Hina moved first. A swirling brown sphere the size of a melon flew from her palm, not at them, but at the floor ahead. It shattered, erupting into a patch of grasping, glue-like mud that spread across the stone. Soo Ah leapt over it, but her boot caught the edge, slowing her momentum.
Arata was faster—he cut them off at an intersection of aisles, drawing his pistol in one smooth motion. The weapon glowed with internal cyan light, water-aspected, carved with flowing script. Not a normal weapon—a spiritual channeling device.
He raised it reluctantly, and the anguish in his eyes was genuine. "Please," he said, his voice strained. "Just stop. It'll be better if you come quietly. I don't want to—"
"Move!" Soo Ah snarled.
Arata's expression tightened with resignation. He raised his pistol—not at them, but at the ceiling above their heads—and fired. A high-pressure jet of holy water sliced through ancient mortar. Dust and debris rained down, forcing them to skid to a halt.
"I'm sorry," Arata said, genuine regret threading through his tone. "I really don't want to do this."
Something was wrong with Noir's perception—everything felt slower, sharper, like the world had been dipped in ice. He saw Arata's finger tighten on the trigger a split second before the next water-jet fired.
He shoved Piers aside with more force than he should have, sending them both sprawling as the pressurized water seared past, cutting a steaming groove in the stone floor where Piers had been standing.
Noir's breath caught. That wasn't—he'd never moved that fast before. Not before the mission. Not before the cave.
Not before he'd died.
His hands, when he grabbed a fallen shelf to drag it into Arata's line of fire, felt different. Stronger. Like they belonged to someone else.
Behind them, Hina was already closing in. She flung two more spheres. Soo Ah spun, her axe materializing in a flash of violet light. She caught one sphere on her blade, splattering it, but the second struck the wall beside her and erupted into a web of hardening mud-spikes, blocking the way back.
They were being herded. Pushed toward the far end where—
Soo Ah stomped her foot. A circular purple barrier erupted from the floor around Hina, encasing her momentarily in shimmering energy. "Piers, the door!"
Piers was already at the reinforced emergency exit, his hands glowing with a faint red-orange haze. "It's spiritually sealed—I need to destabilize the temperature gradient—" He pressed his palms to the lock, applying focused heat that made the metal groan and warp.
Arata rounded the corner behind them, favoring one leg slightly but his pistol steady. "Don't make me aim for your legs," he pleaded. "Please. I don't want to hurt you."
Noir saw it then—the genuine conflict in Arata's eyes. This wasn't an enemy. This was a good soldier who hated his orders. Who was doing this because he believed he had no choice.
"We're not your enemy," Noir said quietly.
"I know," Arata said, and his voice broke. "But you're breaking the law. You're stealing secrets. And I have my duty, even if I—"
The door Piers was working on exploded outward in a blast of spiritual pressure that sent stone shrapnel skittering across the floor.
Shin Jin stood in the doorway, his robes torn and dusty, blood trickling from a cut on his temple, his spiritual energy filling the corridor like a thunderstorm compressed into human form.
He took in the scene in one sweep—his students cornered, Hina just shattering Soo Ah's barrier with a surge of earth-aspected energy, Arata's wavering aim, the guilt and fear written across three young faces.
"Jean," Shin Jin said quietly, and his voice carried the weight of twenty years of respect about to shatter into pieces. "Stand down."
"Stand down?" Jean's voice rose from behind them as he strode into view, his spiritual pressure swelling like a rising tide.
"They were stealing classified documents! They broke into a restricted archive! And you—" His eyes narrowed, understanding dawning with terrible clarity. "You created the surveillance gap. You helped them."
"Yes."
The admission fell like an axe on a chopping block. Final. Irrevocable.
"Why?" Jean demanded, and there was real pain in his voice. "Why would you betray everything we—"
"Because they deserved to know the truth about what was done to them," Shin Jin said flatly. "Because our Head Priest sent them to die as an experiment. Because I'm tired of watching children burn for the sake of someone's research."
His eyes found Jean's, and they were full of something that might have been pity. "Because I've already failed one child. I won't fail these three."
Jean's spiritual pressure exploded outward, cracking the stone beneath his feet. "You've gone mad. Step aside, Shin Jin. I'll take them into custody, and we'll sort this out through proper channels—"
"There are no proper channels," Shin Jin said. "Not for this. Not when the Head Priest himself orchestrated their deaths." His voice dropped, became something colder. "Step aside, Jean. Let. Them. Go."
"I can't do that." Jean rolled up his white sleeve to reveal spiritual runes carved on his arms that shone with white, pure, radiating righteous certainty.
"Not even for you."
"Then you leave me no choice."
Shin Jin's form blurred. From his silhouette, three identical, semi-transparent copies burst into existence, each one solid enough to cast shadows, each one radiating the same lethal intent—the Mirror-Step Spiritual Technique.
One moved to intercept Hina, who was preparing another attack. Another positioned itself between Arata and the students. The third, the original, faced Jean directly.
The true Shin Jin looked at Arata, and his voice gentled despite the violence coiling in the air. "Lower your weapon, son. You know this is wrong."
Arata's hand trembled. His pistol wavered. "Master Shin Jin... I have my orders. I can't just—"
"And I have my duty," Shin Jin said. "To them. To the truth. To the children we're supposed to protect, not sacrifice." His eyes hardened. "Don't make me go through you."
For a heartbeat, Arata's pistol dipped. Like he might choose mercy over duty.
"ARATA! Stand firm!" Jean's voice cracked like a whip, and the command was absolute.
Duty won. Resignation washed over Arata's face like a wave of cold water, drowning whatever hope had flickered there.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and raised his pistol. "I'm so sorry."
Shin Jin didn't waste another breath. "GO!" he barked at the three students. "The undercroft passage—follow it to the old catacombs! Don't stop, don't look back! RUN!"
All four Shin Jins moved as one—a whirlwind of identical forms and feints that made it impossible to track which was real. The mirror-image facing Hina ducked under her earth-spike and swept her legs.
The one confronting Arata deflected a water-jet with a casual flick of spiritual energy.
The original crashed into Jean with enough force to send them both skidding backward.
"You'll have to go through all of me first!" Shin Jin's voice echoed from multiple directions at once.
Piers grabbed Noir's arm. Soo Ah took the other. Together, they plunged through the door Shin Jin had opened, into the damp, consuming darkness of the undercroft.
The last thing Noir heard was the sound of shattering stone, Hina's frustrated cry as she tried to strike a mirror-image that vanished on contact, Arata's anguished apology carried on the wind, and Shin Jin's voice—grim, determined, final.
Jean's blade met Shin Jin's in a shower of sparks that lit the corridor like lightning.
"Why?" Jean shouted over the clash. "Why throw everything away for three students who broke the law?"
"Because the law is wrong!" Shin Jin's mirror-images circled, forcing Jean to defend on three fronts. "Because I followed the law when Akane died, and I've regretted it every day since!"
"Akane was different—"
"Akane was exactly the same!" One of the mirror-images struck from behind. Jean spun, deflecting, but another attacked from the side. "Another gifted child, another 'necessary sacrifice' for the greater good! When does it end, Jean? How many children have to burn before you question the fire?"
Jean's spiritual pressure surged. "I trust Master Yuusha's judgment!"
"Then you're a fool," Shin Jin said, and there was such weariness in his voice. Such bone-deep exhaustion.
"And I'm done being one."
All four Shin Jins attacked at once.
---
They ran until the sounds of Shin Jin's fight faded into memory, until their lungs burned and their legs trembled with exhaustion. The catacombs stretched endlessly—passages branching into darkness, stairs spiraling up and down, chambers opening into nothing.
They stopped in a small chamber, maybe an old meditation room. Empty stone benches lined the walls. The air was thick and still, untouched for decades. They collapsed, gasping for breath in the suffocating dark.
"What the fuck," Soo Ah wheezed, one hand pressed to her side where a stitch had formed. "What the fuck just happened."
"Shin Jin just committed treason for us," Piers said, his voice shaking. "He just—he threw away everything. His position, his reputation, his entire life—"
"We have to go back," Noir said suddenly, trying to stand. His legs barely held him. "We can't just leave him to—"
"We can't help him," Piers said harshly, grabbing Noir's arm and pulling him back down. "We'd just be liabilities. Dead weight. He knows what he's doing. He's buying us time."
Piers channelled spiritual energy to his hands that lit up with hazy orange heat waves, and brought them up just enough to emit a glow to see by. His hands were shaking—adrenaline crash mixing with cold fear.
"The aqueduct outflow," he said, pulling out the mental blueprint. "If I'm right about where we are, it should be... maybe twenty minutes northeast of here. Maybe less. It exits outside the walls."
"If you're right," Soo Ah said.
"If I'm right."
Noir sat heavily on one of the stone benches, his head in his hands. Everything felt wrong. His body felt wrong. His thoughts felt wrong.
Like something had shifted inside him during that moment in the basement, during that moment when he'd died, and now he was slowly, inevitably becoming something else.