The fall saved them, but it scattered them.
They crashed through layers of maintenance rigging and ductwork, landing hard in the sprawling, labyrinthine slums of the lower Glazier's Ring. The impact separated them, losing them in the smog and the panic of the rioting city.
The Cleaners recovered instantly. They didn't regroup; they fanned out. The city turned into a hunting ground.
The broadcast had done its work—the streets were chaos. Mobs of confused Vanguards and angry civilians were clashing with Guild security. But beneath the noise of the riot, a silent, deadly game of cat and mouse was unfolding.
Each member of Squad Aurora was alone. Cut off from support. Hunted by an assassin designed to kill Signifers.
Roui stumbled into the ruins of an old theater in the Ningen Quarter, his armor cracked, his mana dangerously low. He could feel the Tenebrae presence of a Cleaner stalking him from the rafters.
Persya dragged himself into a derelict mana-foundry, his piston-arm jammed and useless. He could hear the scrape of a shadow-blade against iron behind him.
Aurora, Alyia, and Isla, having escaped the vents, were pinned down in a market alleyway, shielded only by the confusion of the crowd, but the shadows were lengthening around them.
They had nowhere left to run. The safehouse was compromised. The only way out was through.
Persya hit the floor of the derelict foundry with the grace of a dropped anvil.
The impact shattered a crate of rusted cog-wheels, sending shrapnel skittering across the iron grating. He rolled, instinctively trying to bring his shield-arm up, but the brass piston-brace let out a torture-filled screech. The mechanism was jammed, the Sera-Vine sutures torn by the fall. His left arm—the arm that had blocked a saw for Aurora—was dead weight, a useless slab of meat and brass dragging at his shoulder.
He wheezed, tasting copper and dust. The air in the foundry was stagnant, smelling of old ozone and cold iron. Shadows stretched long and unnatural between the silent, towering crucibles.
Crunch.
A sound behind him. Not a footstep—too quiet for that. It was the sound of Tenebrae displacing air.
Persya didn't turn; he dropped.
A black blade, curved like a Skiapardos claw, sheared through the space where his neck had been a microsecond before. It sparked against his Kayaçelik pauldron, slicing through the outer plating like it was parchment.
Persya kicked out, driving his heavy boot into the attacker's midsection. It felt like kicking a bag of wet sand. The Cleaner didn't grunt. The assassin simply dissolved into smoke, absorbing the kinetic force, and reformed three meters away in the darkness.
"Subject: Durable," the Cleaner's hollow voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "adjusting torque."
Persya hauled himself up, leaning his back against a massive, rusted smelting vat. His internal furnace was sputtering, the orange glow in his veins dim and erratic. He had no mana for a Flash-Augmentation. He had one good arm and a sword he couldn't lift properly.
"Statistically," Persya muttered, spitting a glob of blood onto the grate, "this is where I die."
The Cleaner rushed him.
This wasn't a duel; it was an erosion. The assassin moved in a blur of shadow-steps, striking from the left, the right, above. Persya became a turtle, tucking his chin and using his jammed piston-arm as a buckler. The brass plating rang like a bell under the barrage of strikes—clang, clang, clang—denting, tearing, sparking.
Persya roared, swinging his Kayaçelik sword in a desperate, one-handed haymaker. The Cleaner ducked under the blade with contemptuous ease and drove a knee into Persya's gut.
Air left Persya's lungs. He staggered back, slamming into a control console. The Cleaner raised their blade for the execution stroke, aiming for the gap in the gorget.
Persya's hand found the cold iron of the console. He didn't try to hit the assassin. He poured his remaining mana into the machine.
"Recomposere!"
He didn't fix it; he unzipped it. He targeted the molecular bonds of the high-tension bolts anchoring the heavy overhead gantry.
SNAP.
The bolts liquefied. The massive iron walkway above them groaned and swung down like a pendulum.
The Cleaner looked up—a fatal microsecond of distraction. The gantry slammed into the assassin, not crushing them, but sweeping them aside with the force of a train. The Cleaner flew across the room, crashing into a stack of empty fuel drums.
Persya didn't wait to see if they got up. He ran.
He scrambled deeper into the foundry, his boots ringing on the metal walkways. He needed a weapon. A real weapon. His eyes scanned the gloom, analyzing the composition of the room. Iron. Rust. Carbon. Trace amounts of volatile alchemical residue.
He reached the central chamber. Suspended from the ceiling by massive chains was a "Crucible of the Deep"—a Yeralti-designed smelting pot the size of a house, filled with tons of solidified, semi-processed slag.
The Cleaner was back.
They dropped from the rafters, landing silently in front of Persya, blocking the exit. The assassin's armor was dented, leaking a black, smoky ichor, but they moved without pain.
"Variable: Environment," the Cleaner stated, raising dual blades. "Irrelevant. Termination imminent."
"You think you're a ghost?" Persya growled, backing up until his heels hit the base of the crucible. He grabbed a handful of iron filings from a workbench—the raw material for his Shrapnel Blast. "Let's see how you handle mass."
The Cleaner blurred forward.
Persya threw the filings. But he didn't just throw them; he fused them mid-air into a cloud of jagged caltrops.
The assassin shadow-stepped through the cloud. Mistake.
Tenebrae allowed them to bypass solid objects, but Persya wasn't just throwing metal; he was actively manipulating the lattice. As the Cleaner phased, Persya clenched his fist.
"Solidify."
The iron filings embedded in the shadow-form didn't pass through; they bonded to the mana-structure of the spell.
The Cleaner materialized mid-step with a shriek of static. Hundreds of iron shards were now fused inside their armor and flesh. They stumbled, their rhythm broken.
It wasn't enough to kill, but it bought a second.
Persya turned and slammed his good hand onto the support pillar of the massive crucible. He didn't attack the iron; he attacked the rust. He accelerated the oxidation process a thousandfold in a heartbeat.
The thick iron support beam turned to red dust.
Gravity took the wheel.
The twenty-ton crucible swung free. It didn't fall straight down; it swung on its remaining chain, a wrecking ball of solid slag.
The Cleaner, hindered by the iron in their flesh, tried to dodge. They moved left.
Persya anticipated the vector. He wasn't aiming at the Cleaner. He aimed at the floor beneath the Cleaner.
He stomped his boot. Recomposere.
The metal grating beneath the assassin's feet liquefied into a grasping quicksand of steel for just a second, then snapped solid again. The Cleaner's foot was welded to the floor.
The assassin looked up. The crucible was swinging down.
"Calculation: Error," the Cleaner whispered.
CRUNCH.
The impact shook the foundations of the Ningen Quarter. The crucible obliterated the assassin, the walkway, and the floor supports, driving the Cleaner down into the sub-basement in a thunderous avalanche of metal and slag.
Persya stood alone in the settling dust, his chest heaving. His piston-arm finally fell off, the straps snapping, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. He stared at it, then at the hole in the floor.
"Warranty... definitely void," he wheezed, sliding down to sit against a pillar.
He checked his mana. Empty. He checked his blood. Still inside, mostly.
A faint static crackle echoed from his belt—the stolen Echo-Crystal Alyia had rewired.
"...Status... Aurora... Sector 4..."
Roui's voice. Faint, distorted, but alive.
Persya forced himself up. He couldn't rest. He picked up his sword, dragging it like a plow. He had to find the idiot noble before he got himself stabbed.
Roui crashed through the rotting velvet curtains of the stage, his boots skidding on the dust-choked floorboards of the old Ningen opera house. He didn't stop to admire the faded giltwork or the crumbling balconies; he fell to one knee, coughing up dust and bile.
His Null-Plate was a ruin. The diamond-hard Terrazation coating he had conjured in the Glass Garden was gone, shattered by the fall, leaving the steel beneath dented and rent. Blood, warm and alarming, trickled down his side where a shadow-blade had found a gap in his ribs.
He was alone. The silence of the theater was heavy, pressing in on him like a physical weight. But he knew he wasn't truly alone.
Scritch.
A sound from the catwalks above. The Cleaner was here.
Roui forced himself to stand, using his Aether-Glaive as a crutch. His legs trembled. He was running on fumes—his mana reserves were a shallow puddle, barely enough to light a candle, let alone fight an elite assassin.
"Well," Roui whispered to the empty auditorium, his voice cracking. "If this is the end, at least the venue is appropriate."
He thought of Aurora. Not the Warlord with the blue-flame axe, but the woman who had leaned her forehead against his in the sewer tunnel, her eyes dim and soft. You are the blade, Aurora. I'm just the setting. He had meant it. He had spent his life in the gilded cages of New Earth, surrounded by people who were perfect, polished, and hollow. Aurora was jagged, messy, and brilliantly alive. She was the only thing in this world that felt real.
If I die here, Roui thought, gripping his glaive until his knuckles turned white, the blade breaks. She needs me. She needs her setting.
A shadow detached itself from the high rigging. The Cleaner dropped, landing soundlessly center stage, thirty feet away. The assassin raised their curved blades, the Tenebrae smoke swirling around them like a shroud.
"Subject: Identified," the Cleaner droned. "Stamina: Critical. Mana: Depleted. Execution protocol engaged."
Roui straightened. He wiped the blood from his lip with a torn silk sleeve. He didn't take a defensive stance. He opened his arms, exposing his chest.
"Execution?" Roui scoffed, channeling the last dregs of his Tenebrae affinity into the shadows pooling around his feet. "My dear, boring friend. This is a performance."
He stomped his foot.
The shadows on the stage erupted. They didn't attack the Cleaner; they coalesced into shapes.
To the left, a hulking, slate-grey silhouette rose—a phantom Persya, raising a shadow-hammer. To the right, a lithe, cloaked figure materialized—a phantom Alyia, leveling a shadow-wand. And in the center, towering over them all, a figure with a great axe made of darkness—Aurora.
It was a bluff. A parlor trick. Skia-Machia—shadow-boxing. These constructs had no mass, no damage. They were smoke and mirrors.
But the Cleaner paused. For a microsecond, the assassin's tactical logic faltered, processing four targets instead of one.
"Now!" Roui roared, though his "army" was silent.
He charged. He didn't run at the Cleaner; he ran at the "Aurora" shadow. He merged with it, his physical body hiding inside the visual noise of the illusion.
The Cleaner reacted, slashing through the "Persya" shadow. The blade passed through harmlessly.
Roui lunged out of the "Aurora" illusion, his glaive extending with a Shadow-Reach phantom blade. He thrust for the Cleaner's throat.
CLANG.
The Cleaner parried, the impact jarring Roui's teeth. The assassin was fast—faster than thought. A backhand strike caught Roui in the chest, sending him skidding backward across the stage.
Roui gasped, the wind knocked out of him. The Cleaner didn't pursue immediately; they were dissecting the illusion.
"Deception detected," the Cleaner stated, dispelling the remaining shadows with a wave of null-magic. "Subject relies on theatrics. Irrelevant."
"Theatrics," Roui wheezed, struggling to his feet, "are just politics with better lighting."
He was losing. The bluff had bought him seconds, nothing more. The Cleaner advanced, blades raised.
Roui backed up, his boots finding the brass marker for the trapdoor mechanism. He looked up at the rigging—the heavy sandbags, the rotted ropes holding the counterweights for the old scenery.
He needed to get the Cleaner to the mark.
"You know," Roui said, stepping back, feigning a limp he didn't need to fake. "She's going to kill you. Aurora. When she finds out you touched me... she's going to take you apart. She's very possessive."
The Cleaner lunged.
Roui barely deflected the strike with his glaive handle. The wood splintered. A second blade sliced his thigh. He screamed, falling to one knee.
The Cleaner loomed over him. "Subject: Aurora. Status: Next."
Rage, cold and sharp, flooded Roui's veins. Not her. Never her.
He didn't try to stand. He slammed his hand onto the stage floor.
" Terrazation! ".
He didn't target the assassin. He targeted the lock on the trapdoor beneath them. The mechanism, rusted shut for decades, shattered under the pulse of earth magic.
The floor dropped out.
Roui and the Cleaner fell into the sub-stage orchestra pit.
But Roui was ready. As he fell, he thrust his glaive into the wooden beams of the stage structure, anchoring himself. He dangled in the dark, his arms screaming.
The Cleaner, expecting solid ground, plummeted past him into the darkness of the basement.
THUD.
A wet impact below. But not fatal. Roui could hear the assassin moving, recovering instantly.
"Persistent," Roui grunted, hauling himself back up to the stage level. He crawled onto the boards, dragging his bleeding leg.
He looked up at the rigging. The Cleaner was climbing back up, scaling the support pillars with spider-like speed.
Roui grabbed the release lever for the main curtain counterweight—a massive block of iron suspended forty feet above the stage.
"Curtain call," Roui whispered.
He pulled. The lever snapped. It was rusted solid.
The Cleaner vaulted onto the stage, blades dripping. "Termination."
Roui looked at the lever. He looked at the Cleaner. He looked at his Aether-Glaive.
He stood up. He didn't raise his guard. He threw the glaive.
He didn't throw it at the Cleaner. He threw it like a javelin, straight up into the dark rafters.
The Cleaner paused, tracking the weapon's useless trajectory. "Error."
The glaive struck the frayed rope holding the counterweight. The blade sliced through the hemp.
SNAP.
The multi-ton iron block plummeted.
The Cleaner looked up.
CRUNCH.
The stage exploded. Wood shattered, dust billowed, and the entire building groaned. The iron weight smashed through the floor, driving the assassin down, down into the earth, burying them under a mountain of debris and stage timber.
Roui was thrown back by the shockwave, landing hard against the proscenium arch.
Silence returned to the theater. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light filtering through the broken roof.
Roui lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling. He was alive. He checked his limbs. Still attached. He checked his heart. Still beating, though it hurt.
He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small, crushed flower he had picked in the Glass Garden—a Mete-cwide blossom. He had meant to give it to Aurora as a joke, to teach her the alphabet of romance. Now it was just a stain on his shirt.
"I really," Roui coughed, laughing painfully, "need a drink."
He used the wall to stand. He was broken, bleeding, and exhausted. But he had a date to keep.
"Aurora," he whispered. "I'm coming."
Alyia Embrahem lay prone on the gargoyle-studded precipice of the abandoned Clock Tower, the rain slicking her crystalline skin. The Keikō-Goke moss lining the stone ledge pulsed with a faint teal rhythm, mimicking her own racing heart.
She adjusted her glasses. The left lens was shattered, a spiderweb of cracks refracting the burning city below into a kaleidoscope of violence. But her right eye—the amber, hyper-acute eye of a Pengdhudhuk Wedhi—was clear. It zoomed in, filtering out the smoke and the mana-haze, dissecting the battlefield with the cold precision of a machine.
"Status check," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the wind.
Her internal chronometer was ticking. System integrity: 12%. Mana capacity: Critical. Ammunition: One charge.
Through the scope of her Heafon Wand, she saw him.
Persya.
The hybrid was a wreck. He was dragging his Kayaçelik sword through the mud of the foundry ruins like a plowshare. His piston-arm was gone. His slate-grey skin was pale, the internal furnace that usually powered him reduced to a dying ember.
And behind him, merging with the long shadows of the smokestacks, was a second Cleaner.
The assassin was unhurt, moving with fluid, Tenebrae-infused silence. They raised a serrated blade, poised to strike the "Wall" of the squad in the gap between his helmet and pauldron. Persya didn't see them. His sensors were offline.
Alyia's finger tightened on the trigger mechanism of her wand. The Kristal Biru lens hummed, a high-pitched whine of protest as it gathered the last dregs of her Ionization affinity.
Target lock: Established. Windage: Adjusted.
But then, a static hiss crackled in her ear. The stolen Echo-Crystal at her belt flared.
"...Au...rora... I'm... com...ing..."
Roui.
His signal was originating from the Ningen Quarter theater, three blocks east. The bio-telemetry she had jury-rigged to the crystal was screaming a warning. Heart rate: Falling. Mana: Depleted. Trauma: Severe.
He was fading. If she didn't intervene, he would bleed out in the dark.
Alyia froze. The equation appeared in her mind, bright and terrible.
Variable A (Persya): Immediate threat. Probability of survival without intervention: 0%.Variable B (Roui): Critical condition. Probability of survival without intervention: 8% over 300 seconds.Asset (Charge): 1.
She could fire a Lumen flare to guide Isla to Roui instantly, potentially saving him from shock. Or she could take the shot at the Cleaner, saving Persya from execution.
She couldn't do both.
"Calculators break," she whispered, echoing Roui's words from the tunnel. "When you introduce variables they can't predict."
She shifted her aim. She didn't aim at the sky. She aimed at the shadow.
"Variable: Friendship," she muttered. "Logic dictate: Save the active combatant to secure the objective."
She exhaled.
SNAP-CRACK.
The Heafon Wand discharged. A lance of concentrated blue lightning screamed across the rooftops. It didn't arc; it flew straight and true, a thunderbolt thrown by a desperate god.
It struck the Cleaner in the foundry square dead center in the chest plate. The assassin didn't even have time to scream. The Ionization energy overloaded their shadow-cloak, vaporizing the armor and the flesh beneath in a blinding flash of ozone and light.
Persya spun around, his sword raised, but there was nothing left to fight. He looked up, scanning the skyline until he saw the faint glint of her lens in the clock tower. He raised his sword in a silent salute.
Alyia slumped back against the gargoyle. The wand was dead. Her mana soul felt like a dried husk.
"Persya secured," she wheezed into the comms. "Roui... Roui is critical. Sector 4. I am... dry."
She slid down the tower ladder, her legs trembling. She hit the street level just as Aurora and Isla emerged from the smoke of the market, battered but alive.
"Alyia!" Aurora grabbed her, checking her for wounds. "Where are they?"
"Persya is mobile," Alyia reported, pointing west. "But Roui... his signal is fading. The theater."
"Isla, move!" Aurora roared.
They sprinted. They found Persya halfway to the theater. He joined them without a word, running on sheer stubbornness, his good hand gripping his sword, his bad side trailing useless vines.
They crashed into the theater.
The dust was still settling from the stage collapse. They found the hole in the floor. They found the crushed Cleaner.
And they found Roui.
He was slumped against the proscenium arch, his Null-Plate shattered, his silk coat soaked in red. He was clutching a crushed flower in his hand.
"Roui!" Isla slid across the floor, her hands already glowing with Hydro magic. She placed them over the wound in his side. "Stay with me. Don't you dare close your eyes."
Roui blinked, his vision unfocused. He looked at Aurora, who was kneeling beside him, her face a mask of terror she never showed the enemy.
"I..." Roui coughed, a bubble of blood forming on his lips. "I held the curtain... for you."
"You idiot," Aurora whispered, gripping his hand. "You absolute, dramatic idiot."
"Stable," Isla announced, her shoulders sagging with relief. "He's stable. But he can't walk. And we can't stay here."
Persya looked at the shattered roof of the theater. The sky was lightening. Dawn was coming. But it wasn't the sun.
It was the glow of the Animus Prime.
Through the hole in the roof, they could see the Spire of the Glass Garden. Varrick had reactivated the grid. The tower was pulsing with a sick, violet light, drawing mana from the entire city to fuel his ascension.
"He's starting the ritual," Alyia said, staring at the light. "He is going to drain the city to refill the Animus."
"We have one shot," Aurora said, standing up. She looked at her battered squad. Roui couldn't walk. Persya had one arm. Isla was exhausted. Alyia was empty.
"We finish this," Aurora said. "Tonight."