Dawn had not yet fully reached the bottom of the ravine.
The first red light of the sun seeped through the cracks between the towering rock walls in narrow bands, reflecting off the spring and illuminating the papers scattered across the flat stone we used as a table.
On the other side of the rock, Havelyn sat surrounded by pieces of charcoal, navigation charts stolen in Syfles, and the frantic sketches she had spent the last few days trying to reconstruct from memory.
Her wings were still immobilized against her back.
Sahger had already replaced the heavier bandages with smaller dressings, giving her a little more comfort, but the support was still rigid enough to prevent any attempt at flight.
Some of the superficial wounds were finally beginning to close. The deeper ones, however, remained a cruel reminder of what she had endured.
Beside me, Tsukumo kept one of the sheets floating a few inches above his palm, his eyes moving analytically between Havelyn's drawing and one of the official transport routes.
"Did this symbol appear more than once?" he asked, his voice calm but demanding.
Havelyn closed her eyes for several seconds, straining her memory before touching the tip of the charcoal to the paper again.
"Yes. On the clothes of the men who went downstairs to retrieve certain prisoners from the tower."
"The same prisoners who were given priority during transport?"
"Exactly the same ones." She tightened her grip on the charcoal, the bitterness of the memory bleeding into her voice.
"I remember the murmurs, the hushed conversations in the corridors... the sound of those heavy doors opening in the middle of the night."
The metallic sound of footsteps against stone broke our concentration.
Sahger emerged between the walls of the ravine, already fully equipped.
Dark blue armor covered his massive frame, and although his helmet remained clipped to his waist, his combat spear rested over his right shoulder with lethal readiness.
He walked toward us with firm steps, stopped in front of the stone, and remained silent for several long seconds, simply studying Havelyn's crooked sketches.
The night before, I had left him alone outside the camp, holding the small, crumpled drawing his daughters had made.
I hadn't promised him anything grand.
I had only offered him a possibility.
A door out of that hell.
The fact that he was standing there now, approaching us of his own accord, told me everything I needed to know.
Sahger's calloused finger came down over the paper, tapping lightly against the center of Havelyn's drawing.
"Gron-Tarh."
Havelyn froze instantly.
The piece of charcoal slipped from her fingers and struck the stone with a dry crack.
She raised wide eyes, shock pulling at her features.
"That..." Her breath caught.
"Say it again."
"Gron-Tarh," the hunter repeated, his deep voice echoing through the confined space.
Her reaction came before reason had time to catch up.
"I've heard that damn name."
My body straightened, the morning lethargy vanishing in an instant.
"In the tower?"
"Yes." Havelyn pressed her hands to her temples as though trying to hold onto the slippery memory.
"I don't know how many times I heard the guards say it... but I heard it, Suki. I'm absolutely sure."
Tsukumo shifted his assessing gaze toward the mercenary.
"You know the place?"
Sahger dragged a loose rock closer with his foot and sat heavily across from us.
Unlike the times when he preferred to kill a conversation with aggressive monosyllables, this time he answered directly.
"I do." He stretched out an arm and placed his finger on the original map, pointing to a region far beyond Vahr-Nei and any space route we had been tracing.
"Gron-Tarh is one of the largest prison complexes in all the Obscure Galaxies. If not the largest."
"An entire planetary prison?"
"Not exactly."
"The prison complex occupies an absurd portion of the planet, yes, but the rest of the world simply grew and rotted around it."
His finger moved across the surrounding regions marked on the paper.
"Intergalactic transfer ports, weapons factories, brutal mining zones, training centers, black markets... Entire cities and societies exist there, breathing and surviving solely on what enters and leaves that complex."
Havelyn swallowed.
"What enters... you mean prisoners?"
Sahger met her eyes without mercy.
"Mostly."
Tsukumo pulled the map closer, his pragmatic mind already dissecting enemy territory.
"And what is the main structure like?"
"Most of the infrastructure is buried far beneath the surface."
"Underground, then. Do you know how many operational levels it has?"
Sahger narrowed his eyes, searching through the past.
"When I was there, nine levels were officially recognized."
The golden-eyed man lifted his chin slightly, catching the implication at once.
"Officially."
"There were isolated areas far beneath those levels that didn't appear on any public plans."
I fixed my gaze on the mercenary.
"So you've actually walked through the place. You've been inside Gron-Tarh."
"Yes."
That explained the absolute certainty with which he had identified the mark.
Tsukumo wasted no time being surprised. His expression simply hardened.
"Who controls the complex now?"
"On my last visit, the prison's director-general was a damned demigod named Yashin."
The name meant absolutely nothing to me.
"What do you know about his abilities?"
Sahger's hand moved instinctively down the side of his leg.
Only then did I notice that his fingers had stopped directly over a thick, old scar partially visible between the joints of his armored plates.
"Lean and fast as a snake," he answered, his grayish eyes drifting far away, lost in the memory of a battle.
"And the bastard never wasted a single movement."
Tsukumo followed the motion of his hand and understood immediately.
"He's the one who gave you that scar."
Sahger glanced down at the healed wound.
"Yashin is one of the few living things that managed to cut me open and nearly take me down before I even realized where the attack was coming from."
"And you think he's still running the place?" I asked, measuring the level of threat we might be facing.
"According to the rumors crawling through the filth of this system, yes."
"My last visit was seven years ago, but I seriously doubt that worm would willingly give up the throne of a prison that size."
I crossed my arms.
"And how exactly did you make it through the gates of a hole like that alive?"
Sahger looked back at me.
"I was invited."
Havelyn frowned, skepticism written across her pale face.
"Invited to walk freely into Gron-Tarh?"
"Gron-Tarh doesn't survive solely by storing and torturing prisoners, girl."
"They hire outsiders too."
"Elite mercenaries, hunters, suppression specialists, torturers."
"Anything money can buy."
"What did they want you there for?"
Sahger took a little longer to answer this time, the memory bringing visible bitterness with it.
"They wanted me to kill someone specific."
"I received an official communication from security guaranteeing that I could enter under a white flag to negotiate."
"The arrangement was simple: I wouldn't be arrested, no one would attempt to capture me inside, and no outstanding contract on my head would be enforced while I was in their territory."
Tsukumo put the pieces together immediately.
"If you're carrying that scar, things clearly didn't go very well with that contract."
"Yes."
"And Director Yashin clearly wasn't going to let the insult slide."
"Yashin decided that simply by setting foot inside, hearing the details, and seeing the maps, I already knew too much about how the complex operated."
"I was also a proud fool for agreeing to walk into the beast's cage and trusting the word of that piece of trash."
"I got out alive through nothing but blind luck."
Sahger ran his thick fingers over the scar once more.
"Then how did you break through the blockade and escape a maximum-security prison planet?"
"After Yashin turned the prison's entire defense and suppression system against me, the only opening I had was to steal one of their official ships and launch it into orbit."
Havelyn immediately looked up, startled.
"You escaped in a Gron-Tarh ship?"
"A heavy-containment prison transport, yes."
She went still.
Tsukumo's breathing seemed to catch as he made the connection a second later.
"Wait."
Tsukumo reached across the table, pulled one of Havelyn's newly drawn sketches toward him, and lined it up perfectly beside the map.
"Havelyn... you said you saw transports that looked identical to these docked at the Tower."
Havelyn brought the paper closer to her face, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
"I don't remember the exact shape of the entire hull, but this section here..." Her trembling finger traced one of the armored structures she had drawn.
"It was identical to the transports used for priority prisoners."
"Then the Gron-Tarh complex was directly receiving important prisoners transferred from those towers."
Laura invaded my thoughts.
Alive.
Dragged away and transported like valuable cargo.
Moved from dying worlds to orbital stations and clandestine routes that treated human beings like fuel.
I shot to my feet.
"Then we're going to Gron-Tarh right now."
"Not like this, you reckless idiot," Tsukumo cut in.
I turned toward him, the muscles in my arms tightening.
His golden eyes didn't retreat an inch. He simply kept his index finger planted over the prison's central point on the map.
"If Laura really is trapped in a hell like that, charging through the front gate with only the four of us is categorically the worst and stupidest tactical decision we could make, Suki."
I hated hearing it, but there was no denying he was right.
Tsukumo continued, his clinical tone merciless.
"We don't know which damned cell block she'd be held in."
"We don't even know whether there are still only nine levels today."
"And we certainly don't know whether Gron-Tarh was the end of her ordeal or merely another transfer station."
My hand tightened into a fist, anger mixing with the helplessness of planning blind.
"There's something else you need to know," Sahger's rough voice pulled us back from the edge.
We turned our attention toward him.
"Seven years ago, there was a hidden village established outside the prison perimeter."
"The people there hated every gear and every block of stone that made up that place."
Tsukumo leaned slightly over the stone table, interest sharpening his eyes.
"A resistance?"
Sahger considered the memory carefully before answering.
"They didn't like calling themselves that."
"The group was a chaotic amalgamation."
"Former prisoners who survived the pits. Entire families of people who disappeared inside Gron-Tarh's walls."
"Deserting guards whose stomachs turned at the atrocities, smugglers, junk merchants, and crippled mine workers."
"There were even a few lesser divinities mixed into the dirt."
"Did they all share the same goal of bringing down the prison?" I asked.
"If we had an army, the suicidal invasion might actually become viable."
"No."
Sahger looked at me.
"It depended on which tent you visited."
"Some only wanted to break through the walls long enough to rescue relatives and disappear into space."
"Others were more methodical. They infiltrated the complex and stole bureaucratic records."
"Transfer records."
"Some only operated to help new arrivals out of sheer pity."
Those words stopped my thoughts cold.
"Transfer lists."
Sahger immediately noticed the almost manic spark of hope in my eyes.
"Yes, Suki."
"If Laura officially passed through that damned planet's system..."
"There may very well be a physical bureaucratic trail, a detailed record confirming that she was there," he finished.
"Did you have some kind of contact inside? Did you know any of them?"
"I knew one person. Candice."
"Who was she?"
"She was the natural leader who held that entire resistance together."
"At first, Candice only wanted to get her younger brother out. Then she started helping other families."
"Before I knew it, half the village went to her before making any decision."
"That personal hell was what drove her to build and arm that entire community around the prison."
I stared at Sahger's hardened, weathered features.
The history of Gron-Tarh was becoming too entangled with Sahger's past to feel like coincidence.
"And where exactly do you fit into the story of this leader?"
"She was the target of that visit to Gron-Tarh."
"So they invited you under a white flag to kill Candice?"
"Yes."
"Now it makes sense," Havelyn said.
Tsukumo crossed his arms.
"And what did the official contract claim she had done?"
"It described Candice as a dangerous, deranged terrorist."
"It accused her of coordinated attacks against civilian zones, cold-blooded murders, nuclear sabotage, and senseless violent extremism."
"Was any of it true?"
Sahger didn't blink, his gaze anchored on the dark mark representing the old village.
"When I finally broke through the perimeter and cornered her... she was inside an old collapsed structure that had been turned into a makeshift communal infirmary."
The four of us fell silent in the ravine, waiting for the rest of the story he seemed reluctant to give.
"Candice was distributing what little clean medicine and medical supplies she had to the filthy, starving orphaned children of forgotten prisoners."
Havelyn immediately looked away, fixing her eyes on the center of the map.
"You didn't kill her."
"No."
"When I found Candice and refused the contract, the white flag stopped meaning anything."
Sahger touched the scar.
"Yashin made sure to explain that to me personally."
Every cautious habit and guarded answer from the hunter made perfect sense now.
The moral abyss of the Obscure Galaxies had swallowed even the honor of their killers.
"Do you think her people are still dug in there?"
"I don't know, Suki. Seven years can change entire governments around here."
Havelyn tightened her trembling fingers against the fabric over her leg.
"Then there's a very real chance we get there and not a single damned stone is left standing."
"No one to talk to. No one to help."
"There may be nothing left but ash," Sahger agreed bluntly, refusing to offer false comfort or soft lies to calm her.
"Or hatred may have fed that seed, and they could have grown exponentially."
"We'll only know once we set foot there."
Tsukumo finished his careful assessment of the surrounding geography, his slender fingers tapping against the stone table.
"Either way, if any remnants of Candice's resistance still exist, they're unquestionably our most valuable and up-to-date source of information on how to penetrate the prison."
"Agreed," I said.
First, get into the village. Find the survivors or trace whatever footsteps were left behind.
Find out what had changed under Yashin's feet over the last seven years before making the ground shake.
At that moment, Havelyn pulled her smudged sketch of the transfer ship closer to her chest.
"I just had a terrifying thought."
I looked at her curiously.
"What?"
"If those damned ships really belonged to Gron-Tarh's internal fleet... then maybe, purely as part of the supply chain protocol, one of the transports or recovery vessels had strict orders to return to the Tower sometime in the next few weeks to check the systems and collect the next prisoners."
Silence dropped like a lead anchor.
Tsukumo, cold as ice, was the first to process the implication.
"The tower doesn't exist anymore, Havelyn."
"I know very well that it doesn't."
"So logically, any ship from the complex that makes the hyperspace jump and gets sent to those collection coordinates is going to find nothing but a dark crater and kilometers of vaporized debris."
Havelyn nodded slowly.
"And the crew will panic and alert Gron-Tarh's military control the same second."
My blood ran cold at the uncontrollable variable.
"How long do you think it'll take them to discover the mess we left behind?"
"There's no way to know their schedule from here," Havelyn said.
"But they'll find out, Suki. And quickly."
Tsukumo's voice sounded lethal.
Havelyn refused to give in to panic. Her blue eyes sought refuge in Sahger's harsh realism before returning to the paper at the center.
"And where does that leave me in all this?" she asked, lifting her chin to hide the pain.
Sahger answered without embellishment, pity, or hesitation, tearing straight through her facade.
"You stay put, recover, and let your back stitch itself together."
Her wounded pride hardened instantly.
"I'm not going to sit here hidden away like useless dust."
"And I never said you're going to stay trapped in this ravine rotting," he shot back with equal harshness, subtly indicating the massive, trembling black wings bound beneath bloodstained bandages.
"But you're also not walking through the gates of a militarized prison built to contain gods while you can barely control or support one of those wings fully extended without screaming in pain."
Havelyn drove her ice-blue stare deep into Sahger's visor.
She held the tension, jaw locked tight, for several agonizing seconds.
But this time, she didn't shout.
She didn't fire back in offense.
It wasn't some cheap provocation from the hunter.
It was simply an undeniable fact striking directly against her wound.
"Then Gron-Tarh is our real destination," I declared, breaking the invisible standoff between them.
"Havelyn, we'll do everything we can to make sure you're better by the time the next ship arrives," I said.
Tsukumo gave a measured nod.
Havelyn remained silent for a long time, staring at the crooked emblem on her paper before slowly nodding as well, resigned to the cold brutality the future promised.
I clenched my fist.
"Gron-Tarh."
A prison built to keep gods inside.
A resistance that might already be dead.
And somewhere among its records, perhaps the first concrete trace of Laura.
We didn't need another direction.
Now we had a destination.