The air inside the vent was thick with dust and silence.
Seo-Yun moved slowly—belly pressed to cold metal, limbs stiff and bruised, every motion sending pain sparking up his spine. His wrists ached from where the last set of shackles had torn skin. But the bruises were old friends by now.
The weight in his lower abdomen throbbed with each breath. The movement—crawling, dragging himself through steel shafts barely wider than his shoulders—pressed his growing stomach against every rib of metal.
He didn't let himself stop.
He didn't think about how much time had passed since he'd eaten. Or how much blood he was losing from the reopened split on his lip. Or how the nausea that had eased earlier was returning now in waves.
He just thought about one thing.
Forward.
The passage twisted sharply. A narrow shaft veered left into pitch darkness, and as Seo-Yun dragged himself into it, he heard something.
Not a voice. Not a guard.
Something smaller.
Breathing.
Unsteady. Wet.
He froze.
Then crawled forward—inch by inch—until the darkness gave way to a flicker of flickering yellow light leaking through another grate. He peered through the slats.
And saw another Omega.
Chained to the wall. Barefoot. Shirt torn. Skin pale and waxy. Ribs showing.
But their eyes were open.
And watching him.
Seo-Yun didn't speak.
The Omega's lips parted slowly. "…you're not a hallucination?"
Seo-Yun's voice cracked. "No."
A long pause. The Omega laughed—dry and cracked like paper burning.
"I thought I was the last."
Seo-Yun's fingers gripped the edge of the vent. "What's your name?"
"Used to be Kirian," they rasped. "Now? I think they just call me Nine."
Seo-Yun swallowed. "How long have you been here?"
Kirian smiled. "Long enough to forget what day means. Long enough to remember every Alpha who tried to breed me."
Seo-Yun's stomach churned.
Kirian shifted slightly—chains scraping. "You're pregnant, aren't you?"
Seo-Yun didn't answer.
"You smell like hope," Kirian said. "And that's dangerous here."
Seo-Yun opened the grate slowly, silently. It gave.
"I'm getting out," he whispered. "There's a route."
Kirian didn't move.
"I can't. My legs… they don't work anymore."
The silence between them was thick with grief.
Kirian looked up again, eyes clear for the first time. "But you can still walk. So do it. Go. Make it matter."
Seo-Yun nodded.
Then kept crawling.
The vent led to an old archive room—dusty, unused, forgotten.
He stumbled from the wall like a ghost, falling to his knees. His stomach ached. His fingers were numb. His throat burned.
But he was out of the cage.
Not free. But not seen.
He found old robes in a storage crate—Alpha robes, from a time before. He wrapped one around himself, tucked his hair up beneath the hood, and staggered toward the maintenance doors.
Leya had told him: If you ever reach the archives, there's an old lift. It's broken, but only in the upper levels. The descent still works.
Seo-Yun moved with every scrap of instinct he had.
He didn't know how much longer he could walk.
But he knew what he had to protect.
By the time he found the lift shaft, his body was trembling.
He collapsed inside it, slamming the override panel like it was the last thing he'd ever do.
The metal groaned.
And the lift began to descend.
Alarms didn't sound.
No voices came.
The world outside the shaft was still and cold and terrifying.
But Seo-Yun was moving down.
Toward the old tunnels.
Toward something forgotten.
And for the first time in weeks, he whispered the word that had kept him alive:
"Free."