The straps of the straitjacket hit the floor in tatters.

Ronan stood in the center of the interrogation room, rolling his shoulders as the last remnants of the reinforced fabric fell away.

His stats had surged back to full strength the moment the darkness of the windowless room had activated his skills, and the restraints that had held him seconds ago now felt like wet paper.

The black windows stared at him like empty eyes. Behind them, he knew, people were panicking.

A D-Rank porter had just shattered military-grade restraints with his bare hands.

Ronan raised his voice, calm and level.

"I’m not going to hurt anyone. I just want to talk. Then I want to leave."

Ronan pressed his palms flat against the glass and stared directly into his own reflection. To whoever was watching from the other side, the image must have been unsettling.

A man who’d just shattered military restraints like tissue paper, standing calm and still, asking politely for a conversation.

[Ronan, I’m back!]

Sarael’s voice resonated through the system, clearer than before, and less shy. Their time together in Tartarus-B had strengthened the connection, or at least, made Sarael less hesitant.

[The sunlight prevented me from reaching you. I couldn’t—]

She stopped.

Ronan felt her attention shift. Felt her notice the torn straitjacket at his feet, then the bindings, then the cold metal chair bolted to the floor.

And finally...

The wound on the back of his head. The one from the sword pommel.

[...]

The silence was worse than anything she could have said.

[Who did this to you?]

The darkness in the room shuddered. With the shadows themselves convulsing and rippling across the walls like the surface of water struck by a stone.

Paint cracked.

A fracture spiderwebbed across the corner of the ceiling.

Behind the glass, Ronan could picture the scene with perfect clarity. Monitors glitching. Coffee cups vibrating off desks. Not enough for a full-on emergency alarm, but definitely enough that a peaceful conversation was now harder.

’Sarael, calm down. I’m fine.’

He pushed the thought toward her, but it definitely didn’t work. It definitely wouldn’t work this time.

The shadows kept trembling.

And this time, Ronan panicked. The last thing he needed was for Sarael to go berserk.

"I strongly suggest..."

Ronan said, his voice trying to be calm and level, still the voice of a man who was asking rather than demanding.

"That you open the door before any of us regrets the alternative."

He pressed his hands deeper into the glass. Just enough to make it groan. Not enough to break it.

He wasn’t a fool. Right now, in this dark room, he was terrifying. But the moment sunlight touched his skin, that power would evaporate.

He’d be strong, sure, faster, and tougher than most, but he wouldn’t be untouchable. He wasn’t some all-powerful king of the world who could do whatever he wanted.

He was still just a hunter. And hunters still had to pay for property damage.

Besides, Sarael still seemed... calm enough for now. Ronan could still argue for his release instead of just escaping on his own, which would brand him as a criminal and rogue.

The silence behind the glass stretched for three full seconds.

Three seconds more than Ronan would have liked.

Then the speaker crackled.

"Step away from the mirror."

The voice was different, this time from an older male, measured in a way that suggested he’d seen enough impossible things to know when negotiation was the only viable option.

Ronan didn’t move.

"Let me out, before you all regret it."

Ronan knew he sounded vague and threatening, but what else could he say? That he had a crazy goddess looking after him? Or that the darkness around him turned volatile every time he was hurt?

Nothing he could say would be satisfactory.

He knew how the association worked.

The moment he even uttered those words, his closest thing to an excuse, he’d be signing his own death warrant.

"You attacked one of our officers," the voice replied, still measured.

"I was blinded; it was unintentional."

[They’re not listening, Ronan. These people... they don’t trust you.]

’I can handle this, Sarael.’

[But they’re bad people.]

[They should just die.]

Sarael spoke again, and this time she decided to no longer be patient and follow Ronan’s script. The door leading outside the room suddenly slid open, the electronics sparkling, and the speakers crackled with sounds as if someone were choking.

’Sarael, wait!’

Ronan immediately ran out of the room, and to his surprise, everyone watching him on the other side had died, choked to death. And not only that.

Ronan could hear a creepy, manic laugh echoing in the darkness. It was obvious who had done it.

"D-Damn it, there’s no explaining my way out of this one!"

Ronan bit his thumb, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment before deciding to just screw it. Sarael was right; there was likely no way anyone would believe he was the only survivor from Tartarus-B.

He’d just be treated like a pariah.

Or maybe Ronan was just trying to find excuses for the fucked-up situation he found himself in.

"Sarael, can you get me out of here!?"

[Where do you want to go?]

"A-Anywhere that’s not here!"

Ronan yelled out. Explaining wasn’t an option anymore. The moment someone entered and saw this scene, he was going to be dispatched on the spot.

Either as an intentional murderer, or as an unstable hunter who had gained corrupted powers from the gate. There was no winning in this situation anymore.

Darkness surged up from the floor in a spiraling column, swallowing Ronan whole. The world folded inward and then spat him back out with the casual violence of something that had never quite learned how to be gentle with living things.

He hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled twice across cracked linoleum, and came to rest against the leg of a rusted metal table.

For a long moment, he just lay there, staring up at a water-stained ceiling and trying to remember how breathing worked.

"Where—"

The smell hit him first. Dust and mildew and the faint, sour tang of abandonment.

He pushed himself upright and took in the room.

An apartment.

Small.

Cramped.

The kind of place rented by people who couldn’t afford better and didn’t plan to stay long. The kitchenette was barely more than a counter and a hot plate, both buried under a layer of grime that had been accumulating for years.

The window above the sink had been boarded over from the inside, thin slats of plywood nailed across the frame with the kind of desperate finality that suggested whoever had done it hadn’t planned on coming back.

The refrigerator stood open, its door hanging at an angle from a single bent hinge. A stack of old newspapers sat moldering in the corner, their headlines too faded to read.

And everywhere, on every surface, the dust lay thick and undisturbed.

"Where are we?" he asked, his voice scraping against his throat.

[Your apartment,]

Sarael answered. Her voice had lost its manic edge, settling back into something softer.

Almost sheepish.

[You said anywhere. This is the place you think of as home, as far as I can tell.]

Ronan looked around again, and slowly, the details began to resolve into memory.

The dent in the refrigerator door, from when he’d kicked it shut while carrying too many grocery bags. The scorch mark on the counter, from the time he’d tried to cook ramen without water. The stack of unpaid bills on the tiny dining table, their envelopes still sealed.

He’d lived here for two years before the expedition. Two years of porter contracts and instant noodles and the quiet, grinding loneliness of a hunter too weak to join a real guild.

It felt like someone else’s life.

"No one’s been here," he said quietly.

[The door was locked. The windows were covered. It looks like the landlord hasn’t come here at all since you left.]

Ronan pushed himself to his feet, his legs still unsteady from the teleport. The apartment was dark, no lights on, no sunlight bleeding through the boarded window.

Safe, for now at least.

He pulled out one of the creaking wooden chairs and collapsed into it, his head falling into his hands.

’Sarael, can you hear me?’

[Yes.]

’What did you do back there?’

A pause. The shadows in the corners of the apartment stirred, but gently, almost nervously.

[They hurt you. They locked you up. They were going to keep you there forever.]

Her voice cracked, and Ronan realized with a strange, hollow feeling that she wasn’t being defensive.

She was scared. Scared that she’d done something wrong, that he’d be angry, that he’d push her away after everything they’d been through.

[I couldn’t let them take you. I won’t. Not after I just got you back.]

Ronan exhaled slowly.

"Sarael, how many did you kill?"

[...]

"Sarael."

[Seven,] she whispered. [Only the ones behind the glass. The ones who were watching you. The ones who were going to keep you locked up.]

Her shadows curled around his ankles like cats seeking forgiveness.

[I didn’t touch anyone else. The other hunters, the officers in the hallways, they’re all still alive. I was precise. I promise I was precise.]

Ronan closed his eyes.

Seven people.

Seven officers, or interrogators, or whatever they’d been. Dead in the span of a heartbeat because they’d been in the wrong room at the wrong time. Because they’d been between Sarael and the man she loved.

He should have felt horror.

Guilt.

The weight of seven lives snuffed out on his behalf.

Instead, he felt nothing.

No, that wasn’t true. He felt tired. And strangely, beneath the exhaustion, something that might have been relief.

Those people had been ready to lock him away. To study him, interrogate him, keep him in that cold metal chair until they’d wrung every last secret from his body.

And Sarael had ended them.

"They would have killed us both eventually," he said, more to himself than to her. "Wouldn’t they? Once they figured out what I was. What you are."

[Yes.]

Ronan knew he was lying to himself. But he can’t really do anything about it anymore. Sarael was a lot of things, but she definitely wasn’t the goddess of time and reverse everything that had happened.

"Fuck my life..."