Their infiltration route was a literal descent into hell. They navigated a series of forgotten geothermal service tunnels, the air growing thick and heavy with the smell of sulfur and ozone.
The rock walls around them pulsed with a dull, red glow, and the oppressive heat was a physical weight.
Joric had designed specialized thermal-cloaking suits, technology he had 'requisitioned' from a Sunstone Jaguar R&D lab using their new, untraceable line of credit.
The suits masked their heat signatures and protected them from the ambient temperature, but they did little to alleviate the feeling of being slowly cooked alive.
Deeper they went, until their path was blocked by a massive, impassable wall of semi-molten rock—a tunnel collapse from decades past, now superheated by the nearby magma flow.
Kiera's blade, which could slice through plasteel, was useless.
The intense heat would ruin its temper, rendering it as brittle as glass. The path was blocked.
It was here that Ryu faced his most demanding test yet. He stepped forward, the heat washing over him in waves.
He closed his eyes, his mind seeking the calm 'center' amidst the roaring inferno.
He extended his senses, feeling the chaotic, violent thermal energy churning within the rock.
He remembered Kiera's lessons, not of power, but of control.
Of resonance. Of leverage.
He would not be a hammer. He would be a tuning fork.
He placed his hands on the glowing rock, and instead of pushing his own energy out, he began to draw the heat *in*.
It was an act of terrifying intimacy with the raw power of the planet's core.
He became a conduit, a living heat-sync. The chaotic thermal energy flooded into him, and for a moment, the pain was blinding.
But Kiera's blueprint, the stable pathways she had burned into his very soul, held firm.
He filtered the raw energy, channeling its destructive force through his own being and venting it harmlessly into the earth beneath his feet.
The effect was immediate and dramatic. The superheated rock groaned and hissed, vast clouds of steam erupting from its surface as its temperature plummeted by hundreds of degrees in seconds.
The thermal shock did what no blade could. Cracks spiderwebbed across the rock face.
With a final, focused exhalation, Ryu gave a small push of kinetic force, and the now-brittle wall crumbled into a cascade of dust and gravel, revealing the path forward.
Joric and Kiera could only stare in stunned silence.
This was not the chaotic, uncontrolled blast he had unleashed in the tunnels. This was a display of fine control, of a deep, intuitive understanding of energy that defied all known principles of ChainForce manipulation.
He had not just destroyed an obstacle; he had tamed it. The boy who could barely contain a spark was now channeling the heart of a volcano.
They moved through the newly-opened passage and finally reached a rusted maintenance hatch. Joric interfaced his datapad, bypassing the ancient lock.
They were in the sub-basement of the Correction Center. But as Ryu extended his senses upward, a cold dread filled him.
He could feel the cold, disciplined hum of the Vanguard guards, the thrum of the facility's power core, and something else...
a dozen faint, flickering life-forces, trapped like dying embers in shielded cells. And one of them, a hollowed-out, ghost-like echo, felt horrifically, painfully familiar.
"Jax," Ryu whispered, his voice catching in his throat.
"He's here. And he's not alone."