Alarms turned the corridor red, then redder. Sirens bled through the ceiling vents—thin, angry, official. The Guild built these places to look calm. Under strobe, you saw the teeth.
Asta didn't run. He moved the way a blade chooses a path through silk: straight, quiet, fast enough to be taken personally.
The guard he'd told to run hadn't gone far. Fear makes poor maps. Asta stepped over the man's dropped cap, nudged the flechette rifle aside with his boot. The hound paced at his heel like a smear of night. The Black Knight kept to his spine, pressure there—a steadying hand that felt like history.
[Objective: Escape Inquiry]
[Optional: Rescue External Vessel]
[Map: Not Available]
[Tip: Vents carry sound. Follow the alarms back to their cause.]
He followed the alarms. Left at a fire door, right where the floor texture changed from polished to grit (loading zone). Cameras tracked him, red eyes blinking; shadows huddled under their housings like barn swallows. He could feel the watching.
"Devour," he breathed, without breaking stride.
The closest camera coughed static into itself. A curl of dark ran up the wiring and came back down as smoke you couldn't smell.
[Devour Successful.]
[Record Purge: Partial]
[Erosion: 1% — within tolerance.]
He turned another corner. Two guards shouldered a barricade cabinet into the hall and swore when he appeared out of red light.
"Stop—hands! Hands where-"
"Later," Asta said, and flicked his fingers like he was dismissing a fly. His shadow jumped like a dog hearing its name. It rose under the cabinet, tipped it, the metal box belly-up like a beetle. The closest guard fell with it, head striking the floor. The other went for the rifle. The hound reached him first, a quiet avalanche of teeth in silence. The struggle lasted as long as guilt.
Asta kept going. He was not here for men who would live or not because a bell rang. He was here for one person who refused to be a bell.
The hallway forked around a glass cube. Inside, three techs froze mid-panicked typing. Their screens showed the dungeon feed, Asta's face paused, the Rift's last scream captured as a flat line of data. One tech lifted his hands like Asta was a bear he could reason with. Asta didn't break the glass. He met the man's eyes, allowed a breath's worth of pressure—just enough to put weight in the room, to make them sit back down.
They sat.
[Note: Sovereign Pressure, Minor, observed.]
A steel door ahead bore a placard: INQUIRY-PERSONNEL. A keypad glowed, waiting to be obeyed. The Black Knight's hand pressed through Asta's shadow, set itself over the numbers like an eclipse.
"Rise," Asta said softly, and the door remembered being unlocked.
The room beyond smelled like coffee that had gone to meetings. Rows of lockers. A bulletin board with Pre-Raid Safety laminated in a friendly font. Another door. Another keypad. He didn't slow.
Behind this one: a corridor with cells. Gray, single windows in each door, eye-level for ghosts. A guard at a desk looked up too late.
Asta knocked the man's chair out from under him with a shove of shadow and pinned him there with the Knight's sword pointed through the floor like a nail. The guard froze in place; you didn't argue with inevitability.
He paced the windows, one after another. Pale faces looked back, scared, angry, bored, nobody that moved the needle in his head. Down the row, a woman with smudged eyeliner flipped him off. He almost smiled.
At the last door, he stopped.
Lysandra sat like a statue that had punched a king. Wrists cuffed to the chair arms, ankles clamped. Hair unkind, eyes very awake. The tarp was gone. Her armor was a sketch in metal and cracks. She took him in with one blink.
"You're late," she said.
"I got lost," he said.
"You don't get lost," she said, but the corner of her mouth tipped.
He stepped to the glass. The door had a slot for food trays and lies. The keypad next to it waited, patient.
Behind him, the pinned guard found a scrap of courage. "Don't," he said, voice thin. "If you open that, protocol-"
"Protocol bends," Asta murmured, and pressed his gauntleted palm to the keypad. It whined.
[Security Weave Detected.]
[Counter: Shadow Armament—Partial.]
[Risk: Essence drain.]
"Fine," he said, rolling his wrist. The gauntlet bled out of his skin again, black metal pouring over bone like a confession that fit too well. The keypad's light guttered.
The lock clicked.
He opened the door.
Lysandra's gaze raked the hall first—habit—and then returned to his hand. "You're getting faster," she said.
"Hungry," he said.
"Worse," she said, but her eyes warmed a degree.
He tore the cuffs apart like cheap jewelry. They didn't like being torn. The metal sang a note that made the hair on his arms lift.
[Devour Opportunity: Restraint Fragments]
[Y/N?]
"Later," he said.
She stood, bones arguing, breath clipped short. He slid a shoulder under her arm. She didn't need it; she took it anyway because pride is expensive and halls are long.
"You hurt?" he asked.
"Ribs," she said. "Ego," she added, deadpan.
"They didn't-"
She cut him with a look. "If they had, this facility would be a crater."
They moved.
The guard at the desk considered raising the alarm again. Asta considered the man back. The result was that the guard stared at the ceiling and counted somewhere past thirty.
"Left or right?" Asta said.
"Left." Lysandra didn't hesitate. "I memorised the drafts from the vent hum. Left is load-in. More doors, fewer eyes."
He let her choose. Trust wasn't a word he liked; it was a path you walked because there was nothing else paved.
They limped left. The alarm bled into a lower tone—less panic, more focus. He didn't love that. The Guild was replacing confusion with intent. It meant someone smart was steering.
"Director," Lysandra said, as if hearing his thought. "He has a name?"
"I didn't ask. He had a smile."
"Smiles are the worst names," she said.
Past the cell block, the corridor opened onto a catwalk. Below, a hangar: vans, crate stacks, a forklift sleeping like a yellow animal. Overhead, steel truss, corrugated roof groaning under weather. The far wall wore a painted slogan: WE KEEP THE CITY SLEEPING. The paint peeled in smug flakes.
A squad of Security spilled into the hangar from a side door, helmets on, visors down, boots moving as one. The lead woman, knife-lover from the lot—saw them on the catwalk and smiled with all her small teeth.
"Hi again, rat."
"Hello," Asta said.
She gestured. Two portable pylons trundled out on casters, crackling. They sparked a circle of white-blue around the catwalk's stairwell, anti-essence lights. The air turned thin where the field touched it.
[Warning: Null Halo Detected.]
[Effect: Shadow Attenuation — Severe.]
[Workaround: Physical pathfinding or light-source sabotage.]
Lysandra winced. Her fingers flexed, light fluttering and dying. "I hate these...."