The Last Godfall: Transmigrated as the Young Master-Chapter 144: After the Escape

The room no longer held its shape.

Stone had split where the walls failed, the floor breaking into uneven slabs that tilted toward open air. Cold night wind pushed through the gaps and carried dust out into the dark. The cube still stood near the center, scorched along its edges. Its panels sat crooked, the hum faltering and uneven.

Vencian and Seris were gone.

The space they left felt wrong, like a sound cut off mid-note.

Malox moved first.

He went straight to the cube and grabbed it. His fingers dug into the metal as if pressure alone might wake it. He circled once, eyes sharp, checking the space around it. He stepped closer, then closer again, as if distance itself was the problem. His jaw was tight, breath held low, anger pressed inward under control.

Therell followed more slowly.

She limped, blood dried along one arm, her focus still clear. She leaned toward the cube, head angled, eyes tracking the warped openings and bent channels. Her fingers traced shapes in the air without touching. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Hm," she said. She sounded annoyed rather than shaken. "That setup is a disaster."

Malox pushed harder against the frame. "Where did they go."

Therell shrugged. "Somewhere."

He turned on her. His eyes burned. "Say it again."

She glanced at him. "The link is cut. Cleanly. I can’t see where it led."

His breath caught. "You built it."

"And he broke it," she said. Casual. "Whatever he did scrambled the reference. Clever, for a bad toy."

Malox stared at the cube.

"It shouldn’t have answered him."

Therell’s fingers paused in the air. "It needs arc-light."

"Which he doesn’t have."

"Which only arksprens carry," she said. "Even then, only when their anchor holds."

Malox let out a low sound that scraped his throat. He punched the cube. Metal rang through the ruin.

"We should have taken him then," Malox said.

Therell shook her head once. "For what. The cube wasn’t primed. No arc-light feeding it. I thought he was pressing metal and hoping."

Malox’s jaw tightened. "So did I."

"This was my opening," he said. "I begged for it. I promised results. Do you know how long it took to get permission."

Therell straightened. "Lower your voice."

"We were told she was weakened," Malox said.

Therell’s mouth thinned. "She clearly wasn’t. And what information we had? Her anchor weaken. Which arkspren with Shattered Crown archean bond have you seen that moves like that with a weakened anchor?"

"It can’t be," he said. "Master wouldn’t lie and give us a dangerous mission like this with a false information"

She cut him off with a sharp motion. "Enough."

She stepped closer and placed her hand on the cube. She felt its uneven pulse.

"It needs time," she said. "The alignment has to recover, then the internal structure settles."

"How long."

She thought. "Long enough to hurt."

Malox turned away. His teeth clenched. He paced once through the rubble and dragged a hand down his face, smearing blood.

"I can’t lose them."

"You haven’t," Therell said. "This is delay. The cube still exists. The trail is blurred, not gone. When it resets, we follow."

The room fell quiet around that certainty.

Then the air changed.

There were no footsteps. Only the sense of attention pressing into the space behind them. The night air felt held, like it was waiting.

A man stepped through the broken edge of the chamber.

He moved through shattered stone with ease. His robes stayed clean. His pace stayed calm. He looked at the ruin, the cube, then them, as if he had arrived on schedule.

Larion Marendil.

Therell’s smile slipped.

Malox froze. His eyes widened.

No wards had warned them. No approach had been felt.

The pressure in the room deepened, heavy and absolute.

Neither of them spoke as he stopped among the wreckage.

-- -- --

The return had no grace.

Vencian and Seris fell out of empty air and hit ground that gave badly. Weight came back all at once. Darkness swallowed direction. Shapes stretched upward and resolved into trees as his vision steadied.

Color came back late.

Greens dulled to ash, browns to thin shades of the same. It felt familiar. Like something had been taken out of him and not yet returned.

Trunks stood close together and vanished into shadow where their branches sealed the sky. The ground rolled beneath him, thick with leaves and roots that softened the fall just enough.

Seris landed on him.

The impact drove the breath from both of them. Her weight came down loose and wrong. She pushed off him too fast. Her palms slipped on damp leaves as she scrambled back. The movement felt urgent for reasons that had nothing to do with danger. She pulled away as if touch itself needed undoing. Her face stayed turned aside. Her eyes fixed anywhere but him.

Vencian noticed.

He saw the haste. The refusal. The sharp need for distance. He set it aside.

His body felt emptied. His vision rang at the edges, still catching up from the strain. Speaking would cost more than it gave. He let the moment pass.

He rolled onto his side and forced himself up. His boots slid on wet leaves. The forest pressed close. Sound felt muted by age and thickness. No wind reached him, and no light broke through the canopy. The place felt old and settled, like it expected quiet.

His attention snapped to his hands.

He looked for the device.

The habit was immediate. He scanned the ground where they fell, behind Seris, and the dark spaces between roots and trunks. His eyes traced where it should have landed if it had followed them.

It was gone.

There was no hum or distortion in the air, only empty space where it should have been.

Vencian straightened slightly as the absence settled.

The device had stayed behind.

The thought cut through his exhaustion. Clean. Sharp. Contained.

His sight thinned again at the edges, as if the strain had counted the thought as use.

The escape was one way, and the tool that made it possible was still with the enemy. The rest followed on its own. They could still be chased.

Seris spoke before he did.

"Transport like that always has a cost," she said. Her voice had steadied now that they had stopped moving. "Moving more than one person pushes limits. What they used was old. Probably found, not made. Devices like that force delay or they break."

She stated it as fact.

Vencian listened. It fit what he had felt. It matched what he had felt at the cube, the instability and the care Therell had shown lending it weight.

He did not relax.

The forest ahead blurred when he focused too far.

He told himself it was temporary. Recovery always followed use. Until then, staying close to Seris made sense. Limited vision demanded fewer variables.

"We move," he said. "Delay or not, staying still helps them."

Seris nodded once. She did not argue.

Distance mattered, even earned slowly, if it bought uncertainty.