Chapter 124: There She Is

Evren slid the black titanium keycard into the freight elevator console. The reader beeped green, and the massive hydraulic platform shuddered beneath their boots.

With a deep mechanical groan, the lift plunged past Sub-Level 7, leaving the sulfur heat behind as it plunged into deep bedrock.

The air grew sharply colder with every second, frost creeping along the reinforced mesh cage and crystallizing against the iron cables.

Amber adjusted her grip on her sabers, watching the dark shaft slide upward. "The temperature down here is unnatural," she murmured, her breath pluming in white mist. "The upper refinery was over a hundred degrees. Why is the bedrock freezing?"

"Alchemical stabilization," Zephyra whispered, testing her whip-blade.

"High-tier celestial compounds degrade under heat. Vane has to keep this level near freezing."

Evren watched the floor indicator flicker down. "Sub-Level 8 is the bottom," he said calmly. "Director Vane keeps his private wardens stationed here. No warnings... silence them before they touch an alarm."

Amber and Zephyra nodded in unison.

The freight platform slowed with a hydraulic hiss, locking into the lower bay with a loud clang as the steel gates rattled open.

Unlike the noisy refinery above, Sub-Level 8 was dead silent.

Thick obsidian blast walls lined the corridor, lit only by the faint crimson pulse of wall-mounted suppression runes. The air smelled of frost, ozone, and dried medicinal herbs.

At the end of the entry corridor stood a reinforced security bunker. Four elite cartel wardens in enchanted black-iron plate guarded the passage with crackling shock-halberds and tower shields.

The moment the lift opened, the lead warden lunged toward an emergency lever on the console. "Intruders! Trigger the..."

Zephyra moved like midnight mist.

Before his hand reached the switch, Zephyra’s whip-blade snaked down the hallway.

The razor wire coiled around his wrist and yanked hard, slamming his helmet into the steel partition before a blunt kick knocked him cold.

The second warden thrust his shock-halberd, crackling with blue lightning aimed at Amber’s chest.

Amber ducked low beneath the lunging spearhead, her twin sabers igniting with roaring phoenix flame. With a fluid upward cross-slash, her blazing blades sheared clean through the reinforced steel shaft.

Before the stunned guard could recover, Amber drove her saber pommel into his breastplate, caving the metal and knocking him flat across the frozen deck.

The remaining two wardens locked their heavy tower shields together, forming an impenetrable iron wall.

"Crush him!" one roared, channeling defensive mana into the steel as they charged straight at Evren.

Evren didn’t even shift his stance; he planted his boots firmly onto the obsidian floor, his dark combat coat settling around his shoulders.

When the two tower shields slammed into his chest, the impact rang like a bronze bell. The ground cracked beneath his boots, but his body didn’t yield an inch.

The two wardens grunted in shock, their arms trembling under the recoil as if they had rammed into a mountain of solid steel.

"Too slow," Evren said calmly.

He raised both hands, planting his bare palms flat against the center bosses of the twin shields. With a sharp thrust of raw physical power, Evren unleashed his SS-Rank strength.

The reinforced steel plates buckled inward like tinfoil under the concussive shock. The kinetic force shattered their forearm braces, hurling both men backward across the corridor.

They crashed into the bunker wall, crumpling into an unconscious heap.

Silence reclaimed the frozen corridor.

Zephyra stepped over the fallen guards.

"Communications bypassed. No alarms reached the surface."

"Good," Evren said. "The crucible chamber is straight ahead."

At the far end of the hallway stood double blast doors forged from dark brass and etched with alchemical seals.

Evren gripped the release wheel and turned it with one hand, snapping the electronic locks with brute force. The doors parted with a pressurized hiss, venting a cloud of frigid vapor.

The chamber beyond was cavernous.

It was a domed hall carved right into the granite bedrock. In the center sat an old bronze alchemical furnace, its big cooling vents glowing with faint violet embers. Surrounding the furnace were rows of shattered alembics, empty vats, and pools of dried dark purple fluid.

On a raised stone dais beneath the cold furnace sat a massive adamantine anvil, and chained to that anvil was a woman.

Amber caught her breath, gripping her saber hilt. "There she is..."

The woman knelt on the freezing stone, her frail frame trembling under the bitter draft.

She wore torn apprentice robes bearing the faded embroidered crest of a crescent moon and seven stars... the mark of House Vesper. Her long, tangled silver-violet hair hung over bruised, hollow cheeks.

Heavy manacles of blackened Deep-Iron bound her wrists and ankles, attached to thick chains welded to the adamantine anvil.

Pulsing purple agony runes glowed like venomous veins along the dark metal of the shackles. Calcified lines spread across her bare forearms where the runes actively burned, suppressing her mana conduits.

Hearing footsteps, the woman slowly lifted her head. Her eyes were bloodshot and glazed with exhaustion, but the core of her gaze burned with defiance.

"I already told Vane..." Calista rasped, her voice sounding dry from dehydration. "I would rather let my soul-core burn to ash than complete your stabilizing formula. Kill me and be done with it."

Evren walked up the stone dais, stopping two paces before her. "We don’t work for Director Vane," he said evenly. "And nobody is killing you today."

Calista blinked through her tangled hair. Her gaze drifted from Evren’s calm expression to Amber’s flaming sabers and Zephyra’s shadow garb.

"You... you aren’t cartel wardens?" Calista whispered in confusion. "Who are you?"

"Apex Guild," Amber said softly, kneeling beside her. "We came to tear this facility down and get you out."

Amber inspected the glowing purple bands around Calista’s wrists. Her brow furrowed with deep anger. "Grade-4 Deep-Iron Agony Runes," she said, her voice trembling with fury.

"They’ve been continuously draining and burning her mana channels. Her conduits are severely scarred."

"It’s worse than that," Zephyra warned, examining the locking cylinder on the anvil.

"The shackles are wired with an anti-tamper mana charge. Without Director Vane’s master biometric key, forcing the lock will trigger a lethal detonation."

Calista let out a weak, bitter laugh that ended in a painful cough. "She’s right," she murmured, looking at Evren with hollow resignation. "Deep-Iron can’t be picked."

"If you try to pry the latches, the runes will discharge straight into my heart," she added weakly. "Leave me... take whatever elixirs you can find and run before the shifts rotate."

Evren didn’t move an inch; he stepped directly in front of the anvil and knelt down to meet Calista’s gaze.

"I don’t leave people behind," Evren said simply.

Before Calista could comprehend his words, Evren slid his hands into position around the shackles. He wedged his thick fingers beneath the cuffs, creating a solid physical shield between the metal and her delicate skin.

Wrapping both palms entirely over the outer casing, he enclosed the locking core like an airtight steel vise.

Calista’s eyes widened in sheer terror. "No! Stop! You’ll trigger the blast!"

Evren tightened his grip. His SS-Rank physical strength surged through his forearms, every muscle locking into place like hydraulic pistons.

The reinforced Deep-Iron began to shriek, the metal buckling under immense physical pressure. Detecting the violent tamper, the agony runes flared with a blinding crimson light.

The trapped mana charge surged, detonating point-blank in a violent concussive burst. But trapped entirely inside Evren’s sealed palms, the blast had nowhere to vent.

The roaring shockwave and heat were completely smothered within his closed fists, snuffed out against his impenetrable flesh before a single ember could touch Calista’s wrists.

With a sharp grunt, Evren twisted his wrists and crushed the remaining runic circuitry.

CRACK!

The shattered Deep-Iron snapped cleanly in half, the broken pieces dropping harmlessly to the stone floor.

Calista stared in frozen, paralyzed shock.

For two years, the cartel’s finest blacksmiths had told her that only an S-Rank runic key could ever release those chains.

And this man had just crushed them with his bare hands.

The moment the suppression snapped, the agonizing pressure crushing her chest evaporated. The sudden rush of blood and relief overwhelmed her weakened body.

Her vision spun, and her knees gave out.

Before she could strike the freezing stone, Evren caught her, his strong arm scooping her frail frame against his chest.

WHRRRRRRR-CLANG!

Suddenly, deafening red emergency sirens wailed across the ceiling, bathing the entire domed crucible in rotating crimson light.

Across the chamber, a pair of thirty-foot-tall hydraulic blast doors began grinding shut, thick steel gears turning as an automated voice echoed through the speakers:

[WARNING: CRUCIBLE BREACH DETECTED. MASTER CELESTIAL VAULT INITIATING EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN IN THIRTY SECONDS.]