The climb took forever. Every step up sent his broken ribs shifting in ways that made him gag. His burned hand was useless, so he braced himself against the wall with his left arm and pulled himself up one rung at a time.
When he finally reached the surface, the night air hit him like a wall of cold water. He stumbled out of the maintenance hatch and into the ruined courtyard above, his legs finally giving out completely.
He hit the ground on his good shoulder and just lay there for a long moment, staring up at the stars through the gap in the collapsed ceiling.
’I made it. I actually made it.’
Behind him, deep in the vault below, Dexter and Myra hadn’t moved.
They were still standing exactly where he’d left them, frozen in place, listening to his footsteps fade into the tunnel. The silence that followed was so thick that Myra later swore she could hear her own heartbeat bouncing off the walls.
They stayed that way for several agonizing minutes. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. Neither of them even breathed loudly. They just stood there, surrounded by the corpses of two dead beasts and the ruins of a destroyed vault, waiting for the masked stranger to come back.
When the footsteps had been gone for a full five minutes and no sound came from the tunnel, Dexter finally exhaled.
"Is he gone?"
Myra didn’t answer immediately. She listened for another thirty seconds, her ears straining against the silence.
"I think so."
Dexter’s entire body sagged with relief. He sat down on the floor, right there in the pool of Drake blood, and put his head between his knees.
"I thought I was dead," he muttered. "I actually thought I was dead."
Myra sheathed her blades and looked down at him with an expression that was equal parts disgust and exhaustion.
"You dropped your sword."
"I know."
"You hid behind me."
"I know."
"We’re going to have a conversation about that later."
Dexter didn’t argue. He just sat there, staring at the floor, trying to remember how to breathe normally.
Myra turned and looked at the tunnel entrance. It was dark and empty. No footsteps. No sound. No sign that the masked stranger had ever existed.
"Let’s go," she said. "Now. Before anything else shows up."
Dexter got to his feet. He retrieved his broadsword from where it had fallen, wiped the blade on his pants, and sheathed it without a word.
They moved toward the tunnel together, stepping carefully over the rubble and around the Drake’s corpse. Neither of them looked back at the vault. Neither of them mentioned the Astral Prism or the Stone-Ape’s power crystal or the fact that they had just witnessed something that defied everything they thought they knew about power scaling in this world.
When they reached the surface, the courtyard was empty. Completely empty. No masked figure. No residual energy. No sign that anyone had been there at all.
Dexter scanned the ruins, his hand resting on his sword hilt.
"He’s gone."
Myra nodded. "We never came here. We never saw this vault. We never saw him. As far as anyone knows, we spent the night tracking Malakor and found nothing."
"What about the mission?"
"Forget the mission. Whatever that thing was down there, it claimed this territory. We’re not coming back."
Dexter opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. He thought about the dead Drake. The destroyed Stone-Ape. The single punch that had killed a fifty-percent Flux beast.
He nodded.
They left the ruins in silence, moving fast, not looking back.
Micah watched them go from behind a collapsed wall two blocks away.
He was sitting on the ground with his back against the concrete, his legs stretched out in front of him, his burned hand cradled against his chest. Every breath came in short, shallow gasps that barely moved his ribs.
He waited until Dexter and Myra were completely out of sight before he tried to stand up.
It took three attempts.
The first time, his legs simply refused to cooperate. The second time, he got halfway up before his knee buckled and he slid back down the wall. The third time, he gritted his teeth, grabbed a piece of rebar sticking out of the concrete, and hauled himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
The walk back to the academy was the longest three kilometers of his life.
He stayed in the shadows, moving from one piece of cover to the next. His Beast Analysis was completely dead, his Flux reserves so empty that the talent couldn’t even flicker. He navigated by memory alone, retracing the route he’d mapped two days earlier through the underground parking structures and collapsed subway tunnels.
Every step sent pain shooting through his ribs. Every breath tasted like blood. His burned hand had gone numb, which scared him more than the pain did. Numbness meant nerve damage, and nerve damage meant this hand might not work the same way again.
He didn’t have time to worry about that right now.
The eastern perimeter fence appeared through the darkness ahead. The gap behind the old generator building was still there, still unguarded, still just wide enough for a broken recruit to squeeze through.
He waited until the nearest patrol pair rounded the corner, counted to fifteen, then moved.
He slid through the gap. A fresh jolt of pain shot through his shoulder as the rough concrete scraped against his injury. Fresh blood warmed his skin beneath the wrapping, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving.
Three minutes later, Micah was inside the academy walls.
He limped through the dark corridors of the eastern wing, staying off the main paths, using service hallways and maintenance passages that the night patrols didn’t bother checking. His predecessor’s memories had the layout burned into them, and Micah followed the route on autopilot.
When he finally reached his quarters, he closed the door behind him, leaned against it, and slid to the floor.
He sat there in the dark for a long time, breathing in shallow gasps, staring at nothing.
His tactical pack was still on his back. He could feel the Astral Prism pressing against his spine, still humming faintly. The Stone-Ape’s power crystal was in there too, dense and warm and full of enough energy to change everything.
He’d done it. He’d beaten the vault, killed the guardian, survived the Drake, scared off Dexter and Myra, and made it back without anyone knowing who he was.
’Not bad for a ten percent Flux nobody who pissed himself in the arena.’
He let out a weak, bloody laugh that turned into a cough.
Then he closed his eyes and passed out on the floor.