The cold stone wall dug into Erika's back. There was no retreat.
Ahead, the spears of the Auric Guard formed a moving fence of death in the gloom, advancing step by step. Each rasp of their armor echoed through the space—a hall piled high with silent "corpses"—hammering against her eardrums.
Erika could hear her own heart slamming against her ribs. Too loud, she thought wildly. What if they hear it too?
The Marks on her arms had stopped burning. Now they hung like dead, cold weights—drained coals—offering no warmth, only the numb, blunt ache of overuse. Her throat was sandpaper; each swallow scraped raw.
Pressed against the wall, she tried uselessly to shove herself and the crumpled Loren deeper into the shadows of the stone, though she knew there was nowhere left to hide.
Loren's trembling came up through the floor. The young noble was curled in on himself, his fine white suit smeared with grime and the dark seep of his own wounds. His ice-blue eyes were wide but vacant, unfocused, filled with nothing but pure, animal terror. He kept murmtering broken syllables—a family motto, maybe, or a meaningless prayer—so faint it was almost soundless.
Erika wasn't much better.
She watched those approaching visors. No eyes showed in the slits—only darkness. That darkness was worse than any snarling face. She knew what capture meant. Not execution. Not after Hong Bo's final order: "Alive."
It rang in her skull like an ice pick.
They would take her back, to some place darker and colder than this, and carve out everything she was, everything she knew, until she was just another hollowed-out thing left in this scrap heap.
Despair rose like frigid water—ankles, knees, chest.
She couldn't even make a fist; her fingers were ice.
Was this how it ended? In a filthy corner, forgotten among drained husks, rotting without a sound?
Then, just as the tip of the lead guard's spear came within an arm's length of her throat—
CRRUUMMBLE—!!!
A deep, massive sound of collapse erupted from deep within the mountain of scrap.
Not an explosion. This was the groan of overburdened metal and structural waste finally giving way. The noise reverberated through the enclosed space, vibrating in her teeth, and the floor shook distinctly.
Every Auric Guard froze. Spear tips wavered. Visored heads turned as one toward the source, vigilance snapping to its peak.
Erika's heart lurched. She looked.
Beyond a hill of twisted structural debris, a thick cloud of dust was rising. Within it, something glinted—a shifting light.
Then a voice, slow and slurry with sleepiness and unmistakable irritation, drifted out ahead of its owner:
"Tch… Morrison, you old fool… What 'surprise' junk have you dumped in my yard this time? Told you to stack it proper. Now look at this mess…"
The voice drew nearer.
A figure shuffled out of the dust.
First, a bright orange ember glowed at the corner of his mouth. Then Erika made out the man: maybe in his thirties or forties, hair sticking up in unruly tufts, face smudged with ingrained grease and weariness. He wore worn, practical work clothes, sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing solid forearms streaked with more grime. In one hand, he swung a short metal rod—maybe a tool, maybe a weapon—carelessly at his side.
He didn't even glance at the tense standoff. Instead, he squinted at the newly collapsed pile and muttered, "…Great. More cleaning."
"Halt!" barked the Auric Guard captain.
Spears swung toward the intruder.
"By the authority of the Sanctum Auric Guard—stand aside! Do not interfere!"
The man with the ember finally seemed to notice the armored soldiers, and the two desperate youths at their spear-points.
He took a slow drag, exhaled a cloud of greyish smoke, and let his gaze sweep over the faceless guards, then over Erika's pale, terrified face, and Loren's ruined, once-fine clothes. His eyes lingered for a half-second on a small, perhaps familial, insignia on Loren's attire.
Then he scratched his messy hair. His expression shifted into something between what a nuisance and a flicker of well, now…
"Authority?" he repeated, his tone still lazy. "In my storeroom?"
The air changed.
Not because the guards moved—but because he did.
The sleepiness, the irritation, evaporated like breath on cold glass. He stood there, same slouched posture, but his focus settled on the Golden Guards, on the gleaming circuit emblem on their chests. His eyes turned cold. Disgusting cold.
"This place…" he said slowly, each word rough and deliberate, pushed through gritted teeth, "…is no place for you… hounds."
As the last word fell, he jerked his head and spat the cigarette to the ground. The ember bounced once in the dust.
"Damn it, Morrison…" he cursed under his breath, ripe with aggravation, as if blaming an absent man for this entire disaster.
Then, almost habitually, he lifted his foot to stamp out the glowing stub—
What happened next stole the breath from Erika's lungs.
The motion was casual. A simple step.
But the moment his sole touched the ember—
The tiny orange spark exploded.
Not with fire, but into a swarm of finer, brighter, incandescent points of crimson light. They streaked outward like conscious hornets—straight at the line of Auric Guards.
It was too fast to follow. A spray of red sparks. A miniature, lethal meteor shower.
Then—
"Ukh—""Hgh—"
Choked, guttural sounds.
The guards stiffened. They didn't block. Didn't dodge. They simply toppled backward, rigid, in unison.
THUD. CRASH.
Heavy armor hit the floor. Spears clattered away.
No breath fogged the visor slits. And where each body lay, the floor was scorched black in the outline of a man—as if seared by instant, terrible heat.
No flames. No screams. No struggle.
Just silence.
The scruffy man lowered his foot, as if he'd merely crushed a bug. He didn't look at the fallen guards.
He lifted his head. His eyes found Erika and Loren again—assessing, annoyed, weary.
"Get up," he said flatly. "Unless you want to be the next stains on the floor, or wait here for more hounds. Follow me."
He turned and shuffled back toward the shadows.
Erika stood frozen. Terror and disorientation swamped her.
Beside her, Loren shuddered violently and clutched Erika's arm, fingers like ice.
Go?Or stay and die?
There was no choice.
They followed.
Erika's mouth was dust-dry. There was no choice.
Leaning on Loren's desperate grip and sheer instinct, she stumbled forward on numb legs, toward the shadows where the man had disappeared. Each step carried her through air still warm with the smell of sudden, silent death.
Erika didn't know how long they followed the man through the mountains of scrap. Underfoot was a shifting rubble of unidentifiable debris; the air grew thicker with the hollow stillness of spent energy, mixed with the smell of rust and dust—a taste close to suffocation. Loren leaned heavily against him, their footsteps faint in the vast silence. The scorched patch of death behind them had long been swallowed by the dark.
The man didn't hurry, but his steps held a strange certainty, as if he were walking through his own backyard. He said nothing more. Only the freshly lit cigarette between his fingers glowed, a single orange pulse in the gloom, the sole moving point of light.
Finally, they rounded a curved metal ruin like some giant's ribcage—and an opening appeared ahead. Less an entrance than a narrow crack forced between masses of compressed waste, half-hidden by a few deliberately placed, twisted plates.
The man slipped inside without looking back.
Erika and Loren exchanged a glance. Exhaustion. No other choice. Gritting their teeth, they squeezed through.
It wasn't another narrow cave or junk pile.
It was a space.
A space that stole Erika's breath and blanked his mind for one dizzying second.
They stood at the base of a cylindrical chamber so high its ceiling was lost in shadow. The walls curved away on all sides, but they weren't stone—they were shelves. Floor to unseen heights, every inch of the arc was crammed with bookcases, packed tight with volumes, scrolls, and oddly shaped data-containers. All of it stretched upward into impenetrable darkness. The air smelled of old paper, leather, dust, and something else—a faint, quiet hum, different from the Sanctum's energetic aura.
No windows. No outside light. The only illumination came from cold white glows embedded along some shelves or clinging to certain book covers—eerie, phosphorescent gleams that sketched the outlines of this impossible interior.
Nothing about this place was right.
Erika was certain no such structure existed in the Sanctum—nothing this impossibly tall yet utterly concealed. The height felt unnatural, as if space itself had been stretched. And the books… how could so many be stored here? It was like someone had shoved an entire priceless library down a bottomless well.
The man walked to a relatively clear area at the center, where a few uncomfortable-looking chairs and a cluttered table stood. He pulled out a chair—it screeched against the floor—and sat down.
Then he drew another cigarette from his coat. Erika noticed the hesitation—his fingers brushed it once before bringing it to his lips. A snap of his fingers, a tiny spark of energy at his thumb, and it was lit. He drew deeply, the smoke exhaled slowly, softening the grime on his face but sharpening the eyes behind it. Eyes that looked both keen and deeply weary.
"I don't know what's happening out there," he began, his voice echoing softly in the book-lined silence, roughened by smoke and utterly flat. "I don't care who you are, where you came from, or why those gilded hounds were after you."
He gestured upward with the hand holding the cigarette, a vague, dismissive flick toward where the Sanctum would be.
"But there's one thing you should understand." His gaze swept over Erika, then Loren. No warmth there—only a settled, almost tangible loathing. "I hate everything about the Golden Creed. Every brick, every strand of their so-called 'blessed' light, every smiling, scripture-spouting robe."
He said it calmly. That made it worse. This wasn't hot anger—it was cold, marrow-deep hatred.
The man spread his hands, the cigarette trailing a thin line of smoke between his fingers.
"So, by any reasonable measure," he leaned forward slightly, pinning the two youths with his eyes, his tone leaving no room for negotiation, "what I did back there already counts as the utmost… leniency… you're likely to get from me."
He paused, letting the silence and the pressure build again.
"Now," he exhaled smoke, the words low and clear, each one striking Erika's strained nerves like a hammer-blow,
"give me one reason not to kill you."
Not a reason to stay.
Not a reason to help you.
A reason not to kill you.