The eastern archives smelled like old paper and secrets.
They'd made it past the first two checkpoints using Piers's memorized route—maintenance corridors, a disused stairwell, paths only someone who'd studied blueprints for hours would know. Soo Ah picked the lock on Section 7B's door in under a minute, her hands steady despite the adrenaline.
Inside was darkness and rows of filing cabinets stretching into shadow.
"Okay," Piers whispered, pulling out a small light crystal. Its pale glow carved their faces into ghosts. "We're looking for anything on Crimson Seers. Historical cases. Reincarnation documentation. Anything that mentions—"
"Devil's Cradle," Noir finished quietly. "Or me."
They split up. Soo Ah took the left wall, Piers the right. Noir went straight down the center aisle, his footsteps silent on old stone.
The cabinets were labeled by date, going back centuries. Piers found the section marked 'Restricted Cases - Spiritual Anomalies' and started pulling files.
"Here," he breathed. "Crimson Seer documentation. There's—wait, there's dozens of them. Going back over four hundred years."
Soo Ah looked over his shoulder. "They're all dead. Every single one. Look at the death dates—none of them lived past twenty-five."
Noir's hands were shaking as he opened another cabinet. Inside were leather-bound journals, handwritten. He pulled one out at random, flipped it open.
The pages were covered in dots and dashes.
"Morse code," Piers said, coming over, squinting at the patterns. "All of it. Yuusha doesn't trust even his own archives." His fingers traced the dots and dashes. "My grandfather made me learn this. Said it was a dying art worth preserving."
"Can you read it?" Soo Ah asked.
"Slowly. Give me a second."
Piers's eyes tracked across the page, his lips moving silently as he translated. His face went pale.
"This is... Yuusha's research journal. It mentions something called 'End.'" He flipped pages frantically, translating in fragments. "It's something Founder Edna wrote about. Something she put to sleep, not killed. And there's—"
He stopped, staring at a page.
"'Devil's Cradle incident: unforeseen consequence of blood covenant with Novus Page. Previous Crimson Seer—Subject 47—initiated the pact attempting resurrection. Result: sky turned red, mass spiritual contamination. Current subject shows identical signature. Bindings: three required for containment. Status: Anchor lost (retrieved from industrial district site, later stolen—perpetrator unknown), Suppressor under partial analysis, Trigger—'"
Piers squinted, trying to make out the next line. "The rest is in a different cipher. I can't read it. But Noir..." He looked up, his face pale. "Your anchor is already gone. Someone stole it from the Order's evidence vault, after the mission."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
"What else?" Noir's voice was barely audible. "What's End? What did Subject 47 do?"
"Not enough time—there are dozens of journals here, all in morse code, and this cipher—" Piers turned pages frantically. "Wait, here's something about Founder Edna. She didn't fight End. She—"
Soo Ah grabbed his shoulder. "Did you hear that?"
They froze. Listening.
Footsteps. Distant but approaching. Multiple people.
"Shit," Soo Ah breathed. "Someone knows we're here."
"Seems someone was already suspicious," Noir finished.
The footsteps were getting closer. Organized. Purposeful.
"We need to grab what we can and go," Soo Ah said, already moving toward the emergency exit Piers had marked on the blueprints.
Piers shoved the journal inside his jacket and grabbed two more at random. Noir scooped up a folder marked 'Subject 47 - Classified' and stuffed it under his shirt.
The footsteps were in the corridor now.
"Move!" Soo Ah hissed.
They ran toward the far end of the archives, where the emergency door should be—
The door at the far end exploded inward.
Light flooded the room—harsh, white, spiritual energy condensed into illumination that banished every shadow.
"Well," said a calm, measured voice. "This is unfortunate."
A man stepped through, his priest robes immaculate white, his spiritual pressure filling the space like water flooding a chamber.
Behind him came two students in the silver insignia of mid-rank seers—a girl with sharp, watchful eyes, and a boy with cyan hair and a conflicted expression, his hand resting on an ornate pistol at his hip.
Jean Vouré. One of the Order's most respected priests, known for his unwavering dedication to doctrine.
"Priest Jean," Soo Ah said, her voice remarkably steady despite the damning evidence scattered around them.
"Students." Jean's eyes swept over them, taking in the open cabinets, the scattered files, the guilt written across their faces.
"I came to retrieve a reference text and found the surveillance system showing a convenient maintenance gap in this sector. Curious, I thought. So I came to investigate personally."
His gaze settled on Noir, and something flickered in his expression—recognition? Concern? It was gone before Noir could name it.
"And here we are."
The archive was a long corridor of filing cabinets. Jean blocked the main entrance behind them. The two students had come in from a side passage to the left, cutting off their flank. The emergency exit they'd been running toward was still ahead, but it was reinforced, spiritually sealed. They'd need time to break through.
Time they didn't have.
The girl stepped forward, her hands already glowing with earthy brown spiritual energy. "Master Jean, should we do the honours?"
"Restrain them, Hina. Gently, if possible. They are still students of this Order." Jean's voice was sad, almost regretful. "Arata, secure the documents they've disturbed."
"Yes, Master." The cyan-haired boy—Arata—moved forward, his movements fluid but his expression pained, like a man walking to his own execution.
Soo Ah's hand went to her axe.
"Don't," Piers hissed.
"We can't just—"
"We run," Noir said suddenly. His voice was flat, dead calm. "Now."
Soo Ah didn't question it. She grabbed the journal Piers had dropped and threw it at Hina's face. The moment of distraction was all they needed.
They ran.
Not toward Jean, but straight ahead, down the center aisle toward that distant emergency door.
"Stop them!" Jean's voice cracked like a whip.
And the night exploded into chaos.