The stairs spiraled endlessly, the air growing thicker with each step. Blue light bled from cracks in the walls, pulsing in rhythm with something alive. The deeper Shadow went, the stronger the hum became—like the city's heart was buried beneath its own feet.
At last, the stairwell opened into a vast chamber. Rows of glass tubes lined the hall, each filled with pale fluid that shimmered faintly under mana light. Inside them floated children—dozens, maybe hundreds—suspended in silence. Their bodies were thin, veins faintly glowing blue. Tubes connected their spines and hearts to the walls, feeding the chamber with steady mana streams.
Shadow's jaw tightened.
His senses reached out—and found only emptiness. No heartbeat. No mind. No trace of life.
Just shells.
"Artificial mana compound…" he whispered. "You turned them into fuel."
He moved closer to one of the tubes. The face of a small boy stared back—eyes open, vacant, lips parted as if to speak but forever silent. A faint mark glowed on his collarbone—the same serpentine cross from the door above.
That same mark had been on the ones he saw before, in the southern ruins.
This wasn't a single experiment.
It was an entire network.
The gauntlet on his arm trembled, its veins of light crawling higher up his wrist. It reacted to the mana in the air—dense, corrupted, wrong.
Then came a sound.
A faint, wet exhale from deeper within the chamber.
Shadow vanished in an instant, reappearing behind a pillar. Through the glass and mist, something stirred—figures in white robes, their faces obscured by masks of porcelain. They moved around a central machine, inserting crystalline cores into compartments that pulsed with blue fire.
"Batch 47 completed," one of them said, voice monotone.
"Essence extraction successful. Prepare refinement for distribution to upper sanctum."
Upper sanctum.
That meant someone above—the Directorate, perhaps even the Holy Land itself—was controlling this.
He clenched his fist. The idea that those children were nothing more than ingredients made his blood burn.
A sudden hiss filled the chamber. The robed figures turned as one, their heads jerking unnaturally. One tilted its head toward his direction.
"Unauthorized mana fluctuation detected," it said flatly.
Before the words finished echoing, the glass tubes began to crack. Fluid spilled out in cascading streams as the bodies within convulsed. The faint blue dust rose like mist, coalescing into phantom shapes.
They weren't human anymore. The mana inside them had twisted their essence into something else—something mindless and fast. Their eyes ignited in cold azure flame as they lurched forward.
Shadow's dagger was already drawn.
He moved like darkness given shape—cutting, dodging, vanishing between flickers of light. Each strike silenced another corrupted child-body, leaving faint trails of fading mana dust. But there were too many. For every one that fell, two more crawled from the shattered tubes.
"Pathetic… what they've done to you," he muttered, voice cold.
He summoned a surge of black mana through the gauntlet. The chamber warped, shadows expanding outward like a tide. The sound of air collapsing followed—then stillness.
When the smoke cleared, nothing but silence remained.
Only one thing lingered—a small tag floating in the ruined fluid.
A number etched in it: Project Azure Veil – Subject 0031.
He pocketed it, eyes narrowed.
He was beginning to understand the scale of this corruption—but not the purpose. Not yet.
Then…
he heard footsteps. Light, familiar, almost gentle.
"Shadow…?"
A voice echoed from the stairwell above.
He turned sharply.
Descending from the corridor were three figures—Rena, Kael, and Lira. Their faces lit by torchlight, calm, composed. Rena smiled faintly, though her eyes glowed faintly under the reflection of blue light.
"We followed your trail," she said softly. "You shouldn't have come alone."
Shadow didn't move. He felt the hum of their mana—it was faint, synchronized. Too perfect.
His fingers tightened around the dagger's hilt.
Something was wrong.
The light flickered—and for a split second, he saw it. Their shadows on the wall didn't match their movements.
They bent the wrong way.
Rena tilted her head slightly, the same uncanny motion he'd seen in the puppets above.
"Come, Shadow," she said again, voice tender but hollow. "You've seen enough."
The air turned cold.
The gauntlet pulsed once.
And Shadow's eyes narrowed into pure, icy calm.