The ground shook.

  A roar—deep, ear-splitting, primal—ripped through the air from the nearby building. The sound rolled through the cavern like thunder trapped underground, shaking loose dust and fragments of stone from the ceiling.

  The armed men froze. The masked one staggered a step back, his weapon turning to the building. Fear rippled through them like a contagion.

  Boriss, by contrast, only grinned—wide and wolfish—as the echo faded. “Ahh,” he said with relish, turning his head toward the trembling building. “Comrade Quasi is having fun.”

  He started forward, boots crunching over stone. But before he could reach the entrance, the gas-masked man stumbled in front of him, blade raised, voice cracking through the filter.

  “I said You go any further, and—”

  The rest never left his mouth.

  Myers moved.

  The old man’s cane clicked once against the floor, and then—blur. In one seamless motion, the wooden sheath split open to reveal polished steel. The blade flashed once, a whisper of motion so fast it barely cast a shadow.

  A single metallic .

  By the time Myers straightened, the sword was already hidden again. He adjusted his coat sleeve, expression calm, his voice quiet but edged with urgency.

  “Clay’s life may be in danger,” he said, walking past the frozen slavers without looking back. “There’s no time to waste.”

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then the gas-masked man made a choking sound. His weapon clattered from his hands. A thin violet line split his armor from shoulder to hip—then widened.

  The man fell apart in two clean halves, flesh, armor, and bone sliced as neatly as paper. His sword split with him, the metal gleaming briefly before collapsing into the dust.

  Silence followed.

  Boriss whistled low. “Like mother with cleaver.”

  Nepenthes glanced at Myers as he strode for the entrance, her eyes flicking to the faint trace of clean air his blade had left behind. “Efficient,” she murmured, approvingly.

  Yuto exhaled, the faintest grin curling his lips. He glances at the rest of the armed men now frozen in fear. “If you’re still here when we leave, know that your lives are forfeit.” With his warning said, he follows after the old man.

  Myers walks towards the entrance and opens the door. He enters inside, even more worried now. He understands how powerful Quasi is, and anything that forces him to take on the form of a royal wyvern poses a considerable threat to a child's life.

  ________________________________________________________________

  The door creaked open under Myers’s hand. A wave of heat and iron-scented air rolled out, thick enough to sting the eyes. The old man stepped through first, cane tapping softly against stone as violet light flickered through the smoke.

  The others followed.

  Inside, the hallway was devastation incarnate. Rune-lamps guttered and sparked overhead, painting the walls in jittering flashes of purple and red. Bodies lay everywhere—burned, broken, some melted into the walls themselves. Blood pooled along the cracked floor, reflecting the dying light like black glass.

  Myers said nothing as he moved deeper, his boots leaving prints in blood and ash. His face was calm, but his eyes—the eyes of someone who’d seen too much—were sharp and grim.

  Boriss whistled low, stepping past him. He glanced around, let out a low whistle, and grinned. “Ah. Looks like mother’s pantry,” he said, eyes gleaming with morbid amusement. “Only less frozen… and more meat on walls.”

  Nepenthes followed close behind, her gaze sharp and fascinated. The violet light shimmered across her carapace as she crouched beside a corpse half-fused into the wall. “The Matriarch leaves no seed of resistance behind.”

  Yuto walked beside her, gaze steady, nostrils flaring as he breathed in the heavy air. “These bodies are fresh,” he said, tone low and certain. “He passed recently.” His hand drifted to his sword hilt, his tail flicking once. “He might still be fighting.”

  Myers glanced over his shoulder at them, his voice soft but weighted. “Then we move quickly.” He turned back down the hall, stepping over a severed arm without breaking stride. “If Quasi’s still in this building, Clay can’t be far.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  The group pressed forward through the carnage.

  As they went, the air thickened. Blood steamed faintly on the hot floor; the scent of ozone lingered with every breath. The deeper halls were nearly black, lit only by dying runes and the faint pulse of violet veins glowing from the corpses that lined their path.

  Mishka padded silently behind them, her fur bristling. The great wolf’s growl rumbled low as they turned another corner. Ahead, the corridor ended at a massive steel door—its surface warped and cracked outward as if something had forced its way through. Behind it, they can see stair leading up.

  Yuto’s ears twitched. “I can smell him now. He’s not far.”

  Myers nodded once, already walking towards. “Then let’s not keep him waiting.”

  They moved together up the stairs, exiting on a floor and taking another set of stairs further up.

  As they neared the top, they stop on a floor more devastated than any other.

  Yuto sniffs again and turns to Myers. “Clay was just here.”

  _____________________________________________________________

  The door open hard enough to rattle the walls.

  Corvin Malvek looked up, cigar halfway to his lips, the glow of lamplight cutting through the dense smoke. The Gambino representative beside him turned just enough to see the disturbance—but didn’t rise. He merely adjusted his cufflinks, calm as a man at tea.

  Through the doorway strutted a cat with violet eyes and a stride that somehow suggested a smirk.

  Behind him came an armed woman, Veynor, and a child.

  Quasi stopped in the center of the rug, tail flicking. “Wow,” he said, voice bright and flippant. “Real you’ve got here. Leather, wood, the faint odor of moral rot. Did you order this whole look from ‘Megalomaniac Monthly,’ or was it a family inheritance?”

  Corvin frowned, unamused. “Who let you in?”

  Quasi blinked at him as if the question were absurd. “ Buddy, are you deaf? Did you not hear the screaming? The exploding? The artistic redecoration of your hallways with what used to be your staff?”

  Daiyu’s eyes swept the room, then the walls. “The area’s runed for silence,” she said flatly. “Sound doesn’t carry in or out of this room”

  The Gambino representative leaned back, one brow lifting. “Were you expecting company, Mister Malvek?”

  Corvin’s gaze sharpened. “No.”

  “Yes,” Quasi said at the same time, beaming.

  A pause.

  “Granted,” the cat went on, “my invitation was a little . You know—what with the , , , . Real five-star experience. I’ve had spa days with more chains, but at least they offered wine.”

  He hopped up onto the desk in one fluid motion. Papers fluttered, the Gambino’s glass wobbled. Corvin didn’t flinch, though his hand slid a half-inch closer to the pistol beneath his coat.

  “Now, Corvin, my dear kidnapper,” Quasi said, pacing across the blotter like he owned the place. “We need to .”

  His paw reached out and flicked an inkwell from the desk. It hit the carpet with a , bleeding black ink into the weave.

  Behind him, Daiyu sighed. “I’m checking the armory in the back.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Quasi said, not looking at her. “Grab whatever you want. I’ll keep the audience entertained.”

  Veynar, meanwhile, had already drifted toward a shelf holding a long white spike covered in runes. “Fascinating runework. I didn’t know such a spell could be applied…”

  Quasi rolls his eyes at the doctor and returns his attention to Corvin.

  “So. My day. Let’s talk about it.” He exhaled dramatically. “You ever end your nights by getting by half a dozen guys who look like discount plague doctors? Because I did. Real charming bunch. Not a single one of them could enunciate through those masks. Every breath sounded like they were making love to a kettle. I kept asking if they were trying to mug me or recite poetry, but they just ignored me while dragging me into your dungeon.”

  He nudged a quill off the desk.

  “And your dungeon—what’s with the décor? Dripping moss, cracked stone, no natural lighting, zero ventilation. Honestly, I’ve seen outhouses with better feng shui.”

  Off went another item—a paperweight this time.

  “Oh, and the guards! Real customer-service champions. One actually screamed, ‘Help me’ So I set him on fire. I mean, I feel —not for him, obviously—but for the floor. The scorch marks clash horribly with the rest of this place’s bourgeois misery.”

  He pushed a small stack of ledgers.

  “I passed six floors of this nonsense. Six! Each one uglier than the last.” A ledger slid beneath his paw and thumped to the carpet. “The first floor was just grime — classic, respectable decay — but by the third, portraits started staring at me. Miserable faces, all oil-painted regret and bad posture. Half of them looked like they’d been painted mid-confession.”

  He gave the next paperweight a lazy nudge. “Then the tapestries. Gods, the tapestries. Someone wove shame into fabric and called it heritage. Every hallway reeked of inherited guilt and mothballs. I swear one painting actually sighed when I looked at it.”

  He sat down, tail curling, and brushed another inkwell to the floor. “By the fifth floor I started playing a game: ‘Spot the ancestor who didn’t drown in his own hubris.’ Spoiler—none of them won. Beige walls, beige carpets, beige souls. You run a black-market empire, Corvin, and you chose It’s criminal. Beige doesn’t hide blood, it it.”

  The quill holder followed with a metallic “And the architecture!” he cried. “Stairs, stairs, stairs. Endless, joyless, penitential stairs. By the time I got here I’d burned more calories than most of your men earn in a week. My claws are practically filing themselves smooth from all the steps.”

  He prowled to the blotter, eyes gleaming, and with one paw swept a sheaf of papers off the edge. They fluttered down like pale leaves. “And don’t even get me started on those chandeliers — all pretending to be antique but looking more like skeletal spiders in mid-midlife crisis. Lamps that hum off-key, brass so over-polished I could see the reflection of my disappointment.”

  Another flick: the glass tumbler toppled and shattered, scent of whiskey and smoke rising. “Honestly, Corvin, you could terrify people resorting to bad taste. Add some color, a potted plant. Maybe hang a cheerful sign—‘Human Trafficking, but Make It Cozy.’ At least then your victims would die in style.”

  The necklace glittered, lonely and loud amid the desk. Quasi’s paw hovered over it, the joke in his voice folding into something colder.

  “And all of that — every complaint, every petty quibble about your decor?” He let the word hang. “Forgivable.”

  He tapped the necklace once, lightly.

  “Unfortunately, you didn’t just kidnap me.” He met Corvin’s eyes. The smirk vanished. “You kidnapped a child. And that, Corvin, means I’m going to have to kill you.”