Sixty-Two — Annihilate Them

　Back at the inn, the food in front of me had long since gone cold.

Two hours. She said an hour. It's been two.

　"She's not usually late," Lyra said, quiet, watching me with the specific carefulness of someone who'd already noticed my hands had stopped being steady.

　"No," I agreed. "She's not."

"I would recommend beginning a search," Anti-Subconsciousness said, and something in its tone had gone sharper than usual, more urgent than its typical flat delivery.

Please. Please just be running late.

　I was on my feet before the chair finished falling behind me.

　"Ace. Elaine. We're finding her. Now."

　It took the better part of an hour before Ace caught the thread — faint, but unmistakable, leading away from the district's main streets toward a stretch of the city I'd had no reason to visit before.

Please still be alive when we get there.

"Soul Link is not responding," Anti-Subconsciousness said, and I felt something cold settle into my chest at the careful way it chose those exact words.

　"What does that mean," I said, already moving faster.

"Her soul registers as faint. A barrier surrounds whatever location she's currently in, obstructing the connection further."

　"Faint. Be specific. What does that mean."

　Silence.

That's not a good silence.

　"Ace," I said, forcing my voice level. "Can you sense her?"

I can, Ace replied, pace unbroken. She is barely alive.

　Everything after that happened somewhere outside the version of myself I usually let anyone see.

　My mind emptied.

　Not panic. Not fury.

　Just a cold, absolute stillness, like setting something down I no longer had use for.

　"What should we do," Ace asked.

　"Annihilate them."

　"How many."

　"All of them. Don't let a single one leave this mansion. If you find the family living here, leave them — they're mine. Everyone else, annihilate. All of them."

　"Understood," Ace said, and was gone.

　The barrier surrounding the mansion — old, poorly maintained, nothing against what I'd built at Horizoncrest — shattered the moment I actually tested it, like it had never once expected to face anything capable of testing it properly.

"I have her location," Anti-Subconsciousness said. "This way."

　My blade appeared in my hand without ceremony. My jacket blurred faintly at its edges.

　I walked, and the men who came to stop me simply weren't there anymore a heartbeat later, my hand never once moving in any way that would have explained it.

　Above me, distantly, I heard the mansion's master shouting, panicked, demanding answers nobody was left alive to give him. Ace's own work rolled through the upper levels somewhere behind me — wood and stone giving way, men learning, far too late, exactly what they'd dismissed as "just a dog."

　The guard captain found me in a corridor already littered with everything that had tried to stop me before him.

　"You really made a mess," he said, something between awe and dawning horror. "You the master of that overgrown dog, then?"

　I didn't answer.

　I kept walking, slow, unhurried.

　"That's far enough, boy," he tried, backing away. "You're not getting any clo—"

　He didn't finish the word.

　I found the underground door by the pressure in the air more than any actual searching.

　It simply wasn't there anymore, and then I was inside.

Eris.

　Chained.

　Blood soaking what remained of her clothes.

　Her eyes—

No.

　I crossed the room in an instant, dropping to my knees, hands already moving toward the chains.

　"Kai," she said, faint, a small, impossible smile finding her face despite everything.

　"You really came."

　"Of course I came," I said, voice breaking entirely. "Hold on. Just hold on a little longer."