The transition from sunlight to shadow came on abruptly as he ventured into the cave.
Having kept track of Gerald and Elizabeth's spiritual signatures, Damon continued moving, his gaze flashing over the smooth cave interior. Reddish-brown surfaces surrounded him, stretching ahead into the dark, while an array of pale wax candles lit the path, flames casting shadows across the stone.
At the base of the candles, stone hands jutted out from the walls, their fingers curled inward, cradling the melting wax in their palms.
'These weren't lit before...'
Damon slowed his steps and leaned closer to examine one of the candles. His eyes widened as he noticed the gentle glow was made entirely of spiritual energy.
'T-this is Gerald's spiritual energy...'
The spectral flame burned the wick steadily, without sway, as if it were only an illusion, yet the edges of the wax showed signs of darkening nearest the heat.
Damon had a few guesses on how it happened, but he had little time to dwell on them. Pressed for time, he reached out and amplified his strength to shatter the hanging wrist of stone.
Crack!
With minimal force, the cold rock cracked apart like brittle wood, resting in his palm.
Damon's lips pressed together, pensive.
'I don't know if the other Resonator will target me again, but this should help...'
While Elizabeth had helped him break free of the mental intrusion once, he was still wary of it happening again. He decided to take one of the candles with him, using it to hold his concentration.
Thud!
Right after, another sound echoed behind him.
A handful of rocks rattled to the ground, falling from the concave ceiling.
Shining the light in that direction, Damon spun around and grabbed the hilt at his waist. For a moment, he worried a chain of dominoes had just been set off.
'Maybe I'm just scaring myself...'
He lowered his shoulders and took a breath, then reminded himself not to get careless. He drew the dagger and pressed his hand against the wall.
'If I move my hand for any reason without meaning to, that should tell me if my mind's being forced open again.'
The plan relied heavily on physical sensation and his own conscious choice to follow the surface until the path diverted or distorted. But that also meant if he acted against that choice, he'd have to decide whether to press ahead or turn back before he became another threat to deal with.
'I could also run back to Tomoe for help.'
'I just hope it doesn't come to that...'
Damon sighed and pushed the idea aside. Beneath these thoughts sat a quiet comfort: the knowledge that if he were killed, he'd presumably just be sent back home.
Suddenly, as he began walking, a familiar voice rang out.
"Liz? Is that you?"
"Your face looks really pale. Did Gerald lose against that Eirosian?"
Rudy's tone sounded casual at first, and Damon could picture the smug little expression that likely hung on his face. Whenever the boy wasn't pouting or acting clingy, his features seemed to default to it.
But his words were cut short by a feverish, panicked cry.
"Ah! W-what are y—argh!"
Damon's brows furrowed. Without a second's hesitation, he shot forward and ran silently through the path.
As he tried to follow the boy's spiritual signature, a thick mist of sweeping colors filled his view, and his brain protested with throbbing pain, as if telling him to turn back. It made him briefly lose his footing, and he stumbled.
Then his spiritual perception went blank.
'Ugh... That should have been Rudy, but the spiritual energy seemed off.'
Damon grew wary as he struggled to stagger forward. His crimson eyes lost their luster, fading back to crystal blue.
The throbbing in his head continued. It had weakened slightly, but it hadn't stopped.
The unseen presence was slowly scraping at his mind.
'Not this time! You're staying out!'
Damon lowered his gaze to his right hand, still holding the sculpted stone hand. Focusing on the flame of spiritual energy, he saw that his palm and fingers were slick with sweat.
Still, he pressed forward. At every turn, his mind churned with questions he couldn't answer.
'What if Elizabeth is the one trying to kill Rudy?'
He hated the thought the moment it surfaced. But it lingered, burrowing deeper like a splinter beneath the skin.
What if it was just a family dispute, a disagreement that had spiraled? They'd both be fine, sent back to their entry points once their bodies here were killed.
Would intervening even matter?
He didn't know the Greyhounds well enough to judge. They were partners who couldn't even claim to share the same goal. Heck, what was his goal in the first place?
If it was simply to get home, he could have let himself fall to any random blow. And if it was strength he wanted, did he really have to be here to get it?
In lands he barely knew? Among people who could turn on each other without warning?
'What am I even thinking?'
Damon stopped walking and shook his head, pressing the pommel of the dagger against his temple. The throbbing in his skull had faded to a dull ache, but the thoughts felt wrong, too sharp, too insistent.
He knew they weren't entirely his own.
'That's right. They're intrusive. Just intrusive. The other resonator is still scraping at my mind.'
Damon quickened his pace, pushing forward with renewed urgency. Catching his breath, he forced himself to focus on the candle in his hand, a stable anchor.
Shortly after, he passed two empty supply crates that Gerald had cleared to start the meal.
His eyes landed on a speck of red.
It was a thin trail of drops littering the ground, leading up ahead like scattered coins.
Damon slowed and crouched, holding the candle low to examine the trail. The droplets were fresh, still dark and wet against the stone.
'That's not a lot of blood. But it's heading somewhere specific.'
He followed the trail with his eyes until it stopped abruptly at the wall ahead. The surface was irregular, covered in jagged edges and deep grooves, but one section caught his attention.
A patch of rock looked different from the rest. Darker, with a subtle pattern that didn't match the natural formations around it.
'Damage?'
Damon rose and approached the wall carefully. With his spiritual senses still suppressed, he had little choice but to investigate directly.
'Rudy must have used his abilities to shift the rocks and make a hiding spot.'
'He's probably terrified. Jumping out and shouting his name would only make him retreat deeper. Any sudden movement could spook him.'
Damon exhaled slowly. Nothing clever came to mind, so he settled for the simplest approach.
He cleared his throat.
"Rudy? You in there?"
No response. Damon knocked the pommel against the disguised section of wall and added, "It's me, Damon. I chased Liz off... she's gone for now."
"We need to leave before she comes back..."
The lie came easily, even through the mental pain, and the silence stretched for three full seconds before a faint grinding sound echoed.
The rocks were shifting against each other.
'Is he coming out or attacking...!?'
Damon took a hurried step back as the damaged wall groaned and the stone pulled apart, revealing a narrow opening just wide enough for a small figure to squeeze through.
A blur of gold and white shot out.
Rudy's arms clamped around Damon's waist with surprising strength, forcing him to raise the candle higher and sheath his dagger to keep from dropping it. The boy's body trembled against him, his face buried in Damon's chest as he let out a choked sob.
"You came! You actually came!" Rudy's voice came muffled through Damon's shirt. "Thank you! Thank you!"
Damon awkwardly patted his shoulder. "Alright..."
But Rudy wasn't finished. He pulled back just enough to look up, his face streaked with tears and dirt, his voice cracking.
"Please... please save me! I'm going to die soon!" His grip on Damon's shirt tightened. "Elizabeth cut me! I'm bleeding, and I'm going to die!"
"It hurts so much!"
"I don't want to die! I can't die. I've never even kissed a girl before!"
'Of all the things to worry about.' Damon stared at him for a long moment, the absurdity of the statement cutting through the tension.
"Will you quit crying and show me the wound?"
Quivering, Rudy hiccuped and shifted his coat, revealing a thin slash across his right bicep. It was shallow, weeping blood, but nowhere near fatal. It would likely need nothing more than a bandage and a few hours to close.
Realizing this, a strange mix of relief and exasperation ran through Damon.
"You're not going to die. You'll just be sent back to wherever you entered from," he said, gently prying Rudy's fingers loose from his gi before crouching to assess the wound.
He tore a strip from his sleeve and tied it around the boy's shoulder, pulling it tight.
The blood quickly soaked through, staining the cloth red, though it slowed slightly.
Rudy flinched, hissing sharply through his teeth, but he didn't scream again. Instead, he looked up into Damon's eyes.
"Who told you that?"
"The old per... I mean Tomoe," Damon corrected himself mid-sentence. "Now, do you remember the dagger Liz attacked you with?"
Rudy's breath hitched, but he forced himself to focus. "It was... it was the one with the black handle. Wrapped in silver wire. The blade had a diamond-shaped notch near the hilt with a violet lithos crystal inside and a curse that prevents the blood from clotting."
'A curse meant to stop the victim from healing...? But if that's true, why does he think he'll actually die from it?'
'Dammit, how could she use that on her own brother...?' Damon groaned inwardly.
To use a weapon like that implied it wasn't about killing outright. Whoever wielded it wanted the victim to suffer, slowly, before the final blow landed.
'In that case, she'd still be nearby, waiting to finish him off...'
His eyes darted around, searching for her, but he found nothing. He looked back to the boy crouched in front of him and asked the question that had been nagging at him. "Hey, Rudy, have you had any issues with your spiritual perception?"
"Well, for a while it was working, but suddenly I couldn't sense anything outside. That's why I came up here in the first place."
Damon raised a brow.
"Up? I thought this place only had one level..."
Rudy cleared his throat. "Um... so we kind of... lied about that earlier."
He scratched the back of his head, sheepish. "W-when we found it, there was only one. Gerald had me remodel it into three levels afterward."
"We stored most of our supplies on the third, and that's where I was."
Damon's thoughts froze. 'Just how many lies did you people pile on!'
His brow twitched as a hint of red crept into his eyes, and he glanced down at the candle. He took a deep breath to steady himself.
"It doesn't matter how much you look at it. That trick won't do you any good soon."
Damon's head snapped up at those words.
"What?"
Rudy's face had changed.
The tears and dirt remained, but the expression underneath had contorted entirely. An eerie smile stretched across his cheeks, almost reaching his ears, as if invisible fingers had hooked the corners and pulled them upward, revealing rows of teeth and pale gums.
'That's not Rudy!'
Damon's instincts screamed before his mind caught up. He leaned back, his hand already moving toward his dagger.
But the boy was faster. His grip clamped onto Damon's forearm with strength that didn't match his frame, his other hand sealing over Damon's mouth.
The wolf insignia on his chest plate began to glow. The rings on his fingers followed, one after another, each brighter than the last, until they cast their own shadows against the cave walls.
'No. No... No, wait, wait...'
Damon screamed with his eyes.
Rudy's smile widened impossibly further as the edges of his jaw began to tear. His voice came out in a distorted rasp that wasn't his own.
"It's been fun, you stinking brat. Hehe."
Damon's mouth opened to shout, to push the boy away, to do anything, but the metal shattered first. Every piece exploded outward in a burst of violet light that swallowed the space between them.
The blast threw them backward, his body weightless for one terrible moment as the shockwave tore through his chest, his arms, and his face.
Then the world went white.