Ren and Daichi slipped into the staff room and quietly shut the door behind them.

The moment they turned, both froze.

Daichi's voice cracked. "…What the hell…"

In the center of the room lay a pile of bodies. Women—dressed in the same cleaner uniforms as the ones patrolling outside—stacked like garbage bags. Blood drenched the floor, pooling beneath them, staining the air with the metallic stench of iron. Limbs hung at wrong angles. Faces were frozen in fear.

Ren's chest tightened. This isn't a fight. This is a massacre…

Daichi stumbled back, his face pale. "T-These are the ones holding us hostage, right? Then… who the hell killed them?"

Ren stepped closer, his eyes scanning the scene. The blood was fresh. Whoever did this had been here not long ago. "Not us. Not the students. Something else happened here."

Daichi's fists clenched. "Wait, wait, wait. If someone's strong enough to wipe out armed women like this… then what if they're still here?!"

Ren didn't answer right away. He crouched near the bodies, noting how deep some of the wounds were. Not bullets. Not blunt weapons. Almost like—something ripped their hearts straight through them.

He muttered under his breath, "Too clean. Too precise. This wasn't the work of someone struggling. This was deliberate."

Daichi's voice rose, panicked. "Ren, we need to get out of here! Forget calling anyone—this place is cursed!"

Ren shot him a sharp look. "No. If there's someone who did this, making noise is the last thing we want." He straightened, brushing his hands against his pants. "Besides, the phones are in this room. If we run now, we lose our only chance to get help."

Daichi ran a hand through his messy hair, trembling. "Phones, phones—do you really think anyone's gonna pick up when this place looks like a horror movie?"

Ren glanced at the desk where an old landline sat, receiver half-dangling. His expression darkened. "We'll find out soon."

He walked over, stepping carefully to avoid the spreading pools of blood. Each squelch beneath his shoes made Daichi flinch. Ren picked up the phone and pressed it to his ear.

Static.

No dial tone.

"…Dead line," Ren muttered, clicking his tongue.

Daichi swore under his breath. "Of course. Why would it be easy…"

Ren set the receiver down slowly, his mind racing. The massacre. The missing guard. The red hair. All of it pointed to something worse than armed women with rifles.

He turned back to Daichi. "Listen. Whatever killed them… might still be in this building."

Daichi's face twisted in disbelief. "And you're saying that like it's supposed to make me feel better?!"

Ren almost smiled at the outburst, though his own nerves were tight. "It means we're not just hostages anymore. We're in the middle of someone else's game."

Daichi swallowed hard, his fists trembling at his sides. "Then what the hell do we do?"

Ren's eyes drifted to the window, faint moonlight spilling through. "We survive. Long enough to figure out whose game this is."

The silence in the staff room pressed down on them, heavy and suffocating. And beneath the metallic tang of blood, Ren swore he caught another scent.

Something faint.

Like burning.

And for just a moment, he thought he saw that flash of red hair again—watching from the hallway's shadows.

***

A ring of police and guild leaders clustered behind barricades, their breaths fogging in the cold air. Beyond the high iron gate, muffled by distance and stone, came the staccato of gunfire and the occasional, harsher crack of something larger — explosions, or the sound of a megaphone. Tension hummed through the crowd like a live wire.

A police sergeant raised a megaphone. Her voice, amplified and flat, rolled across the courtyard.

"Traitors of the Academy! Surrender. Lay down your arms and come out. We are willing to discuss terms."

A woman's voice from the compound answered back, clear and calm enough to cut through the tension. "Terms? We gave you our terms — return what you stole, give us our leaders, and we will let your people go."

Silence tightened. Several guild leaders exchanged looks. Chiyo Asashi's jaw was a hard line; Nina's hand never left the hilt of the greatsword slung behind her back, though she was standing well outside any danger. Xinyue scanned the gate with narrowed eyes, every muscle coiled.

The sergeant's voice again, sterile and final. "What you ask is impossible. Astrid and Lan Jia are not in our custody. They are dead."

A ripple of disbelief went through the crowd. The traitors' reply was immediate, a cold smile behind rough words. "We both know that's a lie. The government has both Astrid and Lan Jia alive. We've seen proof. You've been playing at cover-ups; bring them out, and we can negotiate like civilized people."

Chiyo let out a soft, incredulous laugh. "Our people reported Astrid dead. If she's alive, who benefits from lying about it? These people are just crazy!"

Nina looked to the highest-ranked woman standing at the center of the government delegation. She was tall, rigid with the kind of authority that made people either obey or resent her. Her title echoed in the back of Nina's head — High Commissioner Olivia Havel. The badge on her coat gleamed like a coin of state.

Olivia shrugged, a small, almost insolent movement. "We have no idea what you're talking about," she said, voice cool as steel. "Neither Astrid nor Lan Jia are in government custody. We would have announced it. We would—"

The megaphone cut in again, this time with a single, deliberate act: a woman stepped forward from the traitors' line carrying a sealed envelope. She walked with the looseness of someone who had nothing left to lose. At the gate, she called, "High Commissioner Havel. For you."

A hush fell. The woman handed the letter up through the bars, the paper whispered in the dead air as Olivia took it. She slit the seal with a thumb and unfolded a sheet that was folded with quick, practiced hands. Her eyes flicked over the ink.

For the first time since the standoff began, Olivia's face broke its composure. Wide eyes. A flicker of disbelief. She pressed the paper in her gloved hand and passed it down to Nina without a word.

Nina took it with a hesitant hand. The paper smelled faintly of smoke. Her eyes traced the lines of the handwriting — slight, definitive, the same tilt that haunted her dreams. Her lips moved, tasting the syllables.

"Astrid's handwriting," Nina said at last, quiet as a prayer and twice as stunned. "This is Astrid's handwriting. She's alive."

A chorus of stunned murmurs rose. Chiyo stared as if struck. "So our government and all mighty Lan Xinyue claimed she was dead," Chiyo said, voice tight. "And yet—somehow—she's alive and hasn't bothered to come to the traitors? What does she get by lying to these traitors instead of fighting with them. What's going on here?"

Xinyue snapped her attention back to the tactical situation. "There is no time for hypotheticals," she said, voice sharp. "What is the SWAT team doing? The outer premises should already be secured." The words were a knife; they cut away the fog of disbelief and left raw, nervous urgency.

Olivia's mouth thinned. "That's what I'm wondering." Then the crackled voice of a radio cut through the open air — an urgent, tiny sound that made everyone lean in. A SWAT operator's voice came through, ragged.

"—command, this is Unit Three. Our powers… they aren't working. We've lost our abilities and skills. We might have to—switch to lethal. Repeat: powers failing. Switching to lethal if we have to. I don't want to, command. I don't want to—"

The radio chopped and broke. Silence crashed after it, heavier than the gunshots.

Xinyue's face went pale. "Their powers failing?" she repeated. Her hand went to the strap at her side as if for comfort. "That's not a small thing. Our SWATs were chosen because their powers make guns almost redundant. If their powers are down—if this environment neutralizes abilities—then guns become supreme. This changes everything."

From within the compound, a burst of gunfire answered as if to underline her point. The sound was closer now, sharper, each round deliberate.

Nina's jaw tightened. "You can stay here if you like," she said to the traitors' direction, lips curling in a dangerous smile. "My skills lie in my greatsword. Without the berserker… I will still kill every one of those traitors."

Xinyue's eyes flicked toward the gate. "That is if you can get past that gate," she said. Her voice had the cold certainty of someone calculating variables that didn't add up. "If they can somehow suppress our powers here, their guns will kill us better than any monster in that dungeon."

Chiyo pushed back a step, ignoring Olivia's order. "This has gotten a lot more dangerous than it should be. My clan members and I are going back. This is not something our guilds should handle. Now it's totally up to the military — they have better gun training."

Nina looked at Chiyo with disgust, as if thinking (as she always did) that Chiyo was retreating to her clan house to hide in fear. At the same time, Nina couldn't help feeling helpless.

Olivia turned slowly, her eyes cold as she stared at the academy building. None of them knew that another unit was inside, working to secure the place. "Amanda… you're my only hope now."