The silence of the salt cellar was a living thing, thick and heavy with despair. It was broken only by the drip of moisture and the ragged breathing of the captives huddled in the main chamber. Joshey and Lucia moved like wraiths, their footsteps silent on the damp stone. Joshey's mana-sense was their map, guiding them unerringly toward the isolated signature.
They passed a large, barred chamber. Through the grille, Joshey caught a glimpse of the "new batch." Dozens of figures, chained to rings in the wall, their heads bowed. The air from within was a physical blow—a miasma of filth, sickness, and broken hope. Lucia's step faltered for a heartbeat, her eyes scanning the faces frantically before Joshey's gentle but firm pressure on her arm urged her onward. Not here. He's probably further in.
The corridor turned, leading to a smaller, separate section of the cellar. Here, the doors were individual cells. And from behind one of them, Joshey could feel it—that contained, resilient fire. Kaelen. Or so they thought.
But as they approached the final corner, a different kind of noise reached them. Not the silence of misery, but the raucous, careless din of men at leisure. Laughter, the clatter of dice, the clink of bottles. Light spilled from an open doorway just before the row of cells. A guardroom.
Joshey's plan had been simple: wait for the dead of night, when vigilance was lowest, bypass any guards through stealth or minimal force, extract Kaelen, and vanish. This… this was a complication. A room full of Viggo's men, awake, drunk, and loud.
He pressed his back against the cold wall, peering around the corner. Four men sat around a crude table, a single oil lamp casting long, dancing shadows. They were playing a gambling game, a pile of copper and silver coins in the center. They were armed, but their weapons were leaning against the wall, their armor loosened. They were off-duty, comfortable in their den of villainy.
Joshey held up a hand, signaling Lucia to hold. We wait, he mouthed. Let them drink themselves into a stupor. We can slip past.
Lucia's jaw was a hard line, her entire body vibrating with the need to reach the cell just twenty feet beyond that doorway. But she nodded, understanding the tactical reality. They settled into the shadows to wait, the sounds of the guardroom a grating counterpoint to the silent suffering surrounding them.
Minutes stretched into an hour. The laughter grew louder, the boasts more slurred. Joshey began to hope. They were winding down. One man was already slumped over, snoring. Another was struggling to focus on the dice.
And then, the worst possible thing happened.
The door at the far end of the corridor—the one leading back to the main entrance—creaked open. More voices, louder and even more intoxicated, echoed down the stone passage. A new group of men stumbled into view. Three of them. And leading the pack, his face flushed with drink and a familiar, predatory gleam in his eye, was the man from the inn. The one who had expected his "turn."
Joshey's blood ran cold. No. Not here. Not now.
The man from the inn, whose name they would never know, scanned the corridor. His bleary eyes slid past the shadows where Joshey and Lucia stood frozen, not registering them at first. He was looking for the guardroom. He spotted the light and lurched towards it, his friends following.
"Oy! Joric! You miserable lot still awake?" he bellowed, slapping one of the gamblers on the back.
One of the gamblers, Joric, looked up, annoyed. "Borin? What in the seven hells are you doing down here? You're supposed to be on gate watch."
"Shift's over!" Borin slurred, grabbing an abandoned bottle and taking a long swig. "And I've got a celebration! Remember that piece I told you about? The quiet one with the stormy eyes?"
Joshey's heart hammered against his ribs. He tried to make himself smaller in the shadows. Lucia had gone preternaturally still beside him, a statue of impending violence.
Borin, emboldened by the alcohol and his audience, continued his boast. "Well, when her man brought her by i thought God finally answered our prayers. Must've been hella lucky. Said I could have my turn!" He grinned, a wide, ugly thing. "He was a stand-up guy."
Joric frowned, a flicker of sobriety in his eyes. "Why would he trade off his own girl like that?"
"How should I know? Maybe he's looking to sell her!" Borin laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Don't matter. A deal's a deal."
It was then that Borin's wandering gaze finally landed on the two figures pressed into the alcove. His eyes widened in drunken recognition and delight. "Speak of the devil! Brother! You done yet?" He began to stagger towards them, away from the guardroom.
One of his friends, a hulking brute with a broken nose, called out, "Borin, where the fuck are you going?"
Borin waved a dismissive hand without looking back. "Oh, this new sexy babe caught my eye! Time to collect my payment!"
Joshey stepped forward, putting himself between Borin and Lucia. His mind was racing, searching for any lie, any distraction that could work. "It's not a good time," he said, his voice tight. "We're here on business for Viggo."
Borin was too far gone to care about Viggo or business. The promise of flesh was the only thing in his pickled brain. "Fuck outta here!" he snarled, shoving Joshey hard in the chest. The push was clumsy but powerful, born of brutish strength and intoxication. Joshey stumbled back, crashing into the stone wall, the breath knocked from his lungs.
"You had your turn," Borin growled, his attention now fully, predatorily, on Lucia. He leered at his friends, who were now watching with amused interest. "Come on, lads! Let's see what all the fuss is about! I'm a sharing man!"
This was it. The point of no return. Joshey, gasping, pushed himself off the wall. He began to gather Aero mana, his hands moving to create the Void, to blast these drunken fools away from her. But his concentration was fractured, his stance compromised from the shove. He was a half-second too slow.
Borin reached out a grimy, calloused hand, his intent clear—to grab the hem of Lucia's skirt and lift it. He never made contact.
The world seemed to slow down. Lucia, who had been a statue, became a blur of motion. There was no flash of steel, for her sword was back in the inn room. There was only her hand. Her fingers, tipped with nails she kept filed to a subconscious, deadly sharpness, straightened into a blade. It was a technique born not of formal training, but of a child's necessity in a clan of swords—the Bladeless Sword. When no metal was allowed, you made your own.
Her arm moved with the fluid, precise arc of a master's strike. It was not a wild slash. It was a cut. A perfect, geometrically ideal cut. There was no loud sound. Just a soft, wet shhh-thump.
Borin's hand froze inches from her clothing. His leer of anticipation didn't have time to change. His head was no longer attached to his shoulders. It simply… departed. It described a slow, tumbling arc through the air, a look of profound confusion now etched on its features, before landing with a dull, final sound on the stone floor. His body remained standing for a heartbeart, a grotesque fountain, before it too collapsed.
The silence that followed was more profound than any the cellar had ever known. The laughter from the guardroom died instantly. The clatter of dice ceased. The only sound was the drip, drip, drip of blood pooling on the stone.
The other drunks, Borin's friends, stared. The alcohol that had clouded their senses seemed to evaporate in the face of the impossible, brutal reality before them. The hulking brute with the broken nose blinked, his jaw slack. The man behind him took a stumbling step back. The four gamblers in the guardroom were on their feet now, weapons forgotten, their faces pale in the lamplight. The spell broke. The brute's face contorted from shock to rage. "You bitch! You killed Borin!"
All seven men—the three drunks and the four guards—were now a single, enraged entity. Their focus, their unified, murderous intent, was no longer on the woman who had just decapitated a man with her bare hand. It was on the man who had been with her. The one who had tried to talk. The easier target.
They turned as one, their eyes locking on Joshey, who was still leaning against the wall, his Aero mana half-formed and sputtering in his shock. He was now the only thing standing between them and the living weapon in the corridor. The plan was ash. Stealth was a forgotten dream. It was time to fight.
The silence after Borin's head hit the floor was a physical presence, thick and choking. For a moment, the only movement was the slow, grim spread of his blood across the damp stone. Then, the spell shattered.
A raw, animalistic roar erupted from the hulking brute. "You bitch! You killed Borin!" The cry was less a statement of grief and more a tribal call to violence. The other two drunks and the four guards from the room, their drunken stupor burned away by the shock of sudden death, surged forward as a single, enraged mob. Their weapons were forgotten in their rush; this was about overwhelming force, about tearing the interlopers apart with bare hands.
Their collective fury, however, had a focal point. The woman who had just performed an act of impossible violence was a specter, a force of nature they instinctively shied away from. Their rage, fueled by fear, latched onto the easier target: Joshey, the man still leaning against the wall, who looked stunned and, to their eyes, vulnerable.
Seven sets of eyes, bloodshot and wild, locked onto him. Joshey's own fear was a cold spike in his gut. His mind, already calculating, screamed for the most decisive solution. He began to gather Aero mana, the air around his hands distorting as he prepared to unleash the Void. It would be messy, brutal, and would likely crush them all against the walls, but it would end the threat instantly.
A hand landed on his shoulder. It wasn't a gentle touch; it was a firm, grounding pressure. Lucia.
"That might attract more of them," she said, her voice a low, calm monotone that cut through the roaring in his ears. "A noise like that….. will bring every guard in this cellar down on our heads."
She was right. The Void was a sledgehammer. In this confined space, the concussive whump of collapsing air would be a dinner bell for every thug Viggo employed. They'd be surrounded in minutes.
His mind raced to the next option. Pyro mana. A controlled blast of fire. But fire in a stone cellar was less about burning and more about roasting. It would consume the oxygen, fill the space with suffocating smoke, and cook everyone inside, including the prisoners, including Kaelen. It was a guarantee of killing, a path he was desperately trying to avoid.
"I… I can switch to fire, but…" he stammered, the words tasting like ash. "I'll kill them. I can't control it well enough not to."
He looked at her, his eyes wide with a frantic helplessness. He was a strategist, an engineer, not a precision combatant. His tools were either too loud or too lethal.
Lucia's gaze was steady, her grey eyes holding his. The fury that had animated her seconds before was gone, replaced by an unnerving, professional calm. "Do not worry," she said. "I will handle it."
The offer should have been a relief. But the memory of Borin's headless corpse was seared into his mind. "Handle it?" he hissed, his voice tight. "Lucia, no. That's what I'm trying to avoid! I don't want a slaughterhouse!"
There was no time for a long debate. The seven men were advancing, their initial shock hardening into a wall of murderous intent. They were seconds away from reaching him.
"Then what is your solution?" Lucia asked, her tone not challenging, but genuinely curious. "They will not surrender. They will not flee. They will kill you, and then they will try to kill me. What is the alternative to death?"
Joshey's mind blanked. She was right again. In the brutal calculus of this place, there was no third option. You were predator or prey. But the thought of seven more bodies, seven more lives ended on his conscience, even by her hand, was a weight he couldn't bear. It was the Lagos alleyway all over again, a choice between his morality and his survival.
"Please," he begged, the word torn from him. "Just… don't kill them. Knock them out. Disable them. Anything. Please, Lucia."
He was asking the impossible. He was asking a master swordswoman, trained from birth to deliver fatal blows, to suddenly fight with one hand tied behind her back. That was asking for too much
Lucia studied his face. She saw the genuine anguish, the conflict between his ruthless survival instincts and the man who hated unnecessary bloodshed. It was a paradox she didn't fully understand, but in that moment, she recognized its truth.
She gave a single, sharp nod. "I promise. I will not kill them."
It was all he had. A promise from a living weapon. He had to trust her. There was no other choice. He met her eyes and gave a nod of his own. "Do it." The moment the words left his lips, Lucia moved.
It was not the explosive, vengeful blur that had ended Borin. This was different. This was efficiency refined to an art form. She became a ghost, a series of afterimages that flowed through the cramped space of the corridor.
The seven men, their brains addled by fear and residual alcohol, saw her coming. But their perception was warped. They didn't see a young woman. They saw Death itself. The grim reaper their drunken nightmares had always promised. Her calm was more terrifying than any battle cry. Her speed was unnatural, a violation of physics from Joshey home world.
She didn't engage the first man; she simply appeared beside him. Her hand, fingers rigid and precise, chopped down on the side of his neck with the force of a falling timber. There was a dull thock. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he dropped like a sack of stones, unconscious before he hit the ground.
The brute swung a wild, haymaking punch at where she had been. She was no longer there. She was behind the second drunk, a similar precise strike to the carotid artery. Another thock. Another body collapsing.
The guards, finally remembering their weapons, fumbled for knives and short clubs. It was like children trying to swat a hornet. Lucia weaved between them, her movements a liquid dance of evasion and pinpoint strikes. A jab to the solar plexus here, driving the air from a man's lungs and leaving him gagging on the floor. A sharp, upward palm strike to another's chin, snapping his head back and shutting off his consciousness.
She was a sculptor, and unconsciousness was her medium. Every movement was economical, every strike calculated to deliver the exact amount of force required to disable the nervous system without causing permanent damage or death. It was, in its own way, far more difficult and demonstrated a level of control far beyond simple killing.
Joshey watched, his own half-formed mana dissipating, his mouth slightly agape. He had seen her kill with terrifying finality. But this… this was something else entirely. This was a level of martial mastery he couldn't have conceived of. She was systematically dismantling seven armed men with her bare hands, and she was doing it without spilling a single additional drop of blood.
In less than ten seconds, it was over.
The corridor, which had been a chaotic press of bodies, was now a still life of prostrate forms. Seven men lay in various poses of stunned slumber, their chests rising and falling steadily. The only sound was Lucia's quiet, even breathing. She stood amidst the carnage she had not created, her hands resting at her sides, not a hair out of place.
She turned her head and looked at Joshey, her expression unreadable.
"I promised," she said simply.
Joshey could only stare, a wave of dizzying relief and awe washing over him. She had agreed. And she had delivered. In the heart of this den of monsters, she had shown a restraint that felt more powerful than any of her lethal skills. He had trusted her with an impossible task, and she had proven herself worthy of that trust. The path to Kaelen was now clear.
The word hung in the damp, bloody air, a single, blunt syllable that contained a universe of stunned realization.
"Damn."
It wasn't a curse. It was a surrender. A surrender to the sheer, impossible reality of what he had just witnessed. Lucia hadn't just fought; she had performed a brutal, precise ballet. Seven men, armed and enraged, reduced to a pile of sleeping giants in the space of ten heartbeats. And she had done it without a weapon, without a shout, without even seeming to breathe hard. The power wasn't in flashy mana or elemental fury. It was in her bones, in the very fiber of her being, a terrifying grace that spoke of a lifetime dedicated to the art of dismantling human bodies. In that moment, Joshey, who had seen Sylvaine warp reality itself, thought that Lucia's potential, this raw, physical mastery, might one day rival it. The thought was dizzying, and he had no real scale for either of them.
Lucia, seemingly untouched by the storm she had just quelled, wiped her hands once, briskly, on her trousers. "Let's move," she said, her voice as calm as if she'd just finished washing dishes.
The spell broken, Joshey nodded, his own limbs feeling clumsy and uncoordinated in comparison. He led the way, stepping carefully over the unconscious forms of the guards. Each one was a testament to her control—alive, breathing, but utterly removed from the world. The silence felt heavier now, charged with what had almost happened and what had, miraculously, been avoided.
His heart, a frantic bird trapped in the cage of his ribs, beat harder as they approached the cell. This was it. The culmination of their desperate journey. The reason for the forest ambush, the vile negotiation on the stairs, the silent, terrifying walk through this city of shadows. He could still feel it—that resilient spark of life, that contained fire that was Kaelen. It was close. So close.
He reached the heavy, iron-banded door and pressed his face to the cold bars of the small window, his breath fogging the metal.
The cell was empty.
Not just unoccupied. It was… void. A perfect, sterile cube of nothing. The stone floor was swept clean, not a stray piece of straw or a drop of moisture. The pallet in the corner was bare, the rough blanket folded with an almost military neatness. There was no smell. No lingering scent of sweat, or fear, or despair. It was a stage after the play had ended, all the actors and props gone, waiting for the next performance. It was a room that had been prepared, not used.
From behind him, he heard a small, broken sound. It was the air leaving Lucia's lungs in a rush, a quiet, wounded thing that was more devastating than any scream. He turned.
She was staring into the void of the cell, her face a mask of crumbling stone. All the fierce determination, the lethal control, the stubborn hope that had carried her across who-knew-how-many miles, simply evaporated. Her shoulders, usually set with the readiness of a drawn bow, slumped. The hand that had just delivered seven precise, non-lethal strikes now rose, trembling, to grip the cold iron of the door. Her knuckles were bloodless. She looked, for the first time since he'd met her, like a lost girl. The despair from the main chamber, which she had held at bay, now washed over her, a black, suffocating tide.
But as her world fractured, Joshey's mind, the part that was always a strategist, the part that had built a business from nothing and negotiated with a Guild Master, snapped into a different kind of focus. The empty cell wasn't an end. It was a clue. A single, glaring anomaly in a narrative that was suddenly full of holes.
Wait.
He held up a hand, not looking at her, his eyes fixed on the sterile interior. "Lucia, wait."
His voice was low, but it had a sharp, analytical edge that cut through her gathering despair. She didn't respond, but her trembling stilled, her entire being focusing on him with a desperate, fragile intensity.
His mind became a storm of connections, cross-referencing every detail, every feeling, from the moment they'd entered the Granary.
First, the intel. The laborers at the well. They'd been so specific. Old salt cellar. Cypress Lane. New batch. And his own mana-sense had screamed that Kaelen was here, in this very spot. But this cell… it was a lie. It was a prop. If Kaelen had been held here, even for an hour, there would be a trace. A scuff mark, a lingering emotional residue, a scent. There was nothing. It was as clean as a tomb that had never been opened. The signature he felt… it wasn't coming from inside this cell. It was coming from beyond it.
Second, the path. He replayed their infiltration. The silent, windowless exterior. The two guards at the front, easily avoided. The walk through the corridors. They had encountered no one. No random patrols turning a corner. No secondary checkpoints. No unexpected sounds. In a place housing "valuable assets," the security was a joke. It had been… convenient. Too convenient. It felt less like they had skillfully infiltrated a fortress and more like someone had deliberately left a door unlocked and turned off the alarm. The only people they'd encountered were a room of drunk, off-duty guards and Borin's party, a chaotic variable that had nearly blown everything up. It was as if their path had been cleared.
Third, the feeling. The oppressive misery of the main holding area was a physical weight. The despair was palpable. But back here, in this secluded wing, the air was different. Still, but not heavy with suffering. It was… neutral.
The pieces clicked into place with an almost audible snap. The flawless path. The pristine, empty cell placed exactly where his senses told him his target would be. It was a set-up. A beautifully laid trap, not to capture them, but to… what? To test them? To lead them?
His eyes narrowed, scanning the corridor beyond the cell. His mana-sense, still active, reached out, tracing the faint, fading "trail" of the guards who had followed Borin. Their auras, muddied by alcohol and fear, were like smudges on the air. He followed that trail with his eyes, not to where the men had fallen, but to where they had come from. It led down a short, dark, offshoot corridor he had dismissed as a storage closet.
"Follow me," he said, his voice firm now, all uncertainty gone.
"Joshey, what—?" Lucia's voice was raw, confusion and a flicker of renewed hope warring with her despair.
"Just trust me," he said, already moving towards the dark opening. "I think I know what's happening."
He led her down the short, unassuming corridor. It ended not in a closet, but in a single, unmarked door. It was made of the same heavy wood as the others, but it felt different. It felt… intentional.
He stopped before it, turning to face her. Her face was a battlefield of emotions—hope so fragile it was painful to look at, fear, and a deep, simmering confusion.
"Lucia," he said, his voice low and steady, trying to project a calm he only partially felt. "I need you to be calm. Whatever is behind this door… your brother might be there."
Her eyes widened. "What? How? The cell—"
"The cell was a decoy," he interrupted gently. "It was too clean. Our path here was too easy. Someone knew we were coming. Someone who knows how to hide a mana signature, and how to make one appear where it isn't. They led us right to that empty cell. But they got sloppy. They didn't account for Borin and his friends. The guards' trail led right here."
He saw the understanding dawn in her eyes, slow and wary. The despair receded, replaced by a sharp, focused alertness. The warrior was back.
Joshey took a deep breath, his own heart thundering. He reached out, gripped the cold iron handle of the door, and pushed.
It swung open silently, well-oiled.
The room beyond was not a cell. It was a small, but comfortably appointed chamber. A rug covered the stone floor. A proper bed with a real mattress stood against one wall. A desk held a half-eaten meal of bread, cheese, and a cup of wine. And sitting at that desk, calmly chewing a piece of cheese, was a young man.
He had Lucia's same sharp features and dark hair, though his was cut shorter. He looked up as the door opened, his eyes—a lighter grey than Lucia's, but just as intelligent—widening in surprise. There were no chains. No guards. He was simply… a guest.
Lucia stood frozen in the doorway, her hand flying to her mouth. The breath she took was a ragged, shuddering thing.
"Kaelen?" she whispered, the name a prayer.
The young man—Kaelen—swallowed his food and stood up, a wry, almost apologetic smile touching his lips.
"Hello, Lucia," he said. "Took you long enough."
"Hello, Lucia," he said. "Took you long enough