Elira adjusted the runic crossbows Ludger had lent her and took a slow breath, her usual curiosity buried under clean focus. A faint chill began to gather around her shoulders as mana stirred through her body, subtle but sharp.
Viola looked between the two of them and clicked her tongue. Luna really did make decisions like she was rearranging pieces on a board. Much like Ludger.
Annoying. Useful, but annoying.
Still, there was no time to argue. Not when the tunnel was trembling around them and Ludger was likely smashing apart half the castle above their heads.
Viola stepped toward the wall and placed both hands against the rough earth. The earthen gloves pulsed faintly as she pushed mana through them, her Seismic Sense spreading outward once more. She mapped the nearby space quickly, identifying the outer corridor Luna wanted and the sleeping dungeon chamber on the other side.
Two routes. Two openings.
Small enough to avoid drawing attention too early. She gritted her teeth and focused.
The first exit began to form above and ahead of them, where the tunnel ran closest to the outer section Luna intended to hit. Viola did not fully tear the wall apart. Instead, she softened the packed earth from within, breaking its structure apart in a tight controlled circle until a gap formed just large enough for a body to pass through.
At the same time, she forced a second opening toward the dungeon interior. This one took more care. The stone near the cells was older, denser, and more uneven, but after a few seconds of concentrated effort it too loosened, crumbling inward in silence as the earth turned brittle and gave way.
“There,” Viola whispered.
That was all Luna needed.
The moment the upper opening became large enough, Luna bent her knees and jumped through it without a trace of hesitation. No dramatic pause. No final words. Just a smooth burst of motion, silent and immediate, like she had already stepped through it in her mind before Viola even finished making the exit.
Then she was gone. Viola stared at the hole for half a heartbeat. She really moved like a ghost sometimes.
“Elira,” Viola muttered.
“I’m here.”
The two of them moved toward the second opening at once. There was no room for clumsy footing or second guesses now. Viola jumped first, Elira following in the same motion, both of them slipping through the newly opened path in a single clean drop.
They landed on the dungeon floor without making any real noise.
Viola bent her knees on impact, armored boots absorbing the force. Elira landed beside her with a light step, ice briefly forming under her feet to soften the descent before vanishing again.
Both girls froze immediately and scanned the chamber. No alarm. No shout. No sudden rush of steel. The guards inside were still asleep. Viola’s eyes narrowed.
A few of them sat slumped against the walls or near tables, heads lowered, breathing deep and steady. One had his arms folded while dozing in a chair, another had a helmet tilted low over his face. Their weapons were nearby, but none of them looked even remotely ready for a real response.
That was wrong. Not impossible, but wrong. And the prisoners… Viola’s gaze shifted past the bars. They were unconscious too.
Not merely asleep. Not restless. Not moving. Just hanging there in their cells like broken figures discarded for later use. Some were chained to the walls. Others lay collapsed on the ground. Even from a glance, the stillness felt too deep to be natural.
Elira’s voice dropped to the faintest whisper.
“This feels bad.”
Viola did not answer right away.
Because she agreed.
Above them, muffled through layers of stone and structure, another violent impact shook the castle. Dust drifted from the ceiling. Somewhere far off, something heavy collapsed.
Ludger was still at it. Which meant their window was open. But it also meant whatever was happening here needed to be dealt with now. Viola slowly straightened, eyes cold behind her armor.
“Stay close,” she whispered to Elira. “Something’s off.”
Elira moved first.
The cryomancer raised one of the runic crossbows Ludger had lent her, her posture tightening as she drew in mana with controlled precision. A faint shimmer of cold gathered around the bolt track, then condensed further, layering over the ammunition in a thin crystalline shell. Ludger had shown her how to do it in the tunnel. Not just pour power into an attack, but shape it with intent. Sharpen it. Anchor it.
Freeze first. Kill only if needed.
In a place like this, silence mattered more than blood. She exhaled slowly and fired.
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The first ice arrow crossed the dungeon in near silence and buried itself in a sleeping guard’s chest, just when the impacts made some dust fall on his face and almost woke him up. Frost spread over him instantly, racing across armor, skin, and chair in a pale blue-white bloom. Before the man could even twitch, he was completely frozen in place.
Elira pivoted and fired again. Then again.
Each shot was clean. Fast. Efficient. The guards never even had time to wake up properly. Ice devoured them where they sat, sealing limbs, throats, lungs, and weapons alike. Within seconds, the entire inner watch had been turned into a row of silent frozen statues.
Just as Ludger had taught her.
Not perfectly, of course. She was not about to delude herself into thinking she had caught up to that ridiculous monster in human shape. But the method worked. Precise, quiet, and brutal enough for the job.
The hood over her head covered half her face, and in the darkness of the dungeon that was probably enough. Even if someone saw her from a distance, they would only catch a slim figure with crossbows and cold mist clinging to her hands.
That suited her just fine. Viola had already moved toward the cells.
The armored girl stepped between the frozen guards without sparing them more than a glance, then reached the iron bars and peered inside. What she found made her expression tighten.
The prisoners were not lying on the floor. Nor were they sitting. They were hanging.
Chains bound them to the walls in standing positions, wrists and sometimes ankles fixed in place so their bodies sagged under their own weight. Their heads drooped forward, clothes stained and worn, skin pale beneath the low dungeon light. It was an ugly sight. Less like imprisonment and more like storage.
Viola narrowed her eyes and placed a hand against one of the bars, then extended her senses again. A faint hum answered her.
The chains.
They were doing something. Weakening the prisoners, draining them, suppressing mana, maybe even clouding consciousness. She could not fully identify the mechanism, but she could feel enough to know they were not ordinary restraints.
It didn’t matter. They had come for information, not to admire the craftsmanship of imperial cruelty.
“Elira,” Viola whispered.
Elira nodded and stepped closer. She dismissed one crossbow for the moment and raised a hand instead. A small thread of ice formed around her fingertip, thin and sharp like a glass needle. Delicate work. Fine enough to slip into the lock mechanism and force it open from within if she handled it carefully.
She leaned toward the first cell. Then Viola’s hand shot out and stopped her. Elira blinked and turned her head. Viola was staring at one of the prisoners.
She had not said a word, but the shift in her expression was obvious enough that Elira immediately understood this was not just some random condemned noble. There was recognition there. Surprise too. And something more complicated under it, something she did not have time to fully parse.
Elira followed her gaze.
The prisoner in question was a young man, even in his current state unreasonably handsome in the way noble boys often seemed to be. Refined features. Straight posture despite the exhaustion dragging at him. Dark hair hanging messily over his face. Even chained to a wall and worn down to this condition, he still carried that faint air of breeding and education that clung to certain people no matter how badly reality mauled them.
But now he looked half-dead.
Thin. Drained. His breathing was shallow, head lowered, wrists held by humming suppressive chains. And yet the noble air around him had not vanished completely. It had only been crushed under fatigue and suffering.
Elira looked back at Viola, who still had not spoken. Then recognition clicked into place for her too.
Rufas Dalmoren.
For a second, Viola just stared. What was Rufas doing here?
The question hit hard enough to cut through the tension for a moment. Rufas Dalmoren was not some nameless traitor from Gustav’s household. He was supposed to be protecting the castle. Her mind immediately started pulling at possibilities.
Had he been taken quietly? Framed? Thrown here because he knew something? Because he had sided with the wrong person? Because he had simply become inconvenient? Too many options. None of them good. But Viola couldn’t ask any of that. Not here. Not now.
There were still prisoners around. Even unconscious, that didn’t matter. Some of them could wake. Some could hear. And more importantly, if any of them recognized her voice, that alone could become a problem later. She was not stupid enough to forget whose granddaughter she was and what that could mean if the wrong survivor put the pieces together.
So she hesitated. Only for a moment, but still long enough to irritate herself for it. Then Luna appeared beside them like she had been part of the darkness all along.
Viola barely caught the movement before the other girl was simply there, stepping into the dungeon interior without sound, without wasted motion, without even the courtesy of looking tired. Her knives were already back in her hands, dark and wet.
They smelled like blood.
Viola’s eyes flicked to them for half a second.
She had known what Luna meant when she said she would take care of the guards outside. She had understood it logically. But seeing the aftermath implied so cleanly, so casually, still hit differently. Imperial guards. Armandis men. Whoever had been above. Luna had dealt with them with such ease and so little hesitation that it was almost unsettling.
No dramatic expression. No visible shake in her hands. Just blood on steel and a calm gaze already moving past the corpses to the real problem.
Viola wondered, very briefly, if Luna had always been able to kill like that and simply never had a reason to show it so openly before.
Then she crushed the thought. There was no time. Luna’s eyes landed on Rufas for a single instant, and Viola saw understanding settle into her expression immediately. No surprise, no questions, just instant calculation.
Of course she understood.
Of course she did.
For all the times Ludger irritated her by acting like he was the only practical one in the room, Luna really was terrifying in her own way.
Luna looked at Elira. When she spoke, her voice was different.
“Open the door.”
Viola’s brow twitched.
The words were the same, but the voice wasn’t Luna’s usual one. The cadence had shifted. The tone had roughened slightly. Even the accent she normally carried so lightly was simply… gone. Stripped away. What came out instead was flatter, colder, harder to place. A voice that belonged nowhere obvious.
Elira blinked once, clearly noticing it too, but recovered immediately and nodded. She didn’t say anything, but the reaction still crossed her face before she could stop it.
Sometimes she forgot Luna could do things like that.
Not just move silently or think ahead, but slip into another voice so naturally that it felt less like imitation and more like removing herself altogether. It was the kind of skill that reminded Viola, unpleasantly, that Luna was built for this sort of mission in ways most people weren’t.