The Guildmaster's office looked less like a command center and more like the aftermath of a storm. Maps covered the tables in overlapping layers, half-crushed quills bled ink across reports, and runners pushed in and out of the doors carrying orders and casualty lists. Korvath was fighting to stay upright. That much was clear.
In the middle of that chaos stood Zentake, hands resting casually on a bulging burlap sack that jingled with every shift of his weight. He smiled like someone who had just stolen heaven's pantry and expected applause for it.
Across from him, Kouki Nozomi looked like he'd aged five years since Yoshiya last saw him. Eyes bloodshot. Shirt wrinkled. The burden of a city on his spine.
Kouki exhaled slowly.
"So. You're here to… negotiate."
Zentake nodded, cheerful.
"I helped destroy a city. I want early release. Simple business, right?"
Kouki stared. The silence carried a weight heavier than any blade.
"You're a criminal," Kouki finally said.
Zentake shrugged, unfazed.
"A criminal with leverage."
He nudged the sack forward with his foot. Something inside clinked—metal on crystal, sharp and resonant.
Kouki didn't even reach for it. He only lifted a hand and snapped his fingers.
Footsteps echoed down the hallway.
"Bring in Taro Koshirō," Kouki ordered.
---
Taro entered like a quiet breeze—no dramatic air, no wasted motion. His coat was neat, his gloves spotless. He looked more surgeon than merchant. The kind of man who could tell you the value of your soul by the angle of its shine.
Zentake opened the sack.
Crystals that pulsed faint blue. Metal gears fused with veins of condensed mana. A half-melted ceremonial emblem warped by demonic heat. And something else—a shard of deep red, pulsing like a heartbeat, faint and steady.
Taro picked up each item with the gentleness one gives to poisonous snakes.
He murmured measurements, density, mana flow, stabilization properties.
Zentake leaned against the wall, humming a nonsense tune like he was waiting for tea water to boil.
Finally, Taro lifted the red shard—one of Giggleburg's stolen crystal-heart fragments. The room itself seemed to tighten when he held it.
"This one," Taro said softly, "is… city-core grade. Refinery-stable. Possibly capable of localized mana field amplification."
Kouki's eyes sharpened.
Taro set it down, folding his hands behind his back with a surgeon's calm.
"These are genuine. Some extremely valuable. Possibly kingdom-grade."
Zentake grinned like the sun had just risen just for him.
Kouki didn't smile, but the faint shift in his posture was as loud as thunder.
The city needed supplies.
Mana.
Weapons.
Hope.
Zentake had just walked in holding all three in a burlap sack.
---
Outside the meeting room, the world was still moving, wounded but alive.
In the courtyard, Lia Shinsei worked through stacks of names—fallens, missing, presumed lost. Her quill hand never stopped. Her eyes didn't show the tears anymore.
On the guild balcony, Kaito and Anzuyi shared dried squid in silence, watching black smoke rise from the funeral pits beyond the south fields. Their laughter was gone. Even their breathing seemed smaller.
Across the plaza, Tamaki Yume and Yaguro Aka barked orders, directing reconstruction teams—rebuilding walls faster than grief could break them.
And above them, Iroko Ryusei's trained stormbirds launched into the sky, carrying messages to allies that might no longer be allies, pleas that might come too late.
The war was not won.
The war had simply introduced itself.
---
Back in the Guildmaster's office, the air had stilled.
Kouki leaned back in his chair, studying Zentake the way a mathematician studies a problem with too many moving parts.
"You understand what you're asking for," Kouki said at last.
"A bit of freedom," Zentake replied, waving it off like it was nothing. "Some fresh air. Maybe a bed that doesn't smell like old boots. And the option to come and go from the caravan. Reasonable."
"You are still under sentence," Kouki said, voice steady. "You do not get freedom."
Zentake waited.
"You get reduced sentence," Kouki continued, "if—and only if—you agree to fight again when called."
Zentake placed a hand over his heart dramatically.
"I was born to cause property damage."
Kouki didn't laugh.
Taro didn't react.
Nobody did.
But the decision was made.
Zentake's smirk grew—not wicked, but hungry.
War had taken the city's breath, but Zentake had just given it fuel.
And now the machine would begin turning again.
Not for honor.
Not for glory.
Not even for survival.
But because once a fire has started—
you either feed it
or it consumes you.
The room released its breath as the ink dried on the agreement.
The war wasn't over.
It had just sharpened its teeth.