Kei tilted his head toward the black opening beneath the roots. He activated Deathsight to pierce through the darkness below, searching for any living thing.
"Anything down there?" Vincent asked, leaning over his shoulder.
The blue light faded from Kei's eye. "Nothing. No trace of prana moving at all."
Vincent sighed, hands on his hips. "That kind of kills my hopes. I'm starting to think the kid really did just imagine it."
Tsuyu reached over and tapped the side of his head. "Don't give up that easily. An old shelter like this is still the best hiding spot on the island. It's definitely worth a look."
"I'll go first," Kei said, unbuckling his cloak so it wouldn't snag on the brush. "Stay here until I call you."
He swung his legs over the edge, gripped the damp limestone lip, and dropped.
He landed almost silently on the packed dirt below. The air smelled of wet gravel and dust. He drew a dagger and swept the shadows. A low, narrow tunnel stretched ahead, carved straight from the rock, with a faint speck of pale light flickering somewhere far down the passage.
"Still alive down there?" Vincent called, his voice echoing.
"It's all good," Kei called back. "Tunnel's clear. Come down."
Vincent dropped through a moment later, boots landing with a soft thud, followed by Tsuyu, who drew her curved short sword the instant she touched ground.
"Stay low," Kei whispered, pointing his dagger toward the glow ahead. "There's light down there."
They moved single file through the winding tunnel, the rough walls slick with cold moisture dripping steadily from above. The passage opened into a wide, square chamber.
Vincent wrinkled his nose, scanning the room. "This place isn't exactly welcoming."
Heaps of old bones lay scattered across the stone floor.
Tsuyu knelt, turning over a cracked rib with the flat of her blade. "These didn't end up here by accident. Some are adult-sized, but there are smaller ones mixed in. Completely dry, though — no flesh, no cloth. Whatever happened here happened a long time ago."
"They don't even smell rotten," Vincent noted, running his fingers along the wall. "Just stale air and stone."
While they examined the floor, Kei moved along the perimeter. Near a cracked pillar, he found a rusted iron lever set into the rock. He tested its weight and pulled it down.
Gears groaned somewhere in the masonry, and a section of the stone floor slid back, revealing steps leading further down.
"Lower level," Vincent said, walking over. "This place goes deeper."
"Careful," Tsuyu said, stepping onto the first stair. "Old shelters like this weren't built to last—"
CLICK.
The stone under her boot sank half an inch.
Before she could shift her weight, four iron spikes burst up through the masonry with a violent snap, punching through her boot sole and into her foot.
Tsuyu screamed, pitching forward.
"Tsuyu!"
Vincent lunged and caught her around the waist before she could fall down the stairwell.
Kei did not panic. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the steps, scanning the stone. Now that the dust had settled, he spotted them — faint, hairline squares carved into the center of every third step, cut so precisely they nearly vanished into the natural grain of the rock.
He flicked a throwing dagger at the step below.
THWACK.
A second set of barbed spikes shot out with enough force to punch through plate armor, then slowly retracted.
"I see, so that's how it works," Kei said. "Avoid the steps with the carved squares. They're pressure plates."
Vincent hauled Tsuyu back into the main chamber and set her against the wall. She gripped her foot, jaw clenched against the pain.
Kei knelt beside her, pulling out linen and his canteen. "Hold still."
He pressed a thread of soothing prana into the wound, numbing the torn flesh and slowing the bleeding. The blood stopped, but the damage was done — the muscle and tendon in her heel were bruised and torn.
"You can't climb back out through that shaft," he said, glancing up at the narrow opening they'd dropped through. "Not on that foot."
"I'm fine," Tsuyu gritted out, though her leg shook the moment she tried to put weight on it.
"You're obviously not," Vincent said firmly, hand on her shoulder. "You're staying put."
Kei looked at him. "Go back for reinforcements, Vince. She needs to be carried out properly, and we don't know what's at the bottom of these stairs."
Vincent nodded. "Don't go anywhere without me," he said, and sprinted back through the tunnel, hauling himself up through the ceiling hole.
Silence settled over the chamber, broken only by dripping water and Tsuyu's ragged breathing, as they waited for the reinforcements. Kei stood at the mouth of the stairwell, hand on his dagger.
Then, minutes later, from the black corridor below—
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Slow, deliberate footsteps climbing the stone steps.
Tsuyu looked up sharply. "Kei? Do you sense something?"
He raised a finger to his lips and stepped closer to the edge, eyes igniting blue. Through the rock, his Deathsight caught two warm signatures — two living men, standing motionless at the base of the stairs, as if listening.
He did not move, watching the glowing shapes through stone until the sound of returning boots signaled Vincent was back.
Dirt rained down from the entry tunnel as Vincent dropped in, followed by Princess Yejin, Haein, and three other Blood Rose retainers — Mojun, Yuram, and Pihan.
"Kei! Tsuyu!" Vincent called in a sharp whisper.
Kei raised a hand, pointing down. "Quiet. Two people are down there."
The group froze. Yejin stepped forward, holding her cloak close so her armor wouldn't clink. "What two people?"
Haein closed her eyes, extending her own senses down the shaft. A heartbeat later her eyes opened, sharp. "He's right. I feel them too, just past the bottom of the stairs." She turned to them. "What are you all doing down here in the first place?"
"We're tracking the yellow-eyed creature the boy mentioned," Vincent said quietly. "We found this old shelter, and then Tsuyu triggered a trap on the stairs."
Yejin knelt beside her second-in-command, checking the bandage, then looked up at her retainers. "Mojun, carry Lady Tsuyu. Yuram, Pihan, get them back to the infirmary. Be extra careful."
"Understood, my Lady." Mojun crouched, letting Tsuyu lean over his shoulders, and the three of them carried her carefully back through the tunnel.
With Tsuyu safe, Haein studied the carved pressure plates on the stairs. "If the steps are wired to spikes, we can bypass it. Kei, freeze the whole staircase. If the plates can't depress, the mechanism can't trigger."
Vincent grinned, nudging him. "Why didn't you think of that earlier, genius?"
Kei did not answer. He stepped to the top of the stairs, extended his palm, and drew a sharp cold from his core. A spectral wolf's head formed in the mist, and a sheet of hard pale ice swept down the steps, locking the seams and burying the pressure plates under solid rime.
Kei led the way down over the ice, Vincent, Haein, and Yejin close behind with weapons drawn.
Near the bottom, his glowing eyes widened. "They're moving. They heard us."
"What are you waiting for? Let's go after them!" Vincent said, dropping into a sprint.
Kei grabbed his collar and yanked him back before he could bolt down the corridor.
"What are you doing? They're getting away!" Vincent said.
"Don't be reckless. There could be more traps down there." Kei replied.
"He's right," Haein said, stepping past them. "The entrance was rigged with spikes meant to kill. Charge down a blind hallway and you could hit a tripwire or a pitfall."
Vincent scowled but stayed put. "I could just burn the traps out."
"And bring the ceiling down on us," Haein said flatly. "Think, for once."
Yejin turned to Kei. "Can you still see them?"
He stared down the winding corridor. "Yes. They're still moving together."
They advanced carefully, letting Kei's sight guide them past empty turns until the tunnel opened into an unexpectedly large room. Rotting wooden shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling, packed with water-damaged scrolls and crumbling ledgers.
"An underground library?" Haein murmured, running her fingers over the decaying parchment. She pulled a leather journal from a shelf and turned its brittle pages. "Coastal defense records... these are logs of pirate raids from the early dynasty."
Kei lifted a heavy, dust-covered tome from a nearby table. The binding was cracked, the script inside written in some angular language he could not recognize. He turned a page and found a crude illustration — a massive, tentacled sea monster rising from the waves, and beneath it, strange figures that were half-human, half-fish, arms raised as if in worship.
The next page turned violent: warriors with straight swords cutting the fish-men down along the shore, driving the great beast back into the dark water.
Vincent leaned in, squinting at the ink. "What is that supposed to be?"
"No idea," Kei said, closing the cover. "I can't read the script. All I can tell you is it's full of illustrations — some kind of squid monster, and people that are half-fish."
He set it aside and picked up a thinner volume beside it, this one in standard imperial script. He flipped through a few pages, scanning quickly.
"This place was originally called Hongbanao," he said, still reading. "Built by the village's ancestors as a deep sanctuary. Meant to hold over fifty families at once — enough dried fish, grain, and water to keep them hidden a full week while pirates tore through the surface."
"Fifty families?" Vincent glanced around the shadowed room. "Then there's more of this place further in." He frowned. "But why would villagers put killing traps in their own shelter?"
"They wouldn't," Yejin said quietly. "Someone else could have moved in after it was abandoned, and they were the ones who placed the traps."
"That makes sense," Kei said, his eye flaring blue again as he turned toward the rear archway. "Those two men have stopped running."
"Then let's move," Haein said, already stepping past him.
They passed through the archway into a wide tunnel. Unlike the rough, forgotten passages above, this one was swept clean by regular use. Ahead, warm yellow light flickered against the stone.
The tunnel opened onto a raised stone balcony overlooking a vast underground hall. A heavy iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, dozens of tallow candles casting a warm, flickering glow over rows of rusted iron cages bolted to the floor.
Yejin stopped short, a hand flying to her mouth. "What in Abaddon..."
Inside the cages lay scattered piles of small bones.
Something about the sight struck Haein as sickeningly familiar. She knelt beside the nearest cage, reaching through the bars to turn over a small skull. "These are children's bones," she said.
Vincent's jaw tightened. "So the boy was telling the truth. Some maniacs captured kids and brought them down here and caged them like animals."
While the others stayed fixed on the bones, Kei's attention had already drifted past them, into the darkness at the far end of the hall.
"Don't you think it's time to finally reveal yourself?" he said quietly. "I can see you."
For a moment, nothing answered but silence. Then, out of the black corner of the chamber, two pairs of yellow eyes opened, unblinking, watching them back.