Chapter 6 Enchanter's Cage

Ren fell for a solid four seconds before his feet, finally, hit stone.

The sting ran from his heels up through his spine — his Grade-E body complaining in a way that was becoming far too rarefied. But the agony was consumed whole by what he saw.

The bottom of the ravine was shining gold.

Clusters of six Stone Gargoyles — rock monsters, Grade-C, broken wings and claws to crush steel — surrounded a silver-haired girl. A barrier of Enchantment pulsed around her body like a dying heart — cracks spider-stretched up its surface, and each Gargoyle hit made the light flicker weaker.

Grade-B — He could sense the pressure of her mana from here. But her body was thrashing, blood streaming from her temple and every breath she took seemed short and gasping. She had been fighting for too long.

Six Grade-C against one Grade-E.

Impossible math.

But Ren hadn’t leapt into this ravine to win. He'd jumped to buy time.

Silent Step. The world lost its sound.

Ren was an executioner now — a shadow among shadows. A shadow claw emerged on his right hand, and he cut the wing tendon of one Gargoyle from its blind spot.

Two Gargoyles broke rank, pursuing Ren toward the wall of the ravine. The number of people pressing on the girl fell from six to four.

Enough.

She seized the opening with the instincts of a trained fighter. Her barrier ceased to defend — and exploded inwards. That golden light transformed into an explosive shock that pulverized the closest Gargoyle from within, sending stone shrapnel in a rain scatter.

Five left.

Three.

A choreography of coordination fell into place without a single word — she lured them with obstacles, Ren baited and ambushed from behind a wall. A deep gash on his right thigh turned his stride into a drag. His own blood slicked the stone floor.

Then above, light went green.

Kael — at the edge of the ravine, hands outstretched downwards, Heal trickling in a thin stream that sealed Ren’s wounds just enough to leave him upright. Not healing — postponing.

It was enough.

The final Gargoyle died in a clash of golden light and black claws. Silence fell back over the bottom of the ravine — heavy, laced with stone dust and ripe with the coppery reek of blood.

A shadow crossed his face. The girl with the silver hair loomed over him, a pair of grey eyes sharp as scalpels boring down.

"Who are you?" Her voice was icy, controlled — even though her body was still shaking from fatigue. “Why on earth would a Grade-E jump into a ravine to fight C-rank monsters?”

"Good question." Ren coughed. Copper on his tongue. “I was saying the same thing to myself on the way down.”

"You're an idiot."

"So I've been told. Several times today."

The girl narrowed her eyes — not an angry narrowing, but a calculation. Assessment. Ren knew that look well: the look of someone who’d long treated people as variables in an equation.

“I’m Aela,” she finally said. "Aela Voss."

A cold feeling came to the pit of Ren's stomach.

Voss.

Aela saw the change in his expression at once. Her eyes hardened. "Yes. He's my father. And no — I'm not with him. I’m here in part because I fled him.”

It was the kind of tension that sat in the air like a blade that had not yet dropped.

Kael — who had just touched down at the bottom of the ravine on quakes-weakened knees with a deathly pallor on his face — read the scene with all the accuracy of someone who's spent way too many days standing between people who wish to hammer one another.

“So we three are fugitives from the same man?” Great. At least we can share the expense of the food.”

Nobody laughed. But the tension leveled one notch. Enough to breathe.

A fledgling campfire at the bottom of the ravine — its glow overwhelmed by luminescence wrought from mana fungi sprouting from the stone walls. They loomed at an uncomfortable triangle: Ren and Kael on one side, Aela on the other — two meters of separation that seemed like a national frontier.

Aela was silent from trust.

"Commander Voss isn't just corrupt." Her voice was flat — the tone of someone who had cried until there were no tears left. "He's running a classified project. 『Project Rebirth』 — implanting Cores from one Awakener into another.

Ren felt his blood go cold.

“Since the process kills the donor,” Aela continued. "Every time. Without exception." A pause. It burned in her wet eyes like fire. "The test subjects… children. Nulls hired from the lower class districts. Nobody asks where they go. Nobody cares."

Her eyes met Ren's. "My daddy thinks stronger Awakeners are more deserving of Cores. Nulls are just… raw material."

Ren’s hands balled into fists in his lap. His knuckles went white. This wasn’t the Chain Law — the harsh hierarchy he had already resigned himself to as how the world worked. This was worse. This was the industrialization of savagery. A slaughterhouse fueled by the corpses of children who never had a chance.

Children like him.

Inside his head, Lyra said — gently, without sarcasm for the first time in a long time.

『Project Rebirth… I’d call it a crude imitation of your Devour. Someone knew that it was possible to absorb Core. 」

A pause.

“The million dollar question is: how did they know? 」

The fire had smoldered down to embers by the time Aela glanced at Ren again.

"There's something different about you." Her eyes narrowed. "Your mana… it feels strange. Not like a normal E-Rank."

"I eat a lot of vegetables."

"I'm serious."

Ren held her gaze. Behind the skepticism and the fatigue, he saw in her something he recognized — anger with nowhere to go. Not the hot kind that burned. The cold kind that waited.

“I have my reasons to wish for your father’s destruction,” Ren said. “If you want we can walk together. For now."

Aela was quiet. The fire dimmed. A cold breeze blew through the ravine.

Then she nodded. Once. Enough.

Far away from the Fractured Lands — deep inside the iron wall of the Sentinel Corps headquarters, a cold gleam under crystal lamps — a man was reading a report that tightened his jaw.

The crippled scout Ren had defeated lay at the dead end passage in the dungeon. Alive, but his legs would never again work.

Commander Voss read through the report in silence. Then softly, “He crippled my Grade-C? A… Null?"

Voss remained standing, taking his time as he walked to the steel cabinet in the corner of the room. A key turned. A drawer opened.

Inside: a creased old photograph — yellowed edges, faded colors. A young man facing a Void symbol mirroring the one carved into the wall of the ravine at Ravine Point. Dark hair, razor eyes, a smile packed with too many secrets.

And next to him — shoulder to shoulder — another figure.

Voss closed the drawer.

"So it's true. That bloodline can't stay hidden."