The Imperial facility was built like a vault meant to hide unpleasant decisions.
No open sky. No cheering crowd. No courtroom theatrics.
Just stone, iron, and empire authority, absolute.
Kaito was walked into the sentencing chamber alone.
A long table of officials sat raised above him. Their armor was ceremonial, their faces impassive. gold lanterns burned cold red instead of warm flame, the color of conviction, not judgment.
Magistrate Hale, spokesman for the sentencing council, rose.
"Nyla Harlow of House Harlow vanished from Marin."
Kaito inhaled sharply at the name.
Nyla. His friend abducted by the man who sat in front of him, this entire situation was messed up.
"Her final confirmed sighting coincides with an unregistered adventuring group that so brashly attacked the magistrate in his home, led by a man called 'Kaito.'"
Kaito strained against his restraints, chains going taut.
"That's not true, the magistrate kidnapped her, and I was fighting other people, he's working with the one's who did this, Nyla is my friend I wouldn't hurt her!" Kaito shouted.
Hale showed no sympathy.
"Friendship is not evidence."
"When I get out of this, i'm gonna mess you up!" Kaito shouts at the magistrate. The magistrate laughs on the inside, with how violent Kaito is being, it'll be easy to pin this on him and then grab the crown.
The council murmured. A scribe leaned forward.
"Do you possess House Harlow authority to examine noble correspondence?"
"I don't even know what that means!" Kaito barked.
They exchanged glances. That only looked worse.
Hale raised his hand. Silence crushed the room again.
"Empire investigation protocol concludes: undocumented adventurer, destroyed the great bridge, mayhem through all of Astrale, and the attempted murder of Magistrate Hail!
Kaito shook his head, hard.
"No.... you're wrong," he insisted, more desperate now than oblivious. "He wants the blame on me. That's why it points to me."
Hale turned away.
"Final ruling."
The guards stiffened. The hall prepared itself to swallow another prisoner whole.
"Adventurer Kaito, accused leader of abduction of Nyla Harlow…
under Imperial Statute 12-B: Noble Seizure and Concealment…"
Kaito felt the words land like the swing of an axe.
He glanced toward the sealed side doors beyond the sentencing platform, the direction of the holding block where his friends were locked away, powerless to do anything but wait and listen for bells.
His pulse was thunder in his ears.
"…you are sentenced to Death, effective immediately."
The room clicked into motion.
The alarm wasn't rung yet.
This was still procedure.
But Kaito moved first.
He forced himself upright, shoulders burning from tension, chains rattling violently as he reached their limit. His voice dropped low, finally, a tone without humor, without deflection, without commentary.
Just raw intent.
"I didn't take her."
"I can't let you kill me for this."
The mage-anchors in his shackles flared, meant to suppress spellcasting, he couldn't control his magic to begin with, but the straps also restricted movement.
With a grunt, Kaito bent his arms inward and ripped them apart with sheer force.
The shackles burst open like gunmetal splitting from pressure.
Hale finally reacted. "D-don't just stand there catch him!"
The facility lit up instantly, red glyphs spinning across the walls like closing jaws.
Guards piled on fast. Kaito met them harder, focused now, brutal efficiency taking the place of his usual reckless energy.
Down the hall, his voice echoed through the Imperial holding block where his friends sat in chained silence:
Dante muttered from his cell. "Here we go."
Toni tightened his fists behind bars, whispering. "Come on friend, do somethin."
Nanami stayed quiet for once, ears folded down, tail wrapped around herself, nervous as always, but even she could sense the tone of the bells. This wasn't adventure anymore.
This was survival.
Back in the sentencing hall, Kaito slammed through the guards like a breach, still overwhelmed, still outnumbered, still unproven and officially guilty.
But now the Empire had a new directive ringing through their fortress.
Just like that he refuses a death he never earned.
The guards blasts magic at him, Kaito leaps out of the way barely avoiding the blast. He ducks another, the commander in charge of his capture charges after him. Kaito spins. "Hey, could I ask where you put my dagger?" He asks.
The man not one for his jokes, Casts a new magic. The man turns his body into water and floods the entire hall. He appears in front of Kaito, ripping himself from the water. He slashes downwards with his sword Kaito barely dodges before he's thrown through the door of another room.
He looks up at the cage he landed on and its.... DANTE!
He grabs the bars of the cage and immediately recoils. "Ow. That tingles."
"El-Metal," Dante explains. "They use it to hold mages. Cancels magic. And apparently zaps hands."
Kaito frowns. "Okay, so… how am I supposed to get you out?"
Dante leans back in the cage. "Well… you're good at improvising, right?"
Kaito stares at the cage like it personally offended him. "…Sure. Totally."
A slow applause from behind grabs their attention. Turning around Kaito sees the magistrate along with numerous guards. His cartoony laugh nearly making the duo's ears bleed. "You just walked right into my trap!" He looks around annoyed not seeing the other two.
"I wouldn't say walked, I was thrown here."
"It would seem the girl was able to avoid capture." The magistrate says before dramatically posing. "But no matter, for one as great as I!" He says before tapping his face.
In an instant, the magistrate's face shifts, morphing seamlessly into Rika's.
Kaito gasps, taking a full step back. "Rika?! You're the magistrate?!"
Dante blinks. "Seriously, Kaito?"
The magistrate, still wearing Rika's face, lets out a delighted laugh. "Oh, that's adorable. No. But thank you for the compliment."
He drops the illusion, revealing his true face again. "Guards! Kill them!"
The soldiers charge forward without hesitation. Their sheer numbers make Kaito instinctively step back, right into the cage again. The familiar magical buzz shoots up his arm, and something clicks in his brain.
"I've got it!" he exclaims.
Dante immediately looks concerned. "You've got something. That's for sure."
Kaito grabs the cage and hoists it off the ground, jostling Dante like a hamster in a very aggressive wheel.
"Kaito, don't!" Dante barely gets the words out before Kaito throws the cage, with Dante still inside.
The metal prison crashes into a cluster of guards with a loud clang, knocking them over like bowling pins. Before they can regroup, Kaito charges after it and uses the cage, again with Dante inside, as a battering ram to knock another guard flat.
From inside, Dante shouts, "I am not a weapon!"
Kaito, panting from the magical drain, doesn't stop. "You're a team player!"
He rushes at the next wave of guards, swinging the cage like a giant flail. The guards panic and start scattering.
The magistrate watches from a distance, arms crossed, expression slowly shifting from confident to mildly horrified. These were supposed to be elite imperial troops, and they were losing to one very sweaty teenager using his trapped friend as a blunt object.
"Come at me!" Kaito shouts, almost triumphant.
"Please don't," Dante adds from inside the cage.
As the guards flee down the hallway, yelping and tripping over each other, the magistrate sighs and slowly backs away.
"This is… embarrassing," he mutters.
Turning on his heel, he bolts down the corridor. "No matter! I'll catch the others myself, and use them as leverage to make that kid give up!"
His face shifts once more.... this time into a perfect replica of Kaito's, complete with a slightly unhinged grin.
The magistrate cackles to himself, running off into the halls.
Kaito continues his attack with Dante inside of the cage. One final mighty throw into the guards causes the latch to break Dante spilling from the cage, in a dizzy mess.
"Come on Dante! We have to catch that guy!" Kaito says. Dante stands up barely able to hold his balance. "Yeah, uhm definitely mom." Dante responds, completely out of it.