She listened.
Not casually.
Not anxiously.
The way soldiers listen—head tilted just enough to catch vibrations through bone instead of air.
Another distant impact rang through the shaft above us.
The sound didn't echo.
It traveled—down steel, through concrete, along the elevator frame, until it reached us like a warning pulse.
Yuna exhaled once.
Then she spoke.
"Violet Shadow Clan."
The name carried no legend.
That was what made it terrifying.
The name didn't explode.
It didn't demand attention.
It landed wrong.
Heavy.
Dense.
Like a weight dropped into still water that never finished sinking.
"They're contractors," she continued.
"Assassins who don't belong to any one power."
Killers without allegiance didn't fight wars.
They erased variables.
The emergency lights flickered red across her face, carving sharp shadows along her cheekbones.
"They work for big-shot clans. Old money. Old blood."
"People who don't get their hands dirty."
She glanced up at the ceiling, eyes tracking the tremor lines spidering through the shaft.
"Left hand," she added flatly.
I laughed once.
The sound came out dry.
Broken.
Like something inside me had cracked and tried to pretend it was humor.
"So I wasn't killed for revenge," I said quietly.
"I was erased for convenience."
My jaw clenched until it hurt.
"That makes it worse."
Because revenge ends.
Convenience only escalates.
I swallowed hard.
"Because it means they'll keep coming."
Another impact.
Closer.
The elevator jerked violently.
I slammed into the wall, pain detonating across my chest in a white flash that stole my breath completely. The air left my lungs in a harsh, useless gasp as sparks burst from the ceiling panels.
The lights flickered.
Then—
BOOM.
The explosion came from above.
Not sound first—pressure.
Like the building inhaled and forgot how to exhale.
Not downward.
Not collapsing.
Cutting.
A precise detonation that didn't destroy the car—it sheared the upper stabilizers loose.
The ceiling buckled inward with a tortured shriek of metal.
Sparks rained down like burning snow.
One cable snapped.
Not catastrophically.
Precisely.
The car tilted.
My inner ear rebelled instantly.
Up and down stopped agreeing with each other.
My body screamed that I was falling, even though my eyes insisted the walls were still there, still solid. The disconnect was nauseating—like being drunk on gravity itself.
I tried to adjust my footing.
There was no footing.
The elevator wasn't falling yet.
It was deciding which direction gravity belonged to.
That was worse.
Gravity slid sideways.
Up stopped meaning safety.
Down stopped meaning ground.
The floor vanished from under my feet.
I screamed as the world rotated, my stomach flipping violently as the orientation of everything I trusted simply… changed.
Yuna slammed me flat against the wall with brutal force, pinning me there as the car lurched again.
"UP!" she shouted. "We go UP!"
"How?!" I choked, vision blurring.
She didn't answer.
She tore open the ceiling hatch with raw strength, metal screaming as it gave way under her hands.
Above us—
The shaft stretched upward into darkness.
Cables whipped like wounded veins.
Fragments of concrete and steel rained past us, clanging and spinning into the void below.
Another explosion detonated higher up.
The remaining cables screamed in protest.
The elevator dropped.
Just a meter.
Then another.
"If it falls—" I gasped.
"We die," Yuna finished calmly.
The words didn't shake.
That scared me more than if they had.
Fear meant uncertainty.
Calm meant calculation.
Yuna wasn't hoping we'd survive.
She was already working through the steps that came after we didn't.
For a split second, Renya's face flashed through my mind.
Not screaming.
Not crying.
Just alive.
For a terrifying instant, another image tried to surface.
Not Renya alive.
Renya alone.
Standing somewhere I couldn't reach. Calling my name into a world that no longer answered back. The weight of my hand missing from his shoulder. My promise unfinished. My absence permanent.
That future pressed against me harder than the pain.
I understood then—this wasn't fear of death.
It was fear of leaving something unresolved.
Fear that if I let go now, the world wouldn't remember why I'd ever tried to hold on in the first place.
That was enough.
I moved.
Yuna shoved me upward, muscles coiling as she launched me toward the open hatch.
I grabbed a cable instinctively.
My body screamed no.
My hands ignored it.
White heat exploded across my palms as the insulation burned away instantly, the smell of scorched rubber and copper flooding my nose. Skin split. Something wet slipped under my grip.
I held anyway.
Something tore inside my shoulder—a sharp, final sensation, like a rope snapping where it shouldn't exist.
I didn't scream.
I didn't have the air.
Letting go would've hurt less.
That was the problem.
Pain meant I was still choosing.
Falling would've meant I wasn't.
The climb was hell.
My fingers slipped against greasy metal.
My arms didn't feel like mine anymore.
Signals lagged.
Strength arrived half a second late—or not at all.
Every movement felt delayed, like my intent and my body weren't fully aligned yet.
Below us, the elevator creaked.
The car dropped again.
This time farther.
The cable jerked violently, nearly ripping my arms from their sockets. A sound tore out of my throat—half breath, half animal.
Yuna followed, leaping with terrifying precision.
Her boots slammed against the shaft wall as she anchored herself beside me, one hand gripping steel like it owed her something.
Below us—
The elevator tore free.
The final cables snapped in sequence.
Not all at once.
Like a countdown.
Not to impact.
To permission.
One.
Two.
Three.
The car fell.
The sound didn't fade.
It ended.
A distant, crushing impact reverberated up the shaft, followed by a pressure wave that rattled my bones and punched what little air remained from my lungs.
Silence rushed in.
I hung there, shaking.
My breath came in ragged bursts.
My palms bled freely.
My muscles screamed.
My hands were numb—not pain.
Absence.
I couldn't feel my fingers at all.
Yuna didn't let go.
She never did.
Letting go wasn't in her vocabulary.
"Climb," she said. "Now."
Above us, the shaft trembled again.
They weren't done.
Arata hadn't built this for comfort.
He'd built it for this moment.
For the moment when survival stopped being theoretical and became a demand.
Each meter upward felt less like escape
and more like induction.
As I pulled myself upward, hand over burning hand, one thought cut through the pain with brutal clarity:
This path wasn't meant to save me.
It was meant to see if I was willing to keep going.
And somewhere in the dark above—
This was the first step he'd never be there to walk with me.
I knew the next test was already waiting.
Gravity had teeth.
And it was hungry.
✦ END OF CHAPTER 34 — Gravity Has Teeth ✦