddenly that Soo Ah nearly ran into him.
"What, Piers?"
"Look."
He raised his left glowing hand, and the chamber came into view.
Murals. Ancient ones, painted directly onto the stone walls. The colors had faded over centuries, but the images were still clear. Still terrible.
The first sequence showed a robed woman holding an ornate page that glowed with golden light— The Novus Page.
She stood before a massive, writhing shadow with too many limbs—The Walking Abyss, the text beneath read in archaic script.
The battle played out across three panels: the woman fighting, the page blazing brighter, the shadow dissolving into nothing. Founder Edna, victorious.
But that wasn't what made them stop.
The second sequence, on the opposite wall, showed something else entirely.
A crimson figure knelt before Edna. Not bound. Not restrained. Kneeling of its own accord. Between them, three objects were laid out: a piece of fabric, something small and round, a blade. The figure's hand reached toward them, accepting.
Beneath the image, an ancient text they'd encountered before:
"When a soul carries its own past across death's river, three bindings preserve the journey: An ANCHOR to tie spirit to flesh, A SUPPRESSOR to veil ancient eyes, A TRIGGER to lift the veil."
The next panel showed the crimson figure wrapped in the three bindings, eyes closed, at peace. Edna stood beside it—not above—her hand on its shoulder like a benediction. The text below read:
"The sleeper does not host the dream. The sleeper IS the dream, forgotten."
Then came the image of dissolution. The crimson figure fading like smoke, Edna's hand still raised in blessing or farewell, guiding it across an illustrated river of darkness.
The fourth mural was different—dozens of other crimson-robed figures scattered through history, each consumed by internal darkness. Names, dates, causes of death. None lived past twenty-five. These were not the figure from the earlier panels. These were something else. Failures. Warnings.
The final panel showed only an outline where a figure should be. Empty. Waiting. Below it:
"And when the dream remembers itself, the world shall tremble or rejoice, depending on what was buried."
Piers stood before the second sequence, the heat waves trembling in his hand.
"It chose this," he whispered. "Look—it's reaching for the bindings. Not being forced. Choosing." He traced the figure's outstretched hand. "End wanted to forget what it had been. Wanted to cross death's river and come back as something new. Edna just... helped."
He gestured at the fourth mural. "These others—the Crimson Seers—they tried to touch void power. All of them died, corrupted. But End isn't like them. It's not corruption. It's—"
"Rebirth," Soo Ah finished quietly, staring at the dissolving figure, at Edna's gentle guidance. "It binded itself on purpose. To be reborn."
Noir touched the empty outline in the final panel. At the space waiting to be filled.
"As me," he said.
Piers nodded slowly. "The bindings aren't a prison. They're... they're what you—what IT—asked for. A way to forget and start over."
His voice dropped. "Which means when Yuusha strips them away, he's not freeing you. He's destroying the one thing you wanted most."
Piers's silence was answer enough.
A sound broke the moment—breathing, slow and steady, echoing from somewhere in the chamber. They spun, weapons manifesting, Piers's heat blazing brighter.
Nothing. Just empty stone and painted warnings.
"Where did that come from?" Soo Ah hissed.
They stood there, frozen, listening. The breathing came again—then stopped abruptly, as if cut off.
"This place," Noir said quietly. "It's doing something to sound. Making echoes weird."
They moved single-file through a narrow exit, Piers clinging to one thought: northeast, to the outflow.
But which way was northeast down here, where no sun reached and every passage looked the same?
He chose based on instinct and fading memory of blueprints that might not have included these ancient sections.
Ten minutes of twisting passages later, they emerged into a junction. Piers stopped.
Their own footprints were in the dust.
"We've circled back," Noir said.
"Impossible." Piers's voice was tight. "I kept track."
He scratched an arrow on the wall and took the opposite passage, marking each turn.
Twenty minutes later, they stepped into the same junction. Their footprints. His arrow.
"No." This time it was a plea.
"It's not a maze," Noir said, staring down a passage at the distant, haunting murals. "It's a labyrinth. Every path leads back to the center."
Footsteps echoed, steady and inevitable. Blessed lantern light bloomed in a passage.
"One more try," Piers breathed, already running for the last exit. "One more passage —"
They ran through corridors and crumbling rooms, only to stagger back into the same junction—their footprints, their marks, their fear waiting for them.
The trap had been closed before they'd even realized.
The lights were in the chamber now. Figures emerged from the passages—guardians in full combat regalia, their spiritual pressure filling the space with crushing weight.
And Hina and Arata, the mid-rank students, stepping forward with grim purpose.
No words. No demands for surrender. Just the slow, inevitable closing of a trap that had been set the moment they'd entered the catacombs.