"Where could they have gone?" Yejin asked, scanning another empty hallway.
She and Kei searched through every quarter of the building, floor by floor, but found only two members still there — Kiro and Hwiseong, both resting in a side room, oblivious to anything being wrong.
"Where's everyone else? Kiro? Hwiseong?" Yejin asked, stepping into the doorway.
Both of them shot up straight the moment they saw her. "Oh, Leader Yejin." Kiro blinked, confused. "Aren't they in their rooms?"
"I hadn't noticed either, honestly," Hwiseong added. "Have you tried asking the others?"
"We're the only ones left in this entire building right now." Yejin's voice carried a sharp edge of worry.
Both men's confusion deepened visibly. "That can't be right," Hwiseong said. "Where would they have all gone at once?"
"Help us look. Search outside." Yejin was already moving toward the door. "If either of you find anything, report to me immediately — send a wisp, don't wait."
"Yes, Leader Yejin!" Both scrambled into motion at once.
Kei and Yejin split off to cover more ground, searching for any trace of the missing members. Kei even climbed to the top of a nearby tower and let his Deathsight flare wide, scanning the streets below — but with so many people moving through the district at once, picking out familiar signatures from the noise proved impossible.
"Kei! Did you find anything?" Yejin shouted up from below, shielding her eyes against the last of the evening light.
"Nothing." Kei dropped from the tower roof in one clean motion, boots landing silent against the cobblestones. "I couldn't sense them at all. Not a trace." He shook his head slowly. "I honestly don't understand what's happening here."
Yejin's grip tightened around her scabbard. "None of this makes sense. People don't just vanish into thin air. If they'd left the building, Hwiseong and Kiro should have noticed something. And there's no sign anything unusual happened in that room, either."
Kei stayed quiet for a moment, staring down at the ground, turning the pieces over in his mind. Then something clicked.
"Let's go back to the infirmary, Princess Yejin."
"Why there?" Yejin's brow furrowed.
"There's something I want to try." Kei was already moving, and after a beat, she fell into step behind him.
START OF FLASHBACK:
Two hours earlier, while Kei and Yejin had been out wandering the streets, Haein and Tsuyu had stayed behind, keeping watch over Vincent.
"So how long have you actually known Vincent?" Tsuyu asked, seated on the far side of the bed, legs crossed comfortably.
"Five, six years now?" Haein considered it. "When I first joined the Fabled Class, he wasn't even part of the order yet. Took another six or seven months before he got recruited."
"I see. Has he always talked this much?" Tsuyu smirked. "This guy never seems to stop. Hahaha."
Haein let out a small laugh, glancing toward Vincent's still face. "Always. Though, honestly, I don't know what he was like before. Deikher pulled him out of some disaster back in Westex, and whatever happened there wiped his memory clean. Everything before that point is just gone for him."
Tsuyu reached out, pressing the back of her hand lightly against Vincent's forehead, and frowned. He was sweating, more than made sense given the room's temperature.
"Something's off," she said, leaning back in her chair. "Why's it suddenly so hot in here?"
Haein noticed it too. Vincent's face had tightened, brow furrowed hard, like he was fighting through something in his sleep. A nightmare, maybe.
Then the room simply ignited.
Flame burst outward in every direction at once, tearing through the door, swallowing the hallway beyond it. Both women lost consciousness in the same instant — and when they came to, they were not in the infirmary anymore.
They stood somewhere else entirely, somewhere hellish, screams echoing endlessly from every direction at once.
"HELP! PLEASE — JUST SAVE MY SON!" A mother's voice, raw with terror.
"WHY IS THE KING DOING THIS TO US? WE DID NOTHING WRONG!" A man, somewhere close.
"THIS IS MADNESS! ALL OF IT! THE KING'S LOST HIS MIND!" Another voice, further off.
"What is this place? Where are we?" Tsuyu spun in place, trying to place anything familiar and finding nothing. Her head still hurt.
Hajun appeared moments later with several other Blood Rose members in tow, all of them equally disoriented. "Commander Tsuyu — you're here too? What's happening? Where are all these screams coming from?"
"I have no idea either," Tsuyu admitted.
The screaming didn't let up. They tried moving to get a better sense of their surroundings, but the whole place burned with something that felt less like illusion and more like actual hellfire — the heat pressing against their skin, real enough that none of them dared push further without understanding it first.
"Haein? Any thoughts?" Tsuyu asked.
Haein breathed deeply first. "Just a guess," she said slowly, "but I think we've been pulled into Vincent's memories."
The whole group froze, could not believe what they just heard. "What?" Hajun's voice cracked with disbelief. "How is that even possible?"
"I don't have an answer for that part." Haein tilted her head, listening to the chaos surrounding them. "But these people — I think they're from Westex. From what Vincent witnessed there himself. The King of Westex was paranoid, from what I understand. Given how hostile things were with Artemia and Oddin at the time, he became convinced his own people would be turned against him — used as weapons by his enemies. So he sealed the kingdom off entirely and started hunting down anyone he suspected of disloyalty. His own citizens."
The others listened in silence, the screams around them taking on new, horrible context.
"A lot of innocent people got swept up in that mess," Haein continued. "Falsely accused of working with Artemia or Oddin's agents. It was brutal. Grim. Vincent and his family were almost certainly caught up in it." She paused. "And..."
"And what?" Tsuyu pressed.
"It's not really my story to tell, but — here it is anyway. Vincent's known as the Firebeast of Westex."
"The Firebeast?" Tsuyu's brow furrowed. "What does that even mean?"
Hajun and the others looked just as lost.
"It means Vincent's considered a major threat by Westex's own government. He nearly brought the entire kingdom down himself, wiping out thousands of the king's soldiers and turning entire units to ash. He was nearly unstoppable, from what I was told."
"Goddess Amaterasu." Tsuyu's voice dropped to barely a whisper. "I never would have guessed."
"That's all based on what was told to us, though — from our Director, Deikher. I don't know the full story myself." Haein's expression softened slightly. "But knowing Vincent the way I do now, I doubt any of it was ever something he wanted to do."
"PLEASE! WE'RE NOT REBELS, I SWEAR IT!" a woman's voice cried out somewhere in the burning dark.
"Never would've guessed he had that kind of power in him." Tsuyu shook her head slowly. "Almost bringing down an entire nation by himself."
"Right now, the bigger problem is figuring out how we get out of here." Haein's focus sharpened, all business again.
"Fair point. Any ideas?" Tsuyu asked.
Hajun and the others turned the question over as well, though most of their attention kept drifting back to the oppressive heat pressing in from every side — making it hard to think clearly about anything at all.
END OF FLASHBACK