Daniel and Haiz exchanged a glance.

She was not from the Academy. They were certain of it. The reigning goddess of Atlantis would not have qualified to carry this girl’s sandals through the dust.

The thought settled unanimously in both their minds without a word being spoken.

Their eyes returned to her. They traced the line of her face, the shape of her jaw, and the curve of her throat, then slid lower without permission.

"I am hungry."

Her voice carried across the chamber.

"You have already eaten," Kenji said, his tone bordering on a scold.

The two boys bristled. How inconsiderate. How could anyone deny a hungry girl her meal?

Indignation burned hot in their chests, though neither of them dared voice it. Offending Kenji of Atlantis Academy was a path neither wanted to walk.

"Please."

The single word, soft and pleading, broke through their restraint. Haiz stepped forward before he had finished thinking.

"Kenji, come on. You cannot let a girl go hungry. Let her eat already."

A pause stretched across the chamber, thin and strange. Then the girl laughed. The sound bounced off the damp stone like a bell.

"See? They said it is fine to eat."

That was the last sentence either of them processed.

Blood-red threads unfurled from the girl, moving with the quiet purpose of something that had done this many times before.

Daniel opened his mouth to scream, but the sound never reached his throat. Their bodies came apart in pieces and dropped to the floor in two wet, careless heaps.

Ayla’s tendrils found what they were looking for. The chamber filled with a soft, methodical sound, like a child sipping from a straw at the bottom of a cup.

She straightened. Her face reassembled itself. She pressed a thumb to the corner of her mouth and considered the smear that came away on it.

"The taste is disappointing, as always," she complained.

"They were D-rank Runners," Kenji answered flatly. "What did you expect?"

"More flavor, perhaps."

He did not answer. He had stopped finding her remarks shocking, and the absence of his shock troubled him more than the remarks ever had.

Ayla turned to face the empty tunnel mouth where Jaxon’s team would arrive any minute. Her dimples returned.

"Now the others."

"Ayla."

"Hm?"

"Why’d you want to kill Daniel and Haiz but team up with Jaxon and his team?"

Kenji watched her for a long moment. When they had regressed, Ayla told him to kill Daniel and Haiz while teaming up with Jaxon and his team.

He had not questioned it at the time. He hated those two for his own reasons, and her decision had aligned with what he wanted anyway.

But for Ayla to have that same opinion—that was strange.

"Because they want to mate with me."

"Eh?"

"It is in their memory." Ayla’s lips pursed. "They want to mate with me whether I want it or not."

"Monsters." Kenji’s voice cracked out of him before he caught it.

Ayla flinched at the volume. Her shoulders pulled in slightly.

"Humans," she corrected.

Kenji froze, feeling insulted. He thought of all the things he could say, and then he weighed each of them against the look on Ayla’s face, which carried no malice at all. Only patience. Only appetite.

He lowered his eyes. The remnants of the two corpses on the floor were already cooling. He drew a slow breath.

"They are not all like that."

"I know," she answered agreeably. "You are not. Jaxon and his friends are not."

She tilted her head, considering.

"Although Jaxon also wanted to mate with someone."

"Mia is his sister."

"Not Mia. The girl from the bakery on Fern Street. The one with the freckles."

Kenji opened his mouth and closed it. "You can’t peek at such private memories," he finally said.

Ayla’s attention was on the second tunnel, listening for her cue. Footsteps echoed from there. Kenji caught her eye.

"Remember what we said. Surprise. Slight confusion. You do not know any of them."

"I remember."

"Do not say their names before they say them."

"I know."

"And do not mention the bakery."

Ayla blinked at him.

"Why would I mention a bakery?"

"Because it is the kind of thing you would mention."

Ayla bobbed her head twice.

The first figure to emerge from the tunnel was Kael, shield half-raised, his eyes already counting exits before they counted faces.

Elara slipped in behind him on light feet, her gaze cutting across the chamber in a single sweep and catching on the two corpses.

Sora followed her, a white staff held close to her chest, her lips already shaping a question. Jaxon came last, hands raised in a half-defensive stance that did not quite know what it was defending against.

The four of them froze at the threshold.

"Kenji?"

Kael’s voice carried the particular flatness that came from recognizing someone you had not expected.

"Kael."

"What happened here?"

Kenji gestured toward the bodies without looking at them.

"Daniel and Haiz. They are dead."

"Dead? How?"

"I..."

"Seems like they were killed and eaten by goblins." Kenji gave Ayla a hard look, forcing her to shut her mouth.

This line isn’t in the script, she mouthed.

Four pairs of eyes shifted to Ayla.

"Hello," Ayla offered brightly.

"And who is this?"

"My name is Ayla. I have been traveling with Kenji."

Kenji shifted his weight to draw their attention.

"She is from a guild outside the city. She caught up with me about an hour ago. We were planning to head deeper before you arrived."

"Which one?" Elara asked. Kael nudged her shoulder. Understanding she had gone overboard with her questions, Elara flailed her arms.

"I am sorry, I am not being intrusive. It’s just our guild is also from the Outer Walls."

There was no way such a beautiful girl could be unknown in the Outers.

"She was with me," Kenji answered.

"Oh..."

She fell silent. Kenji was from the Inner Walls, but he worked for Outer guilds. No one knew the reason. He just said it was for experience.

After all, the Outer Walls were like a blueprint of the situation inside the Crusades without the monsters and alien races.

"We need to move," Kenji interjected. "There is a problem in the tunnel ahead, and I want to handle it before we sit down for introductions."

"What problem?" Kael asked.

"Goblins. A horde of them. They are stalking this junction."

The four Outers tensed in unison.

"How many?" Elara demanded.

"More than fifty," Kenji answered. "Three Hobgoblins among them. A Mage, a Warrior, and an Assassin."

Sora paled.

"That is not a horde. That is a war party."

"It is what it is."

"How do you know?" Kael cut in.

"I’ve scouted after seeing their dead bodies," he pointed at the remnants of corpse on the ground.

"And you did not run?"

"Running takes us deeper into their territory. They have already cut off the upper exits. Our only path forward is through them, and the longer we wait, the better organized they get."

Kael chewed on this. His gaze flicked to Ayla, who had been quiet through the exchange, watching the four of them with a fascination she was trying very hard to disguise as ordinary attention.

"And her?"

"She fights. Pyromancy. Decent with crowd control."

"Pyromancy?" Jaxon’s head snapped around.

"Yes," Ayla said before Kenji could redirect. Her smile widened a fraction. "Like you."

The chamber went quiet. Jaxon’s hand drifted toward his own chest in an unconscious gesture. He had not told her his trait. There had been no opening in the conversation for her to learn it.

"Like me," he repeated.

Ayla realized her error half a second too late.

"My control over Pyromancy is higher. Look." She pointed her finger at Jaxon, igniting a thread of his cotton shirt and stopping before the fire burned deeply. "I sensed Pyromancy from you." She shrugged.

Jaxon’s mouth opened wide in awe.

What terrifying control over fire... The four Outers glanced at each other.