The path to the cargo wagon was worse than Trafalgar expected.

That was saying something, considering the train had already offered him sleeping gas, corpses, a storm, and enough incompetence from armed criminals to make him wonder who had planned this mess in the first place.

He and Caelum moved through the connecting passage without speaking. The stolen masks hid their faces, and the clothes they had taken from the attackers helped enough for anyone looking from a distance. The train groaned around them, its outer frame trembling each time the storm struck from the side. Somewhere ahead, metal screamed as if something important had been forced to bend.

Wonderful.

The closer they got to the cargo section, the worse the damage became.

The walls had scorch marks along the lower panels. Several mana lamps flickered with an ugly blue pulse, half-dead but too stubborn to go out. A trail of blood led from one wagon door to the next, smeared across the floor by someone who had been dragged while still alive.

Trafalgar followed it with his gaze for a breath, then kept walking.

At the end of the passage, the mithril-reinforced cargo door came into view.

It was massive, silver-white plates layered over black steel, with runes locked across the seams. Or they had been locked. Now half of them sparked, damaged by explosives placed with far more skill than the idiots in the passenger cars had shown.

So Merisse really did know the train.

Beyond the damaged door, the cargo wagon had become a battlefield.

Eight guards held the near side.

They were train security, not random mercenaries. Their uniforms were torn, masks cracked, and more than one had blood running under armor plates. One guard knelt behind a broken crate with a hand pressed to his ribs. Another had one eye swollen shut and still held a mana pistol in both hands. Somehow, they had kept the attackers from taking the cargo completely.

Trafalgar had to give them that.

Across from them stood ten enemies.

Nine attackers spread across the wagon, taking cover between sealed containers and alchemical crates. And near the damaged lock, standing as if the violence had been arranged for her convenience, was a woman in a black coat.

Short red hair. Narrow eyes. Thin metal wires coiled around both wrists and ran between her fingers. Small vials hung from her belt, mixed with capsule charges, needles, cutters, and tools too delicate to be anything friendly.

Merisse Varn.

She looked nothing like Selara’s descriptions had suggested, which somehow made her worse. Trafalgar had expected deranged genius, maybe someone with wild hair and a laugh that belonged in a basement full of illegal organs. Instead, Merisse looked tidy, focused, and irritated that people had forced her schedule to bend.

That was usually the more dangerous type.

One of the guards noticed Trafalgar and Caelum entering from the rear.

"Who the hell are you?"

Caelum did not answer.

Trafalgar let Maledicta appear in his hand.

That answered enough.

Merisse turned her head.

Her eyes moved over him, over the mask, over the stolen clothes, and finally to the sword. Recognition did not arrive all at once. It crept in, piece by piece, until her expression changed.

"Ah." Her voice was light, almost conversational. "So the passenger sweep failed."

Trafalgar stepped into the wagon.

"You could say that."

Merisse’s gaze dropped briefly toward the blood on his sleeve.

"How many?"

"Enough."

She clicked her tongue. "Vague answer. Very noble."

Caelum shifted beside him, both daggers hidden again but close enough that anyone sensible would already be dead or leaving.

Merisse smiled faintly. "And the servant. That makes this much more expensive than the contract suggested."

One of the attackers near her frowned. "Merisse?"

She lifted one finger without looking at him. "Focus on the lock."

The man obeyed.

Trafalgar’s eyes moved through the wagon.

Wires crossed the floor in places, thin enough to vanish under bad light. Three capsule charges sat tucked between cargo frames. A misting device pulsed near the far wall, probably feeding more gas toward the other cars. Two attackers worked on the mithril seal with tools that looked alchemical and mechanical at the same time.

The guards were stuck because moving forward meant stepping into traps.

Annoying woman.

Merisse spread her hands slightly, wires gleaming between her fingers.

"You are not my target, Trafalgar du Morgain. Walk away, and I will continue pretending this is a professional operation rather than a heroic inconvenience."

Trafalgar looked at the half-open seal.

"You attacked a train full of students and civilians."

"Correction. I attacked a train full of rich alchemists, protected cargo, and people with enough influence to make everyone panic when something goes wrong. The students were unfortunate decoration."

A guard spat blood onto the floor. "You killed passengers."

Merisse glanced at him with mild boredom. "Your point?"

Trafalgar stopped listening.

He moved.

[Severance Step] curved his path across the wagon, his body blurring around the first wire line before reappearing near the attacker closest to the cargo lock. The man tried to raise a hammer-like tool. Maledicta took his hand before the tool rose past his chest, and Trafalgar drove a knee into his stomach hard enough to fold him over the floor.

A capsule snapped open near Trafalgar’s foot.

He twisted back as green smoke burst upward. The floor beneath it hissed, metal darkening where the vapor touched.

Acidic.

Of course.

Merisse tugged two fingers.

The wires came alive.

They whipped from the floor and ceiling, crossing toward Trafalgar’s arms, neck, and legs. He cut three with Maledicta, ducked beneath another, and used [Crosswind Edge] in a short slash that sent a tight line of mana through the nearest wire cluster. The wires snapped and recoiled, sparking as they died.

Caelum moved through the opening Trafalgar created.

One attacker near the guards suddenly had a dagger in his spine. Another turned and received a blade beneath the ribs. Caelum did not stay near either corpse long enough for them to fall properly.

The guards saw their chance.

"Push!" one shouted.

Four of them surged from cover, mana pistols flashing. The wagon erupted in noise, shots striking crates and alchemical shields. Two attackers dropped. One guard went down with a bolt through the shoulder but dragged himself behind a crate before someone finished him.

Merisse did not seem bothered.

She flicked a vial from her belt with her thumb and crushed it between two wires. A black foam spilled across the floor, expanding into a sticky mass that swallowed the boots of two guards mid-charge.

"Stay there," she said, almost kindly.

Trafalgar used [Arc Slash], sending a dark-blue wave through the spreading foam. The mana cut opened a path, and one guard tore himself free with a curse.

Merisse’s eyes brightened behind her irritation.

"Oh. That sword really is troublesome."

"You talk a lot for someone losing men."

"I am multitasking."

She snapped her wrist.

A wire looped around a hanging cargo hook above Trafalgar and yanked hard. The hook dropped with a chunk of metal plating, crashing toward him. He stepped aside, but the fall triggered two more capsules. White sparks burst across the floor, crawling like insects toward the guards and Caelum.

Trafalgar’s jaw tightened.

This woman had turned the wagon into a filthy little puzzle box.

He raised Maledicta.

[Morgain’s Linebreaker] coated the blade in dense mana as he drove forward in a straight charge, the cutting wave rolling ahead of him and smashing through the sparks, wire anchors, and one attacker who failed to get out of the path. The man hit the wall with enough force to crack the panel behind him, and the mobility curse from the strike left two others stumbling like their legs had forgotten their purpose.

Merisse finally moved away from the lock.

Her wires gathered around her like a metallic web.

"Careful," she said, smile thinning. "Break the wrong thing and we all learn what mithril shrapnel feels like."

Trafalgar stopped before the next wire line.

She had him there.

A full-power strike in this wagon could damage the cargo, the seal, or the train itself. He could win by force, probably. He could also turn the cargo car into expensive scrap and make Selara invent new insults for him until Aurevane.

Caelum appeared beside one of the remaining attackers and cut his throat before stepping back.

The numbers had changed fast.

Then the roof above the far end of the cargo wagon split open with a precise flash of pale light.

Not an explosion.

A cut.

White-gray lines spread through the air, crawling across wires, charges, blood trails, broken runes, and the damaged mithril lock. They marked every dangerous point in the wagon as if the whole room had become a map drawn by a very severe god.

Merisse’s face changed for the first time.

"Oh, that is inconvenient."

A man dropped through the opening.

Eldric au Veyr landed on the cargo floor, coat snapping once in the cold air pouring from above. Behind him, shadows of others moved across the breach, weapons ready.

His gray eyes took in the wagon, the bodies, the traps, the guards, Merisse, Caelum, and finally Trafalgar.

Then he spoke, voice carrying through the damaged car without effort.

"By authority of the Council of Sages, all hostile action ends here."

The white lines in the air tightened around every wire and hidden charge.

No one moved.

Trafalgar looked at Eldric.

Eldric looked back at him.

And somewhere behind Merisse, the damaged cargo seal sparked again.