"The blindfold conceals the world, yet it cannot silence the mind that maps it."
Checkmate
Rain hammered the street in straight, needle-like lines. Ricardo and Sybill pushed through the narrow alley, boots splashing through shallow puddles, clothes wet from their earlier escape by the river. Their breathing was sharp, controlled—soldiers forcing their bodies forward despite exhaustion.
They turned the corner—
—and the world shifted.
The exit behind them sealed with a pressure they could feel in their ribs. The opposite path narrowed, angles tightening like invisible hands pushing the walls inward.
And then the rain parted.
Two silhouettes appeared where the alley widened.
Tala Martinez, holding the Panulat ng mga Makata like a silver stylus of command.
Aura Medina, her floating Bolang Kristal revolving steadily above her open palm.
They did not step out of the shadows.
It was as if the alley had formed around them.
Ricardo halted. Sybill's witchflame ignited immediately along her wrist, spitting black sparks that hissed against the rain.
"Tala," Sybill growled.
Tala's grip tightened on the Panulat ng mga Makata. Thin silver strokes formed behind her—lines of light, suspended in the air, waiting to become barriers or blades.
Aura raised her chin slightly. The Bolang Kristal spun in a smooth orbit, its surface refracting the rain into clean lines, bending droplets in unnatural paths.
Three Anino operatives stepped forward behind them, forming a silent formation.
The alley became a cage.
Ricardo acted first.
He surged forward, boots skidding across wet ground. With a twist of his wrist, three molten crescents—his Three Stars—shot toward Tala.
Before they closed the distance—
Tala flicked the Panulat ng mga Makata across the air.
A single silver line flashed.
The Three Stars smashed into the stroke and ricocheted sideways, exploding against the wall with loud, steaming cracks.
Aura's Bolang Kristal pulsed.
Ricardo's next step buckled. His right foot slid half a degree off-line, forcing his weight to shift and breaking the strike he was preparing.
His balance was stolen—predicted—before he finished the movement.
"Sybill!" Ricardo barked.
She was already in motion.
Sybill snapped her arm outward. A whip of black flame erupted, carving through the rain with a violent curve. The witchfire sliced toward Tala—
—but the Bolang Kristal rotated sharply, faster than an eye could follow.
The flame bent midair.
Instead of striking Tala, it slammed violently into the ground, exploding in a plume of black fire that tore a crater in the asphalt. Water splashed upward in a tall column.
Sybill stumbled from the recoil.
Two operatives surged toward her.
Ricardo spun just in time as an operative's heavy strike cut toward his skull. The gauntlet carved a chunk out of the wall instead, sending broken brick scattering.
Ricardo countered with a knee and elbow, driving them into the operative's ribs.
The man didn't react.
Another operative hooked Ricardo's arm from behind and pulled hard. Suppression glyphs flashed along the man's gauntlets, gripping like a tightening vise. Ricardo struggled, muscles bulging against the restraint.
But the field didn't give.
Sybill swung Kandila ng Dilim in a vicious arc. Black fire shot from the flame's edge, slicing through the rain toward the nearest operative.
The flame burned through his sleeve—skin blistering instantly—
—but he stepped into her strike with no hesitation, slamming his shoulder into her chest.
The impact launched Sybill into the wall. She hit hard, sliding down, her breath expelled in a choking gasp.
Another operative seized her wrist before she could recover, wrenching her arm behind her back. Her flame flickered weakly.
Ricardo tried to push up, but the suppression field tightened around his torso—thickening, brightening, locking him down. Rain distorted around the bands like heat waves bending light.
Aura spoke softly, but her voice cut through the downpour:
"His next attack would have been diagonal. And it would have missed."
The Bolang Kristal pulsed again, glowing brighter.
Sybill twisted violently, trying to summon another burst of flame. A spark formed in her palm—
—but Tala lowered the Panulat ng mga Makata, drawing a short vertical line in the air.
The spark died instantly, snuffed out as if a lid had closed over her power.
Sybill's knees buckled as the operative forced her down, pressing her face toward the wet ground.
Ricardo roared and pulled against the suppression field. One band cracked—
—but Aura's Bolang Kristal reacted immediately.
New bands snapped into place, twice as strong, forcing him flat against the pavement. His cheek pressed to the cold, wet concrete.
Rainwater collected around Ricardo's face as two operatives pinned him completely—one on his back, one on his legs. Suppression bands locked around his wrists, glowing red beneath the falling rain.
Sybill was pinned as well—one knee on her back, arms twisted behind her. Kandila ng Dilim was ripped from her grip and held by an operative wearing fully shadow-etched gloves.
Her flames sputtered uselessly.
She couldn't lift her head. She could barely breathe through the pressure.
Tala stepped forward, Panulat ng mga Makata held loosely at her side.
Aura crossed her arms, the Bolang Kristal hovering beside her, pulsing like a calm heartbeat.
"You're finished," Tala said.
She drew a small downward checkmark in the air with the Panulat.
A visible silver mark.
The alley sealed around that motion.
Ricardo and Sybill's bodies went still—not from choice, but from complete restraint.
Their defeat was visible in the simplest, most brutal terms:
Ricardo pinned under suppression fields and Anino gauntlets.
Sybill forced to her knees, arms wrenched behind her, unable to ignite even a single flame.
Both immobilized.
Both disarmed.
Both overpowered by force, coordination, and two High Council relics designed to control outcomes.
The fight was over.
Blindfolded to Captivity
Muntinlupa, Metro Manila
The world faded behind black cloth.
Rough fabric pressed against Ricardo's eyes; the faint scent of dust and iron clung to the threads. His wrists were bound behind him with something colder than steel—Anino restraints, soft as cloth but harder than plate.
Beside him, Sybill exhaled through her nose in a controlled rhythm, calibrating her breath as MID-Zeta trained its operatives to do when deprived of sight.
Boots scuffed against the pavement.
Not gravel.
Not mud.
Concrete.
Old, weathered, uneven.
A long corridor.
Ricardo committed each sound to memory.
They were marched forward, guided by two engineered Anino operatives, their steps almost soundless despite the weight of their armor. The air tasted thick with mildew and something older—damp concrete that had absorbed decades of decay and secrets.
Yet beneath it…
Something else.
An electrical hum, faint but constant.
Myth-tech generators.
Deep within a structure that had never been intended to contain such power.
Sybill tilted her head as she walked.
She heard it too."Left turn," she whispered under her breath.
Ricardo confirmed it through the shift in airflow against his skin.
A hallway junction.
They were in a repurposed megastructure—something labyrinthine, built to contain threats long before the Anino took control.
A metal gate groaned open ahead of them.
Old hinges.
Large.
Industrial.
A prison gate.
Ricardo's pulse remained steady, though his mind raced. He counted steps.
Ear-conducted every sound.
Mapped distances by airflow, vibrations, and echoes.
Left.
Right.
Ramp downward.
Three floors.
Iron bars. Thick walls. Corridor acoustics too broad to be a bunker.
A multi-level facility.
Behind her blindfold, Sybill whispered, "Ricardo… this place is too big for a temporary site."
She kept her voice barely audible—safe beneath the hum of the transport team's communications.
Ricardo silently concurred.
This was no small black facility.
This wasn't even an Anino outpost.
This was a fortress.
A prison repurposed into a myth-tech black site.
But which one? The answer simmered just beneath the surface of his thoughts—but without sight, he couldn't confirm.
Not yet.
They were stopped abruptly.
A hand shoved Ricardo forward. His shoulder clipped the corner of a concrete wall—rough, ancient, chipped. A relic of a structure built long before myth-tech modernization.
A door hissed open.
Myth-tech, grafted onto something ancient.
"Proceed," one operative ordered.
Ricardo stumbled forward, the shove intentionally disorienting—an old psychological tactic. Blindfold, imbalance, controlled panic reflex.
He maintained his posture.
He counted the steps.
He memorized every shift in ventilation.
Every change in temperature.
Every hum in the walls.
Three rooms passed.
Two guards stationed at each.
The heavy sound of a vault door echoed nearby—dense, pressurized.
Inside it, he discerned the faintest resonance:
The fire-star heartbeat of Alab ng Tala.
His relic… stored nearby.
Sybill stiffened as well.
She sensed her relic too.
A guard struck the back of her leg with a baton, forcing her to kneel.
"Eyes down," the operative growled, though she could not see.
Ricardo tensed, but Sybill shook her head slightly.
They couldn't break formation yet.
They needed these moments—to memorize, to calculate.
The operatives resumed their march.
A long stairwell descended—echoing, metal against concrete, like a retrofitted underground block. A forgotten section of an old prison expanded with myth-tech nodes.
Three flights.
A right turn.
Two more gates.
"Stop."
Hands seized Ricardo and Sybill by their shoulders and forced them to their knees.
A device beeped behind Ricardo—a keypad.
Six digits.
Entered quickly.
Confidently.
He replayed the rhythm in his mind—
Tap-tap… tap… tap-tap-tap.
A pattern.
He memorized the spacing of the fingers.
Sybill counted the sequence the same way.
Ricardo could hear her matching the cadence with her breath.
Doors hissed open.
A gust of colder air greeted them. Sanitized. Sterile.
The faint chemical scent of Anino interrogation halls.
"Remove the blindfolds," the lead operative commanded.
Hands yanked the cloth away.
Ricardo blinked against the sudden glare of artificial light—
And the sight before him confirmed what he had already suspected:
This place was once a prison block.
A massive one.
Long-abandoned, now carved open and reborn under Anino control.
Layers of myth-tech conduits ran through cracked walls. Panels of shadow-glass pulsed with red sigils. Cells were chained with both metal and sorcery.
An interrogation hall constructed inside the carcass of an old penal complex.
Sybill muttered under her breath:
"…Bilibid?"
Ricardo didn't respond—not yet.
But she was correct.
They stood inside a facility that should have been emptied years ago.
Now it belonged to shadows.Their captors dragged them forward again—toward a reinforced chamber at the far end. Its door shimmered with a controlled barrier field and the unmistakable sting of suppression glyphs.
An interrogation block. A torture room built from the bones of an old megaprison.
Ricardo exchanged a brief glance with Sybill.
No fear.
Only readiness.
Only the unspoken agreement:
Everything they memorized here
would later become the blueprint for their escape.
They were shoved into the chamber.
The door sealed behind them.
Darkness swallowed the edges of the room.
Chains clinked.
Glyphs activated.
Restraints tightened.
The interrogation was about to begin.