Distant alarms pulsed through the dim corridors, flickering panels still struggling to reboot.

Akiko pressed a palm to the wall, breath shallow. Her mana pathways still thrummed from the breakthrough. Potent, yes, but hollowed out.

"Mana reserves at 12%. You're burning fumes."

Takuto's voice had returned to her ear, his fox-form presence limited to her inner vision.

"But the system breach gave us a gift. Security layer on the lower vault is down. Magical seal collapsed."

Akiko nodded, still catching her breath. Her skin prickled with residual heat from the mana she'd unleashed in the digital realm. Too much, too fast. She'd need days, maybe longer, to replenish fully. But there wasn't time for rest.

"Obfuscation?"

"Feasible. The detector's offline. They'll be scrambling to fix core systems. You'll blend well enough, if you don't do anything flashy."

A flick of thought triggered the spellform. Wisps of foxfire coiled up her frame, soft and silent, bleeding her outline into shadow and shimmer.

Applied Spellform Initialized: Obfuscation (Tier I)

She slipped out of the server room.

Outside, chaos reigned, subdued but tangible. Auction hall employees darted between terminals, speaking in low voices, not yet panicked but trending there.

No one looked too hard at her; most didn't look at all. Her presence wavered just beyond notice, wrapped in magic and movement.

She slipped through the quiet halls, the memory of the guards outside clinging to her like a shadow. Her breath caught, but she didn't pause. No time. No regrets.

The stairwell downward gaped open now. No glow of magical barriers.

She slipped inside, her descent quiet but certain. The air grew colder.

"Any heat signatures?"

"Minimal. Looks like the lockdown scared off the staff."

Her lips pulled into a tight smile. Finally, a bit of luck. She hadn't forgotten what she'd glimpsed in the display cases earlier that day. Potential, tucked behind glass and pedigree. Now it was just a matter of claiming it.

The vault was darker than she expected. Quiet, cold, and lined with sealed compartments and reinforced crates etched in runes. It had that preserved, untouched feeling. Like history stored under glass.

Her eyes scanned the catalog tags, and sure enough, there they were: magically alloyed metals. Not just any kind, either. Some she recognized from her home world, perhaps bleeding over in the same way everything else seemed to be bleeding through. Or perhaps discovered here the same as in the other world.

Others were newer, alloys she wasn't familiar with. All of it rare. All of it valuable. All of it… heavy.

Akiko crouched beside one of the slabs and gave it a testing nudge. It didn't budge.

She frowned. Nudged harder. Nothing.

She hissed a breath through her teeth. "Right. Muscle."

Back then, Brom would've just lifted it with a grunt. Kaede would've carried the enchanted bag. And Valric would've argued about weight distribution before helping anyway. But none of them were here. And for all her aura strength, all her flashy new fire tricks and digital reality duels, Akiko was still just one kitsune with a thief's instincts and no actual plan for moving a hundred kilos of enchanted scrap.

"Gods damn it," she muttered.

She glanced toward the exit, then back at the alloy slab. The sheer absurdity of it made her want to laugh. She didn't. Instead, she sat down cross-legged in front of it, exhaled, and let the weight of it all, metal and memory, settle on her shoulders.

She clenched her jaw.

There had to be another way.

A faint sound broke the stillness.

Tap-tap-tap. Rhythmic, light, like tiny feet on glass.

Akiko froze, every muscle coiled. The noise wasn't loud, but in the silence of the vault, it cut through like a blade.

She waited, listening. Not boots… too light. Not a drone, no hum. Maybe…

She crept toward the sound. Back corner. Stacked metal racks. Reinforced glass cases sat in rows, each one pulsing faintly with containment light.

And in the center one…a figure. Small. Winged. Pacing the edges of her cage with restless energy.

Akiko drew closer, breath caught.

It was the fairy from the auction.

Green hair tumbled in tangled curls over narrow shoulders. Iridescent wings twitched behind her in sharp, agitated bursts, tapping the glass with every turn.

The case shimmered with active sigils. A cage. Containment. The kind that would suppress mana. The kind that drained.

As Akiko's shadow spilled across the glass, the fairy halted mid-step. Her eyes, green as polished jade, snapped to her.

She crossed her arms, wings fluttering once with a rippling glow.

"Well," she said, voice high but smooth, laced with sarcasm. "You're not what I expected. Goon? Janitor? Thief with a conscience?"

Akiko blinked. She hadn't expected her to speak. Certainly not like that.

"Neither," she whispered. "Just… looking around."

The fairy arched a brow. "In a locked storage room. In the middle of the night. How delightfully suspicious."

Akiko smirked. "You're awfully chatty for someone in a box."

"And you're awfully curious for someone committing a felony," the fairy shot back. "What's your angle? Liberator? Collector? Bad at planning?"

"Rogue," Akiko said simply, then tilted her head. "And you?"

The fairy's expression flickered. For a heartbeat, something raw broke through the snark. Fatigue, maybe. Bitterness.

"I'm a victim of unfortunate geography," she said, wings twitching. "Wrong place, wrong planar density, no decent mana in the air. I was snatched midflight, stuffed into this little hellbox, and now I'm a conversation piece for bored billionaires."

She waved one hand dismissively, glittering with dust. "The usual."

Akiko studied her in silence. Rogue instincts tugged her one way; a deeper unease pulled the other. She knew enough about fey to be careful. Bargains had teeth. But she also knew cages, and she wasn't a fan.

The fairy's eyes narrowed. "You're thinking about it."

Akiko raised a brow.

"Freeing me," she said. "And all the ways it could go terribly wrong."

Akiko shrugged. "Am I that obvious?"

"You have the look of someone who's made a lot of mistakes and survived most of them."

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Akiko chuckled softly. "Flattering."

"So what's it going to be?" the fairy asked. "Do you crack the seal, let me fly free, and hope I don't turn your hair into moss? Or do you walk away and pretend you're not the kind of person who leaves things in cages?"

Akiko exhaled. "I was thinking about making a deal."

The fairy paused, her eyes sharpening. Her wings stilled.

"A deal," she repeated.

"You help me," Akiko said, resting her palm lightly against the glass. "I let you out. I know how your kind works. No favors, no free gifts. But bargains? That's tradition."

The fairy leaned forward, grinning now. "Oh, you're not from around here."

Akiko stilled.

"I can tell," she went on. "Most mortals in this world wouldn't know the rules. They'd try to break the glass or demand three wishes and a pony. But you—" her gaze glittered "—you understand what I am."

Akiko hesitated. "Let's just say I've had experience."

The fairy smirked, head tilted, as if sifting through Akiko's words for hidden thorns. "Experience, huh? Vague enough to be true. Alright, mysterious rogue, you've got my attention. What's the pitch?"

Akiko gestured to the cage. "Freedom. In exchange, I need something."

The fairy's smile didn't fade, but her eyes sharpened. "Ah, the catch. What's the price tag, then?"

Akiko pointed toward the crates of magically reactive metal. "I need those moved. They're valuable. They're heavy. And I'm fresh out of friends with muscles or enchanted bags."

The fairy's gaze flicked to the stack, then back to Akiko. Her incredulous laugh was almost musical. "You're joking."

Akiko raised an eyebrow. "Am I?"

She fluttered closer to the glass, wings buzzing irritably. "Do I look like I bench press enchanted alloys for a living? I'm small, not a forklift."

Akiko grinned despite herself. "I don't need muscle. I need magic. Something clever."

The fairy crossed her arms, wings twitching. "If we were somewhere proper, with leylines, circles, dew-washed air, I could crack open the floor and spit your treasure into the wind. But here?" She sniffed the air disdainfully. "I'm working on fumes."

Akiko leaned in. "Nothing at all?"

Her eyes glinted. "Didn't say that. I've got a few sparks left. Could dazzle someone. Convince a bored guard to marry you. But a freight job?" She flicked a hand at the crates. "Not happening."

Akiko sighed, rubbing the back of her neck. "You're not wrong." She stared at the metals, their dull sheen mocking her. "Fine. Maybe hauling isn't your thing. But I've got another problem."

The fairy settled in delicately near the corner of her glass cage, curious. "Oh good. You strike me as a woman of endless problems."

The aftermath of the breakthrough still lingered in her bones. Her magic flowed cleaner, her control sharper. But none of that solved the core problem: she could wield more mana now, sure. And her generation had increased with her capacity. But she was still feeling the shortfall.

Akiko tapped the edge of her necklace, then the concealed junction at her spine. "These take forever to charge. The mana here's thin. I could use a… jumpstart."

She blinked. "You want me to juice your trinkets?"

"Exactly. You'd be a… magical auxiliary."

The fairy recoiled with theatrical horror. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Reduced to a living battery pack." She flopped onto the glass with a sigh. "What next? Should I hum while I work?"

Akiko smirked. "You could stay in the cage instead."

Her wings flicked. The sarcasm slipped.

She studied Akiko a beat longer. "So I trade one prison for another? Be your personal mana bottle? That's the offer?"

"You wouldn't be bound," Akiko said. "No leash, no collar. You'd be free to fly around. Cause problems. Help me stay alive."

The fairy leaned forward, her grin slow and bright. "A traveling partner, then. Fine. But I'm not signing on for eternity. Let's say… a year. That's long for mortals, isn't it?"

Akiko hesitated. A year was…not a lot. But better than nothing. Better than leaving her behind.

"Alright. One year."

Her teeth flashed. "And you'll keep things interesting?"

Akiko gave her a crooked smile. "I'm not exactly boring."

The fairy laughed, a bright, ringing sound that made the room feel less stale. "Then we have a deal. You can call me Sifra. Let me out of here… and let's see how much fun we can cause."

Akiko knelt beside the pedestal, her gaze narrowing at the lattice of glowing runes etched into its base. They pulsed with quiet, deliberate rhythm, insulated from the chaos she'd just unleashed upstairs.

The suppression field wasn't Haven-issue, not exactly. It used the same foundational structure she'd seen the Sovereign use in the belt, and more recently the scavenged system the auction hall had in place. But the layering was more modular, more sophisticated. Adaptive, even. Someone had either known what they were doing… or had learned a little too well from someone who had.

The alarm system, by contrast, was painfully mundane. A pressure-sensitive switch buried in the pedestal, still live. Probably hard-wired to a fallback line. Separate power, separate trigger. Low-tech, but harder to corrupt. Which meant it was still very much armed.

"Of course it's on a separate circuit," she muttered.

Whatever else the Curator had hijacked, this system hadn't flinched. A failsafe, probably. Security built to survive facility-wide collapse.

Her tail twitched. Triggering it would light up every remaining sensor in the building. And with the staff already skittish after the system disruptions, they'd notice.

This was going to take finesse.

Sifra floated up to the glass, arms crossed and expression amused. "You look like you're solving a puzzle box. Want me to come back when you're done?"

"Quiet," Akiko muttered.

Akiko crouched lower, claws steady, and began teasing apart the narrow gap between the pedestal and the locking ring.

The suppression field was too sophisticated to brute-force. Too tight to push through. But not without seams.

She leaned in, eyes narrowing at the runes etched across the pedestal's anchor points. The layout was dense, layered with recursive loops and nested stabilizers that hummed with low, steady rhythm.

"This isn't like the rune-work I've seen before," she murmured

"Well, of course not," Sifra said, smirking. "You're not in Kansas anymore, fox girl."

Akiko blinked mid-trace. "What's Kansas?"

Sifra tilted her head, smile widening like a secret. "Oh, wouldn't you like to know."

Akiko squinted at her. "Is that supposed to mean something?"

The fairy's wings buzzed, laughter chiming like wind through glass. "Let's just call it a joke from somewhere you wouldn't understand. Keep going, I'm sure you'll figure it out someday."

Akiko exhaled slowly and turned back to her work. "You're lucky I don't have time to interrogate you."

"Oh, I'm more than lucky," Sifra said, her tone glittering. "I'm delightful."

Akiko ignored her. She didn't have time for nonsense.

She coaxed her foxfire forward and began guiding it through the field. Around the edges. Between the shifting nodes.

It was like threading a needle underwater. Any wrong move, and the suppression would snap down, snuffing the magic out. But she found the gap. Narrow. Precise. Her foxfire slipped through.

With a breath held in her throat, she used it to wedge open the maintenance latch on the pedestal's underside. The panel popped with a quiet click. No alarms yet.

The field stayed intact above, but now she was beneath it. Inside the hardware.

She dismissed the magic and reached in with clawed fingers. A tangle of wires stared back. They were thick, cramped, looped through a rudimentary trigger module.

"Takuto," she murmured.

"Already scanning. The red-and-yellow pair routes to the localized alarm node. Sever the return loop, not the primary."

"Got it."

She pinched the wire, then sliced clean through. A faint LED blinked once, then went dark. The circuit was dead. The trigger neutered.

"Good enough," she muttered, stepping back.

"You sure about that?" Sifra asked, brow lifted.

"No," Akiko said flatly. "But we're about to find out."

She sliced through the glass, just wide enough for a fairy to slip through. The cut echoed louder than she liked in the quiet room, there were no sirens. No pulses of red light.

Sifra hesitated, just for a breath. Then she darted through the opening. Her wings flared, iridescence flooding back into them with a shimmer that lit the room.

"Ah, freedom," she sighed, twirling midair with theatrical flourish. "You're not half bad."

Akiko released the breath she'd been holding. "Told you I'd get you out."

"And you did," Sifra said, flashing teeth. "Now let's vanish before someone notices I'm missing."

Akiko glanced once more at the runes that powered the containment. Whoever had built that knew what they were doing, and she expected she'd see more of its like soon enough.

"Stay close," she said, moving toward the door. "And don't get us caught."

"Caught?" Sifra scoffed, flitting beside her. "Darling, I'm the queen of not getting caught."

Akiko raised an eyebrow. "Is that what you told the bounty hunter who put you in the cage?"

Sifra froze midair, expression cracking for half a second.

"Ouch," she said, placing a hand over her chest with mock injury. "That was a low blow. Even for you."

Akiko smirked, already walking. "We'll see if you've learned your lesson."

She cast one last glance at the stacked crates of magically infused metal. Regret curled in her chest, tight and sour. Leaving them behind felt like abandoning treasure ripe for the taking, but she knew better than to press her luck twice in one night.

She turned for the exit. Sifra flitted beside her, radiating smug triumph.

"You're quiet all of a sudden," the fairy said, voice light but curious. "Regretting your life choices?"

"Just the one where I didn't bring a way to carry that haul," Akiko muttered. "But I'll be back. Eventually."

Sifra snorted, wings fluttering. "Sure you will, fox girl. And next time, maybe bring a bag."

Akiko shot her a glare, but didn't rise to the bait.

They climbed the winding stairwell in silence, slipping from the shadowed vault into a deserted back corridor, and from there, out into the hushed streets of Blackreach.

The shadows welcomed them. Thick, familiar, wrapping around Akiko like an old cloak. Her shoulders began to loosen. The tight coil of tension in her chest finally started to unwind.

She made it three steps.

Then something stung her neck. A tiny pinprick. Sharp. Her hand snapped up on reflex, brushing the thin shaft of a dart.

Everything stopped. Her pulse spiked, then stumbled. The world tilted.

The tranquilizer hit like floodwater. Her legs faltered beneath her, and her suit sputtered too late, face shield sparking to life in a pulse that meant nothing now. She cursed and yanked the dart free, spinning as the alley blurred around her.

Three figures stepped out of the dark.

The mercenary from before led them, his grin wide and predatory. "Well, well," he drawled. "Looks like the fox slipped her leash."

Akiko tried to summon her foxfire, just a flicker, just enough.

Nothing. She was dry. Spent in the Curator's realm, drained by her breakthrough, and stretched thin sneaking through Blackreach's fractured systems.

Sifra darted forward, her fists tiny but clenched with fury. "Hey!" she shouted, wings flaring. "She just saved my life, you absolute bastards!"

The mercenary flinched slightly at the sight of her, then sneered. "Stay out of it… glowbug, whatever you are."

Another one muttered behind him, uneasy. "What is that? It can talk."

The first waved him off, eyes still on Akiko. "Doesn't matter. She's not the bounty."

Akiko's knees buckled. Her vision tunneled.

She swayed once. Tried to lock her focus on Sifra's silhouette, still hovering.

"Kara's..." she mumbled, the words thick on her tongue, "gonna be pissed."

Then the ground surged up.

And the world went dark.

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