The white cage kept falling.
Not fast enough to crush them.
Just fast enough to make the air feel smaller.
Kael hated that.
Whitefall was not trying to kill them.
Not yet.
It wanted them alive.
Trapped.
Reduced.
Turned into something easier to handle.
Mira dropped to one knee and pressed her hand to the stone floor.
The court answered her at once.
A pale line flashed under her fingers.
Good.
The floor still remembered something older than Whitefall.
The soldiers above saw it too.
One of them shouted.
The arc-spear relics lit up.
Drax caught the first blast on the shield-frame.
The hit rang through the whole court. Perren flinched. The younger child buried into Vera's side. Mara swore and shoved both kids closer to the middle.
A second blast came toward Mira.
Ren cut it apart before it landed.
A thin line of pale current flashed through the air, and the attack broke into pieces against the wall.
Lira looked from Ren to the soldiers above and muttered, "That is deeply unfair to them."
Good.
The city needed unfair.
Mira pressed harder.
The pale line in the floor grew brighter.
"Three breaths," she said.
Above them, the officer shouted, "Seal the opening! Drop the lower net!"
Kael frowned.
Lower net.
Whitefall had planned for this.
Of course it had.
The city expected old routes to fail sometimes.
Expected people to try for hidden ways out.
It had answers waiting under answers.
The first white wall of the trap dropped lower.
Lira hit it with a burst of compressed air. The shining line bent sideways. Not broken. Just wrong enough to throw the box off.
Drax slammed his shield up into the warped section.
The whole thing cracked.
Good.
The officer above stepped back.
Also good.
Mira drove her hand deeper into the seam.
The service court split open.
The center stones broke in a long crooked line and dropped inward, showing a narrow passage below.
White steps.
Wet walls.
Darkness.
An older way down.
Of course it looked terrible.
Of course Whitefall had built a whole court over it.
Kael looked into the opening and felt the road below.
Old.
Cold.
Still alive.
The city had forgotten it.
Or pretended to.
"Now!" Mira said.
The line moved at once.
Children first.
Vera dropped into the opening with the younger child. Mara shoved Perren after her and jumped down next. Nyx went right after, already listening ahead.
The soldiers above recovered fast.
Too fast.
The officer pointed down.
A net of white light shot up from below the opening.
Kael saw it a heartbeat early.
A trap meant to catch anyone trying to escape downward.
He moved without thinking.
His hand hit the court edge.
The old route answered him just enough.
The rising net twisted.
Only a little.
Just enough.
Ren cut through one of its white lines before it locked into place. Nyx vanished below. Mara shouted that the lower turn was still open, which in Mara language meant terrible but usable.
Good enough.
Seris backed toward the opening.
Lira with her.
Another blast came from above. Drax caught one. The second burned across the stones beside Kael's boots.
Too close.
Perfect.
This was Whitefall's first real attempt to take them alive, and it needed to feel like one.
The officer above shouted again.
"Yield!"
Kael looked up through the falling light, the cracked trap, the dust, and all the city's careful control.
"No."
Drax shoved him toward the opening.
That was fair.
Kael dropped.
The old stair caught him hard.
Cold stone.
Wet wall.
No room.
Ren came after him.
Lira next, cursing Whitefall, city planning, and probably the concept of authority.
Seris dropped after them.
Drax came last, because of course he did, after buying the line one more second above.
Then the opening flashed white.
The court sealed over again.
Not fully.
Not cleanly.
But enough.
The line stood in darkness on narrow old steps inside the bones of Whitefall.
Vera was already below with the child.
Perren crouched beside Mara, pale but steady.
Nyx stood farther down, knife out, listening ahead.
Mira leaned against the wall, one hand still on the seam like she was making sure it stayed angry in the right direction.
Ren's current glowed faint and pale in the dark.
Lira looked like she wanted to throw the whole city into the sea.
Seris listened upward.
Drax reset the shield-frame against the stair.
Then the city groaned.
Not from damage.
From movement.
The vault roads again.
Closer now.
The older way down was taking them toward something Whitefall had tried to move before they could reach it.
Kael looked into the dark below and understood the truth at once.
This was not escape.
This was another layer of the city.
A deeper one.
Whitefall had tried to trap them above and failed. Now the line was moving through old roads the city itself still feared enough to hide.
Good.
That meant what waited below mattered.
Mira looked down into the dark.
Then she said, "They know we're under them now."
Of course they did.
Whitefall always learned.
Seris looked over the line once.
At the children.
At the stairs.
At the dark below.
Then she said, "Move."
Nobody argued.
Nobody hesitated.
And the line went deeper.