The chamber they broke into was already soaked in blood.
Three figures stood over a fourth, who lay motionless on the ground, chest torn wide open where a heart should have been. One of the three had the same vein-like red marks branching out from his eyes that Yejin's attacker had worn — a mark that no longer looked like coincidence.
Kei's Deathsight swept over all three of them, hunting for any trace of orange light, any hint the crystal might be close. Nothing. Not one flicker.
"What have you done with the crystal?" His voice came out low, dead serious, eyes locked hard on the one with the marked eyes.
The cultist tilted his head, almost amused by the question. "The crystal, you say?" A slow, humorless smile crept across his face. "You're the first one I've run into who's actually looking for it. What exactly do you plan on doing with it?"
Kei did not answer. He simply drew his twin daggers, blades catching what little light the chamber had, and settled into a low stance.
The cultist's grin only widened. "You're not walking out of here alive."
All three of them raised their palms at once. Lightning crawled up the marked one's arm and snapped between his fingers. Fire bloomed from the second man's hands, curling like it was hungry. The third summoned a violent, spinning tempest of wind that tore dust and loose stone up off the chamber floor, howling as it grew.
Yul moved first. He drove his blade through a fast series of crescent strikes, each one meeting an incoming spell head-on and cutting it apart before it could close the last few feet between them. Sparks and burnt embers scattered off his steel with every clash, hissing as they hit the ground.
Kei went the other way entirely. He dropped low and closed the distance in a blur, weaving under the spinning wind and past a lance of fire, close enough now that none of the three could get a clean shot at him. His first dagger drove straight for the marked cultist's throat.
The man caught it. Bare hand, no visible strain at all, the blade stopped dead an inch from his own skin.
"Did you really think it'd be that easy to kill me?" His other hand snapped up, and an invisible wave of force slammed into Kei's chest like a battering ram, hurling him clean across the chamber. He hit the far wall hard enough to crack the stone behind him.
White light burst across Kei's vision on impact, pain screaming up through his spine and into his skull — but he was already pushing himself back up before the dust from the cracked wall had even finished falling.
The marked cultist thrust both palms forward and let loose a wave of searing flame, certain the strike had finished the job.
While that happened, Yul had found his rhythm against the second cultist, driving him back one strike at a time — a cut to the shoulder, a feint, then a hard diagonal slash that finally dropped the man unconscious to the stone floor with a heavy thud.
But the marked cultist turned on Yul next. He closed his fist slowly in the empty air, and Yul felt an invisible grip wrap around his whole body, yanking him sideways and slamming him into the far wall hard enough to knock every bit of air from his lungs.
The grip kept tightening after that, crushing in around his ribs, cutting off his air completely. His face went red, then pale, fingers clawing uselessly at a hold he could not even see, could not touch.
Kei did not give him the chance to finish it. Three daggers left his hand in the same breath, each one aimed with brutal precision — one for the chest, one for the gut, and the last one buried deep into the left arm, right where it would wreck his ability to keep casting.
Yul dropped the second the grip let go, hitting the floor hard, muscles screaming, sucking air back into starved lungs in short, ragged gasps.
With the marked cultist bleeding and staggered, the last one still standing — the wind user — turned his attention to Kei and unleashed a tempest strong enough to rip loose stones off the chamber floor. Kei moved through it anyway, ducking and rolling and sidestepping, evading every gust despite the injury still aching in his side, his skin already knitting itself back together faster than it should. He flicked a shuriken out mid-dodge, catching the wind cultist clean across the forearm and severing it below the elbow. The man screamed, staggering back, his spellwork collapsing into nothing without a working hand to shape it.
Kei had been sure the daggers alone would finish the marked cultist. Instead, the man reached up with his good arm and pulled them out one at a time, grunting hard through each one, blood pouring freely down the front of his robes, soaking dark into the fabric.
"So it was you." His breathing had gone ragged, blood bubbling faintly at the corner of his mouth. "The one who put a dagger through my skull. Weeks back."
"Where's the crystal?" Kei's voice cracked with the force of it, the calm he usually wore burning away into something closer to fury. "Why are you after it? What kind of demon did you make a deal with?!"
The cultist only smiled wider, blood staining his teeth, utterly unbothered by how much of himself he was losing onto the floor. Then, without a shred of hesitation, he turned and set the wind cultist — the one who'd just lost his arm — on fire. The flames swallowed him whole, and he screamed, thrashing, the fire eating through skin and muscle straight down to bone before he finally went still.
A second later the marked cultist did the same to the body already on the ground, the one Yul had knocked out earlier. The flames took him just as fast, devouring him without mercy.
"What the hell is he doing?" Yul managed, still on his knees, staring in open horror. "He's killing his own people."
Kei lunged, trying to close the last of the distance in a blink and end it before the man could do anything else — but the cultist exhaled a jet of raw flame straight into his path. It caught him across the shoulder and chest, searing through skin, and threw him backward off his feet.
"Kei!" Yul shouted, worry cracking through his voice.
By then the cultist was swaying on his feet, blood loss finally catching up with him fast, his whole body clearly failing. He seemed to know it too. Rather than keep fighting, he simply let the flames rise up and consume himself where he stood, laughing — a high, broken, manic sound — right up until he collapsed, dead before he even hit the stone.
Silence dropped over the ruined chamber, thick and sudden.
"What a madman," Yul whispered, staring at what was left.
He pushed himself upright slowly, still shaking, still weak — but something felt wrong. Or rather, something felt suddenly, strangely right. The crushing pain in his muscles, the deep bruising along his ribs, all of it was fading fast. Faster than it should have. Strength poured back into his limbs like water filling an empty cup.
"I feel... strong," Yul said, flexing his hand slowly, genuinely confused by his own body. "For whatever reason."
Kei felt it too. The burns across his shoulder and chest, raw and blistering only moments before, were already closing over, skin knitting itself back together right in front of his eyes, smooth and unmarked within minutes, like the fire had never touched him at all.
Whatever that crystal had done to them in the explosion, it hadn't just left them alive.
It had made them something more than they used to be.
Kei crouched beside the burnt bodies, inspecting what little was left of them. All three were charred beyond recognition, skin blackened and cracked, nothing left to read from their faces.
"They killed themselves. Why?" Yul asked, still trying to make sense of it.
"They didn't kill themselves," Kei said slowly, turning it over in his mind. "Not really. Someone made them do it — to hide something. Someone, or something, was controlling them the whole time."
Yul took one last look at the scorched remains, jaw tight, before they finally pushed their way out of the collapsed cave, blinking hard against sudden daylight after so long in the dark. The moment the guards and laborers still digging at the site caught sight of them, every single one froze, like they'd just watched a ghost climb up out of the ground.
"It's... Yul. Isn't it?" one of the guards said, blinking hard, over and over, like his own eyes might be lying to him.
"Y-Yes," another answered, voice thin with disbelief. "That's — that's really him."
"What's going on with everyone?" Yul asked, glancing between the stunned faces surrounding them, dust still clinging to his hair and clothes.
Neither he nor Kei understood the reaction. Every face around them wore the same look — shock, stretched into something closer to disbelief than relief.
It didn't take long for Tsuyu to arrive, a handful of Blood Rose hwa-samurai trailing behind her. The moment she saw them, her composure cracked entirely — tears spilled before she'd even reached them, and she broke into a run, throwing her arms around Yul hard enough to nearly knock him back a step.
"I thought you were dead, you fool!" she said, voice muffled against his shoulder, shaking.
"Yeah, almost was." Yul managed a tired laugh, patting her back awkwardly. "Trapped in there for hours, but we made it out in the end. I'm exhausted."
"Hours?" Tsuyu pulled back, staring at him like he'd said something insane, glancing between him and Kei. "You've been gone three weeks! The Empire already declared you both dead. Yejin's the only reason anyone kept digging — she refused to give up on you, kept paying men out of her own pocket to keep searching for your bodies."
Silence. Kei and Yul turned to look at each other, both wearing the same stunned expression.
"Th-That's not possible," Yul said, barely above a whisper.