The explosion, more accurately, the blast that brought the entire building down, should have woken the whole district. Keiser was certain people would've felt the first detonation alone, it had punched a crater straight through the undercroft, enough force to rattle every surrounding structure.

If those buildings weren't empty, that is.

Most of them were nothing more than storage fronts, warehouses for the other illicit 'goods' Mr. Genevra dealt in outside his auctions. And Keiser knew the man had a special privilege, a quiet immunity… a pass.

As long as he continued supplying what the nobles wanted every year at his exclusive auctions, the court allowed him to trade however he pleased. No scrutiny. No limits. No consequences.

All because he kept their appetites fed.

Their curiosities, their forbidden trinkets, their beasts in cages, the court allowed him to sell whatever he pleased.

But that didn't matter now. The man still had a debt to pay.

Because if today had gone differently, If Keiser hadn't intervened, if the disaster had unfolded unchecked, Genevra would have walked away unscathed, his reputation intact, his coffers fattened for years to come.

The man would've walked away untouched, protected again for years to come.

Not anymore.

A soft grunt broke his focus.

Keiser squinted through the haze. Dust still hung thick in the air, curling around splintered beams and jagged stone.

Now that the sun was finally beginning to pierce through the lingering haze, he could see the full extent of the destruction.

The building was a carcass, collapsed in on itself, twisted and gutted. And judging by the debris, the rubble had completely filled the undercroft.

It looked like something torn straight from Sheol, a nightmare of daylight.

He refused to think about what it would've been like to be trapped under all that.

So when Althira gestured behind her, toward the far corner of the ruins where something had begun to stir, Keiser's gaze snapped in that direction.

He couldn't make out the figure clearly, not with the dust still thick in the air and splintered beams piled like broken ribs across the rubble.

'It can't be… them?'

He doubted the elf had abandoned his companions below. She did mention placing them somewhere 'she liked'. Keiser realized, however, that her words hadn't accounted for the 'others' who had been inside with them.

The figure.

His breath caught.

Is not one of his companions.

Keiser's stomach twisted.

The undercroft had been filled with cages, relics, beasts. When the building fell, it hadn't just buried human greed and the horrors it had spawned. It had buried people.

The figure staggered, coughing, blood streaking down his temple. His eyes were wild, unfocused, but Keiser recognized the uniform, one of Genevra's men.

Keiser's hand twitched instinctively toward his missing dagger. He cursed under his breath, forcing himself upright despite the pain. "You left them," he rasped, glaring at Althira. "The others. You didn't move them."

Althira tilted her head, her grin widening into something sharp. "I said I kept your companions safe. But our deal never covered your scapegoat's pets, nor his rabble of workers."

Her voice was silk, but the cruelty in it was deliberate.

Keiser's teeth ground together. "Then those who were innocent, simply working…" His voice faltered, the memory of the collapse pressing against his skull. "You abandoned them."

Althira's eyes gleamed, cold and amused. "Deals are precise, little prince. You should know that by now. I don't waste effort on those who aren't part of the bargain."

The man groaned, dragging himself across the rubble. His hand clawed for the nearest hold, struggling to escape the half‑buried platform beneath him. Every movement was sluggish, desperate.

Before the man could pull himself up, his body was clearly done for. Keiser could only watch him stumble back in a daze, knowing there was nothing he could do.

If he'd had any way to ease the man's suffering, he would have, but he had nothing. His dagger was missing… he had no means left to grant a quick end. When a flash of light caught Keiser's eye.

Something glinting, metal, fast, deliberate, cut through the air straight toward him.

Keiser braced, expecting it to strike the arm he'd already raised to catch it, positioning his body to catch it. But before the blade could hit, a surge rippled through him…

A thread jolting as Muzio's mana snapped taut.

It moved before he could think.

The force pulled at the weapon, twisting its path, turning the dagger aside as if a sudden wind had seized it. And in the same breath, the stumbling man, lay motionless on the ground.

The elven looked almost disappointed that the spectacle was over, and the expression struck Keiser harder than he expected.

It reminded him, again, that Althea's mother was an elven, and no matter how her actions had contributed to the success of him defying Muzio and Lenko's fate, everything to the elven was still a transaction.

A bargain.

A game played for her own amusement.

He had tried to appeal to whatever maternal instinct she might have left, if only to secure a better deal, to disrupt even a fragment of the seal that kept her away, kept her unseen, by her own daughter. By Muzio's bloodscripting, the seal might yield, as it once did with Yona, even if just for an instant.

He still didn't know if it would work, not fully. Yet the elf had relented. For reasons he wasn't entirely convinced were motherly at all.

He remembered the way she had looked at the altar earlier that morning, during mass, while the Saint hummed her gentle melody. That was when Keiser had struck his bargain with the elf, trading what little he had left for the 'help' he needed.

And now, standing here with her expression sharpened by amusement, he wasn't sure anymore, whether he should let her meet the Saint at all.

He was about to argue with her again when he realized, the dagger hadn't come back to his hand.

It wasn't on the corpse, either. It had flown past the man entirely. His open, waiting palm, already poised to catch the weapon, closed around nothing.

He stared at his empty hand, confusion flaring as his mind is preoccupied about how utterly shitty elves could be.

He was about to snap at Althira again when he realized, the dagger hadn't returned to his hand.

It wasn't lodged in the corpse.

It hadn't fallen somewhere else.

It had flown past everything… past the man, past him, and his outstretched hand closed on nothing but on his confusion.

For a moment, his thoughts weren't even on the fact that the dagger had appeared out of nowhere, or that someone had thrown it straight at him.

His mind was still tangled in how infuriating elves were, how every word from Althira struck like a slap to the face that wasn't even his.

And then his eyes caught it.

A figure, silhouetted by the rising sun, its light gliding over them.

Keiser's breath hitched.

Because suddenly, impossibly, his mind leapt to the one thing he had first dismissed.

The unexpected help he never truly believed would answer.

And yet…

Here he was...

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