Deep within the subterranean heart of the facility—
The Operations Command Center.
Rows of glowing monitors climbed the walls floor to ceiling, each one carrying a live feed from somewhere in the underground fortress. Green status lights covered ninety-nine percent of the board.
Then one node snapped to red.
BEEP.
Every operator near the central display looked up at once.
A warning banner unfurled across the room.
[ WARNING — SECTION TWELVE HAS LOST CONTACT. ]
An operator leaned into his console. "...Interrogation Chamber Twelve just went dark."
Clara turned on him immediately. "Captain Sebastian's internal signal?"
He waited on the readout. "...No response."
Another operator's fingers were already flying across a second keyboard. A few agonizing seconds passed.
"Officer Iris?"
He checked the vitals feed again. "...Nothing."
Another alarm cut through the air.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
A new priority banner slammed across the central screen.
[ CHAMBER 12 ]
Captain Sebastian — Signal Lost Officer Iris — Signal Lost
Primary Suspect (Zekai Krystan) — Status Unknown
Threat Classification: Escalating
Nobody said a word.
Chamber Twelve hadn't lost two routine signals. It had lost a Captain, and the officer standing next to him.
Clara stepped closer.
"Internal surveillance, gone. Audio feed, terminated. Grave Resonance monitoring, unavailable." She scanned the readout once more. "Structural sensors show severe damage to the chamber's foundation."
She stared at the dead feed for exactly one second.
"...Then this is no longer an interrogation." A pause. "Someone went in there to kill."
Her palm hit the guarded red control.
The room detonated into motion.
"Seal the interrogation sector. Drop the blast doors."
"Barrier Division — lock every corridor tied to Chamber Twelve."
"Containment — deploy Response Units Alpha and Delta, now."
"Moving."
She turned to another station. "Everlight status?"
"Most field teams are still spread across Valenreach. Whoever's left at headquarters is already tied up in the eastern and lower sectors."
Her jaw tightened. "Then get me Moonlight."
An operator opened the encrypted emergency channel.
"Operations Command to Moonlight. Headquarters breach confirmed. Requesting immediate reinforcement."
Static.
He adjusted the frequency. "Moonlight, acknowledge."
Nothing.
"Moonlight, respond."
Still nothing.
Clara stepped in behind him. "Force it through."
"Trying."
Then—
Click.
A different channel bled through the frequency uninvited. Every monitor in the room flickered at once.
The operator froze. "That's not Moonlight."
A calm voice filled the room. "...Don't worry."
Clara's head lifted, slow.
Across the tactical floor, Helden stopped mid-stride.
Both of them recognized the voice instantly.
"I'm already here."
Click.
The line cut.
Nobody moved for several seconds.
The operator looked toward Clara. "Commander... was that—?"
"Cancel the reinforcement request."
She turned from the console. The tension in the room bled off a fraction.
A short silence.
"Then it's already over."
She snapped her attention back to the tactical board. "Medical Division — trauma teams to the sector perimeter, now."
"Ready and standing by."
She turned toward spatial analysis next. "Any dimensional fluctuations?"
A technician scanned the log. "Negative. No external breach. No unauthorized gate activation. No spatial displacement registered."
Her expression hardened. "Then how does someone put over a hundred hostiles inside this building?"
Nobody had an answer.
For a moment, the only sound in the Command Center was the steady pulse of the alarms.
Then one operator's eyes flicked, just briefly, toward the silent surveillance feed. Toward the single name still sitting on it.
EYEMAC
"...Someone let them in."
Dead silence swallowed the command room whole.
Helden's gaze stayed locked on that dark channel. He reached for the communicator on his belt.
"Seal every exit."
"Sir?"
"Until we know how they got in, everyone in this building is a suspect." His voice dropped, cold and final. "No one leaves headquarters."
—
Iris's heart slammed against her ribs.
If I go down now, Zekai dies with me.
Live or die. No room left for hesitation.
Her left hand shot up, two fingers pressing hard against her own eye.
This technique wasn't supposed to exist outside a sealed file. Forbidden the moment it was classified — buried under Aldric's name, known to no one else in the Bureau. If she lived through this, there'd be a reckoning waiting on the other side of survival.
She didn't care. Survival came first.
"I never thought I'd waste this on trash like you." Her voice didn't shake. "Die."
"[Grave Art: Crimson Nightmare]!"
BOOM!
The last of her Grave Energy tore loose, and she forced her stare straight into his. Caught off guard, he met it head-on.
That was all it took.
Flash.
The room disappeared around him. His whole world folded into a bleeding, red-lit nightmare.
His eyes bulged. "What — what are you doing to me?!"
His body locked, every limb frozen like iron chains had wrapped around them.
"My arms — my legs — everything's tearing apart—! I'm dying, I'm actually dying!"
Step. Step.
A massive black shape rose out of the crimson fog, dragging itself toward him — a bleeding, grotesque face that turned his whole body to ice.
A claw closed around his throat and crushed down.
"AHHHHHHHHHHH!"
His eyes rolled, breath tearing out ragged, his body convulsing against the floor of an execution chamber that existed only inside his own skull.
None of it was real.
Outside the illusion, Iris stood frozen, watching him thrash against a nightmare she'd built and now had to hold together.
Her pupils shook. [Crimson Nightmare] carried a warning label for a reason — in her current state, the blade cut both directions, and she was bleeding out from her end of it too. The contact she'd made pulling him off Zekai had built the spiritual link the technique needed. His own unraveling mind had done the rest, cracking open wide enough for her to walk straight in.
A perfect trap. A brutal price to pay for it.
"...Ugh!"
Something tore wider inside her. Blood poured out twice as fast, spreading beneath her on the floor. Darkness crawled in from every edge of her vision.
Not yet. Not before I finish this. If I go first, he dies.
Inside the illusion, his skull felt seconds from splitting apart.
The torment held for one more heartbeat. Then her body gave out.
Her body shook once, hard. "No—!"
Her vision cut out. Consciousness snapped clean. She hit the floor.
Shatter.
The nightmare came apart like dropped glass. The real room reassembled itself around him exactly as it had been. The demon vanished in an instant.
Thud.
He dropped to one knee, gasping, drenched through with sweat. Illusion or not, [Crimson Nightmare] had carved something real into him. His body remembered the fear. His mind knew it wasn't real. His body didn't. For a few unbearable seconds, he'd looked straight at his own death.
He glared down at Iris's collapsed body, hatred burning in his eyes — and underneath it, something colder. Certainty. No reason to waste more Grave Energy finishing off something already dying on its own.
His tongue clicked. "Tch. Out of my way, then."
He turned from her and faced Zekai's still body instead, magma reigniting across his palm, hotter this time.
"Why doesn't anyone else see what he is?!" he screamed at the empty room, closing the distance step by step. "My grandfather was right about all of it! He should've been slaughtered before he ever had the chance to wake up!"
He raised his molten hand overhead.
Just as he came within striking range—
The dust drifting through the broken wall froze in place.
Every loose fragment of concrete hung motionless in the air.
The smoke stopped moving entirely, like the room itself had forgotten how to breathe.
Footsteps rang out from beyond the breach.
One.
Two.
Three.
A figure stepped through the wreckage like the destruction around him didn't register as worth noticing.
"Who exactly is this senile prophet bastard you keep barking about?"
✦ End of Chapter 35 — No One Leaves Headquarters ✦