The hall stayed closed.
No murmuring nobles. No servants drifting like ghosts. No polite laughter to soften sharp words.
Only four of us remained beneath the heavy ceiling and the weight of the Vonel name.
Alcatraz du Vonel sat on the elevated platform as if he had never moved in his life. Even without an audience, his presence filled the room. His wife remained beside him, silent and composed, eyes unreadable. Fennec stood a step behind and to the side—relaxed in posture, but not in attention. Lyan sat farther back, still raw from yesterday, still carrying that fragile warmth from his father's approval like a candle he was terrified to drop.
Alcatraz's gaze didn't waver when he spoke.
"Now," he said softly, "repeat your question."
The word "now" made it clear this wasn't a request. It was a test.
I swallowed, feeling my bandaged side pull when my chest rose. My sling tightened around my left arm. Pain tried to distract me.
I didn't let it.
"I want to know what happened to the dungeon expedition on floor forty-three," I said, forcing my voice steady. "And if there were any survivors… especially anyone with the name Austere."
Alcatraz didn't answer.
He watched me.
Not like someone listening.
Like someone weighing metal in his hand to see if it would bend.
Then he asked, calm as ever, "Who is Austere to you?"
The question was simple.
But the room tightened around it.
My tongue felt dry. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, steady and loud.
"She's my sister," I said. The words tasted strange in this hall. Too personal. Too human. "Her name is Myrina Austere."
For the first time, I felt the air shift—not with magic, not with thunder, but with attention.
Fennec's eyes sharpened slightly, as if a line had been drawn between "story" and "relevance."
Lyan's posture stiffened. His expression flickered—shock, then something like guilt.
Alcatraz simply watched my face.
I realized then that he wasn't deciding whether to tell me.
He was deciding what I was.
Useful.
Dangerous.
Or both.
He leaned back a fraction and finally spoke.
"The public version," he said, voice smooth, "is that an expedition was launched to floor forty-three as a rescue mission."
His tone was deliberate. Almost official. Like he was reciting something prepared to be repeated in court.
"It was known as Expedition Forty-Three," he continued. "Its stated purpose was to assist an Avalonian team believed to be ambushed on that floor by Chimmerian forces."
He paused.
Not to breathe.
To see my reaction.
I held my face still, but inside my stomach twisted. Public version. That meant there was another.
Alcatraz's gaze remained on me as he continued, slower.
"What the public does not know," he said, "is that the rescue mission itself was a trap."
The words were quiet, but they hit harder than shouting.
"It was designed to draw reinforcement into a prepared slaughter."
My right hand curled slightly, then I forced it to relax again.
Alcatraz's voice didn't change.
"The method of the ambush was not immediately understood," he said. "According to the report from Garrand Vox Myrmidon—commander of the expedition, who returned with fatal injury and survived—Chimmeria deployed a specimen unknown to our forces."
My breath caught.
Unknown chimera.
Alcatraz continued, clinical and cold.
"It did not simply fight," he said. "It separated."
A single word. And suddenly I could picture it.
Not a monster tearing people apart in a crowd.
A monster turning a team into isolated pieces.
"It scattered the formation," Alcatraz said. "Split squads. Turned coordination into confusion. Forced our forces to engage at a disadvantage."
He didn't describe gore. He didn't need to.
The shape of the disaster formed in my mind anyway—people calling names that couldn't be heard, footsteps retreating into wrong tunnels, the panic of realizing you were alone.
"And so," Alcatraz continued, "Expedition Forty-Three suffered catastrophic losses."
A humiliation.
His eyes narrowed slightly—not in anger, but in judgment.
"Avalonia classified it," he said. "The public was told it was a dungeon anomaly. A misfortune. A setback caused by the Abyss itself."
His mouth barely moved as he added, "It was not misfortune. It was Chimmeria outthinking and overpowering an Avalonian rescue force."
The room felt colder.
Fennec spoke then, his tone gentle but stripped of humor.
"This isn't a story you want shouted in a guild hall."
I didn't respond. I couldn't.
Alcatraz continued, and his next words made my throat tighten.
"Floor forty-three was not merely a battle," he said. "It was a massacre designed to leave no survivors."
I felt my ribs pull against bandages as I inhaled too sharply.
"But there were survivors," Alcatraz added.
My eyes locked onto him.
"The commander returned," he said, "with injuries that should have ended him. He survived. And he delivered information vital enough to shift Avalonia's preparations."
He rested one hand lightly on the armrest, as if this were a casual conversation and not the place my life was being dismantled.
"Chimmeria has improved," he said. "Strength, strategy, and tools. There is reason to believe they have gained a new prodigy among them."
A prodigy.
My mind flashed back to Lyan's aura, the way the air had changed around his blade.
I forced myself back to the point.
"And… Austere?" I asked, and my voice came out too sharp, too desperate.
Alcatraz's gaze flicked to me.
Then, as if he was mentioning a minor detail in a long report, he said:
"All of this was possible because of a female adventurer who called herself Austere."
My body forgot pain for one heartbeat.
Then it remembered everything at once.
My breath left me in a broken gasp.
I took a half step forward before I realized my legs had moved.
"What—" I choked. "What did you just say?"
Alcatraz didn't flinch at my tone. He didn't look offended. He didn't look amused.
He looked… mildly interested, like a man observing a predictable reaction.
"We do not know her full name," he said. "But the report places her as a C-rank adventurer from Azuris."
My vision narrowed.
C-rank.
Azuris.
That was her.
That had to be her.
Myrina.
My voice climbed without permission. "How?"
The word came out like an accusation.
"How was she there? How did she—"
Alcatraz waited until I stopped tripping over my own breath.
Then he said calmly, "If she was your sister, then she was likely the reason any of them returned at all."
My knees weakened.
I heard myself again, louder, rougher. "How did she save them?"
Fennec shifted slightly, as if prepared to step in if my emotions made me do something stupid.
Lyan's eyes were fixed on me, wide and shaken.
Alcatraz answered like he was reciting what was written.
"According to the surviving commander," he said, "Austere manifested an aura in the final moments. Some kind of barrier-type manifestation."
Barrier.
The word made my mind freeze.
And yet…
Alcatraz continued, "It created enough protection—whatever its exact nature—to allow the remaining survivors to withdraw."
He paused. Then he added the line that broke something inside me.
"She demanded they leave her."
My throat tightened so hard it hurt.
"She ordered the survivors to retreat," Alcatraz said. "And they obeyed."
I heard it in my mind as if I could hear her voice through a report—flat, quiet, uncompromising.
Go.
Now.
Don't stay.
My legs gave out.
I dropped to my knees on the carpet, the pain in my side flaring, but I barely felt it compared to the cold flooding my chest.
I stared at the floor as if it could answer me.
"Is there…" My voice cracked. "Is there any possibility she survived?"
Silence stretched.
For the first time in this conversation, Alcatraz did not speak immediately.
He let the pause exist.
Let it carve into me.
Then he said, measured, "There is a possibility."
Hope sparked so hard it almost hurt.
Then he finished, "But it is extremely small."
The spark dimmed. Not extinguished. Tortured.
Alcatraz's tone remained calm, almost gentle in its precision.
"We do not know the full range of her aura," he said. "We do not know its limitation, its duration, or what it costs her. She may have survived the initial ambush."
My hands clenched into fists against the carpet.
"But floor forty-three is harsh," Alcatraz continued. "Miasma is thick. Without proper equipment, a person will not last."
I swallowed, throat burning.
Alcatraz's gaze sharpened slightly.
"And there is a worst case," he said.
My stomach dropped before he spoke it.
"If Chimmeria recovered her," Alcatraz said, "her body could have been claimed. Altered. Turned into a new chimera."
The words slammed into me so hard my vision blurred.
Myrina.
Not a person.
Not my sister.
A monster.
I felt something in me fray.
My breath turned thin.
My hands shook.
Before I could break apart completely, Alcatraz continued, voice steady as stone.
"These are speculations," he said. "Assumptions based on Chimmerian precedent. Possibilities. Not confirmations."
He watched me as he spoke, as if to see whether the reassurance stabilized me or whether it simply gave the pain a different shape.
"The possibility remains," he said. "However small."
Lyan stood and shifted towards me.
I heard the subtle scrape of his foot against the floor. I didn't need to look to know he was trying to step forward.
To say something.
To apologize again.
To promise help.
But he stopped.
Like the air itself held him back.
Alcatraz hadn't moved.
Hadn't glared.
Hadn't spoken.
And still, the room made it clear: messy emotion was not permitted here.
I forced myself to breathe.
In.
Out.
My voice came out rough when I spoke again. "Why are you telling me this?"
Alcatraz's gaze didn't waver.
"Because," he said, "you have shown something interesting."
My spine tightened.
He continued, "Yesterday, you fought my son with no training worth mentioning. And yet you did not fall."
The words were not praise. They were observation.
Alcatraz leaned forward slightly.
"Tell me," he said, "about what you saw."
I blinked, confused.
"The grey world," he said, as if naming something I'd never dared to explain. "The sensation that time slowed. The orbs of light. The path the blade should take."
My blood went cold.
How—
I swallowed hard and forced myself to speak politely this time, because I'd learned what disrespect cost in this hall.
"How did you know?" I asked.
Alcatraz's mouth curved in the smallest possible way—not a smile, not quite.
"Because it has a name," he said.
He let the word hang before he gave it.
"Flow."
The syllable landed like a lock clicking into place.
My mind ran back to the arena—the grey tunnel vision, the thinning sound, the light points that only I could see.
Alcatraz continued, voice calm.
"Flow is an ability difficult to master," he said. "Because most cannot control its activation. It emerges randomly—often in near-death situations."
Near-death.
My side throbbed in agreement.
"And even then," Alcatraz said, "most experience it once in a lifetime, if ever."
He watched me.
"You used it multiple times."
My throat went dry.
Alcatraz's voice remained smooth.
"To control it reliably," he said, "requires decades. A grandmaster's discipline. Experience measured in scars."
He didn't say it to intimidate.
He said it like he was stating physics.
"And yet," he added, "you touched it."
I stared at him, mind spinning.
He wasn't looking at me as a child.
He was looking at me as a tool that might be sharpened.
Alcatraz leaned back.
Then his tone changed—not in warmth, but in intent.
"You asked for information," he said. "I gave you more than the public deserves."
He paused, eyes sharp.
"Do not mistake this for charity."
The words were velvet.
The meaning was steel.
"I am offering you a negotiation," Alcatraz said.
My pulse hammered.
He continued, "You want access to the Abyss. You want proximity to Expedition preparations. You want information about floor forty-three and what may remain of it."
I didn't deny it.
"I can provide controlled access," Alcatraz said. "Information, drip-fed. Verified."
My breath caught.
Hope rose again—carefully this time, like a wounded animal lifting its head.
Then Alcatraz added, "In exchange, you will accept conditions."
The hall seemed to tighten.
"Silence," he said. "You will speak of Expedition Forty-Three to no one without permission. Not the guild. Not friends. Not family."
My stomach twisted at the last word.
"Second," Alcatraz continued, "a binding oath under Vonel authority."
A binding contract.
A leash written in ink and sealed in power.
"You will serve when called," Alcatraz said calmly. "And you will comply with the terms of your placement and training when assigned."
Training.
Placement.
Service.
My hands clenched, then I forced them open again.
Fennec watched me quietly, expression calm, eyes measuring—not threatening, but attentive, like he was checking whether I would survive this conversation without choking on it.
Alcatraz's gaze remained fixed on me.
Then he said the line that set my heart racing.
"Myrina Austere was never confirmed deceased."
For a heartbeat, the world softened.
Not grey.
Not slow.
Just… hope.
One heartbeat.
Then reality returned with teeth.
Alcatraz's voice lowered, precise.
"Which is why your next choice matters."
The silence that followed wasn't empty.
It was waiting.
And I understood, finally, what he was doing.
He was giving me the smallest crack of light—
And positioning himself as the only doorway toward it.