Keiser tugged his cloak loose, letting it fall down across his shoulders as he slipped soundlessly from the shaft he had pried open. His boots touched the floor with only the faintest tap, muted against the ragged stone and packed dirt beneath. He froze, listening, testing whether the sound had betrayed him, but the silence held.

The room stretched wide before him, swallowed in darkness except for the glow of oil lamps nailed to the corners. Their light was thin, heavy with smoke, throwing more shadow than clarity.

Rows upon rows of crates and iron-barred cages loomed like a forest of broken teeth, their shapes jagged and uneven, crowding the floor until it felt like the walls themselves were closing in.

He drew a breath through his nose.

The air was thick, not only with the reek of wood rot, oil, and rust, but something sharper, heavier, mana. It pressed against his skin in waves, seeping from every cage and crate. Even from where he stood, he could feel it... each container was not just storage but a cage, brimming with something bound.

His fingers twitched at his side. This was no mere undercroft. This was a menagerie of power, imprisoned and hidden beneath the capital's skin.

When Keiser was certain no alarm had been raised, no footsteps, no shifting shadows beyond the flicker of lamps, he turned back toward the shaft he had slipped through. With a low grunt, he reached up and offered a hand to Tyron.

The boy was still half-crawled inside the narrow passage, clinging to the edge like he wasn't sure he wanted to come out at all. His posture was stiff, his breath shallow. In the dim glow of the lamps, Tyron's sky-blue eyes looked strange, almost glowing, pupils reduced to pinpricks, quivering as though straining against the dark.

"Come on," Keiser muttered under his breath, flexing his fingers impatiently. "You'll jam yourself in there if you keep hesitating."

But Tyron didn't move. Instead, a strangled sound caught in his throat, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper. His trembling hand rose, not toward Keiser's, but past him, pointing with one shaking finger toward the shadows behind.

"Y-your highness…" Tyron's voice cracked, his lips barely forming the words. "I… I don't think we should be here."

Keiser stilled, the boy's tone sending a prickle down his spine. Slowly, he followed the line of Tyron's trembling finger, toward the black beyond the cages. The mana he had sensed earlier pulsed heavier now, almost as if something in the dark was listening.

Keiser only spared Tyron a sidelong glance before turning his head, letting his eyes finish adjusting to the gloom. The undercroft stretched wide before him, almost like a cave... suffocating, the air thick with oil smoke and the bitter tang of mana.

It was no ordinary storeroom, this was where the 'items' were kept.

The same items that would soon be paraded upstairs in Genevra's private estate, dressed in finery for the hidden auction the lords and their pet magisters whispered about.

And there they were, row upon row... cursed trinkets humming with malice, blessed relics stripped from shrines, smuggled goods from foreign lands, each locked in its own iron cage or rune-scrawled crate. But it wasn't only objects. Keiser's gaze swept further and landed on shadows that shifted with breath.

Beasts.

He knew them intimately. He had been the one forced to lead the brigade against them when they had slipped loose into the streets, beasts that did not die clean, whose corpses burned and poisoned the ground they touched. More than once, his men had been too late, arriving only after the beast had already left their mark carved into walls, streets… bodies.

Keiser reached further and grabbed Tyron's wrist, hauling him out of the narrow shaft he'd been half-stuck in. The boy stumbled as his boots hit the stone and dirt floor, his knees scraping against the rough surface as he tried to steady himself. His breath came in sharp, quick bursts, too loud for Keiser's liking.

"Quiet," Keiser murmured, glancing up toward the wooden beams and faint rumble above them. "They'll be starting soon."

The auction.

Upstairs, in the lavish halls of Mr. Genevra's estate, the sixth princess, Olga, and Lenko were already slipping into their roles. Their presence was the distraction. Down here, beneath all that wealth and opulence, was the real objective, and Keiser and Tyron were the only ones who could pull it off.

But Tyron looked like he might bolt at any moment. His hands shook as he brushed dirt from his tunic, his wide, sky-blue eyes darting from shadow to shadow as though every dark corner might spring to life.

"I–I don't like this place…" he whispered, his voice trembling. "This isn't like the plan before. There are beasts here… man-eating beasts…"

"You're not wrong." Keiser's voice was low, steady, almost too calm for the danger around them. "But that's why we're here, before those beasts are unleashed up there."

He turned to look at Tyron properly, studying the boy's tense stance and the way he hugged himself, stepping back whenever they passed another caged shape. Keiser couldn't really blame him.

It wasn't just fear. It was something deeper, instinct.

And of course it was. Tyron wasn't just a boy. Not entirely.

The only reason they were even risking this part of the mission was because of him. Because he was the only one who had ever seen the 'Dragon's Heart', the relic that he claimed his father had brought to the capital and was now trying to sell to the highest bidder.

Tyron had claimed it wasn't just a relic. It was his mother's heart, literally.

If that thing stayed here, if it was sold to people who had no idea what they were holding, the havoc it could wreak on the kingdom would make every beast look tame.

Keiser had never seen the Dragon's Heart himself, he'd been too busy cleaning up the messes it left behind... twisted carcasses on the cobblestones, shredded patrols, beasts from the deep Sheol spilling into the streets and tearing through neighborhoods before his brigade could burn them down.

Now, here those same horrors were again, caged and starved, reduced to grotesque trophies and exotic 'pets' for nobles who thought danger made them powerful.

If only they knew. Most of these beast didn't see humans as masters. They saw them as meat. And the way they shifted restlessly in their cages now, jaws flexing and eyes gleaming under the oil-light, told Keiser they were more than ready to feed.

Tyron flinched as one of the cages rattled nearby. His pupils had thinned into sharp slits, almost reptilian, and his breath came shallow and quick. The primal part of him was awake now, the part tied to the dragon blood that pulsed through him.

"Easy," Keiser said quietly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "They're behind bars. They're not going to touch you."

Tyron's lips pressed into a tight line. "They don't scare me, your highness…" he whispered, though his body betrayed him, trembling beneath Keiser's grip. "It's just---"

"It's just that you're not as far from them as you'd like to think," Keiser finished for him, his tone neither cruel nor gentle, simply matter-of-fact. Tyron said nothing, only stared ahead at the rows of cages, his eyes burning with something between fear and rage.

And Keiser knew then, the boy's unease wasn't just because of the beasts. It was because of what lay ahead.

"Come on," Keiser murmured after a moment, pulling his hood up and starting deeper into the maze of cages. "We don't have time to stop now. You're the only one who knows what the Dragon's Heart looks like. And I'm the only one who can make sure we leave this place alive."

Tyron swallowed hard and followed, his boots dragging against the cold stone. Above them, the muffled sound of laughter and clinking glasses drifted down through the floorboards, the auction was starting.

They had to move. Before anyone came down. Before the buyers finished bidding.

Before the monsters upstairs and the beast below all broke free.

They crept deeper into the undercroft, but Keiser's mind was somewhere else.

Back to the plan.

The one they decided on just hours ago.

The one that pitted their lives against fate.

***

"So… did we do it?"

Lenko's voice was a low murmur, thick with hesitation, as he shifted beside Keiser. The boy's hands gripped the edge of the stone window, knuckles pale.

Keiser didn't answer right away. He sat half-slouched on the arching ledge of the window, cloak drawn around him as if the shadows were another layer of armor.

From here, a perch Olga herself had recommended, he had a wide view of the temple grounds, the marketplace beyond, and the winding streets that threaded toward the square. A vantage point meant for him to watch over now also include something heavier... waiting.

The marketplace below was already alive. Merchants shouting over one another, colorful stalls pressed shoulder to shoulder, the sound of cart wheels grating against cobblestones, children darting underfoot with laughter sharp as birdcalls. From the surface, it looked safe. Normal. A day like any other.

But Keiser's gaze was narrow, sharp, cutting through the bustle as though searching for cracks in the glass.

"…Not yet," he murmured at last, tugging his hood lower until the rim of shadow covered his red eyes.

He knew how quickly normal shattered. He had lived it once already.

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