"When a relic calls to its wielder, distance is only a suggestion."
Relic Reacquisition
The vault exhaled cold air—metallic, engineered, humming with myth-tech tension.
Ricardo and Sybill stepped inside. Unlike the retrofitted corridors above, this chamber had been rebuilt entirely—smoother, colder, too quiet.
Shadow-glass panels pulsed with red circuitry.
Containment pylons thrummed like restrained thunder.
A subsonic vibration pressed against bone.
At the far end—behind voidsteel and suppression lattices—
two sealed containers waited.
One burned molten gold.
One breathed darkness like something alive.
Alab ng Tala.
Kandila ng Dilim.
Ricardo felt the heat pulsing from the first vault—like a heartbeat he'd once trained with.
Sybill felt the opposite pull—cold, precise, gravitational.
They reached the panel: myth-tech locks, biometric plate, and a keypad with a three-attempt limit.
Ricardo raised his hand.
Sybill stopped him.
"Three chances. We lose them if we fail."
He nodded.
They ran through the remembered sequence.
*Tap-tap… tap… tap-tap-tap.*
Ricardo entered it.
Beep.
**Red.**
Second attempt.
Beep.
**Red.**
A warning tone crawled across the vault.
Sybill stepped forward.
"Switch."
Her fingers hovered over the panel—steady, surgical.
Tap… tap.
Pause.
Tap.
Short breath.
Tap—tap… tap.
Silence.
Then—
**Green.**
The containment locks disengaged.
Pressure hissed out in a long exhale.
The first vault slid open—
and molten gold light surged like a caged sunrise.
Alab ng Tala floated above an obsidian altar, the blade rippling with controlled celestial heat. Ricardo reached out. Golden fire raced up his arm in a single smooth line, coiling around his shoulder like a greeting from an old ally.
His chest loosened.
"Still with me."
Sybill approached the second container.
The suppression lattice dropped—
and a wave of cold shadow expanded outward, swallowing light without dimming anything else.
Kandila ng Dilim hovered above its pedestal.
A black candle.
Wax pristine, untouched, flawless—its surface absorbing light like velvet void. The wick burned with an inverted flame that extended upward into a long, tapering blade of black fire. The flame shimmered like a sword forged from darkness itself—
inextinguishable, hungry, perfect.
The blade pulsed at Sybill's presence.
She wrapped her hand around the candle hilt.
The wax remained solid—eternal, unmelting, impervious.
But the flame responded instantly:
The black-fire blade elongated, sharpened, and curled around her arm like a living serpent of shadowlight. Each flicker left trails of searing scorch-marks across the air—marks that burned for several seconds before fading into smoke.
A single drop of black flame slid off the blade, hit the floor—
—and burrowed downward, hissing, until it extinguished itself only after consuming the topmost layer of concrete.
Sybill inhaled sharply, eyes narrowing.
"Back."
The sword flickered violently—like it understood.
The vault lights flickered in fear.
Ricardo gripped Alab tighter.
"They're coming."
Sybill flicked her wrist.
A thin arc of black flame shot off the sword, slicing a molten groove through a shadow-glass panel before dying out only after it had nothing left to burn.
"Good," she said. "Let them."
Alarms erupted.
Metal crashed open.
Bootsteps thundered from stairwells.
Ricardo stepped toward the door, molten light rising along his arms.
Sybill shadowed him, black flame curling around her silhouette.
Together—
relics reclaimed, resonance rising—
they walked out of the vault.
And the prison roared awake.
Scorching Shadows
The first wave hit them before the alarms finished screaming.
Ricardo stepped into the corridor first, Alab igniting in a violent bloom of molten gold.
Sybill followed, Kandila's black-flame blade stretching into a long, ravenous arc.
Shadows peeled off the walls—
not natural shadows,
but bodies stepping out from folded partitions of myth-tech gloom.
Engineered Anino Wielders.
B to A-class.
Faces masked.
Movements sharp, efficient, cold.
The first attacker dropped from the ceiling, swinging a hooked void-blade toward Ricardo's throat.
Ricardo's counter was a blur.
Alab's golden edge carved an upward diagonal, meeting the void-blade mid-motion.
The collision detonated like a burst of lightning—
void-energy recoiling, golden fire shredding through it.
Ricardo finished the wielder with a short, devastating elbow strike that cracked armor and sent him crashing into a wall.
The second wave charged Sybill.
She didn't retreat.
She stepped *into* them.
Kandila's black flame stretched longer. It left ribbons of scorched air behind every swing. She slashed once—clean, horizontal—and three operatives were flung backward as black fire clung to their armor, eating through plating like oil-fed hunger.
One tried to douse the flames with a suppression glyph.
Kandila's fire refused to die.
It only burned darker.
---
A prisoner watched from a barred cell halfway down the corridor.
He had been silent for hours, defeated by weeks of conditioning—
until now.
The light from the battle flooded his tiny window, strobing gold and black,
painting the walls with violent, shifting shadows.
He pressed himself into the corner, trembling.
He had seen Anino enforcers kill.
He had seen them torment.
He had seen them break people.
But he had never seen them *lose*.
Ricardo's molten arc split a spear in half.
Sybill dragged her sword across the floor, leaving a scar of inextinguishable black flame that stretched like a hunting beast.
Operatives screamed behind their masks.
The prisoner covered his ears but couldn't look away.
A black-flame projectile shot past his bars—
searing the wall across from him but leaving no heat,
only a darkness that pulsed like a heartbeat.
This wasn't a rescue.
This wasn't a rebellion.
This was two monsters fighting their way out of Hell.
And Hell was losing.
He whispered one thing under his breath, barely conscious of it:
"…mga halimaw…"
---
Ricardo rotated, sweeping Alab into a molten halo.
"Two more incoming—left!"
Sybill flicked her wrist.
A razor-thin projectile of black flame fired off the blade—
straight, silent, surgical.
It struck the first operative in the visor—
not piercing, but *imploding* the myth-tech lens into his mask.
He fell without a scream.
The second charged Ricardo.
Ricardo met him head-on.
Alab crackled with starlit flame as he twisted, dropped low, and delivered a precision strike to the wielder's knee—
a sharp crack.
The operative stumbled.
Ricardo finished with a stab to the chest, Alab pulsing outward in a bloom of molten light that blasted the man into fragments.
Bootsteps thundered behind them.
A full squad.
Eight silhouettes burst from the far doorway—
all wielding relic-augmented weapons:
void-glaives, myth-tech spears, collapsing blades that folded space as they swung.
Ricardo clicked his tongue.
"Sybill—split."
Sybill veered left, black flame trailing behind her like a moving shadow-rift.
Ricardo veered right, Alab blazing in a molten arc.
They met the charge mid-corridor.
Ricardo ducked under a collapsing blade, letting its warped energy scrape sparks off the wall. He drove a knee into the wielder's gut and followed with a rising slash that sent the spear-user spinning.
Sybill flowed like dark water.
Her blade cut the air with surgical precision—long, elegant sweeps that produced arcs of inextinguishable black fire. Each arc landed with a hiss, scorching through armor as if it is paper.
An operative attempted to grapple her.
She responded by snapping her fingers.
A thread of black flame shot from the Kandila's tip and coiled around his arm like a serpent—
tightening—
twisting—
dropping him to the floor as the fire burrowed through the armor joints. It squeezed and scorched through, leaving the engineered relic wielder burning in pieces.
Sybill's voice cut through the chaos.
"Behind!"
Ricardo spun like a hurricane sun. Alab ng Tala melting assailants along its wake.
Silence.
For three seconds.
Then—
THE PRISON ROARED AGAIN.
More bootsteps above.
More machinery activating.
More shadows shifting.
Sybill lifted Kandila, its blade pulsing with vicious black light.
"They're throwing everyone at us."
Ricardo rolled his shoulder, molten fire dripping off his blade in slow sparks.
"Good."
He stepped forward.
"We'll tear through everyone."
Together, they advanced down the corridor—
toward the next wave,
toward the heart of the Anino,
toward the monster waiting deeper inside.
The Warden.
The Warden
The last of the Engineered Wielders collapsed in a heap of smoke and groaning metal, Kandila's black flame still clinging to their armor like a ghost refusing to leave the body.
"Footsteps," Ricardo warned.
Not rushed.
Not panicked.
Measured.
A door at the far end of the chamber unlocked—not opened by fear or urgency, but by protocol.
The temperature dropped as mist slithered in through the widening slit of the doorway.
Then he entered.
The Warden - an S Grade Engineered Anino Relic Wielder. Eight feet tall in reinforced voidsteel armor, robes hanging like execution tapestries. Chains were woven into the plating, each etched with suppression script. His face was hidden behind a slotted helmet, eyes glowing with the same cold red of containment sigils.
In his right hand:
A Kusarigama-type Sandata Relic.
The chain pulsed with violet glyphs.
The blade at the end was serrated obsidian, shaped like something meant for harvesting souls, not crops.
The Warden dragged the chain once across the floor—
SHRRAAK—
and the sound alone made the suppression glyphs stutter on the walls.
Sybill muttered, "That's new."
"No," Ricardo said softly. "That's old. Ancient."
The Warden spoke without emotion:
"Return to your cells."
The chain snapped upward with explosive speed.
Ricardo moved first.
Alab flashed—
golden crescent cutting through the chain's arc—
but the moment the relic met the Kusarigama's blade, a shockwave rippled from the impact and folded the air inward, swallowing light.
Imprisonment technique.
Ricardo's arm locked for half a second—just long enough for the Warden to close the distance.
Sybill intercepted, Kandila's inextinguishable flame slicing downward in a black arc. The Warden pivoted, bringing the weighted end of the chain around—
CLANG!
The chain wrapped around her flame-blade, glyphs pulsing as if drinking the darkness.
He tried to wrench the blade from her hand.
Bad choice.
Kandila's fire surged up the chain—
black, hungry, impossible to extinguish.
The Warden staggered as the flame tried to crawl toward the handle of his relic.
He growled and spun, smashing Sybill into a half-shattered pillar.
Ricardo roared—
Alab ignited fully, golden fire bursting around him in a solar ring.
He dashed.
The Warden raised his palm and slammed it on the floor.
Violet script unfolded like a net—
Paralysis Invocation.
Ricardo felt his legs lock—
then Sybill's voice cut through the field:
"Ricardo—MOVE!"
Kandila's flame carved through the paralysis glyph, burning through the script like it was paper. Ricardo crashed forward, free again.
Alab met Kusarigama in a burst of gold and violet.
Sparks flew.
Blades screamed.
Ricardo pushed, muscles trembling as the Warden held the clash with one hand.
One hand.
Sybill rose behind the Warden, black flame blade dragging a molten line across the floor.
He flicked his chain and sent Sybill flying again.
She landed in a roll, coughing blood—
but still standing.
"Together," Ricardo said.
Sybill nodded.
Alab glowed.
Kandila roared.
The Warden spun the Kusarigama overhead—glyphs spiraling outward into a collapsing cage of violet chains.
An imprisonment sphere.
If it closed, they would never escape.
Ricardo and Sybill sprinted toward each other.
"Ready?" he shouted.
"Do it."
They leaped—
crossing paths mid-air.
Alab spiraled golden flame around Ricardo—
Sybill swung Kandila in a black-fire arc—
their relics harmonizing in a violent whirl.
SOLAR SPIRAL — BLACK FLAME CROSS!
A collision of celestial heat and darkness.
Ricardo drove Alab downward.
Sybill carved up from below.
The Warden swung the Kusarigama, chains exploding outward—
but their attack ripped straight through the collapsing prison-glyph—
Gold met violet.
Black met voidsteel.
Ricardo landed behind the Warden.
Sybill landed in front.
The Warden stood frozen for one breath.
Then the armor split in two clean halves—
a line of golden burn through the chest,
a wound of black fire devouring from the opposite side.
The body fell.
The Kusarigama clattered against stone.
Kandila's flame crawled up the fallen Warden's armor, burning silently, refusing to die even as the metal warped and curled.
Ricardo wiped blood from his lip.
Sybill spit on the floor.
"That was an S Grade?" she asked.
Ricardo nodded.
"Yeah."
She twirled Kandila.
"Then we're warmed up."
He grinned.
"Let's leave."
Together, they stepped past the smoldering corpse.
Ahead—
stairs
leading
up.
The exit waiting above.
The prison had one more secret to reveal.
"Come on," Ricardo said. "Let's finish this."
And they began the final ascent.
The World Revealed Itself
Ricardo and Sybill climbed the final stairwell, breaths steady, relics dim but ready. Behind them, the lower levels still crackled with the echoes of the Warden's fall. Ahead, a rusted double door leaked a thin bar of moonlight into the dark.
Ricardo pushed it open.
Cold night air slammed into them—real air, not the recycled staleness of confinement. Wind carried the scent of wet soil, broken stone, and forgotten years. Their boots stepped out onto uneven ground, and the world widened around them in a single, silent moment.
Ruins stretched in every direction:
Collapsed fences.
Watchtowers rotted into silhouettes.
Barbed wire curled like rusted thorns.
Concrete walls sagging under moss and time.
A dead prison.
Sybill's eyes traced the shattered crest on the far wall—faded, half-eaten by age, but unmistakable.
"…Ricardo."
He didn't need to look twice.
"Bilibid."
The name felt heavier spoken aloud.
Wind swept through the yard, rattling old chains and slamming a loose gate in the distance. Shadows crawled across the abandoned complex like memories refusing to die.
Sybill lifted Kandila ng Dilim, its black flame rising in a cold, controlled arc.
"They turned this place into a blacksite."
Ricardo tightened his grip on Alab ng Tala.
"And they thought we'd never walk out."
No more words.
They stepped away from the stairwell, into the moonlit yard, relics pulsing quietly as the night opened in front of them—proof that they had survived what was meant to erase them.
And the prison that tried to swallow them whole watched in silence
as they left it behind.