The attacker's cracked lips curled into a grin. His thumb stayed pointed down, unmoving.
"...It's over."
Aldric's eyes narrowed.
Something about that gesture didn't add up.
Not aimed at him. Not at Sebastian. Not even at Zekai's unconscious body on the floor.
Past the shattered wall. Outside.
A clean, deliberate line. Someone beyond this chamber was already watching.
—
Far past the ruined interrogation room, perched atop a collapsed support beam, a lone figure lay motionless. His heartbeat had been suppressed down to almost nothing — enough to slip past any ordinary life-signature scan.
One emerald eye stayed open. The other sat hidden behind a dark mechanical lens.
A long sniper rifle rested against his shoulder, nothing standard about it. No magazine. Twenty crystalline pendants hung along its side instead — some empty, some glowing faint from whatever slept inside.
A tiny wolf trapped in one. A miniature raven in another.
One pendant held nothing but swirling dark.
That one trembled, faint, and a whisper leaked out from inside the glass.
"Run... Your path is going to end soon."
He didn't even glance at it. A small smile touched the corner of his mouth.
"I've got a few more cards up my sleeve than that."
He settled the stock against his shoulder.
"My path was chosen long before yours ever started."
"I don't abandon a hunt halfway through."
The whisper cut off. Even the other captured relics went quiet.
He adjusted his scope, calm, and let it settle on Aldric Marune.
"...Target confirmed." No emotion in his voice at all.
A faint smile. "...Relic Round. Release."
Click.
The rifle barely made a sound — just compressed air escaping, no gunshot crack behind it. The round left the barrel unlike any bullet should. Crystal, transparent, wrapped tight in layers of ancient symbols.
It didn't fly so much as drift, gliding silently through the broken wall, straight toward Chamber Twelve.
—
Inside, Aldric still held the masked fanatic suspended by the throat, his face unreadable.
Then something entered his perception that didn't belong there.
His pupils shifted, barely.
"..."
The unseen guardian that had shielded him through every attack so far reacted on instinct — a colossal shadow unfolding behind him, arm stretching for the incoming round. The invisible guardian had intercepted every attack thrown at Aldric tonight—fire, shockwaves, Grave Arts, everything.
Its massive hand closed around empty air.
The relic slid straight through its fingers like it had no physical body at all.
The guardian adapted instantly. Space folded around it. The corridor between Aldric and the bullet twisted, compressed, bent into angles that shouldn't exist, trying to redirect the round somewhere else.
The crystal ignored every distortion. It kept drifting forward, same speed, same line, like the warped space simply wasn't there.
The guardian threw its full authority at it — invisible pressure crushing in from every direction, reality itself buckling around the projectile.
The bullet passed through all of it, untouched.
For the very first time since its birth... the unseen guardian failed.
Aldric's pupils contracted, just slightly. "...Impossible."
The round slipped past the collapsing shield and struck him square in the chest.
Crack.
Not flesh. Something deeper.
Golden fractures split across his body, light bursting out of every seam.
Sebastian's eyes went wide with horror. "...Chief?"
Aldric looked down at his own chest.
"...A sealing relic." Barely a whisper. "So that was the real plan all along."
Gold veins of light raced across him. The guardian reached for him one last time, trying to drag him clear of the spreading seal.
The relic answered first. Thin chains of crystalline light burst from the pendant and wrapped around something deeper than his body — his existence itself. His movements slowed to nothing.
Not weakness. The rules around him were being rewritten in real time.
Aldric watched it happen with something close to detached curiosity.
"So." Calm. No panic in it at all. His eyes tracked the chains closing around him. "It locks the seal before reality has a chance to reject it."
"I'd like to know how you were built one day."
His body kept shrinking. Full height. Half. Palm-sized. Then smaller than a finger.
"...Until then." A last breath escaped him. "Don't assume you've already won."
The gold light flared, and the crystal round unfolded into an empty pendant.
Click.
The miniature figure vanished inside the crystal. The pendant sealed itself shut.
The guardian reached toward him one final time... then dissolved into black mist. It didn't scream. It simply stopped existing.
—
Outside the chamber, the shooter caught the returning pendant between two fingers and glanced inside. A tiny, glowing figure of Aldric Marune stood frozen within the crystal.
"The hunt was worth the trip." He clipped the pendant onto the heavy chain at his belt. "You were expensive."
"...One Devil. Collected."
He counted the remaining empty pendants with his thumb. Nineteen open. One filled.
He drew another crystal round from his coat. Ancient symbols lit up faint beneath its surface.
Click.
The relic slid into the chamber without wasted motion, no unnecessary haste — his rifle already loaded again before anyone inside the building had even registered what had just happened to their Chief.
He rested the weapon back on his shoulder and stepped backward into the dark without a glance at the wreckage behind him.
—
Deep inside BSA Headquarters, the Operations Command Center—
One monitor snapped to violent red.
BEEP.
An operator froze at his station.
"...Chief Marune's resonance—" His fingers trembled across the console, voice going thin. "—it's gone."
Nobody answered him.
Dozens of elite officers stared blankly at the tactical display. The symbol representing Aldric Marune had simply vanished off the map.
Not weakened. Not moved.
Gone.
The supervisor took off his glasses, face draining white. "...That's not possible."
For several long seconds, nobody spoke. The silence itself felt heavier than any emergency alarm. Then every monitor in the facility lit up with warnings all at once.
—
Silence swallowed Chamber Twelve.
The fanatic stared at the empty space where Aldric had stood for one long heartbeat. Then laughter tore out from beneath his cracked mask.
"Hahahaha! Finally! The rat catcher's gone!"
He dropped back to the floor, rubbing the deep bruises circling his throat.
"Now. No more interruptions."
Sebastian forced his broken body upright, pain exploding through his ribs, vision darkening at the edges. His eyes found the shattered wall anyway. Recognition hit him like a second blow.
"...No. It can't be."
Fragments of old, classified investigation reports resurfaced in his mind — investigators who'd vanished. Entire strike teams gone without leaving bodies behind. The rare witness who'd described victims shrinking into nothing.
His breath stopped.
"The Relic Collector." His voice barely made it out. "So the rumors were real."
The fanatic laughed, stepping closer. "You know him?"
Sebastian ignored the question entirely. His eyes locked onto Zekai's unconscious body, blood still spreading beneath him.
"...we don't let that weapon get close." His breath came ragged. "That rifle—"
"—doesn't kill."
"It seals."
The fanatic raised his molten blade, white fire wrapping the length of it.
"No more heroes."
The molten sword descended.
"No one left to save you."
Sebastian's voice tore raw through the ruined chamber.
"ZEKAI!!" His fingers clawed into the broken floor, but his body had nothing left to give.
"...No—"
The burning edge dropped into the deep shadow pooled beneath Zekai's still body.
Silence.
Then—
Inside that shadow, a single crimson eye opened.
Everything stopped.
✦ End of Chapter 38 - Sealing ✦