The ceiling creaked faintly as Sin shifted his weight. He moved slowly, inch by inch, distributing pressure evenly across the light fixtures above him. Each motion was measured , precise , his limbs flexing like a spider's as he crawled forward.
Below, the nurses were too occupied to look up. The dim gleam of lanterns washed over their white uniforms as they tended to the infected. They spoke amongst themselves, a bit about the black out, others about the conditions of the patients, their voices hushed beneath the low rasp of breathing patients.
Sin reached the far end of the infirmary and pressed himself flat against the ceiling above the door. He waited, counting the rhythm of footsteps outside, two, maybe three guards, before letting himself drop behind one of the hanging privacy curtains. The fabric swayed once, then stilled, good… it didn't give away his position.
He crouched low, opened the door by a fraction, and leaned his head out.The hallway beyond was washed in the dull light of emergency runes, flickering red against sterile white walls. Two guards stood at attention despite the blackout, hands resting on the hilts of their blades. The blades were faintly glowing — not much, just enough to kill and or incapacitate a demon beast.
A dilemma.
Sin's eyes traced the corridor. He could not crawl past them, not with their weapons active. Fighting would draw the others, and that was suicide. His gaze slid toward the other rooms. Each door bore only a number — seven-hundred-something — no indication of what lay beyond and what room held what.
He cursed under his breath. No map. No plan. No time. He was just running purely off of assumptions.
Then, slowly, he reached up and removed his mask.
The air felt colder against his skin. His face, the one no one had ever seen, was now exposed, but this was his only chance.
He stumbled out into the hall, clutching his stomach, dragging one leg as if injured. A ragged cough tore from his throat . The guards turned sharply.
"S…sir," Sin stammered, forcing a tremor into his voice. "I… I can't—"
He tripped forward, colliding with one of the soldiers.
The man shoved him back instantly, a hand flashing to his blade. "Back off!" he barked, behind the golden helmet.
Sin raised both hands, stumbling again. "S-sorry! I'm just trying to reach the infirmary— the other one— please, I—"
The guard clicked his tongue. "Tch. Filthy scum. Find your room number and move along." looking at Sin's suit, which raised suspicion, not like they will act before he's gone.
Sin nodded quickly, bowing his head. "Yes, sir."
He limped past them, the guards' attention already shifting elsewhere. His hand, hidden from sight, clenched around a stolen keycard, taken in the instant of collision.
It almost cost him his neck but it was worth it.
He glanced back down the hallway. No eyes on him. Perfect.
Sliding the keycard through the slot of the first door with higher level clearance he had seen, Sin slipped inside, vanishing behind the door as quietly as he had appeared.
Sin slipped back into the room and closed the door behind him with deliberate care, the faint click of the latch echoed in the room of the blackout's lingering silence.
He pulled his mask on again. Not out of necessity, no one knew his face, but habit. Caution was survival, and paranoia was just a way for being alive. The flashlight clicked on. A narrow beam of white light cut through the void, carving the shadows into sharp shapes. Metal shelves. Glass vials. Rows of labeled bottles reflecting back like a hundred small eyes.
He'd found it , the medical storage room. Dozens of sealed cabinets lined the walls, each one locked by hexes glowing a faint, exhausted blue after the EMP pulse. Through the translucent barriers were the labels: Spirit Beast Venom, Wolf Extract, Rabies Counteragent, Nutritional Elixirs, Muscle Reinforcement Solutions, Spiritual Enhancement Serum.
Hundreds of bottles, none were the one he needed.
Sin moved quietly, his steps whispering against the tile. He trailed his gloved fingers over the surfaces, reading each inscription. His mind counted every second, every beat of time Taichi was out there keeping him covered. How, he didn't know. He never asked. If Taichi was still breathing, that was enough.
"Seems lady luck's smiling down on me…" Sin said under his breath. "And here I thought I'd have to go room to room."
He smirked faintly at the thought. The mission, for once, had gone smoothly. Too smoothly. That alone made his gut tighten.
He crouched, opening one of the lower drawers. The stale scent of alcohol and burned herbs drifted out. More vials, all meticulously labeled, organized by potency and purpose. Still not what he wanted.
No matter. He grabbed a few of the smaller bottles and slipped them into his bag. Minor spiritual, muscle and performance enhancement potions, antidotes, anything light enough to carry. If he learned anything, it was to never waste an opportunity and to never let greed cloud judgement.
The beam of his flashlight swept across the far end of the room. Sin's eyes narrowed. A second door stood against the back wall, half hidden behind a tall storage cabinet. The plate on its surface glinted dully under his light.
He stepped closer, brushing the dust from its edge with his thumb.
Etched in fading gold were the words:
"Quarantine Storage – Level 3 Access Only."
Sin tilted his head, studying the door's reinforced seams. The lock bore a higher-grade hex array, the kind that would've fried most thieves for even touching it under normal conditions. But now, with the blackout still in effect, it was dormant. Barely.
He exhaled quietly through his mask.
"Well… if the medicine's anywhere," he whispered. "it's in there."
The keycard felt cold in Sin's palm. Black plastic engraved with thin gold filaments, a photograph, a name, a rank—an ID and a key folded into one. Hex-runes crawled across its surface like a nervous circuit; the thing was alive with authorization. Royal Guard, he read under his breath. Highest clearance.
A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth beneath the mask. Luck, for once,was on his side. He slid the card into the slot and waited for the scanner to chew through its encryption. Seconds.
Then everything went wrong.
Boots thundered. A door slammed open so violently the hinges screamed. Steel flashed in the dim. "Freeze!" a guard shouted, blade up. Two more poured into the room behind him, armor clinking, visors catching the faint light.
Sin cursed quietly. The card was still indexing—one more heartbeat and the lock would clear. He kept his hand half on the scanner, fingers steady, the card whispering data into the plate. Time crawled.
"Hands where I can see them!" another knight barked. Their armor glowed with runic filaments, the hex-inscriptions throwing pale light that made them seem carved from moonwashed metal—an array of authority. Behind them, a figure moved with the slow certainty of command. Black tuxedo, leather plating at the shoulders, hair tied back to a shoulder-length fall. Calm eyes. A nameplate caught the light: Tylian Virell — Royal Arc-forger. Reinforcements in a craftsman's silhouette. His uniform hummed with enchantments that Sin read like a warning. More enchantments than the hospital itself.
This was going wrong. Fast.
Tylian stepped forward, hands open, voice smooth as polished glass. "Don't worry. I don't want a kid's blood on my hands. Come quietly and not a hair will be harmed." His men stayed tight, weapons poised.
Then the scanner clicked. The array above the door sighed and went dead. The lock surrendered. The plate flashed green. Sin moved, slipped through the narrowing crack of opportunity like smoke.
A knight lunged after him, palm extended; the room's temperature began to climb as the man prepared to ignite his element with a thermal burst. Tylian's hand slapped the knight's palm, stopping the heat before it bloomed. "He's in the room with the plague medicine. We can't afford to blow it up. Use physical attacks. Detain him." He said with a clinical command, one that neatly folded risk into protocol. He did exactly as she said it would, Tylian thought, as he looked at Sin rushing into the white room.
The knight charged into the chamber: a clinical cold-box, all white tiles and sealed cabinets, refrigeration coils filled the room in a hum. The air dropped several degrees, an engineered chill to preserve vials of delicate serum. Rows of blue pods lined the room on tether sides of the exit, several rows of ten, translucent domes cradling bodies in viscous liquid; tubes threaded into arms, oxygen masks sealed around mouths. Naked humans floated, pallid and strange, some morphing, claws in place of hands, the rough pelt of some beast bristling across a shoulder, a leg twisted into a different joint. Others were still almost human, a single crimson line on the forehead like a stamp of doom.
Sin's breath hitched beneath the mask. This was not the caricature of Spirit Rot he'd expected, more a gallery of mutation than what he saw in the plague district and what stories and reports said it did. He let the surprise wash through him and shoved it down. Distraction was a luxury he could not afford.
"Enough running, brat!" the knight barked. Sin stopped. He could handle one on one. This room gave him angles, cover, vials and cabinets and slippery tiles to use. He saw the layout in fractions: where a pod could shield a flank, which shelf offered a ledge to pivot off, where the refrigeration vents harbored a shadow, even if he needed a smoke screen.
The knight swung; Sin stepped aside, the blade slicing cold air. He moved quickly, he could fight hand to hand, but he needed to get the main objective out of the way before doing something like this. With one fluent motion he seized three vials from a labeled shelf—Spirit Rot Antigen—and stuffed them into his sack. He weighed risk like he weighed coins.
From the doorway Tylian watched, arms folded, calm as frost, which only made Sin more nervous then he wanted to be. "Running is pointless, Sin," he said, evenly, his tone not changing. "This room is a dead end. There are two endings: your cooperation, or your death." He signaled, and the other guards fanned out, boots thudding against tile as they closed the geometry of escape.
Sin felt the walls narrow. The mask against his face suddenly didn't feel like a mask, but more of a jail, like he was in an enclosed environment, which was starting to make his heart rate increase. He slid behind a pod, breath shallow but steady. He had the medicine. He had seconds to decide how to turn this room or rather, this choke—into passage.
Sin felt the trap close around him like a fist. Four guards, more boots beyond the corridor, and an arc-forger planted at the throat of the door, too many threats and runes for a straight sprint, he could beat them, but killing wasn't an option and they were packed with far better weapons than himself, not to mention Tylian. If he wanted out, he would have to make the space himself.
He reached into his sack without looking, fingers grazing glass and leather; his hand closed around the vials he had taken. They were for salvaging, not for soldiers, little enhancers and antidotes meant to tilt a body's limits for a short time. Ten minutes, at best. Enough, if he used them and made sure to get through this quickly which was his intention.
He pulled the corks fast. He tipped one to his lips and let the bitter draught burn down his throat: performance, muscle, spirit. Each hit like a small hammer striking the inside of his bones. Heat climbed along his limbs, reflexes sharpening, muscles tightening into coiled springs. His breathing calmed, and heart raced faster in turn forcing his pupils to dilate and focus,
He slid the mask back over his face. He set the EMP against the wall with fingers that did not tremble. The device was small. It fed the room a lie, promised light, then ripped the seam out of it.
"Enough running, brat," the knight snarled. He lunged forward. Two others closed from the sides, blades drawn, arcs flaring faint under the strain of their carvings. A crescent of cold steel aimed at Sin's throat.
Sin did not think. He acted. The EMP detonated. Light collapsed into silence. The room fell into absolute darkness; hexes sputtered black. Blades swung, carving spaces where shadows had been a heartbeat before. Steel met nothing but air.
For a moment everything smelled like ozone and cold metal. A guard cursed, hand slashing blindly. Another bumped armor into a pod and staggered. Their hexes on their uniforms were unaffected, but they did not provide too much light, just enough to see what was around them in a one foot radius.
Tylian's brow lifted, impressed, not surprised. He had seen tricks before. He kept his men restrained, ordering containment rather than fire. The arc-forger's palms glowed faintly as he prepared to make a spiritual barrier to prevent the knights from killing sin outright, but Sin already had the room. The dark was his ally now.
And now, the fight had became an even field.