Midnight came with the smell of rain.
The Sovereigns Circle compound sat on the northern edge of the coliseum district—a fortress of white stone and reinforced architecture, surrounded by walls carved with essence-runes designed to prevent unauthorized entry or exit. The building itself was elegant in the way only absolute power could afford to be. No excessive decoration. No wasted space. Just clean lines and cold efficiency.
Aaric studied it from the rooftop across the street, his shadow-essence coiled tight beneath his skin.
"Thirty guards minimum," Rydor whispered beside him, his scarred face lit by the faint glow of essence-stones in the compound's walls. "Two 4-star senior climbers, eight 3-stars, rest are 2-stars. Vex is being held in the east tower, third level."
"How certain?" Ariea asked. She was crouched on Aaric's other side, her silver armor darkened with ash to avoid reflection.
"Certain enough," came Miraen's voice from the shadows behind them.
The void-essence warrior had brought six of her best—Nightveil operatives trained in infiltration, stealth, and silent kills. They were positioned around the compound's perimeter, waiting for the signal.
"The primary guards rotate every two hours," Miraen continued. "Next rotation is in seven minutes. When the new shift changes, there's a three-minute window where coverage overlaps but discipline breaks. That's when we move."
Syl appeared on the rooftop beside them, seemingly from nowhere. "Essence-wards on the main entrances are keyed to Sovereigns Circle insignias. But the east tower's service entrance uses mechanical locks. I can crack it in ninety seconds."
Kess was with them too—her flame-essence would be crucial if things went wrong and they needed to burn their way out. She was quiet, focused, a coiled spring of violence waiting to be released.
"Rules of engagement," Rydor said, looking at each of them in turn. "We're here to extract Vex alive. If guards surrender, we bind and gag them, leave them. If they resist with lethal intent, you respond with lethal force. But we do not slaughter people who are just doing their jobs. Understood?"
Nods all around. Even Miraen's void-essence seemed to settle, becoming less predatory and more... professional.
The seven minutes stretched like hours.
Aaric's shadow-essence thrummed with anticipation. This was the first real action since the assassination attempt. The first time they were taking the fight directly to the Sovereigns Circle instead of reacting defensively.
It felt like crossing a threshold.
"Go," Rydor whispered.
They moved as one.
Aaric and Ariea descended the rooftop using shadow-constructs and kinetic essence respectively—Ariea's energy propelled her down the building's face in controlled bounds while Aaric simply formed shadow-platforms beneath his feet, sinking through the darkness like a man descending stairs.
Syl reached the service entrance first, her small hands already working the lock mechanisms. Behind them, Miraen's team was moving through the compound's perimeter, disabling motion-sensing essence-stones with void-constructs that literally erased the sensing mechanisms from existence.
The service door clicked open.
They slipped inside.
The compound's interior was all marble halls and efficient lighting. No one was around—the guards were concentrated at main entrances and key checkpoints, leaving internal passages relatively clear. It was a flaw of confidence. The Sovereigns Circle never imagined someone would breach their compound's outer defenses.
They were about to learn differently.
Syl led them through the halls with the certainty of someone who'd studied the blueprints extensively. Three turns, up a spiral staircase, down another corridor. They encountered their first patrol—two 2-star guards talking quietly about their upcoming shift change.
Neither saw Miraen coming.
The void-essence warrior moved like a ghost, and her void-constructs wrapped around both guards' throats, cutting off sound. They collapsed, unconscious but alive, and Nightveil operatives bound and gagged them efficiently.
The pattern repeated twice more as they climbed.
Each time, Miraen's team handled the resistance. Each time, the guards never saw what hit them. It was almost clinical in its precision—a breach of a supposedly impenetrable fortress, executed with the grace of a surgeon's blade.
By the time they reached the east tower's third level, Aaric's heart was pounding.
They could hear voices ahead. Two guards outside a heavy wooden door—no doubt Vex's cell.
Rydor held up a hand, signaling everyone to stop.
He moved forward alone, his 4-star presence radiating outward like a beacon of authority. The moment the guards saw him, they snapped to attention, assuming he was a superior officer checking on the prisoner.
"At ease," Rydor said, his voice carrying the command of someone used to being obeyed. "I'm here for a status update on the target."
The nearest guard—a nervous 2-star named Kess... no, different name, Kel—relaxed slightly. "Status is secure, Captain. Prisoner hasn't attempted escape, hasn't tried to contact anyone. Just sits there. Barely eats."
"Good," Rydor replied. He was close enough now. He moved faster than a 2-star could follow.
His fist drove into Kel's solar plexus, knocking the wind from him. The second guard tried to reach for an alarm, but Ariea was already there, her kinetic essence accelerating her hand to intercept his before he could press the button. The impact snapped his wrist.
Both guards went down.
Syl was already working on the door's lock. Thirty seconds. Forty. Sixty.
"We're exposed," Miraen hissed. "Movement in the halls. They've changed shift rotation."
"How many?" Rydor demanded.
"Eight. Heading this way."
Syl's lock finally clicked. The door swung open.
The room inside was sparse—a cell, really. Stone walls, single cot, bucket in the corner. And on the cot, a man in his fifties with the hollow eyes of someone who'd been tortured not physically but psychologically. His hair was gray, his skin was gray, everything about him screamed of desperation and defeat.
Vex.
"Come on," Aaric said, moving toward him.
"I can't," Vex whispered. "They put a death-seal on me. If I leave the compound, if I try to escape, the essence-rune will activate and stop my heart."
"Then we break it," Ariea replied.
She examined Vex's chest, where a faint, glowing rune was carved into his skin—not a tattoo, but an actual essence-scar, woven directly into his life-force. Removing it would require precise shadow-weaving or some form of essence-negation.
"No time," Miraen called from the corridor. "They're thirty seconds away. You need to move now or we're fighting our way out."
Aaric made a decision.
He placed his hands on Vex's chest and let his shadow-essence flow out—not violently, but gently, carefully. He threaded the shadows into the rune, studying its construction, understanding its purpose. It was designed to kill if Vex left the compound's boundaries. Which meant it was only active outside the compound.
Aaric wrapped shadow around it, not trying to break it, but to temporarily suppress its function.
"It will buy us maybe five minutes once we're outside," he said. "After that, the rune will reassert itself."
"Five minutes is enough," Rydor replied.
They moved toward the service exit.
The guards in the halls tried to intercept them, and this time there was no pretense of stealth. A 3-star commander rounded the corner and saw them, and his eyes widened with shock.
Ariea was on him in a flash of silver light. Her kinetic strike sent him flying backward, crashing through a wall and into the next corridor. The other guards tried to form a defensive line, but Kess's flame-essence erupted, forcing them to scatter.
Miraen's void-constructs wrapped around three of them, pulling them into stasis. The remaining guards fled, desperately trying to trigger alarms.
"East stairwell!" Syl shouted, pointing to an access door.
They burst through and descended in controlled chaos—Ariea using kinetic energy to slow their fall, Miraen's void-constructs deflecting an essence-bolt from a guard above them, Rydor and Kess providing cover fire.
They hit the ground level and ran for the service exit.
Behind them, the compound erupted into organized response. Alarms shrieked. Guards mobilized. The Sovereigns Circle was waking up to the fact that their fortress had been breached.
They burst through the service door into the rain-slicked night.
Miraen's team was already waiting with escape routes prepared. The void-essence operatives scattered the pursuing guards by creating spatial distortions in the street—making it impossible to move in straight lines, turning the ground into a maze of shifting perspective.
They ran through the dark streets of the coliseum district, through alleys and side-passages that only Syl and Miraen seemed to know about. The rain covered their tracks. The darkness hid their passage.
By the time the Sovereigns Circle guards reached the streets, the extraction team had vanished like ghosts.
They reached the safehouse twelve minutes later.
The building was hidden in the lower levels, in a district where the Tower's light barely reached and the essence-runes were too old to monitor. Rydor carried Vex inside, the old man gasping and trembling from the stress of his removal.
"The rune," Ariea said immediately, laying him on a table. "Aaric, can you suppress it longer?"
Aaric placed his hands back on Vex's chest and pushed shadow-essence into the construct, holding it, containing it, refusing to let it activate. It burned. His shadow-essence fought against the foreign essence-rune, trying to expel it, but Aaric held firm.
"How long can you hold it?" Lynia asked from the corner, her small voice cutting through the tension.
"I don't know," Aaric replied through gritted teeth. "As long as it takes."
Rydor looked at Vex. "You're going to tell us everything. Who ordered the tainted crystal operation. Who knew about the shadow-awakener hunts. Who's running the conspiracy. All of it."
Vex's eyes were wide with terror. He looked at each of them in turn—the scarred captain, the silver warrior, the void-essence hunter, the thief, the flame-wielder, and the shadow-boy holding his very life in his hands.
"If I talk," Vex whispered, "they'll kill me. The people who gave me orders... they don't leave loose ends."
"And if you don't talk," Rydor replied calmly, "we let Aaric stop suppressing that rune. You'll be dead in ten seconds."
Vex swallowed hard.
"Alright," he said finally. "I'll tell you. But you need to understand... this conspiracy goes deeper than the Sovereigns Circle. Deeper than Floor 15. There are people controlling the Tower from the inside. People who've been here since before humanity climbed it."
The room fell silent.
"What do you mean?" Ariea asked carefully.
"The Tower isn't just a refuge," Vex said, his voice shaking. "It's a machine. And the people who built it, who designed it, who're still managing it from the highest floors... they've been conducting experiments on climbers for centuries. Trying to find the perfect vessel. The perfect successor."
He looked at Aaric.
"You're not the first shadow-awakener they've groomed," Vex continued. "Your brother was one of seven. Seven chosen ones tested over the last two hundred years. And he was the closest to succeeding."
"Succeeding at what?" Aaric demanded.
"Reaching Floor 100," Vex replied. "And merging with the Tower's core. Becoming one with the machine itself. That's the real purpose, boy. That's what all of this has been building toward."
Outside the safehouse, rain fell on the coliseum district, washing the streets clean of blood and evidence.
And deep within the Tower's highest chambers, something vast and patient observed the captured conspirator and the shadow-essence wielder holding him prisoner.
It did not seem concerned.
It seemed, if anything, to be smiling.