Ayame moved through the burning archive with practiced efficiency. Her body had become one with the shadows, each leap and landing silent, each handhold found without thought. This was what they had trained her for. This was what she was. A combatant born in the depths of darkness, where every mission ended either in completion or death.
Yet it always felt wrong. Looming in shadows. Using daggers. Striking from behind.
No matter how many times she did it, it felt off.
She manifested a short blood blade, its crimson surface shimmering in the hellish light, and dashed forward in a blur. The Unfaithful beast, a twisted hound of molten glass and purple sinew, dissolved before it could register her presence. She did not pause to watch it fade.
She scaled the shelves again, climbing toward the vantage point where the group had made their temporary base. Her small, lithe form was perfectly adapted for this. She pulled herself up to the final ledge and looked down.
Her eyes lit up. Briefly. A crack in her stoic mask.
Gone.
None of them were there. The professors. The black badges. Her collaborators. Her partners. Even Silas, her representative.
All gone.
Only the princess remained. But she was wrong now. More wrong than before. The beautiful, untouched half of her face was still there, frozen in silent agony. But the other side had grown. It had spread. The twisted purple flesh now stretched three times its previous size, lying limp and heavy beside her like a second body she could no longer support. It pulsed with a slow, sick rhythm.
Ayame looked away.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
A hand patted her back.
She spun. White. Too late. Something struck her with enormous force, sending her flying from the ledge. She tumbled through the air and crashed through two rows of burning shelves before slamming into a stone pillar.
She winced, pushing herself up.
'I concealed my presence. How did he find me?'
She looked up. No one was there. Then she felt it. A discordant tone. An irregular resonance cutting through the air, carrying high-pitched frequency.
She manifested a blood blade and raised it to deflect an incoming attack.
-Shatter.
The crystallized blade broke instantly. The force of the blow carried through, cutting deep into her left chest. She gasped, hot blood soaking her robes. She shrank her form, leaping backward, creating distance. Her attacker stepped into the light of the flames.
Silver hair. Tan skin. Grey eyes.
She recognized him. One of her collaborators. An agent aligned with the Chapeu, assigned to the same operation.
Why would he attack her?
"Number Four. Is it?" His voice was smooth, almost pleasant. "We heard it. You betrayed your organization. Silas is gone, but if he knows about this… the consequences are grave."
Ayame shot him a look, taking a deliberate step back. It was not worth it. Not like this. Not here.
She focused. Her vision shifted, fading to grey, then to black and white. His heartbeat. His breath. The subtle shifts in his weight. He mimicked the traits of an Awakened. Yet something was wrong. Something beneath the surface pulsed with a denser, older power.
Yet why does he seem like something beyond that?
"Ah, you noticed?" He smiled, genuinely pleased. "I am not an Enlightened. Well. Not yet."
He shot a thumb back over his shoulder. Behind him, a line of bodies lay arranged in grotesque neatness. Boys. Girls. Students. All killed in the same ugly way. Their throats slit. Arranged like offerings.
Ayame's expression did not change. She did not care about them. But her mind wondered.
'Would he…?'
"I have absorbed about fifteen threads of Fate from Illuminated," he said, as if discussing the weather.
She said nothing.
"Oh, why, you ask? Well." He tilted his head, a mockery of confusion. "To become an Enlightened, of course. And to kill the princess. Geez, are you slow in the head or what?"
The pieces clicked into place. The orders to hunt students. Non-Awakened. Latents at best. This was why. A sick, bloody game. Some filthy rich individual with a grudge against royalty, choosing to sacrifice the people instead. Using their faith, their threads, as fuel. It was sickening.
"That shadow… it brings me bodies every second. The kill count is about twenty now." He smiled, a wide, genuine expression of joy. "And it keeps bringing me more."
She had heard enough.
She stepped back.
"Oh! Where are you going?" His voice was mockingly playful.
He closed the distance in an instant. She twisted, but his sword was already there, slicing across her torso. She dissolved. Not retreating. Becoming. Her form bled into the shadows cast by the flames against the white walls. She emerged a hundred meters away, elevated on a high shelf, looking down.
Shatter.
The gem in her palm broke. It was an artifact given to her, by her organization for dangerous scenarios. As her hand and head reformed from the shadow, she saw him. Two glowing eyes and a sinister grin, already fixed on her new position.
'Fast,' she thought.
In that moment, as she turned to flee, she hoped. That he would not pursue. That he would be satisfied. That she could retreat and regroup.
He did not move.
That was the first time in years she had felt relief. She had thought herself capable. Strong. Yet looking at that twisted individual, something that bordered on ascension at any moment, she understood the gap between them.
It was too big.
She scaled the shelves once more and disappeared into the smoke.
The situation was hopeless. Below her, a massive black shadow-limb crawled across the fiery maze, hunting. Miguel was somewhere ahead, ascending toward enlightenment on a pile of student corpses. The princess was transforming into something beyond saving. And her target, she had teamed up with. Lucid. Was still alive and that capable knight.
Things seemed grim but there was hope.
She had teamed up with both of them. Which made her, in the eyes of her organization, a traitor. An enemy.
She ran. Not because she was afraid. Not because she had hope. She ran because it was the only thing she knew how to do. One foot in front of the other. Survive. Complete the mission. Revive her clan.
***
Alaric walked through the burning maze with purpose, each step fueled by a cold, simmering fury. The flames painted his blonde hair in shades of orange and red, casting his sharp features in a demonic glow. He needed to find him. That fog-faced bastard who had enrolled in the academy like he owned it, who had taken their seats, their status, their superiority. Who had punched him. A noble. Where touch alone was condemnation enough to make one's life hell forever in that academy.
Alaric was furious.
"Slow down, Alaric," Clarissa called from behind him, her voice carrying that familiar snobby lilt. "Where are your friends? The square-chinned one and the other?"
He didn't bother turning around. "Dunno. They probably kicked the bucket or something."
"Don't say that." She chuckled, a high, snobby sound that scraped against his ears.
He didn't laugh.
Where were they? He scratched the question aside like an irritating itch. It didn't matter. He needed to kill that fogged bastard. Prove to his brother that his inheritance wasn't as secure as it seemed. It pissed him off. Just because he was born a few years late, he had no chance to become the heir of House Fenshore. If things had progressed differently, if he had been first, he would practically assume the throne by now. Instead, he was here. Hunting. Begging for scraps of recognition.
His hand drifted to the collection of artifacts hidden beneath his robes. A resonance pendant. A strength-amplifying bracer. A minor fate-conduit ring. Each one stolen from the family vault or purchased with his allowance. Together, they made people think he was capable. Awakened, even.
He was neither. Not even Latent. Just a boy with expensive toys and a burning need to matter.
They came to a sudden stop.
"Alaric..." Clarissa's voice trembled. "S-s-stop."
A black seething shadow rose before them, materializing from the smoke and flame as if the rift itself had coughed it into existence. Its height was amassing, towering over their meager forms like a wave of pure, concentrated void. Within its shifting mass, pinpricks of violet light opened and closed like hungry eyes.
Clarissa stumbled backward, her previous arrogance evaporating. "What... what is that thing?"
Alaric stood frozen. His artifacts hummed against his skin, but they offered no spells, no combat techniques. They only imitated power. They did not grant it.
The shadow lunged.
Clarissa screamed. But it was not a scream of terror. It was something else. Something that tore from her chest as her hand shot out and shoved Alaric with all her strength. He stumbled, fell, hit the hot stone floor hard. The shadow's mass started to descend on him.
"CLARISSA!" He yelled.
Her face, contorted in fear and something else, regret as she looked behind her in a desperate looked back.
Alaric scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his fine robes tearing on the jagged stone, his artifacts clattering uselessly against his chest. "No, no, no, no, no—"
He yelled. Profanities, names. The words tumbled out of him in a desperate, incoherent flood. Clarissa's sobs faded as she ran.
The shadow turned its attention to him.
And then the earth shook.
It was not the crackle of fire or the collapse of a shelf. It was a tremor, deep and resonant, that rolled through the very foundation of the rift. The ground bucked. The shadow shuddered, its form destabilizing, violet eyes blinking out one by one. With a swift sound, it dissipated, dissolving into threads of black smoke that scattered on the hot wind.
Alaric lay on the ground, gasping. The tremor subsided. Silence fell, broken only by the eternal crackle of flames.
He pushed himself up slowly, his body shaking. Where Clarissa had been, there was only a dark stain on the stone and a single, silver earring. He did not pick it up. He could not look at it.
Something had caused that tremor. Something powerful. Something that had reached across the burning maze and disrupted the shadow's hold.
Alaric's terror curdled, hardening into something else. His hands, still trembling, clenched into fists. His brother's face flashed in his mind. Miguel's cold, dismissive eyes. The way he walked past him like he was furniture. The way their father never looked at him.
He would find the fogged bastard. He would kill him.