Keiser barely had a second to process the child's voice, those quiet, impossibly human words spoken in that small, weird tone, before a sharp call from behind ripped him back to reality.

"Your Highness---!"

Tyron's voice cracked, and Keiser snapped his head around just in time to see what the boy had seen first.

Two of the porters found them.

The first one froze mid-step, his lamp's light spilling across the aisle, illuminating the disarray of opened crates and the two intruders beside a massive covered cage. His mouth dropped open.

"Wh-what the hell?!"

The second one followed his gaze, the realization hitting him a split-second later. "Shit, shit, those ain't workers! I-INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS IN THE HOLD!"

The cry rang through the undercroft like a bell. In an instant, the sound of footsteps and shifting metal echoed above, the unmistakable rush of armed men scrambling.

Keiser's hand twitched toward his belt. His dagger. He could take them both down before they reached the stairs. Two bodies, two less alarms. It would buy them maybe thirty seconds, a minute if he was lucky,

But he never got the chance.

A whisper brushed the air between them. Small. Barely audible. The very word sank like a nail into everyone in just a few seconds as soon as it was out of her lips.

"…Release."

The girl, the dragon, had her hand still pressed over his burned one, her gaze hazy, unfocused, but her lips had moved.

"Wait, don't---" he tried to wrench his hand free, but it was too late.

The air split.

Mana tore through the undercroft in a violent wave, crashing out from the cage like a blast of air coming out of nowhere. The runes etched into the metal flared once, red, orange, green, all bleeding into white before they shattered completely. A deafening clang followed as the bars, once humming with containment magic, went inert.

"My Lord---!" Tyron's shout drowned beneath the sudden roar that followed.

Every other cage in the undercroft answered.

The seals holding them together shattered in cascading sparks, runes unraveling like threads of light. One by one, metal bars groaned, bent, and burst apart, as if some unseen pulse had struck every corner of the room. The sound was like a chorus of metal screaming.

From the shattered cages, the beasts, once docile, starved and cramped, awoke in rage.

Wings snapped open, claws scraped against stone, and the air filled with the guttural howls of Sheol-born beast tasting freedom for the first time in weeks. The stench of smoke and blood thickened, heavy and choking.

"By the gods---!" one of the porters shrieked as a massive shape lunged from a broken pen behind him, sending him tumbling down the steps. His lantern shattered, spilling flame across the floor. The other tried to run, but the next instant was swallowed by the shriek of bending iron and the wet sound of something catching him.

Keiser stumbled backward, his arm still numb from the surge. "Well... fuck."

He understood too late what had happened. His bloodscript hadn't broken the containment, it had rewritten it. The child's words had triggered it. Together, their mana had connected, turning his sigils from suppressive to reactive, and in doing so.

He'd effectively unleashed every binding ward in the undercroft.

Tyron's cloak whipped behind him as he ducked a collapsing beam. "Your highness! The ceiling---!"

Above, the floorboards groaned. Dust rained down. The once-structured auction house shook under the pressure of the released mana.

Keiser bit down a curse, throwing a glance toward the girl, now standing amidst the slowly collapsing cage. The air around her shimmered, faint ripples of green-gold mana flickering like heat haze. Her eyes glowed brighter, her small hands clenched at her sides, and when she breathed, smoke, thin, silver, and warm, escaped her lips.

She looked dazed. Confused. But not afraid.

"…What… have you done?" Keiser muttered, half to her, half to himself.

The little dragon blinked once, tilting her head. "I…opened the door."

Before he could answer, a second explosion rocked the ground above them, this one larger, deeper. The walls trembled as mana-fused artifacts overloaded, their stored power bursting outward in waves of wild energy. Fire and light danced across the rows of cages, painting the scene in chaos.

Tyron grabbed his arm, shouting over the noise, "My Lord! We need to go! Now!"

Keiser stared at the child one more heartbeat, his mind spinning, every calculation, every plan of finding the boy's mother's heart gone to ash. The mission was in pieces. The undercroft was collapsing.

But leaving her wasn't an option anymore.

"…Damn it all." He tore the dagger from his belt, slicing through the last bit of smoldering cloth between them. "You're coming with us."

The child blinked up at him, eyes flickering like emerald flames.

Then, somewhere above, the sound of boots, mercenaries, reinforcements and closing fast.

Keiser clenched his teeth. "Tyron, get ready. Things are only going to get busier from here. For now, keep your eyes open."

He turned to the girl. "We're gonna run."

The dragon girl's eyes glowed brighter as she tilted her head, murmuring almost innocently, "Run… from what?"

Keiser smirked and hurled his dagger. It spun through the air in a wide arc, shattering each lamp one by one. The room plunged into darkness, the only light coming from scattered patches of fire.

"We're gonna run… from our fates," he muttered, grabbing both kids. In a swift motion, he caught the returning dagger midair.

Above them, the ceiling began to collapse.

***

Keiser slid sideways, boots skidding across the stone floor slick with dust and spilled mana, his hand shooting out to snag Tyron by the back of his cloak before the boy could tumble headfirst into a pile of splintered crates.

"Keep up!" Keiser snarled, dragging him forward.

A flash of steel flickered in the dark, too fast, too precise to be debris. A set of throwing knives hissed past them, clattering off the floor where they'd been a heartbeat before.

Keiser yanked Tyron behind him with a grunt, twisting his shoulder as his free hand snapped upward. His dagger caught the faint glow of a nearby fire and threw, not at their attackers, but at the nearest row of lamps still hanging along the wall.

The blade spun once, twice, and the lights burst apart. Oil hissed and sputtered as flames guttered out one by one. In mere seconds, the undercroft was consumed by darkness, the remaining fire illuminating only what lay close to its flickering glow.

Perfect.

The hiss of knives and the curses of men filled the dark as their pursuers fumbled. Keiser didn't need to see their faces, he could already imagine the panic in their eyes.

He tightened his grip on the dagger, now back in his palm by the pull of its rune, and glanced over his shoulder. Two sets of faint glows looked back at him through the dark, the sky-blue glimmer of Tyron's eyes, and the emerald embers of the small figure clinging to his back.

The child's small arms were wrapped tight around his neck, her weight slight but her presence radiating heat like a banked forge.

She hadn't said a word since they'd started running, but her faint, unsteady breathing ghosted against his collar, warm and strange.

She'd shielded them both.

Keiser still wasn't sure how she'd done it. When the runes collapsed and the undercroft erupted into explosions and debris, he had braced for death. The mana surge had been enough to tear the floor out from above them, to shred skin from bone.

But instead, he'd felt something wrap around them. A pressure, soft but immovable. A barrier of green-gold light, holding the falling beams and shrapnel at bay.

She had kept them alive.

And now every Sheol beast in the chamber, every one of Mr. Genevra's mercenaries, was converging on them.

Keiser huffed a laugh, dry and bitter, as they ducked behind another row of toppled cages. "Well. I don't think we'll find your mother's heart here."

"What?" Tyron panted, stumbling to keep up, his wide eyes reflecting the faint glow from the little girl's hair.

Keiser's smirk twisted, dark and humorless. "But we found us a whole dragon."

Tyron's throat bobbed. "Your highness… are we going to...?"

"Use her to find your mother's heart?" Keiser cut him off, voice low and sharp. "Yeah. We definitely do. We don't have much time."

A roar echoed from somewhere behind them, followed by the heavy crash of claws and bodies slamming against walls. Sparks of wild mana flickered through the dark like pyrebugs, marking where artifacts overloaded and beasts broke free.

Tyron ducked as a knife struck the crate above his head, splintering wood. "They're, close..."

"I know." Keiser's tone dropped to a whisper. His burned hand flexed around the dagger, the bandages on his palm still sizzling faintly from the earlier runes. "Stay low. Guide me in this darkness."

He shifted the girl higher on his back, she clung without protest, her small fingers digging lightly into his shoulder. Her head tilted against his neck, warm breath against his skin.

"…You're bleeding," she murmured, voice soft, almost curious.

Keiser stiffened but didn't look at her. "Remember, I'm not food." he muttered, pushing forward.

This was mayhem, raw and unplanned, but he'd survived worse. He had to believe he could fix this, that he could set everything back to the way it should have been.

Even if his gut thinks otherwise.

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