The stench in the cell was overwhelming – blood and mildew mixed together, thick in the air. Leo's stomach churned; he swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat. His legs were still trembling, uselessly. Ada was wiping her short blade clean on a guard's tunic, the brisk efficiency of it sending a chill down Leo's spine.
"Move out, rookie." Her voice was flat, devoid of inflection. The jangle of the keyring in her hand sounded like a death knell.
Leo pushed himself away from the wall, limbs feeling like jelly. He tried not to look at the two twitching shapes on the floor, but his eyes kept drifting towards the cell's far corner – where another figure lay hunched, utterly still.
"Hey… that one…" His throat felt like sandpaper. He pointed.
Ada stopped. She glanced back, her brow furrowing almost imperceptibly. "What?"
"He's… not moving."
Ada walked over, her boots silent on the damp straw. She looked down. "Yeah. Dead."
Leo edged closer. The flickering torchlight illuminated the man's ashen face – the one who'd yelled "Number Seventeen." His chest was a ruinous mess, blood soaking dark into the straw beneath him. One hand was clamped rigidly over his heart, fingers bone-white, clutching a crumpled wad of paper utterly saturated in dark, coagulated blood. Any writing was long gone.
"He was… shouting just a minute ago…" Leo felt disoriented. A living man, gone. Just like that. Cold. Stiff. Was this death? No flash of light, no respawn prompt. Just the raw tang of iron and this silent husk.
"One of ours. Planted here." Ada's voice came from beside him, still level, but with the faintest hint of a pause. "Cover blown. We were too late."
"Too… late?" Leo's head buzzed. If… if he hadn't been frozen like an idiot? If that damned [Tactical Deployment] hadn't locked him in place? If he'd just managed to shout… Hell, he was even thinking about healing spells from games now… if he could just heal… Damn it! Pointless. He stared at the ruined paper, shame burning his cheeks. All talk behind a keyboard, chickening out when it got real. Self-loathing mixed with raw fear clogged his chest. The static in his right eye flickered maddeningly.
Ada spared the corpse no further glance. "Follow." She turned and strode out, her form melting into the gloom of the corridor beyond.
Outside was a narrow staircase, spiraling upwards. The air was worse here – mildew, blood, and the oily reek of torch smoke combined into a suffocating fug. Torches spat and crackled in wall sconces, their light casting long, writhing shadows. Footsteps echoed unnaturally loud on the stone steps: Thud. Thud. Each one hammered Leo's frayed nerves. He stayed close on Ada's heels, the hair on his neck prickling, convinced something lurked in those shifting patches of darkness. Sweat beaded on his forehead, cold against his skin.
Suddenly!
A dark shape erupted from the shadows at the bend above! Short, solid, moving fast – straight for Ada!
"Bloody hell! Look out!" Leo's voice cracked with panic.
Ada didn't flinch. She even stepped forward, one arm coming up slightly. Thump! The figure slammed into her – a girl, wild hair sticking out, swamped in oversized leather armor, a ridiculously large wooden shield strapped to her shoulder (that must have been the scraping noise). She'd shoved the shield haphazardly onto her back and now clung to Ada like a limpet.
"Boss!" The girl's voice was loud and bright with excitement. "Knew you'd be alright! Andy was goin' spare!" She buried her face in Ada's shoulder, nuzzling.
Almost simultaneously, another figure detached itself smoothly from the shadows higher up, landing lightly a few steps above them. A lanky boy, messy curls, carrying a longbow nearly as tall as he was, quiver stuffed full. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, a lazy smirk on his face. "Mavi, you great oaf," he drawled, voice smooth and edged with sarcasm. "Got a grudge against the stairs? Nearly took the wall down." But his eyes held no humor. They fixed instantly on Leo, standing pale and shaken behind Ada, scanning him up and down with the cool appraisal of a farmer eyeing livestock. "Who's the baggage?"
Mavi hung off Ada like an overgrown, hyperactive puppy, face buried in the crook of her neck as she chuckled. Ada let her cling for a few seconds before lifting a hand to flick Mavi's sweat-damp, tousled chestnut hair.
"Cool it." Her voice remained flat, unreadable.
But Leo—still catching his breath from the carnage and the icy grip of death, his nerves frayed—could've sworn something shifted in that flicker of a moment. The razor-sharp, glacial edge Ada wore like armor when facing enemies seemed… softened. For an instant, the ever-alert, analytical gray of her eyes clouded with something complex and fleeting, like the faint tremor of a bowstring loosened after years of tension.
Mavi rubbed her head where Ada had flicked her, still grinning. Ada's gaze drifted from the massive, scarred wooden shield slung over Mavi's shoulder to the lanky boy leaning against the staircase wall above them. Andy's messy flaxen curls looked almost soft in the flickering torchlight, but his amber eyes burned with feral intensity—pure, undiluted mockery and naked curiosity fixed on the unfamiliar "rookie."
The sight of them, these two etched into her bones, acted like a rusted but still-sharp key. Click. It pried open a door in Ada's mind she'd thought welded shut.
Fragments of memory, sharp and cold as winter shards, sliced through her. A night so frigid it froze marrow. Wind howled through the ruins of the capital like a dying beast. The air choked on gunpowder, char, and the deeper, metallic reek of death. A younger Ada, codename "Cinder," freshly emerged from a clinical "cleanup" operation… She just wanted to vanish. To scatter like ash.
…In a rubble-strewn corner, two small shapes clung together like burrs… The older girl, maybe seven? Skin stretched taut over birdlike bones… She shielded a smaller boy curled against her… He was burning up, cheeks flushed crimson, lips cracked and bleeding… Only unfocused, fever-glazed eyes stared into the void… Nearby… A half-burnt, carbonized adult arm jutted from frozen debris… Its rigid fingers pointed at nothing. A silent epitaph.
Her blood turned to ice. Reason screamed: Dead weight! Weakness! A death warrant!… The girl sensed her presence, head snapping up. Those eyes—sunken by hunger, terror, exhaustion—held no tears, no plea. Only ash. Emptiness. In them, Ada saw a hundred cold mornings in the training facility mirror. Saw her own hollowed-out reflection: just a codename, just a mission. A chilling, suffocating kinship seized her heart…
"Move." The word scraped out, hoarse, weary. Surprising even her. She grabbed the two icy, stick-thin wrists—almost yanking—and dragged them deeper into the dark, away from the capital's dying lights. She shed "Cinder," but shouldered two new weights called "Tomorrow." When the boy's scorching forehead brushed her freezing neck… A jolt. A strange, panicky spasm ripped through her… She only tightened her grip, marching faster, as if speed could outrun the unsettling heat, the frantic pulse hammering in her throat.
"...Wish… wish I knew Holy Light Flash or somethin'… Just once…" Leo's muttered words drifted like smoke through the heavy air of Ada's recollection. His gaze was fixed on the blood-sodden paper wad clenched in the dead informant's hand, its dark crimson glaring against the static dancing in his right eye. "Coulda… coulda patched him up… maybe…" His voice faded, thick with helplessness and self-loathing. "Hell, keyboard healer too long… Think you're some bloody angel? Can't even tie a proper bandage, you useless git..."
"Boss? Daydreamin'?" Andy's voice, metallic and lazily mocking, shattered the stillness. He flowed down the staircase railing like a wildcat, landing soundlessly. His gaze pinned Ada, a challenging smirk deepening. "Made enough racket. Linger much longer, the Silencers'll bring their 'Silence Boxes' down for a stroll. Thing fires up…" He drew the words "Silence Box" out slowly, deliberately, while his eyes slid sideways to Leo, clearly relishing the fear he expected to see. "Won't be pretty."
"Yeah! Right! Andy's spot on!" Mavi finally detached herself from Ada, hefting her oversized shield with a grunt and a scrape of wood on stone. She nodded vigorously, voice booming, then whipped around to Leo. She screwed her face into what she clearly thought was terrifying, shaking a fist the size of a small ham. "Oi! Newbie! You hearin'? Keep up! Eyes front! Or else…" She paused, searching for maximum menace, "...Or else I'll use you for shield target practice! Thwack!" She mimed a brutal shield bash.
Leo flinched, instinctively shrinking behind Ada's silent back. "Shield bash… Live target practice… Talk about hardcore onboarding…" he mumbled under his breath. "Perma-death ain't a joke, mate…" He watched Mavi's fierce, almost comical expression, noting the lack of real malice in her eyes—just a raw, almost childlike earnestness. A sliver of tension eased. The static in his right eye flickered wildly in response.
Andy snorted, contempt dripping from the sound. "Target practice? Mavi, givin' him airs." He cradled his longbow, chin tilted arrogantly, his sharp gaze raking over Leo. "Look at 'im. Not a target. Barely a speed bump." The words stung, flushing Leo's cheeks. He opened his mouth to retort, but Andy's sheer, fearless presence—like the concept of fear was alien to him—stole his voice. This kid… Fearless wasn't the half of it.
The brief haze clouding Ada's eyes, born of unwelcome memory, vanished in an instant, replaced by a depthless, impenetrable ice. The shards of the past that had surged forward froze solid, sinking into absolute silence within the void of her mind. Her gaze swept over the long-dead guard corpses with the same detached indifference reserved for the rough, cold stone walls surrounding them. Her eyes lingered on Leo's face—painted with terror, self-mockery, and a flush stoked by Andy's barb—for less than half a second. A mere acknowledgement of his existence.
"Move." No extra words. Just a single, icy command, leaving no room for argument. She turned sharply, the hem of her black cloak slicing a sharp arc through the air behind her. She led the way onto the spiraling stone staircase, its steps slick and icy, winding upwards like a path into the Abyss itself. The flickering torchlight stretched her shadow long and stark against the damp, mottled wall, transforming her back into the unyielding, iron core of the Raven's Beak – a dark lodestone guiding their perilous way.
Mavi was immediately on her heels, her heavy footfalls and the occasional scrape of her oversized shield against the stone echoing loudly in the confined stairwell. The sheer, brutish energy she radiated offered a crude counterpoint to the pervasive gloom. Andy, however, deliberately hung back a few steps. He cradled his longbow, head tilted, wearing an expression caught between amusement and detached observation, as if watching a play unfold. His sharp gaze, however, remained fixed on Leo like a physical probe, assessing him with undisguised scrutiny. It was the look of someone calculating the potential uses of an inconveniently placed obstacle: would it be kicked aside, or might it accidentally trip a pursuer?
"...A Healing Totem would work... Slow group heal..." Leo's muttered words surfaced again, nearly drowned by Mavi's thudding steps. He stared fixedly at the wet, treacherous stone beneath his feet. The static flickering at the edge of his right eye pulsed erratically with each heartbeat. "...Or... or a medkit... bandages... antiseptic..." The wave of self-mockery crashed silently within him. What are you thinking, Leo?... Nothing here but blood and rock... Your stupid 'Debugging' UI doesn't even have a bloody band-aid icon...
Leo drew a deep, shuddering breath, trying to quell the tickle in his throat and the frantic pounding in his chest. The air he sucked in was frigid, thick with the reek of old blood, damp rot, and greasy torch smoke. It caught in his lungs, forcing out two harsh, dry coughs. Ahead loomed Ada's silent, implacable figure, seeming capable of cleaving through any obstacle. Behind him, Andy's gaze pricked his skin like physical needles, cold and penetrating. And superimposed over it all, burned into his memory like a brand, was the image of Informant Seventeen's rigid, lifeless body in the cell below… The static in his right eye erupted into a frantic, chaotic dance, like malfunctioning warning lights strobing across his vision, playing a shrill, discordant death march only he could hear.
"This fucking 'Debugging Life'..." he cursed under his breath, the words trembling. He bit down unconsciously on his lower lip, tasting the faint, metallic tang of blood – maybe from the lip he'd bitten earlier in panic, maybe just the foul air of this cursed place. "Dropped straight into the expert-level dungeon… No tutorial NPC in sight… The healing skill tree's greyed out… Respawn tokens locked… Save points? Yeah, right, dream on..." Endless streams of bitter despair and futile sarcasm churned in his mind, powerless against the icy dread spreading from his soles to the crown of his head, or the overwhelming sense of being swept helplessly along in a monstrous current.
He clenched his jaw, gritting teeth already aching in protest, wringing the last dregs of strength from his exhausted body. With immense effort, legs trembling uncontrollably, heavy as if poured from molten lead, he took a step. Then another. Lurching, clumsy, painfully slow, he forced himself to follow the three figures ahead, already teetering on the brink of being swallowed by the thicker, more profound darkness above.
Each upward step felt like the stone grew harder, colder, more unyielding. The muscles in his legs screamed in agony. The spiraling ascent seemed endless, the encircling shadows twisting and writhing in the torchlight, as if concealing countless watching eyes, poised to strike. The relentless climb was a struggle against an invisible, clinging mire – exhausting, agonizingly slow, suffocating. And through it all, the static – his supposed 'golden finger' – flickered relentlessly in his right eye, a silent, mocking audience to his futile fantasies of Holy Light Flashes, Healing Totems, and sterile bandages. This damned 'Debugging' was nothing but a desperate race against death, a climb towards an invisible peak, right from the start.