Chapter 131: A Wife's Adventure

Sarael returned to the mansion with disappointment written all over her face. Every person in the studio's backstage area had been completely useless; not a single one of them knew anything useful.

Now she stood in their bedroom with her arms crossed, sulking.

"Ronan... where in the world could you possibly—"

Something nudged her leg.

She looked down. Kevin, one of the foxes, was pressing his nose against her shin. When he saw he had her attention, he turned and pointed his snout toward the nightstand.

A note sat there, pinned beneath a half-empty water bottle so it wouldn't fly off. Sarael's shadows snatched it up before she'd even fully processed what she was looking at.

It was from Ronan.

He'd left her a letter explaining where he might be if she ever came looking for him. He knew she could find him through the bond most of the time, but he'd also known that leaving a physical note was the kind of backup that worked when magic didn't.

"The Abyssal Rift?"

Her shadows were already moving, tendrils of darkness snaking toward the computer and typing faster than any human could. The browser opened. News feeds filled the screen.

"Abyssal Rift expedition gone silent for hours... no communication from inside..."

The gate Ronan had entered.

"Ronan...?"

She didn't hesitate. A snap of her fingers, and her casual clothes dissolved into her battle dress. The artifacts she'd collected from months of shrine hunting materialized around her—rings, amulets, the circlet already nestled in her hair.

She found the portal's coordinates from the database and teleported without another thought.

FWOOSH!

✧ ✦ ✧

The staging area was nothing like the pictures online.

The tear in reality that was supposed to lead to the Abyssal Rift had been sealed shut. Multiple barrier-class hunters stood in a wide perimeter, their magic layered over the portal to contain something that kept oozing against the translucent walls.

Pus. Black and thick, like the gates had become infected wounds.

"Lady Allysane and the mercenary are still alive according to the system logbook, but we can't get any communication through."

One of the hunters was reporting to his superior, voice tense. Sarael moved toward them with a bright smile, her interest piqued by a single word.

Mercenary.

That was a word she'd learned to associate with Ronan.

"Excuse me, may I ask some questions?"

Both hunters turned at the sound of her voice. Their eyes went wide the moment they recognized her.

"A-Aren't you... Miss Night?"

The talk of the world. Ronan Night's wife. Standing in front of them in full combat gear, radiating the kind of ominous presence that made barrier-class hunters take an instinctive step back.

And she wasn't even intentionally radiating it.

Sarael's smile held as she stepped closer, her presence making the hunters shift uneasily.

"Yes, that's me. Now, please tell me, where is my husband? I heard he went inside this portal."

"Husband...?"

The hunters exchanged glances, clearly uncertain how to respond. On one hand, the Night Porter was still technically a fugitive. On the other, the Neumanns themselves had vouched for him.

And Sarael didn't exactly look like a threat, too innocent, too composed, too much like someone they'd seen on television hours ago.

But it was the question itself that threw them further into confusion. The pieces were clicking together for both of them.

"Was that Greystar mercenary supposed to be Ronan Night?"

Sarael's expression didn't change. She'd spent enough time in human society to read between the lines, and unlike Ronan, she didn't obsess over gathering every scrap of information before acting.

She moved toward the barrier. The hunters maintaining the seal around the portal stared at her like she'd lost her mind.

"Miss, please step back. You might get hurt."

The one who spoke didn't even look at her, too focused on the barrier to realize who he was addressing.

"Can you please open the portal?"

"W-What? We can't just do that."

"Just one small second!"

"W-We can't."

"Fine..."

Sarael raised one hand and flicked her fingers. The containment barrier shattered. Every hunter maintaining it was thrown backward, their magic unraveling in a cascade of light and force.

All attention snapped to her: hunters, police, every single person at the staging area now staring at the woman who'd just potentially compromised everything.

"Don't worry," she said, her voice calm. "I'll replace it."

Shadows erupted from her feet and encased the rift in a cube of absolute darkness, far stronger than the barrier from before. Then she stepped into the portal without another word, and the darkness closed behind her.

✧ ✦ ✧

The transition was wrong. Not the smooth shift of a normal gate, but a rough, tearing pull, like being dragged through cold water by something that didn't care if she came out the other side intact.

She landed on dead grass, her boots sinking into soil that crumbled like ash. The sky above was a bruise, violet and black and wrong. The air stank of rot and old blood.

Tartarus-B.

"Ronan..."

The word came out soft, almost reverent. Her shadows spread outward in a slow, searching wave, rippling across the dead ground like ink poured into water.

She could feel him. Faint, distant, but there. The bond was a thread stretched thin, vibrating with his heartbeat.

He was alive.

Her lips curled into a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"Wait for me, hubby. I'm on my way."

She said it like a wife catching sight of her husband across a crowded park, not a goddess stepping into a nightmare. The lightness in her voice would have unsettled anyone listening, but there was no one here to hear it.

Sarael moved through the dead forest. The creatures of Tartarus-B, skitters, bone-faces, the crawling things that had once hunted Ronan for forty-seven days, watched her pass and did not approach.

Some fled. Others simply stood frozen, their pale heads tilted, as if trying to understand what she was.

The bond pulled her forward. A thread of warmth in her chest, tugging her through the ruins of a world that had nearly killed the only person she'd ever loved.

She remembered the shrine. The blood on the stone. Ronan's body broken and dying, his breath rattling as he whispered her name for the first time in years.

That was where she'd first felt it. The pull. The recognition.

Now she was back, and this time, she wasn't a forgotten goddess waiting for a believer to crawl through her door.

She was a wife looking for her husband.

"Ronan~ Where are you?"

Her voice echoed through the dead city streets, light and lilting, completely at odds with the monsters lurking in the shadows.

She wasn't that worried. She knew Ronan's strength; she had watched him tear through S-Ranks and shrug off blows that would have liquefied anyone else.

And they'd already survived Tartarus-B together before, back when they were weaker, and whatever it was that pulsed faintly through their bond told her he wasn't in danger.

Not yet, anyway.

Her shadows continued to spread, a web of darkness extending for kilometers in every direction, feeling for the familiar shape of his presence.

It was harder than it should have been. The gate's corruption interfered with her senses, blurring the edges of her awareness like static.

[The Bonded is within range.]

[Estimated distance: 12.4 kilometers.]