Sebastian didn't respond to the insult.
Zekai looked down at his chest again. And suddenly, he froze.
The familiar outline resting against his arms violently flickered like bad television static. For a fleeting moment, it looked completely normal. Then, the entire image distorted, warping outward like a badly damaged photograph.
Heavy visual static rippled through the edges of Aron's body. Zekai's breathing stopped dead in his throat.
The phantom outline flickered again.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then, it completely vanished.
His arms were empty. Completely, undeniably empty.
The weight disappeared instantly. The warmth disappeared. The gentle pressure against his left shoulder evaporated into the air. Everything vanished all at once.
For several agonizing seconds, Zekai couldn't physically move. His mind simply refused to accept what his eyes were clearly showing him.
"...No," his voice barely existed, a raw whisper. He looked down again, staring at his own lap.
Nothing. Only his own bound wrists. Only empty, sterile air.
"No."
SCREECH—!
His metal chair scraped violently against the silver floor as he abruptly stood up. The explosive movement startled even the stoic Sebastian, whose hand twitched near his holster.
Zekai looked around the four corners of the room immediately. His movements were fast, erratic, and deeply desperate.
"Aron?!" he called out.
Nothing answered him. His eyes frantically searched every square inch of Chamber 12. Behind the metal table. The seamless walls. The reflective ceiling. The locked doorway. Anywhere. Everywhere.
"He was here," the words came out much louder this time, his chest heaving.
"He was right here!"
Sebastian remained completely silent, watching the breakdown unfold.
Zekai turned faster, his pulse accelerating to dangerous levels.
"No." A sharp, suffocating panic began spreading rapidly through his chest.
"He must be in here. Where did you put him?!"
He checked behind his own chair. Nothing. He checked beneath the heavy table. Nothing. He checked every single corner of the metallic room.
Nothing. Only Sebastian. Only silver walls. Only absolute silence.
The realization arrived slowly, cruelly piercing through his defenses. He had been talking to Aron. He had been apologizing to Aron. He had been carrying Aron through the streets of Greyhaven. He had been protecting him.
But Aron had never actually entered this room. The thing he had been carrying across the city threshold wasn't a physical body.
It was grief.
"No..." Zekai's breathing became severely uneven, his teeth grinding together.
"No."
His head snapped toward Sebastian. It was an instantaneous, violently fast movement.
"You did this," the accusation exploded from his throat like a weapon.
"You took him from me while I was out."
Sebastian didn't move an inch.
"You made him disappear!" Zekai roared, stepping toward the table.
"Zekai—"
"WHERE IS HE?!" The shout echoed violently through the silver room. For a brief moment, even the heavy fluorescent lights overhead seemed to vibrate from the sheer force of his voice. "WHERE IS ARON?!"
The deafening silence that followed felt completely suffocating.
Sebastian slowly reached into his black coat, his movements unhurried, and removed a sleek, glass-paneled data tablet. Without saying a single word, he slid the device smoothly across the metal table, letting it slide until it tapped against Zekai's handcuffed wrists.
On the screen was an official Bureau casualty manifest.
Zekai stared intensely at the glass screen. It was an official Bureau database, filled with crisp photographs, medical profiles, and full civilian names.
Recovery reports. Missing persons logs.
Then, his eyes locked onto a familiar face.
Aron. The photograph displayed the exact same awkward, self-conscious smile he always gave.
The same perpetually tired eyes. The identical person Zekai had spent his entire soul trying to pull out of the execution loops.
[ IDENTIFICATION: ARON VANCE ]
[ AGE: 19 ]
[ ASSIGNED DISTRICT: DISTRICT 7 ]
[ STATUS: MISSING ]
Zekai froze completely, his fingers locked against the cold edges of the device.
Sebastian's level voice finally broke the suffocating silence of Chamber 12.
"Forty-five people disappeared into that localized distortion zone."
The captain stretched out a finger and swiped across the glass surface.
"Forty-three bodies eventually came back down from the sky. All dead. Dismantled."
Another smooth swipe.
"You came back entirely intact."
The digital screen stopped scrolling, centering back on Aron's clean-shaven file.
Sebastian looked directly into Zekai's eyes, his expression utterly devoid of emotion.
"But him?"
A heavy, deliberate pause hung in the freezing air.
"His body never returned.
The silver room suddenly felt infinitely smaller. Colder.
Somewhere deep inside the chaotic recesses of Zekai's mind, his fractured memories began rapidly rearranging themselves into a logical sequence.
The illusion of the weight in his arms shattered entirely, making room for the objective truth.
He remembered the collapsing architecture of the King throne hall. He remembered the blinding light of the dimensional fracture. The absolute, suffocating darkness that followed the anomaly update.
He remembered reaching out his hand. He remembered the physical separation as reality splintered like cheap glass. Everything finally connected. Every disjointed piece of the puzzle finally made complete sense to his senses.
The definitive answer wasn't death. The actual answer was far worse.
Aron had never actually crossed the threshold back into Greyhaven. A trembling, uneven breath escaped Zekai's pale lips as his jaw tightened.
"...Another dimension," Zekai whispered, the realization hitting him like a physical blow.
For the very first time since his forceful reintegration into Greyhaven, a volatile mix of genuine, burning hope and absolute, crushing despair appeared together inside his eyes.
Because if Aron wasn't dead.
Then somewhere far beyond the structured boundary of reality—he was still out there, lost in the system layers, waiting to be found.
Across the metal table, Sebastian noticed the subtle, lethal shift in Zekai's posture.
The hysterical panic from moments prior had completely vanished, replaced by a terrifyingly sharp, quiet focus.
"You know exactly where he is, don't you?" Sebastian asked, leaning forward, his cigarette burning down to the filter.
Zekai didn't look up from the tablet. His hands slowly began to pull against the heavy steel handcuffs, the metal links groaning under a sudden, unseen pressure.
The black threads of [The Fool] arcana began to invisibly ripple beneath the skin of his wrists.
"He's still inside Graveyard," Zekai said, his voice dropping into an icy, absolute register that made the fluorescent lights overhead hum unevenly.
"And I'm going back to get him."
Sebastian didn't reach for his sidearm. He simply watched the metal of the Bureau's specialized handcuffs begin to warp and bend under Zekai's passive grip.
"The Bureau won't let you leave this facility, Zekai," Sebastian warned quietly.
"To us, you are the prime catalyst for forty-three murders."
Zekai finally raised his head, his eyes glowing with an unholy, dark clarity.
"Then get out of my way."
"Because I'm bringing him home."
✦ End of Chapter 29 — Interrogation II ✦