Calder immediately tensed. He had never been good at fighting. In fact, he had spent most of his life avoiding trouble entirely.
Whenever danger appeared, he relied on his tools and his quick thinking. Or more accurately, his cowardice.
With everything that had happened today, only one possibility came to mind about who might be standing outside his shop late at night.
The people chasing Aria.
"Do you think anyone knows about the slime?" Calder asked quietly.
"No," Daelan answered, then stopped. His expression shifted as a realization crept in. After a moment of silence, he said, "Maybe someone was still conscious after I knocked them out. They might have seen the slime and heard some of what I said to Aria."
Calder grit his teeth. "You should have been more careful. You could've just killed them."
Daelan looked at him with steady, deep eyes. "You know I prefer not to."
Calder let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. "I know… sorry."
He stood up and walked toward the trapdoor.
"I'll try to handle them," he said. "But I'm not confident. If you hear my signal, you come up immediately or I'm dead. Understand?"
"Hm." Daelan nodded.
Calder climbed through the trapdoor and closed it behind him, locking it from above.
Daelan exhaled slowly, then glanced at the slime, which remained perfectly still as if lost in its own mind, drifting deeper into its own strange identity crisis.
"You want these?" Daelan asked, offering his soup and bread.
"Yes," the slime replied without hesitation. Then it starts to eat.
—
Calder pressed his ear to the trapdoor for a moment, steadying his breath before lifting it, making sure that the people hadn't broken into his shop.
He climbed back into the dimly lit shop. Only a single lantern burned on the counter, casting long shadows across shelves filled with tools, spare parts, and odd trinkets.
He walked toward the front door with measured steps. He could already see the silhouettes through the fogged glass. There were three men, broad-shouldered, rough, armed, and impatient.
Calder forced his expression into something calm and mildly annoyed, the way any cautious shopkeeper might act when woken late at night.
Then he unlocked the door and cracked it open.
Three pairs of eyes immediately locked onto him.
"You're the owner of this shop?" one of them asked. His voice was gravelly, like he'd spent half his life shouting and the other half drinking.
"I am." Calder leaned casually against the doorframe. "Shop's closed. Come back in the morning."
The man shoved a boot against the door, preventing Calder from closing it.
"We're looking for someone," the second man said. He had a crooked nose and a scar running along his cheek. "A man in tattered clothes and a girl. They came this way."
Calder raised an eyebrow, expression unreadable. "Plenty of people walk through this street. I don't memorize every face that passes by. I've been in my workshop all night and asleep just a few seconds ago before you showed up."
The third man stepped closer, sniffing the air like a predator. "You sure? I heard someone saw the girl head this way."
Calder sighed dramatically. "If I had strangers breaking into my shop, I'd be the first to complain to the guards. Do I look like someone sheltering criminals?"
His tone was flat, annoyed, perfectly believable. He'd practiced this act for most of his life. He can act neutral, harmless, and irritated just enough to seem genuine.
The men hesitated. But suspicion still lingered.
"Move," the scarred man said. "We're checking inside."
Calder's jaw tightened. "This is private property."
"We don't care."
Three rough hands reached for him. He could fight back but he'd lose. So instead, he swallowed the knot in his throat and stepped aside.
"Fine," he said calmly. "But if you break anything, you pay."
Inside, however, his heart pounded so loud he was surprised they didn't hear it.
The men barged in, boots thudding against the wooden floor. They ransacked shelves, opened boxes, overturned baskets of small metal pieces. One even knocked over a carefully arranged assortment of gears and springs.
Calder kept his face grimaced in annoyance. But inside he was shaking. If they found the trapdoor he and those people inside were dead.
Minutes crawled by like hours.
Finally, the tall bald man stopped, frustrated. "Nothing."
The scarred man spat on the floor. "Tch. Waste of time."
They pushed past Calder again, stepping back out into the cold night.
"If you see 'em," the leader growled, "you better talk. Or we'll be back."
Calder forced a small smile. "Of course."
He closed the door after them and locked it immediately.
Only then did he let out a slow, trembling breath, knees nearly giving out beneath him.
He had survived this encounter.
—
Calder lowered himself through the trapdoor again and shut it quietly behind him. His breathing still came unevenly, but he forced himself to steady as best as he could before facing the others.
"You need to leave," he said. "Immediately. I can't shelter you here forever. If they come back with more men and search more places, I'm done."
Daelan let out a long exhale. The slime paused, sensing the tension in Calder's voice. It understood something had gone wrong.
"They searched everything?" Daelan asked.
"They tore half my shop apart," Calder said. "If they looked harder, they would've found the trapdoor. I can't risk that again."
The slime slowly lowered its body, flickering with unease.
Daelan rubbed his forehead. His gaze drifted toward the small bed in the corner.
Aria slept soundly, breathing softly, unaware of danger creeping closer again.
"She doesn't deserve this," he murmured.
Calder's expression softened. "No… she doesn't. She's just a kid caught in the wrong place with the wrong people."
"Alright," Daelan said at last. He sounded drained. "We'll go tomorrow morning. Before sunrise."
But the slime suddenly stiffened. Its entire body was still.
Calder noticed first and asked the slime. "What's wrong?"
"Something," the slime whispered. "Something strong is looking."
"What kind of something?" Daelan asked.
The slime's core pulsed. Its instincts shrieked like alarms.
"Predators," it said.
—