They knew something was wrong before Rose woke up screaming.
Chaos left wreckage, loud and clumsy and desperate, shattered doors and scarred walls and overturned furniture, and there was none of that, the door hadn't been forced, bolts disengaged cleanly, no alarms tripped, no defensive wards, the glass walls intact with blue water drifting outside and fish gliding past in silent schools like the ocean had decided nothing inside the fortress mattered, and Rose lay on the floor with dried blood darkening her temple and her vines brittle and faded nearly grey and the absence where Felicity should have been sitting like a held breath in the centre of the room.
Luna hit the floor running before anyone spoke, bare feet slapping polished stone, skidding to her knees beside Rose and reaching out immediately, and Voss dropped beside them with careful precision, one knee to the ground, fingers hovering just above Rose's skin without touching because plant magic lashed out when its host was injured and he understood that, and his expression was unreadable which was never a good sign, and Victor stood in the centre of the room with his hands relaxed at his sides and his eyes moving slowly across the space, once, twice, three times, not searching but recording, the angle of the door and the faint scuff on the floor where something heavy had been dragged and the clean precise absence of damage that told him everything he needed to know about who had done this and how long they had planned it.
Rose jerked awake with a broken sound and her eyes snapped open and she tried to surge upright and gasped "they took her, they waited, I tried" with her voice rasping raw from her throat, and Victor's aura flickered and it was not fire and it was not ice, it was void, and the air pressure in the room dropped sharply enough that Luna's ears popped, and Voss looked up slowly and said "Victor" and Victor said "I know" softly and that single word spoken that quietly was the most frightening thing anyone in the room had ever heard him say, because everyone knew Victor only whispered when something inside him had already decided the outcome and there was nothing left to decide.
Voss moved to the console in three steps and put his fingers on the control panel and started forcing access through Tidehaven's systems, door records and camera loops and patrol paths, and his eyes moved across the information once and he said "they left through the east service corridor" and Victor was already walking, and Rose demanded "alive?" pushing herself upright and Voss said "yes" without slowing and the word cut through the room like something solid, and Luna scrubbed her eyes hard and followed.
"They knew we were leaving," Voss said as he walked, fingers never stopping across the tablet. "This wasn't opportunistic."
Rose's fists clenched until her knuckles went white. "She trusted this place."
Victor didn't answer.
Quiet commands spread outward from Voss's fingers while they moved through the stairwell and down three flights in controlled synchronised steps, dock locks engaging and external gates stalling and shipping manifests rerouting, nothing dramatic, no alarms, just quiet fractures spreading through the city's infrastructure like ice finding the weaknesses in stone, traps closing in the dark while Tidehaven went about its morning entirely unaware that its exits were sealing themselves shut one by one.
They burst into the lower market district and the city felt the shift immediately because Snow Team didn't shout and didn't warn, they simply moved, and the first group of mercenaries who tried to block the street recognised Victor and that hesitation cost them everything as fire and frost rolled outward in the same breath and the street flashed freezing before erupting into white heat and the fight lasted three seconds and Tommy vaulted the ruined barricade with a feral grin and said "this is your heaven? kinda sucks" while water blades sliced through two guards at once, and Ash vanished into shadow across the rooftops murmuring "she would've found something to like" with his eyes never stopping searching, and Voss walked at the centre of it all like the eye of a storm with his fingers moving constantly across the tablet while signal towers glitched and dock authority codes invalidated themselves and merchant vessels trying to depart found their navigation permissions quietly revoked.
Every exit in Tidehaven sealed itself shut, and nobody had done it.
By the time they reached the command hall the city knew something catastrophic was happening, fire blazing across flooded canals and ice crawling through walls Voss had weakened days before while studying the city with the patience of a man who understood that preparation was just violence that hadn't happened yet, and inside the command hall Pia waited with her trident raised and fury sharp enough to cut steel and said "you would doom this city for one woman" and Victor stopped three paces away with frost spreading slowly beneath his boots and said "yes" and Voss stepped out of the shadows behind her and said "you doomed it yourself when you took what was ours, she would have forgiven you, we won't" and Pia never saw the blade slide between her ribs and she fell and above them Tidehaven burned.
Snow Team didn't stop to watch.
Victor turned immediately and said "trail" and kept moving, still alive, still warm, and they left the dying command hall behind them and that was when the ground began to shake, not from collapse but from movement, a low wet sound rolling through the outer districts, dragging limbs and broken throats and a rising chorus of rot, and then the screaming started and Sarge appeared at the head of it blood-soaked and grinning with the feral delight of a man who had done something extremely effective and was aware of it, his voice roaring up the ragged street, "I figured you wouldn't want anyone chasing us!" like he had brought a gift, and the gates of Tidehaven slammed shut too late and the horde crashed through in a tidal wave of decay and guards died first and then mercenaries and then anyone too slow to run, and Snow Team walked on without looking back.
Rose paused once with her vines tightening around her arm and said "she trusted this place" and Victor didn't slow and said "she trusted us" and those two sentences sat in the air between them with the weight of everything they were going to do about that, and behind them Tidehaven drowned, screams fading under the wet relentless roar of the horde and smoke drifting and fire still burning in the canals where Victor's flames refused to die even under the tide.
None of them looked back.
Victor walked at the front with his gaze fixed on the wasteland past the shattered gates and stopped once, only once, his head tilting slightly as the wind shifted across the ruined causeway and carried something through the salt and smoke that made his jaw tighten and his pace change.
Fox.
Fear.
Alive.
He started walking again, faster, and no one needed to be told, the others felt it too, Rose's vines winding tight and Ash lifting his nose hunter-sharp and Luna's fingers clutching Frost's sleeve in silent promise, and Snow Team moved with their pace lengthening as they followed the invisible thread through the ashlands because somewhere ahead of them Felicity was still breathing.
And the people who had taken her had just made the worst mistake of their lives.