The explosion wasn't supposed to happen.

Keiser's heart lurched as the undercroft rattled, sending dust and sparks through the dim, oil-lit gloom. The plan had been to move quietly, to slip through before anyone noticed, but now parchment traps were igniting one after another, each flare painting the walls in flashes of red and gold.

"Move!" Keiser grabbed a fistful of Tyron's cloak and yanking him forward just as another runes flared to life behind them, erupting in a burst of smoke and fire. The boy stumbled but kept running, his breaths ragged and sharp, eyes wide with fear.

All around them, havoc spilled loose.

Iron bars screeched as cages split open, and from within surged the guttural snarls of young beasts long starved and maddened. The undercroft was now a frenzy of claws and teeth, shadows writhing with things too wild to name. Just one misstep and all the careful planning unraveled.

Keiser risked a glance over his shoulder, his cloak snapping as he twisted. Something glinted at the edge of his vision, a sliver of metal arcing through the air. His hand shot out, fingers closing tight around the new but now familiar weight.

'Anabasis.' His dagger.

He'd thrown it only moments ago, and its return to his palm told him he hadn't missed. The sound that followed confirmed it, a sharp collapse of wood and steel, then a crash of debris. Behind them, amidst the snarls and screeches, came the harsh curses. Genevra's mercenaries now chasing them.

The beasts howled, some scattering, some lunging blindly. Their roars mingled with the furious shouts of the men, the whole undercroft shaking with violence.

Keiser gritted his teeth, forcing his legs to carry both himself and Tyron faster down the narrowing corridor. His dagger pulsed faintly in his grip, warm with the echo of Muzio's mana.

Everything had gone to shit in less than a breath.

So how had it come to this?

Keiser could trace it back to that noon, when he'd gone over every detail of the plan for the third time, making certain no step had been overlooked. The morning incident had already been abated, diverted from spiraling into disaster, but that didn't mean the rest of the day would follow his expectations. There was still one variable, one unknown thread, that gnawed at him. He couldn't predict where it would lead.

So he prepared.

The dagger, rested at his hip, hidden beneath the folds of his cloak. Unlike before, it now had a proper sheath, secured tightly. He'd tested its runes again and again until he could trust them with his life. Just that morning, he'd thrown it at an apple across the room, watching it slice through with clean precision before curving back through the air and landing perfectly in his palm, apple still skewered on its tip.

That much gave him some comfort.

But it wasn't only his weapon he had to think about. He'd made it absolutely clear to Lenko that he needed to stay by the princess's side, no matter what. The boy, however, was stubborn to the bone. Lenko had wanted to join him instead, insisting he could be more useful at Keiser's side than playing the watchful vassal.

It had taken a long stretch of back-and-forth before Keiser finally wore him down, though not without paying for it. Lenko's sharp green eyes had fixed on him the entire time, full of pointed looks and unspoken words. Keiser could almost hear the boy's thoughts...

'Don't think I've forgotten what happened in the dungeon. Don't think I'll let you dodge it forever.'

And yet, for now, they had to set those unresolved tensions aside. There were more pressing matters than unfinished arguments.

Almost just minutes before the undercroft turned into a furnace, before ceilings broke and cages screamed open, Keiser had already pulled Tyron down beside a stack of crates and looped an arm over the boy's shoulders. He pressed them both flat into the shadowed gap, cloak pulled low so only the vaguest shapes of their faces showed.

Tyron went rigid at once, every muscle folding tight as wire. The sound from above was a living thing... the rhythmic stamp of feet on stairs, the polite clink of glass, and muffled applause, noisy proof that the auction upstairs still ticked like a clock, ignorant of the disaster about to unwind below. Mr. Genevra's voice rose and fell in that theatrical bark, ordering servants, cajoling bidders, counting coin. The sound should have meant safety, here it only meant time was running out.

Keiser eased forward and peered around the crate. The sight was banal and cruelly ordinary, two sweating porters wrestling with a heavy wooden box, the auction staff moving crates up the ramp in a steady procession. A man jerked as the weight shifted, and another stepped in quickly to shoulder the burden.

"...this one?" one of the porters grunted, tugging at a crate lid. He staggered, the wood slipping in his hands. The other man cursed softly and reached to steady it. "Careful! Break it and you'll pay more than your life can afford."

The instant Tyron let out a strangled sound, half whimper, half gasp, Keiser's palm clamped down over the boy's mouth, pressing him back into the shadows of the crate. His own breath stilled, shoulders coiled tight.

The two porters froze. Their boots scuffed against stone as they turned, heads snapping toward the darkness where Keiser and Tyron crouched.

"…what was that?" one muttered, squinting into the dark.

The other snorted, already moving toward the stairwell. "What else? Probably some beast' spawn. Nobles love treating them like pets, parading 'em around till the damn things grow too big to leash. Then they call mercenaries to clean up the mess."

Their laughter was low, coarse, fading as they hauled the crates up the stair, the scrape of wood and rope groaning with every step until the sound melted into the auction hall above. Keiser noted, sharp and precise, where the footfalls were coming from, how many voices carried down the stairwell.

He matched that rhythm to his own breathing, to the hum under his skin. The runes on his dagger, the feel of the sigils under his bandages, the cold edge of the curse at his wrist, every small thing he'd prepared for clicked into place.

When he was sure they were alone once again, only then did Keiser ease his hand away. Tyron's wide eyes gleamed in the light, his lips parted as if to form a question but no voice came. His breathing was shallow, too quick. Keiser met the boy's gaze, seeing the unspoken horror blooming there, the sudden realization.

These beasts, the ones caged and stacked like merchandise all around them, weren't fully grown beast. If adult Sheol creatures had been brought into the capital, not even these runes on steel bars could hold them.

"Don't pity them."

Keiser's voice was low, cutting through the stale air of the undercroft. His sharp gaze snapped to Tyron, who immediately flinched and looked away. But Keiser had already seen it, the boy's lingering glance at one of the draped cages, his shoulders stiff, his breathing uneven.

Beneath the thick layers of cloth, something shifted. The faint flutter-flutter of wings from inside, a sound too soft for the auctioneers above to notice, but sharp enough for someone like Tyron, someone who carried a beast's blood in his veins, to feel the boy's half-beast nature stirring like a tug on his being. Reaching instinctively toward the thing hidden inside him.

"Listen to me," Keiser said, his voice hard, unforgiving. "Whatever you're feeling, crush it. These aren't sacred beasts. They're not the same ones you've heard about, the ones who could speak and match wits. These things?" He jabbed a finger toward the shrouded cage. "They're nothing but hunger wrapped in flesh. Instinct and malice. No thought. No mercy."

Tyron's lips parted, as if he wanted to argue, but the weight of Keiser's stare silenced him.

"You try to reason with it, you don't tame it," Keiser continued, leaning closer. "You offer yourself up. You're not talking to it, you're feeding it. Remember that."

The boy swallowed hard, his small hands clenching at his sides, and Keiser could see the struggle written plain across his face... fear, pity, and something deeper. A dangerous longing.

Keiser noticed the boy nod, though the motion was stiff, his fist tightening against his chest as though trying to steady something inside himself. Keiser's eyes flicked to the gesture and lingered for a fraction too long. That hand, clenched over where the vial should have been.

The vial that was no longer his, bargained away to the elf in exchange for a narrow escape from the knights. The reminder stirred an irritation he quickly buried. He tore his gaze away. The boy's odd habits, his attachments, not his concern. What mattered was the task at hand.

For now, they needed to find the heart. Tyron's mother's heart.

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