The immediate threat of erasure had passed, replaced by a silence that was somehow worse. The biodome had shifted. Varrick's retreat had triggered defensive shutters, turning the lush, open garden into a claustrophobic maze of shifting glass walls and hard-light barriers.
They were trapped in a dungeon of reflections.
Isla was on her knees beside Roui, her hands glowing with urgent Hydro magic as she flushed the burn of the mana-feedback from his system.
"You stupid, beautiful man," she hissed, tears mixing with the healing water. "You nearly petrified your own heart."
"But I didn't," Roui wheezed, his eyes fluttering open. He tried to smile, but his face was too stiff. "And look... no holes in anyone. I call that a win."
A few paces away, Alyia stood staring at the spot where the diamond wall had been. She was adjusting her cracked glasses, her hands trembling slightly.
"The calculations were absolute," she murmured, her voice devoid of its usual clinical detachment. "The shield density required to deflect a Void-Lance... it exceeded your mana capacity by 300%. You should be dead. The equation... it doesn't balance."
"Equations don't have friends, Alyia," Isla said softly, not looking up from Roui.
Alyia looked at them—Isla tending to Roui, Persya guarding the perimeter with his battered sword, Aurora watching the shifting glass walls with a predator's focus.
She holstered her wand. "Re-calculating," Alyia whispered. She walked over and sat down next to Isla, a rare breach of her own personal space protocols.
"Current probability of fatality for the upcoming ascent is 90%," Alyia stated, her voice quiet. "Varrick has home-field advantage. His Lumen-Constructs are active."
Isla looked at her. "So we leave?"
"No," Alyia said. She looked at Roui, then at Aurora. "I am staying. Because the variable of friendship breaks the equation. And because... I do not wish to be the only integer remaining."
Aurora turned back to them, the blue light of her axe reflecting in the myriad glass panels around them.
"Varrick turned this place into a maze to slow us down," she said, her voice hard. "He's buying time to recharge the Animus. We need to move fast, but if we run blindly, we'll be sliced to ribbons by light-traps."
She looked at the squad. Roui was getting to his feet, shaky but standing, his armor coated in a layer of diamond dust.
"We need to climb," Aurora said, pointing to the central spire visible through the glass ceiling. "Up through the Glazier's Ring. Past his constructs. Straight to the throat."
"No," Aurora said, her voice flat and hard. She lowered her axe, the blue Kristal Biru veins pulsing with a dangerous, rhythmic light. She looked at the shifting, reflective walls of Varrick's maze—a puzzle designed to waste their time, to drain their minds, to play by rules they hadn't agreed to. "We don't solve puzzles, Alyia. We aren't rats in a maze."
She pointed her axe at the nearest pane of reinforced Void-Glass. "Persya. Clear the board."
Persya stepped forward. His slate-grey skin was bruised, his piston-brace hissed with a leaking seal, but his eyes burned with an orange ferocity that matched the heat of his internal furnace. He didn't draw his sword. He raised his gauntleted fists.
"With pleasure," he grunted.
He didn't look for a latch or a weakness. He slammed both fists into the transparent wall.
Recomposere flared—not the subtle, surgical orange of his usual transmutations, but a jagged, violent eruption of mana. He didn't try to reshape the glass; he commanded its molecular bonds to divorce.
CRASH.
The wall didn't just break; it detonated. Thousands of shards exploded outward, turning the air into a glittering cloud of diamond dust. Before the shards could settle, Aurora was moving.
"Forward!" she roared, charging through the breach. "Straight line to the spire! If a wall is in your way, delete it!"
They moved like a siege engine. Persya was the battering ram, smashing through pane after pane, leaving a trail of destruction that looked less like a path and more like a scar. The delicate, shifting logic of Varrick's maze shattered under the weight of their refusal to play.
The Lumen-Constructs—hard-light golems shaped like faceless knights—poured out of the fractures. They were fast, silent, and burned with the intensity of lasers.
"Contact!" Roui yelled. A construct lunged from the reflection of a broken mirror, its blade of solid light aiming for Persya's exposed flank.
Roui intercepted it. He didn't parry; he body-checked it. His Null-Plate, now coated in a residual layer of the diamond-hard Terrazation armor he had unlocked against the Void-Lance, took the hit. The light-blade skittered harmlessly off his shoulder.
"You are nothing but a trick of the light!" Roui laughed, swinging his Aether-Glaive. The blade, infused with Tenebrae, cut through the construct's torso, severing its connection to the mana-grid. It dissolved into harmless photons.
Aurora was a whirlwind of blue fire. She didn't stop running. She Lumen-Stepped through the falling debris, appearing behind the golems to sever their heads before they could track her movements.
"Keep moving!" she commanded, kicking a shattered torso aside. "He's right ahead!"
They smashed through the final wall of the maze.
They emerged into the central atrium of the Glazier's Ring. The Spire loomed above them, a needle of glass piercing the sky. Varrick stood on the balcony, his Animus Prime armor flickering, his face twisted in a rictus of panic and fury.
"You barbarians!" Varrick shrieked, his amplified voice cracking. "You destroy everything you touch! This creates order! This creates—"
"It creates corpses, Varrick!" Aurora shouted, stepping onto the plaza, her squad fanning out behind her. "And we're here to close the account."
Persya cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing like a gunshot. "No more walls, Scribe. Just you and us."
But Varrick didn't attack. He looked up.
High above the glass dome, the sky went black. Not the darkness of night, but the unnatural, suffocating black of Tenebrae.
The glass of the dome didn't shatter; it melted. Black, oily smoke poured through the roof, pooling on the floor of the atrium like liquid shadow.
Varrick's face went pale. He looked at the shadows, then at Aurora. For the first time, the arrogance vanished, replaced by the terror of a man who realizes his leash has been cut.
"No," Varrick whispered, backing away. "Not them. Not here. I—I am still useful!"
From the shadows, figures emerged.
They dropped from the ceiling, landing silently on the glass floor. There were five of them. They wore sleek, featureless armor that seemed to drink the light. They carried no banners, no badges. They held curved, serrated blades that smoked with shadow-magic.
The Cleaners.
"Target identified: Asset Varrick. Status: Compromised," the lead figure said. Its voice was hollow, metallic, devoid of humanity. "Target identified: Squad Aurora. Status: Unauthorized Variables."
"Directive: Sterilize."
The Conclave had tired of Varrick's failures. They hadn't sent reinforcements. They had sent the executioners.
"Run!" Varrick screamed, scrambling back toward the spire's lift. "They kill everything! They leave nothing!"
The lead Cleaner raised a hand. A wave of Tenebrae erupted, not a bolt, but a shockwave of absolute darkness that extinguished every light in the atrium—including the Glow-Quartz on Alyia's wand and the Lumen in Aurora's axe.
The squad was plunged into blindness.
"Scatter!" Aurora's voice cut through the dark, desperate and command-sharp. "They hunt by mana-clusters! If we stay together, we're a beacon! Split up! Regroup at the Ningen Shrine!"
"Scatter!" Aurora's voice was a desperate command in the suffocating dark, but Roui didn't move. He felt the cold, hungry void of the Tenebrae washing over them, seeking the warmth of their souls. The Cleaners were hunting by mana-signature; if the squad ran together, they were a beacon. If they split without a distraction, the "squishier" members—Alyia, drained from the crawler interface, and Isla, exhausted from the aqueduct—would be cut down before they took three steps.
"No," Roui whispered, his voice hard. He reached out in the blindness, finding Persya's uninjured shoulder. "We don't scatter. We flare ."
"Suicide," Persya grunted, but he didn't pull away. He understood the math immediately. "We pull the aggro. They run."
"Exactly," Roui said. He slammed the butt of his Aether-Glaive against the glass floor. He didn't try to hide his mana; he screamed with it.
"Hey! You shadow-skulking cowards!" Roui roared, channeling Terrazation into his Null-Plate. The diamond-hard coating he had unlocked earlier flared again, not as a shield, but as a prism. He pumped every ounce of his noble pride into the spell, turning himself into a shining, geo-magical lighthouse in the center of the void. "Over here! Come and break your teeth on New Earth steel!"
Beside him, Persya unlocked the safety valve on his piston-brace completely. HISSS-CHUNK. He channeled Augmentation into his internal furnace until his slate-grey skin glowed a violent, burning orange. He was a walking ember, a beacon of heat and rage.
"Run!" Persya bellowed to the girls, slamming his fist into a nearby pillar, shattering the glass casing to create a deafening crash.
The Cleaners reacted instantly. Like sharks scenting blood, the five shadow-forms swiveled toward the massive spike in mana. They ignored the fleeing footsteps of Aurora, Alyia, and Isla, focusing entirely on the two tanks holding the center.
"Go!" Roui shouted over his shoulder, parrying a black blade that materialized out of the air. The impact jarred his bones, but his diamond-skin held.
Aurora hesitated for a fraction of a second, her heart tearing, but she saw Alyia dragging Isla toward the ventilation grates. She knew the play. She had to trust the Wall and the Face. She vanished into the gloom, guiding the others into the ducts.
Roui and Persya were alone.
"Well," Roui panted, back-to-back with the hybrid as five blades circled them in the dark. "We certainly have their attention. Do you have a plan for the 'surviving' part?"
"Hit them until they stop moving," Persya growled, his eyes burning in the dark.
They fought like demons. Roui was a whirlwind of stone and steel, his glaive spinning to create a defensive perimeter. Persya was a brutalist hammer, catching blades on his gauntlets and countering with earth-shattering punches. But the Cleaners were elite. They moved through the Tenebrae like ghosts, striking from angles that didn't exist, chipping away at Roui's armor and Persya's stamina.
"We can't win this!" Roui gasped as a blade sliced through his silk coat and grazed his ribs.
"We bought the time," Persya wheezed, his piston-arm smoking. "Now we leave."
Persya slammed his foot down. Recomposere surged. He didn't target the enemy; he targeted the floor.
CRACK.
The glass floor of the atrium, already weakened by their battle, shattered completely. Roui, Persya, and three of the Cleaners plummeted into the darkness of the sub-levels.