While Rix had seen the man in the arena from a distance, this was the closest they'd ever been, and he wasn't afraid to admit it was intimidating. Even with his Path masked, Xu Sho radiated power. Not only was he an Omen, but he was the First Master of a significant corporation. This was a man who could command thousands, a bastion of Cloudpiercer Citadel.

Physically, Sho was clearly his son's father. While not quite as thick, he was a broad slab of a man. He had a wide jaw that made his head look almost square, and he wore his long hair tied back in a simple warrior's knot.

If the gulf between Rix and Han had been a lake when he'd arrived, the gulf between him and Sho was an ocean, even now. The man could snuff him like a candle. And yet, Rix still felt a bolt of rage, white and hot, shoot through him. His fists clenched involuntarily, though thankfully they were hidden below the table. Han had been party to the murder of Rix's parents, but Sho was responsible. He'd drawn steel while his son simply watched. That meant something.

The Omen sized him up, his face impassive. "Do you know who I am?" he asked. Unlike Han, Sho's voice gave little away. It was flat, almost monotone.

"Yes." It seemed pointless to deny it.

Sho nodded, as though that was expected. "Did you kill my son?" He said it almost casually, like a man enquiring after a particular item at a shop.

Yes. Rix wanted desperately to say it. He wanted to stare into the man's eyes and let him know that he'd taken someone precious from him, the way Sho had taken from Rix. But that would obviously be a death sentence. He needed time. Somehow, he'd get strong enough and return and put his [Wind Blade] through the Omen's heart. And then, only then, would he tell the truth.

Assuming he survived this, of course.

"No," Rix replied.

He didn't even see the man move. One moment, Sho was several feet away, the next, his hand was slamming into Rix's face. While delivered without even a fraction of his full strength, the slap rattled Rix's skull and set his vision swimming. He blinked away tears as the room came back into focus.

"Lying will only make this worse, boy. This place is thick with rumors of your feud."

While the act had been violent, Sho's tone was unnervingly sterile. Rix had braced for the raw grief of a father, or at least the volcanic rage his son so often displayed. Sho offered neither. Rix got the impression that this was less a wound to the heart and more a deep crack in the universal order. Losing his son was a violation, a slight to his position and authority. In that way, perhaps, he and Han were similar, but Sho's anger was something much colder and more clinical, tempered by his centuries walking the Martial Path and the perspective that brought.

Rix's chest felt tight, and his head was still ringing, but he met the man's gaze. "It's true we had a disagreement, but you know that I couldn't have killed him even if I wanted to. The prison must have told you about me. Low potential, no bloodline, and no corporate backing. Your son was a monster. He was so far above me it's ridiculous."

This was his key defense. As far as everybody knew, he was still a nobody. Sure, he'd survived longer than most had predicted, but at the end of the day, he was still just a dreg living off table scraps. Han had been in an entirely different weight class.

"And yet, he lies dead," replied Sho, "and all the fingers are pointed toward you. Several of your fellow inmates, including that girl, have already confirmed that you're responsible." The man leaned in even closer, until Rix could feel his breath on his face. "But I want to hear you say it."

Perhaps Sho expected Rix's time in solitary to have broken him. That all he needed was just a little push to make a confession come spilling from his mouth. But even in his current state, the interrogation tactic was obvious. If Sho really knew the truth, this whole spectacle would be unnecessary. He'd execute Rix and be done with it. The fact that they were even talking told Rix everything he needed to know. The man was still just chasing rumors, trying to extract answers through intimidation and suffering.

But Rix wasn't at breaking point yet.

"I'm sorry for your loss." The words nearly choked Rix, clinging to his throat like oil, but he forced them out. "But I didn't kill him, and my friends wouldn't have confirmed something that isn't true."

Sho's eyes narrowed fractionally as the man took him in. Rix's heartbeat was a relentless pulse in his ears. Such was Sho's position in the city that, if he wanted to, Rix suspected he could simply kill them all now without significant consequence. But there was a sharp curiosity in the First Master's eyes. For him, this wasn't simply a ledger to be balanced. He needed to make certain he had the right people so he could understand how this impossibility had occured. And for that, he needed one of them to talk.

Eventually, Sho sighed. "Alright," he said, his voice softening into a tone of false reason. "That was worth a try. Let's say I believe you." He laced his fingers together. "But my son is dead, and, as you yourself said, he was far too talented to fall to some bottom-feeding fade in a place like this. Someone is responsible, and from everything I hear, your little pack of strays are the most likely candidates."

He leaned forward slightly, his gaze intense. "You strike me as intelligent, Zao Rixian. A survivor. Surely you have no loyalty to the other criminals and lowlifes who walk these halls. Help me find the true killer. Tell me who it was. I will be…grateful."

It was another trap, just laid with honey instead of steel. A chance for Rix to save his own skin at the expense of his friends. He'd be lying if he said he didn't briefly consider throwing someone to the wolves, but he wasn't that person. Luna and the other Shadow Runners had all stuck their necks out for him when they didn't have to. They'd earned his loyalty.

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He just had to hope the strength of that bond flowed both ways.

"I promise you, I have no idea who's responsible," Rix said flatly. "But I can tell you it wasn't us."

Sho held his gaze for a long moment. "That is…unfortunate," he said eventually. "The Warden is cooperative. He has granted me full authority to find the truth by any means necessary. And I intend to take full advantage."

He let that sink in before continuing, his tone now devoid of any emotion at all. "I will make you one final offer. Confess to me, right now, and I will grant you a clean death. Painless. Your friends will be left to serve their sentences untouched."

Sho took a step closer, his shadow falling over Rix.

"Remain silent...and I will take my time. With all of you."

Before Rix could even process the threat, Sho unleashed the full weight of his Path. Up until now, he'd been masking it like every other prison staff member. Though it had no physical force, Rix literally rocked back in his chair as though he'd been slapped again. The roiling sea of Sho's power completely enveloped him. He felt like he was drowning. It seemed impossible that someone could be so strong. So much.

Rix's blood ran hot and fast. His whole body felt tense. He'd been doing a good job of putting up a brave front, but the reality was that his time in solitary had definitely had an impact. It left him feeling frazzled and vulnerable. Sho flexing his full strength threatened to tip him over the edge.

Mustering every ounce of willpower he could, he looked Sho dead in the eye. "None of us had anything to do with Han's death."

The man snorted. "We'll see."

***

Solitary was even worse the second time. Rix didn't know if they'd increased the intensity or it was simply the impact of continued exposure to the array, but every pulse felt like reaching a fresh level of the hells.

As before, they'd told him nothing about how long he'd be there or what happened next, and he quickly lost all track of time. While not as bad as the array itself, the sensory deprivation also took a toll. There was a sense of dissociation that came from a long time in the pitch dark that he wasn't even close to adequately prepared for. He was left as just a bundle of sensations in an endless expanse of nothingness. It brought reality itself into question. He'd always thought of himself as mentally strong, but when all you had was time and pain, it was difficult not to let doubts creep in. What if they genuinely just kept them all here until someone gave up the truth? Everybody had a breaking point.

He hadn't bothered to refill his qi. He'd learned his lesson about giving the array a second target. But that meant he had no resources left to work with. Nothing except his mind itself.

And it was racing.

People sometimes said that at the moment of death, your life flashed before your eyes. He didn't know if he was dying, but Rix felt like that now. Memories rose unbidden, as if pulled forward by the solitary array's brutal magnetism. The day of his parents' murders, the years of petty crime, the trial by fire that had been his time here in Spiritlock, they all ran through his mind, merging with each other in unsettling ways. Young Han, the smirking child, was overlaid in a grisly collage with his older self as the life faded from his eyes on that stone spike. The fights with Yutaro and Yuri and a hundred thugs on the street all blurred into one endless melee.

Back his mind went further still to the days before everything had been broken. The times when they were still a family. He could remember his sister's first steps. The little sweet buns his father used to smuggle him when his mother wasn't looking. The simple joy of waking up each morning not afraid. Those memories felt different to the rest, sweeter and lighter, like they were made of some other material.

And then in that swirling mental sea, he found another memory rising to the surface from the depths of his subconscious. When he'd been a child, he had contracted a case of glass lung — an illness caused by the fumes of some of the factories around the Lantern District. While not fatal, it was deeply unpleasant, earning its name because it made every breath feel like inhaling tiny shards of broken glass.

The only cure was rest, though that was obviously difficult under the circumstances. Rix's parents had been alive back then, and, seeing his suffering, his father had taught him a sort of exercise to ward off the pain. He'd called it 'the quiet room'.

"When the world is too loud, or the hurt is too much, you don't have to listen," his father had said. "You can build a place inside you that only you can enter. A space where you're the master. Nothing can touch you in your quiet room."

At the time, he remembered thinking that it was kind of silly, but even when conducted with the scattered focus of a child, the exercise had eased his suffering a little. Eventually, he'd recovered from the illness and had never really thought of it again. Until now.

The most likely outcome was that it would do nothing. A distraction for children was hardly going to stack up against the might of Spiritlock's punishment. But knowing what he did now about his parents, there was a chance it was more than that. The seed of something real.

It wasn't like he had anything to lose by trying.

Collecting his scattered thoughts, he pulled his focus inward. Having worked with Breaker for months now, his aptitude for visualization had grown substantially. No longer did such exercises feel like childish reverie. He'd seen the proof that imagined things could have a tangible impact on the world, if done the right way. This time, his quiet room would not be like before.

The logical place to fortify was his mind itself. The array was too powerful to interfere with directly, but perhaps he could stop himself from feeling some of its effects. The image he conjured first was a slab of heavy, black obsidian. It hovered there under his consciousness, an unshakeable floor through which no pain could pass. The walls came next, four impenetrable fortifications that rose up on all sides, and then the roof slammed into place on top, creating a seal — a space that was purely for him.

He laid these foundations with the same conviction as when he summoned the Breath Bridge or did the Mountain Gate cycling technique. He wasn't just thinking about a room. He was building something real inside himself.

And for a moment, it helped. The sharp, invasive whine of the array didn't vanish, but its edges seemed to dull. The all-consuming storm of agony became just a little more distant. A sliver of his consciousness found purchase in the stillness he'd created, muffling the thunder outside to a low roar.

But the relief was fleeting. His construct was crude, built from little more than childhood memory and guesswork. The walls, though he willed them to be strong, felt porous. The pain seeped through the cracks, a relentless pressure that warped his mental fortress before it had even fully settled. The floor trembled. The roof groaned. The storm was still getting in.

He fought to hold the image, to reinforce the walls and patch the leaks, but it was fruitless. Every time he focused on one breach, another would form. The technique had some effect, but it was clear he was missing something. Some vital component.

Eventually, the visualization crumbled. The full weight of the mana drain crashed back down on him, and a ragged gasp escaped his lips. He slumped against the stone wall of his box, his body slick with sweat, his mind frayed.

The exercise hadn't been a proper shield, not even close. But it had been something. Despite the failure, there had been a brief, tantalising moment of control.

A sense of certainty settled deep in his gut. The quiet room was more than just a child's fancy. He just didn't know how to finish building it yet.

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