Chapter 353: Guest Rights Revoked

The assigned exit remained open behind them. Warm daylight shone through it. Martin could see Slatewind Basin, the exact stretch of grass outside the Sunken Belfry, and Mireva standing beside the cliff doors.

The image was too perfect. Mireva did not move with the wind.

Rias threw an evidence marker through the doorway. The marker vanished before crossing the threshold, while the false Mireva continued staring toward them.

"Trap," she said.

The market closed it, and every lamp in the corridor turned red.

[Assigned exit refused.]

[Recovery crew has interfered with protected patronage.]

[Guest rights suspended pending judgment.]

Doors opened along both walls. Contract enforcers entered first, followed by black-armored constructs carrying hooked poles and rectangular shields. Two players appeared behind them with Beastslayer marks burning above their names. Neither displayed Just Die affiliation.

Rias marked the affiliation as a market-visible claim rather than a verified fact. What they could prove was simpler: the market was fielding multiple Beastslayers without visible Just Die identity.

"Left wall," Rias ordered. "The Sairren disk pointed there."

Martin led with Breakwater Aegis. The first construct struck hard enough to drive him backward, but Stand Against the Current built through the second and third impacts. He shifted the shield and opened a lane for Alexandra.

She and Kumoe crossed it together. The curious head dragged one hooked pole aside. The right caught a construct’s shield rim, while the middle sent restoration through the strain in Alexandra’s sword arm. Alexandra cut the joint between the two targets and kept moving instead of finishing either one.

They needed distance, not kills.

Katherine laid Kinnami’s barriers beneath the injured lynx whenever the corridor buckled, keeping the beast upright while the walls narrowed around them.

Martin felt Angel shift through the bond inside her pocket dimension. He kept her there. In corridors the market could resize at will, summoning something nearly the size of a building could turn their last reserve into a trap.

For now, they ran.

Elisebeth spread Silent Stage along the party’s flanks. Alarm notes struck the spell and curved into empty rooms instead of summoning more guards directly onto their route.

The market adapted. Written contract seals appeared beneath their feet.

[Guest crew classified as stolen property accomplices.]

[Recovery claim transferred to enforcement.]

The corridor tilted. What had been a wall became the floor. Martin caught himself against Breakwater Aegis, but Cassandra and Katherine slid toward an opening that had appeared below them. Kinnami formed a golden barrier across the gap. Both women struck it, bounced, and found their footing before the market turned again.

Rias cut one active seal with Gloamneedle. The corridor stopped moving on her side only.

"It is routing sections separately," she said. "Stay within sight of one another."

One Beastslayer leaped from the ceiling that had been the floor a moment earlier. The mark above his name burned black. One forearm had changed into a hooked, bone-plated limb that clearly did not belong to a human body, an inherited trait from whatever intelligent beast he had sacrificed for the path.

He aimed for Kumoe.

Alexandra saw the target before Martin did. She stepped between them without waiting for a barrier. The hooked limb struck both crossed swords and drove her into Kumoe’s shoulder. The right head snapped at the attacker, forcing him to withdraw before the follow-up.

A black recovery seal flashed across the Beastslayer’s visor, and a red recovery marker appeared over Kumoe at the same moment.

"He has a capture claim on Kumoe," Rias said. "Break the seal over his eyes."

Cassandra reached full draw while the Beastslayer circled. He moved too often for Patient Draw to settle, so she abandoned the growing bonus and fired when he crossed the next red lamp.

The arrow struck the contract seal above his eyes.

Kumoe’s curious head caught the inherited arm. The right seized the opposite shoulder. Alexandra drove one sword through the edge of his chest armor and kicked him free before either head could be dragged into his fall.

The second Beastslayer stayed behind the enforcers. Whatever inheritance he carried, he kept it concealed and used the market’s tools instead. He threw black contract seals into the corridor. Each seal opened into a short-lived beast-shaped barrier that blocked one route and forced the party toward another.

Rias’s evidence interface marked the real bodies by their active contract anchors and left the projected barriers untagged. She shared the overlay with the party.

They pushed left.

The blank wall opened into another auction hall filled with neutral patrons. Some fled when the red notices followed Martin’s group. Others closed their curtains and pretended not to see the pursuit.

A Condemned healer pulled two children beneath a table and shouted, "Take it outside!"

Martin turned his shield away from them and accepted a spear across Worldshell rather than redirecting it into the crowd. The hit tore a dark plate along his side.

Katherine’s barrier closed over the damage immediately. "You are allowed to use the shield."

"Not through them."

The market placed more enemies between the party and the service wall.

Rias looked at the room, the civilians, and the routes disappearing one by one. "We cannot win this."

Alexandra cut a contract chain from Kumoe’s rear leg. "We are winning every fight."

"The market keeps creating new ones. We are carrying an injured beast, preserving evidence, and refusing to turn civilians into cover. That means it controls how long we can remain."

Martin understood the distinction. His pride wanted to keep fighting, but as leader, he knew Rias was right.

"Retreat," he said. "No detours. No targets that don’t block the route."

Nobody argued.

They reached the wall the disk had indicated. Silver scratches covered its lower stones. They matched the mark Rias had found near the food stalls, but here the pattern continued beneath the black surface like a buried bell diagram made from stolen Sairren resonance.

Martin pulled out the return disk and struck it against the wall. The market shuddered at the first hit. At the second, every nearby door slammed shut. The third released a note too low for human hearing. Kumoe’s three sets of ears turned toward the stone, and Kinnami’s golden body brightened.

Somewhere far beyond the market, a bell answered.

The wall did not open. Instead, silver lines began crawling through it while black contract seals fought to cover them.

The three tuning forks fixed around the return disk bent toward the wall while the black seals on the market side pulled their tips backward. Rias watched the opposing tension.

"They heard us. The Sairren are pulling one way, and the market is pulling back."

Enforcers entered the hall through every remaining door.

Martin summoned Riftbell Warhammer and planted it against the floor.

"Hold the Line!"

The golden curtain rose across the hall, leaving the wall, the widening Sairren route, Kumoe, Kinnami, the injured lynx, and the rest of the party on Martin’s protected side.

[Hold the Line: 30 seconds]

Weak points appeared across the contract seals trying to close the route. Rias cut the first with Gloamneedle. Cassandra’s next Nightglass arrow broke the second before another black layer could grow over it.

Elisebeth folded Silent Stage over the wall and trapped the Sairren note inside, preventing the market’s alarms from drowning it out. Katherine and Kinnami layered their own barriers behind the golden line, reinforcing the people and the wounded lynx whenever an impact threatened to break through.

Alexandra and Kumoe guarded the widening silver crack.

The market sent the second Beastslayer forward just as another formation filled the doors behind him.

Martin looked at the shrinking Hold the Line timer, the broad auction hall behind them, and the amount of space they still needed to protect. The cover was dead. Stealth no longer mattered.

"Angel, out."

Ao Tenshin erupted from her pocket dimension in a surge of sapphire light. Her crystal shell filled the hall and immediately crushed two closing doorframes sideways. Damage notices began stacking before all four feet had settled.

The Beastslayer’s arms warped under his inheritance. Dark antler-like plates climbed one forearm while the other ended in a long hooked paw, traits stolen from an intelligent beast that was no longer there to object.

He hooked the edge of Hold the Line with the plated arm and struck Martin’s shield with the other. Then he reached toward the lynx.

Angel caught the hooked forearm in her jaws and pulled him off balance. Alexandra cut across the inherited plate near the elbow, Cassandra’s arrow shattered the recovery seal on his chest, and Elisebeth’s Fire Bolt forced him back outside the golden field.

The Beastslayer hit the floor beyond the line and disappeared beneath his own enforcers before he could reach any companion.

The silver crack widened into a doorway.

Bronze light waited beyond it.

Sairren wardens filled the other side. Mireva stood at the center with both hands pressed to a relay frame, while the older bellkeeper struck three tuning forks against the conductor pattern they had reconstructed.

"Move!" Mireva shouted.

Rias went first with the evidence. Katherine guided the injured lynx through under Kinnami’s barrier. Cassandra followed, then Elisebeth. Alexandra and Kumoe backed through while still facing the market.

Angel approached the doorway, but the opening began narrowing before her shell could pass.

The Sairren bellkeepers sang a sharp route correction. Bronze light stretched the opening around her shell. Stone cracked on both sides as Angel forced herself into the Sunken Belfry.

The market struck Hold the Line again.

The golden curtain flickered.

Martin remained on the wrong side.

Mireva reached through the silver route, but black hands closed around the doorway before he could take hers.

The passage began collapsing between them.