The corridor greeted them with stale air and stone-turned-soil beneath their boots, the same place where it all began to spiral.
Writ stepped in first. The moment her foot touched solid ground, the barrier snapped.
No slow fade. No dramatic crumble. Just a sharp snap, like thread pulled taut, then cut. A sudden collapse, like Kion had been waiting, counting the seconds, until he could let it go.
She turned at the sharp sound of impact behind her.
Kion had slumped to the ground.
Not in theatrical defeat, not in some graceful motion, but like a man who had finally let go of a weight far too heavy for far too long. Like he’d been holding his breath for both of them.
He was panting hard, one hand braced against the floor, the other already fumbling with his satchel.
Writ just stood there. Her arms hung uselessly by her side.
Not because she was ungrateful. Not even because she was still shaken. But because she didn’t know what to do.
So she watched. Watched as he pulled out a jar of mixed nuts and a battered flask. He didn’t even look at her as he set them on the floor between them, the gesture deliberate but not forceful.
“You can take it,” he said, breath still jagged, “or not. Do whatever you want. But don’t go down there alone.”
Then, as if that settled it, he retrieved a single cookie, soft and powder-covered, like it had been left to sleep in frost, and bit into it with the intensity of someone gnawing on his last thread of patience.
She blinked, and finally moved. Knees creaked as she folded herself down in front of him, legs tucked close. The nuts and flask sat there like some offering or test, still untouched.
But she couldn’t stop looking at him.
Raised in a world of exacting cause and effect, Writ had been taught 'if you see a red flag, you act. If your team ignores you, you walk.'
That was survival. Efficient. Logical.
She saw a red flag. She ignored it. She drank the river. She shoved his help away. She nearly crumpled under the fog.
She became the liability she would’ve once left behind without blinking.
And he didn’t abandon her. He didn’t gloat.
He adjusted. Protected her. Waited.
And that contrast. It stung worse than any accusation ever could.
Because his exhaustion was real. Palpable. Bleeding through every ragged breath and drooping shoulder.
She knew what it took to maintain a barrier that size for that long. Not even the mages in the Accord could hold one steady that long.
But he didn’t just hold. He layered. He moved. He reinforced. And then he pushed himself further to destroy the flower.
She noticed one of his wings was still crooked. He must’ve used magic just to keep himself hovering. Another upkeep. Another drain.
Maybe magical creatures really were magical after all. Not just in name, not just in theory. But in the way their magic sustained what should’ve failed. An affinity no human could replicate.
And he knew. From the start, he knew what that flower was.
That’s why he kept the barrier. Why he warned her. Why he fought so hard to keep her from stepping into that ruin.
Writ chewed on the thought with a bitter taste.
If she had been in his place? She wouldn’t have helped someone like her. Would’ve let the fog take them. Lesson learned. End of story.
But he didn’t.
And at this point? He probably guessed she hadn’t known a single damn thing about the glowing flower.
Kion bit into another cookie, chewing with that same absent-minded focus, like a tired little forest animal trying to stay awake.
“...How much do you know about this?” Writ’s voice rasped low. No edge, no accusation. Just tired calculation, worn flat at the edges. She didn’t have energy left to posture.
He stopped mid-bite, looking at her across the satchel. Quiet, gauging.
Then finally, with a voice as raw as hers, he answered.
“Enough to know this isn’t just sickness,” a pause, “Enough to know what it starts as... and what it becomes.”
Another beat. A breath. Then, quieter, almost reluctant, “enough to know I haven’t figured out how to deal with it. Not really. But I’m trying.”
No overpromise, no dramatic claim. Just... a man sitting on dirt, chewing cookies, admitting defeat with his chin up.
Writ hugged her knees to her chest. Let it sink in. Let the image of him flicker through her. Cookie in hand, shoulders slumped, barrier dust still on his coat.
"...I totally looked so much like a fool to you, ain’t I...?" she muttered.
Kion blinked.
The silence that followed was almost comical. Like he was honestly trying to parse if she’d meant that or if his ears had finally given up. But then his lips curved. Small, gentle, real.
“No,” he said slowly, “just... someone who’s never been protected the right way. Someone who’s not used to someone staying.”
It hit like a cough in the chest. Sudden, small, but enough to ache.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
She watched instead as he polished off the last cookie and dusted off his fingers.
He rummaged through his satchel again, pulled out a vial of thick blue liquid and a mug made from an acorn. He dripped several drops into the mug, then tucked the vial back into his pack and sipped slowly.
She guessed it was a mana recovery potion.
Once he emptied the acorn-mug, he shrank it and slipped it back into his satchel. Then, slowly, like every limb resisted, he pushed himself upright.
“I’m mana-drained,” he said, “miasma below won’t let me recover at all. I’ll sleep. Probably long.”
His eyes caught hers, sharp even under exhaustion, “don’t go down there while I’m out. Don’t.”
Writ nodded. No protest. No promise either. Just a nod.
He drifted toward a hollow between the roots where the soil had softened the corridor wall, half-nest, half-crevice, and the moment he slumped down, his body gave out. Asleep in seconds.
She sat there, staring at the roots curling around him. At the now-quiet fairy. At the empty space between them.
His words lingered. Not just the content.
The way he said them. As if he had nothing to gain from lying. Nothing to gain from helping her.
Still hugging her knees, Writ leaned her chin down for a moment. Let herself feel it.
Then, breath steady, she rose to her feet. Walked past the satchel. Past the sleeping mess of limbs.
Back toward the corridor.
Tapping the walls as she went. Listening for hollows. Looking for cracks.
Searching for another way out.
The fog hadn’t left her mind.
It coiled still around her thoughts, slowing them to a crawl. As if her skull had been packed with wet cotton, dense and heavy, dulling the edges of everything.
She could think, yes. Could move, feel. But each attempt to anchor her mind, to direct it somewhere useful, felt like dragging her own limbs through mud.
And that was exactly why she kept moving.
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Because staying still would mean surrendering. To the spiral, to the fragments, to the quiet hum of dread beneath her ribs that only grew louder the longer she lingered.
Her hand swept across the corridor’s side, fingers grazing stone. Again.
She paused, blinking hard. No image came to her mind. No mental map. Nothing had registered.
She gritted her teeth and repeated the motion. Once. Twice. More.
Normally, it only took one pass to understand the structure of a wall, the cracks, the hidden seams, the hollows behind stone that might spell trouble.
But this time? She couldn’t even recall if her hand had moved across this section or the last. Her awareness slid away like water on oil.
Still, she persisted.
Her body could still walk. Her eyes could still see. So she did. Retraced every step through the corridor until she stood before the same smooth stone door she’d fled hours ago.
The truth door opened easily.
Its chamber remained undisturbed, silent and cold. No change. The tension-heavy air within still clung to her memory. The other door beyond it stayed sealed, as it should be.
She didn’t enter. Didn’t even swing a step toward the threshold.
She didn’t dare. Not when she’d need another person to make the truth-offering just to leave. She’d already learned the danger of overconfidence in this place.
So Writ backed out, careful and slow, returning to the far end of the corridor where the gap met the downward tunnel, and where her exhausted companion waited.
Kion hadn’t moved. Not even a twitch.
He lay curled where he’d collapsed earlier, small frame tucked in on itself like a squirrel deep in hibernation.
He barely breathed. Just a soft rise and fall beneath his cloak, one arm looped loosely around his satchel like a lifeline. His sleep was too still. Deeper than rest. Recovery, maybe. Or fallout.
Her stomach growled, loud and sudden, like a protest she’d tried to ignore. And she blinked, slowly connecting the sensation to the absence of food.
The last time she ate was the handful of dried fruit in the truth room. That had to be hours ago. Maybe more. Her body told her it was long past dinner. Stomach hollow, head light, breath dragging slower with each step.
She crouched beside the supplies he’d left behind. The jar of mixed nuts and the flask.
He hadn’t offered that before.
Not openly, at least. But ever since the truth door had confirmed his food safe, ever since she’d accepted even one bite, he’d started providing more options. Small additions. Bare gestures of something she hadn’t named yet. Effort.
She reached for the jar, fingers brushing against the cool surface. It sat near the gap, just at the mouth of the tunnel. Still exposed. Too close to the edge.
She stood there, swaying faintly, and tried to pry the lid off.
Her hands trembled, weak from the miasma still gnawing at her core. Her grip faltered once. Then again. But she grit her teeth and twisted harder, holding it tight against her side, until...
Pop.
The seal broke. The lid snapped free, and the top layer of contents scattered.
A few pieces bounced to the floor. Some skittered over the edge into the tunnel’s darkened mouth. Gone.
She stared after them for a breath too long before glancing back into the jar. Then she sniffed. Hesitated. And plucked out a single nut.
She ate it.
It tasted fine. No bitterness. No strange texture or tinge of poison.
She sat down, back leaning slightly against the corridor wall, and placed the opened jar beside her.
Then picked up the flask.
She sniffed it, too. Took a sip, just one. Neutral. Slightly sweet. Just water, nothing added.
Nothing reacted poorly. No pulse spike. No nausea. No creeping wrongness beneath her skin.
If he meant harm, he had the perfect chance earlier.
But trust wasn’t something she could offer on sentiment alone. Not yet.
And so she reached for her notebook. Still strapped against her hip.
The pages were crumpled at the corners but intact, her handwriting mostly unmarred, no ink smudges, no blotting. Her own scrawl stared back at her, familiar even in the haze.
She flipped to the earlier notes, about the Oathroot, about the Bronze Concord, and began to reread. Slowly. Rebuilding understanding, sentence by sentence.
Her focus kept slipping.
She had to backtrack. Reread whole paragraphs. But eventually, her mind caught enough clarity to follow through.
By the time she reached the end, nothing felt worse. She wasn’t better, but she wasn’t spiraling either. Her pulse remained even. Her stomach... still gnawed from the inside out.
The food was probably safe.
She closed the notebook and strapped it back to her belt. A quiet click of leather against buckle. The sound steadied her more than it should’ve.
Dinner, then.
She reached for the jar again, but misjudged the angle. Her wrist bumped it.
It tipped.
Half the contents spilled, clattering across the floor. A few bounced into the tunnel again, swallowed by its dark stone.
“Shit,” she muttered, lunging forward.
She gathered what she could. Dusty, but edible. She’d had worse. She ate what was left, every salvaged piece. Then wiped the rim of the flask dry and finished that too.
Still ravenous.
Her stomach clenched like she hadn’t eaten in days. She chalked it up to recovery. The miasma had probably taken more from her body, sapped her energy down to the marrow.
She looked back toward Kion.
Still curled. Still silent.
She didn’t disturb him.
Instead, her eyes drifted toward the tunnel. Toward the scattered pieces just inside, gleaming faint in the dim.
Not far.
Close enough to reach.
She crouched beside the edge again, peering inside. No shimmer of barrier. No warning pulse of repelling magic.
She remembered Kion’s voice. His warning.
“Don’t go down there while I’m out. Don’t.”
But she wasn’t going in. Just reaching.
One hand. One scoop. Maybe two.
She knelt down, keeping her knees steady on the corridor floor. The rest of her leaned forward, angled just past the opening.
Her fingers brushed the nearest nut. She picked it up.
That was when the silence shattered.
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
Kion’s voice roared, raw and sharp. It slammed into her like a whipcrack. Loud enough to echo through the corridor’s narrow length.
She flinched.
Her heart jerked against her ribs.
And her hand froze in place.
Writ pulled herself away from the tunnel’s mouth with a slow drag of limbs, her arms trembling faintly, not from strain, but from the sharp, sudden heat of humiliation.
Her fingers curled around the one nut she managed to salvage, holding it like it might anchor her to the moment. The rest had scattered beyond reach, down into the throat of the cavern.
She sat down heavily, back leaning against the cave wall, dirt biting through the thin fabric at her shoulder.
The silence barely had time to settle before wings cut the air in a sharp burst.
Kion flew toward her, too fast, too hard, too close. His face was suddenly right there, far nearer than comfort allowed.
“Why is it so hard for you to just stay still?” he snapped, voice cracking, not from weakness, but from something that hit deeper, heavier, “Just... be near. Safe. Somewhere that’s not actively trying to kill you?”
A flicker of shame darted through her chest. She had heard him, when he said to stay put, to wait. And she hadn’t.
Her body stiffened under his proximity. She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
“Do you hate it that much just because I’m here?” His voice didn’t rise this time, but the way it broke made it feel louder than a shout.
“I-- I just...”
“What?” he cut in, hand clenching before unfurling again in jerky, angry animation, “that bone-deep suspicion that no one can be trusted? Even the person who literally just saved your life?”
She winced, and still didn’t move. Still didn’t interrupt.
“Or is it the old ‘better to die by my own reckless choice than rely on someone who might be a trap’ again?” he scoffed with a sharp breath, and the bitterness in it wasn’t directed at her alone, it wrapped around himself, too, “maybe you're right. Maybe I wasn’t here by accident. Maybe someone sent me. Maybe I have my own agenda.”
His wings hummed with agitation as he hovered, sharp gaze locked on hers.
“But if I were here to end you?” His voice dropped, a scalpel now, “you’d already be dead. Day one. No games. No crawling through corridors. No eleven days of barely sleeping just to keep you from shattering. No offering help, knowing you'd reject it every single time.”
Her breath hitched. A chill threaded down her spine. Not because she doubted him, but because a part of her had. And if he was right...
Writ’s fingers tightened unconsciously around the nut.
“Even the Accord isn’t that cruel. They don’t do... emotional games. Half-broken trust. Whatever this is,” his voice dipped lower, quieter, “they kill clean. Efficient. Just like they taught you to.”
Her eyes flicked to his. The word Accord landed hard. Not accusation, not exposure. But confirmation. And the echo of something unspoken tightening between them.
He raked a hand through his hair, breathing uneven. Then, after a pause...
“So believe whatever you want about why I’m here. Make me the enemy if that helps you feel in control again. But believe this,” he took one breath, slow and deliberate, “I want us out, Writ. Alive. Both of us.”
The words rang through the cave. The silence after felt cavernous.
Alive. Both of us.
Her thoughts snagged on the way he said it, on the shape of her name in his mouth.
Writ.
He said Writ. Not 'Lunlun'. Not the number.
That name. She never gave him that name. She never said it aloud, not once, not since entering this ruin. Not since saying it would cost her life.
But he knew.
The name echoed against her ribs, rattling louder than his accusations.
Once, during the Relay Point Nine mission, someone on the other end of the transmission node slipped that name into the call. They’d been tipped off by codename ‘Sparklefish’, one of their own, who’d overheard the argument and fed it to the other side.
But this time was different. She’d come alone. No team, no argument, no one to overhear. She hadn’t even known Tiran would send her down into this pit until a day before the actual drop.
No one should’ve known she was here.
No one, except the Accord.
Those with clearance on par with Tiran. Or higher.
And Kion had found her before the tracker’s juice ran out. Traced her signal like he’d known exactly what to look for.
Because he had.
Because he wasn’t just a passerby. Not some unfortunate stranger trapped with her by chance.
He was a monitor. The kind they sent when someone needed watching. Someone who knew her, who had likely observed from the shadowed tier above long before she was ever allowed to take a step outside their dorm.
He was Accord. Shadow. Someone whose rank had once stood above hers.
And she’d just recited her disloyalty at the truth door. Yet... he still saved her life.
Kion blinked, the tension in his frame starting to give way to awareness. His eyes fell on her fingers, on the single nut she was still clutching like a talisman.
"...Were you trying to climb down again? Alone?" His voice was quieter now, wary.
Writ shook her head quickly, “No. I spilled the nuts. Still hungry... Tried to reach them. Didn’t mean to go far.”
Her voice trembled, fear creeping in, fed by the realization now cemented in her mind.
Kion was Shadow Accord with higher clearance.
Kion closed his eyes and pressed a hand to his face. He exhaled, a breath that sounded like it had claws.
“...I shouldn’t have said that,” his voice cracked, quieter now, “that was too much. Even for me. I saw you entering the tunnel and... my half-awake brain just panicked. Thought you were trying again. I yelled before I could think. I’m sorry.”
He sank lower without meeting her eyes, wings stilling as he sat in front of her. The bags under his eyes were darker up close. His expression slackened. Not into peace, but into something dulled and frayed by exhaustion.
He reached for his satchel. Pulled out three ration bars and a larger flask than the one already resting on the floor. Placed them wordlessly in front of her.
“I’ll continue my slumber,” he murmured, voice hoarse, like the words cost him something, “don’t. Ever. Go. Down. Understand?”
Writ nodded, slowly.
Then he slumped back behind the sheltering roots, curled onto his side, and was asleep within seconds. Too fast for it to be faked.
Writ sat still.
The nut rolled between her fingers again, silent and round.
He shouldn’t have apologized.
The Accord didn’t do that. They didn’t apologize. They commanded. They corrected. They extracted. Even when they offered space, they didn’t mean it. Not really.
So why did it sound like he did?
And why did that make it worse?
The ration bars sat untouched in front of her, a quiet wall between them. The flask gleamed in the dim glow. Kion didn’t stir. His breath came slow and real, not the too-quiet mimicry of a soldier faking sleep.
She was alone again.
Alone, with supplies that weren’t hers. A nut that felt too small to matter. And a storm in her head that refused to quiet. Echoes of her name, his voice, and the question she couldn’t silence.
He wasn’t sent to kill her. Then what was he sent for?
Why push so hard to save her? Why insist on protecting her?
When even Tiran looked at her like she’d break ranks at any moment.
When no one believed her. Just kept testing, over and over, waiting for her to slip.
So why did his voice sound like a hand reaching through the dark?