Dawn never reached the lower archives.
But something shifted.
The air thinned. The pressure eased—just enough to mark the passage of hours. The chamber where the chains had broken lay silent now, its emergency runes burned out completely. Only faint remnants of script drifted through the darkness like dying embers, slowly fading into nothing.
Levi sat with his back against the wall.
Knees drawn up.
Aria's head rested against his shoulder.
Neither had slept.
Neither spoke much.
The memories still came.
Not all at once anymore—but in waves. Sharp fragments of a life before the Protocol. Faces without serial numbers. Voices that spoke his name without command weight behind them. Moments bright as broken glass.
He let them cut.
Better pain than erasure.
Eventually, Levi stirred.
Aria lifted her head, watching him carefully, as though he might fracture again if she looked too hard.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
He searched for the answer.
No silver threads tugged at his thoughts.
No distant presence corrected his impulses.
No ache bloomed when his mind wandered where it wasn't allowed.
He flexed his fingers.
Shadows responded instantly—eager, precise, his.
"Quiet," he said.
The word emerged deeper than before, resonant in a way that surprised him.
He tried again, softer.
"Too quiet."
A test.
He imagined refusing an order.
In the past, even the thought would have triggered pain—warnings etched directly into instinct.
Now—
Nothing.
Silence.
Levi laughed once. Short. Disbelieving.
"No pain."
Aria smiled, weary but genuine.
"Welcome to the other side."
He rose to his feet. His legs trembled slightly, but he was steady. The spear lay where it had fallen during the fight.
His spear.
He picked it up.
The runes along its haft brightened at his touch, alive in a way they had never been before. When he spun it experimentally, the blade carved smooth arcs of shadow through the air—fluid, obedient.
"It's…" He hesitated. "Happier."
"It's yours now," Aria said.
"Not borrowed."
They left the chamber easily. The sealed door yielded like ordinary stone, stripped of authority. Beyond it, the corridors lay empty. Whatever alarm the slate's destruction had triggered had not reached this depth.
Yet.
They moved cautiously, following faint drafts toward older passages—abandoned arteries where the Protocol's presence thinned and memory clung stubbornly to stone.
They stopped in a crumbling atrium.
Collapsed pillars formed natural cover. Vine-like script growth crawled over the walls, obsolete code feeding on ambient mana. Dust motes drifted through weak light cast by distant glow-orbs.
Aria sat on a fallen block, hugging her knees.
"There have been Free Shadows before," she said suddenly.
Levi leaned his spear against a pillar and sat beside her.
"Four that history remembers," she continued.
"Maybe more whose records were erased."
"What happened to them?"
She didn't hesitate.
"Hunted to extinction."
The words were flat. Practiced.
"The Protocol doesn't tolerate anomalies that can inspire others. The last one—Shadow Twelve-K—lived almost thirty years free. Reached near S-rank equivalent."
Her gaze lowered.
"They cornered him with three Administrators."
Thirty years.
Levi rolled the number around in his mind.
A lifetime for a human.
A blink for the Abyss.
"Freedom in a farmed Abyss," he murmured.
"Sounds like keeping a bird in a larger cage."
Aria nodded.
"The walls are still there. The farmers still watch."
"But inside the cage… you can choose where to fly."
He was quiet for a long time.
"I don't know what choice feels like yet."
"You will."
The silence between them was comfortable—until Levi felt it.
A flicker.
Deep in his core, unbound power shuddered, its edges fraying. Freedom had torn away restraints, but it hadn't taught control.
Not yet.
"I need to stabilize," he said.
"Small harvests. Controlled."
Aria understood instantly.
"There are wraiths in the eastern ruins," she said.
"Minor souls. Barely sentient. Failed echoes."
"No one will miss them."
They reached the ruins an hour later.
Shattered halls open to the false sky of the mid-Abyss. Drifting motes of lost magic clung like cobwebs. Pale shapes wandered aimlessly.
Wraiths.
Remnants of Shadows who had died incomplete.
Levi approached the first.
It sensed him and wailed, lashing out with weak tendrils.
He let it strike once.
Cold passed through him.
Harmless.
Then he harvested.
Not the brutal tearing he'd used on the Administrator.
This was measured. Deliberate.
The wraith unraveled into threads of pale light, flowing into his chest. Warmth spread through him, smoothing the frayed edges.
One wasn't enough.
He took three more.
Methodical. Calm.
When he turned back to Aria, the changes were undeniable.
His face had sharpened—cheekbones defined, jaw clean. The last traces of engineered blankness were gone. His eyes were deeper now, dark and unreadable.
When he spoke, his voice carried that subtle resonance—like distant thunder beneath still air.
"Better."
Aria studied him.
"You look… more like a person."
He almost smiled.
"Feels strange."
They made camp as the artificial cycle shifted toward "night."
While Aria slept, Levi remained awake.
Spear across his knees.
Staring into nothing.
The harvests had done more than stabilize him.
Each soul—minor as it was—had added permanence.
Strength.
Clarity.
If four wraiths could anchor him this much…
How far could he go?
The thought slid into his mind clean and cold.
Not greed.
Not yet.
Calculation.
The Abyss was full of trapped things.
Wraiths.
Remnants.
Failed constructs.
Higher ranks above.
Administrators.
Perhaps even the Architects themselves—if one dared to dream that large.
He could grow.
Not as a tool.
As something new.
Freedom wasn't just escape.
It was potential.
Aria murmured his name in her sleep.
Levi looked at her.
She had risked everything for him.
Believed in him when he had been nothing but a serial number holding a blade.
That debt was real.
Heavy.
He would never forget it.
But debts didn't have to limit horizons.
Levi looked out into the ruins, where pale wraiths drifted like lanterns in the dark.
And for the first time—
He wanted.
The Protocol had lost one Shadow.
Now it had something far more dangerous.
A free one.
And he was beginning to desire more than survival.