Chapter 60: Chapter 60: Night Before The Reckoning

The room was quiet except for the sound of a foot hitting the floor.

This was not their first meeting.

Everyone in the room already knew the mission details.

Melissa was just running the final check before they moved out tomorrow morning.

Zephyr stood near the =weapon rack with his arms crossed, his eyes kept moving between Melissa and the boy sitting quietly at the back of the group.

Shane, or whoever was currently wearing his face, had barely spoken during the entire meeting.

He just sat there with his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the stone floor like he was thinking about something miles away from this room.

That bothered Zephyr more than anything else.

"Here is the final rundown," Melissa said, pointing a finger at the hand-drawn map on the table.

"Everyone remembers their part. We take the narrow path one. In the second stage, we slip through the wall crack at the marked point. We walk three kilometres to the hidden room, retrieve the pendant and the flower, and come back clean. No detours today."

Raven leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms, "You keep saying clean like repeating it will somehow make it true down underground."

"Raven," Melissa warned, her voice sharp.

"I remember the plan," Raven replied, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

"I am just noting your optimism. Things never go clean when we go below the surface."

Zephyr ignored their usual banter.

He watched Shane the entire time Melissa spoke.

The guy had not reacted to the word flower at all.

He had not flinched, and he had not looked up.

In Zephyr’s original timeline, just the mention of his sister’s condition would have made Shane’s jaw tighten.

Zephyr remembered that reaction clearly from his past life.

The boy could hide almost everything, but he could never hide that specific pain.

But right now, there was nothing.

Just flat red eyes staring at the ground.

"Shane," Zephyr said loudly.

The boy looked up slowly; his face was blank.

"You remember where we split if the path collapses?" Zephyr asked.

A pause hung in the air. It was exactly one second too long.

"Junction four," Azrael replied.

His voice was steady and even.

"I take the left wall, and you take the right. We meet in the marked room."

"And if the B-rank fauna has moved deeper into path one since Melissa drew her map?" Zephyr pushed, keeping his eyes locked on the boy.

"We adjust," Azrael said simply.

The answer was technically correct. The words matched the plan perfectly. But the delivery was wrong in a way Zephyr could not quite name yet.

If this were the real Shane, he would have said something cutting after the word adjust. He would have added a joke about adjusting or dying down in the dark.

The silence where that joke should have been sat in the room like a held breath.

"We need to finish this. Zephyr, I have your gauntlet."

Melissa reached into her leather bag.

She pulled out an object wrapped in cloth and placed it on the floor between them.

The gauntlet was old. It was forged from black steel with thick gold veins running through the knuckles and down the wrist guard.

It had belonged to Zephyr’s family line for three generations. It was lost years ago, but Melissa had managed to recover it from a sealed noble vault in the capital using political connections Zephyr could not access himself.

It’s his ultimate weapon from his past life.

"How did you get past the secondary lock on the vault?" Zephyr asked. He kept his tone neutral, but he was genuinely surprised she had pulled it off.

"I told you I would get it," Melissa replied flatly.

"I got it. Do not worry about the details."

Zephyr stepped forward and picked it up.

The metal was much heavier than he remembered from his past life.

He had wielded this exact weapon for years in the previous timeline. He turned it over once in his hands, feeling the familiar grooves on the palm.

"It will not activate for anyone else," Melissa added, watching him hold the weapon.

"The bloodline seal is still intact."

"I know," Zephyr said.

He set it down carefully on the table.

Raven let out a short laugh. "So we are all settled then. The noble girl gets her fancy pendant, you get your ancient family weapon, Shane gets the rare flower for his sister, and I get what is coming to me."

"You get exactly what I promised you," Melissa corrected him, shooting Raven a cold look.

"I am just checking," Raven smiled.

"I like to make sure my risks are rewarded."

Zephyr stopped listening to them and looked across the room at Shane one more time.

The boy was staring at the black steel gauntlet sitting on the table.

He was not looking at Zephyr’s face. He was fixated entirely on the weapon. And his expression was unreadable in a way that made the hair on Zephyr’s arms stand straight up.

Zephyr had fought this person twice in his past life. He knew exactly what Shane’s unreadable face looked like when he was planning a dangerous move.

This was not that face.

This was something entirely else wearing that expression.

’He is evaluating the threat level of the item,’ Zephyr realised with a chill.

"Get some sleep," Zephyr announced, breaking the silence. He picked up the gauntlet and strapped it to his side.

"Tomorrow is five days underground. We leave at dawn."

He turned around and walked out the door without waiting for a response from any of them.

He stepped into the corridor outside and let the door click shut behind him. The torchlight flickered across his face.

’Something is wrong with him. Something has been wrong since the night of the cult attack.’

He did not know how to prove it to the others without sounding insane. You could not just accuse your teammate of being replaced by something else without hard evidence.

But he was going underground with that thing tomorrow regardless.

Because whatever had happened to Shane, the answer was waiting for him at the end of narrow path one.

And Zephyr fully intended to find it.

Away from all this, in the centre of the seventh layer, Shane’s soul wandered through the ruins.

Demons were raging against the tortured souls, but he was unharmed.

Whatever happens to him will affect the original body, which means none of them can hurt him.

A precaution ended up saving his life.

But seeing all the pieces fall into their place, a small smile crept up on his face.

’It’s time to take my body back.’

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