Luck favored Jared’s route; every bend he picked lay outside the patrol patterns of the Jade Immortal Manor, and each time torches appeared they slipped past with inches to spare. At last they reached the vine-choked corner wall. Jared cracked open the concealed hatch, and the group filed inside before he sealed the stones again.
The tunnel was damp and narrow; as they moved through it, tension drained from Jared’s shoulders in slow increments. The hardest part, the snatch itself, was done. Getting Quentin out of a locked-down city and prying the truth from his mouth would be another fight altogether. Still, with the man in hand, the initiative now belonged to Jared.
They emerged in the hidden chamber where Lyza and the others had relocated. Even though the group had prepared themselves, the sight of Jared lugging Quentin and Luther dragging the guards left them speechless. A stunned breath escaped someone at the rear. “H-He… He actually did it?”
And not just Quentin, the manor’s Grand Chamberlain—Jared grabbed the man’s two trusted guards as well, all while the inner court was on full alert. The speed and precision of the job bordered on unbelievable.
“S-Senior… Are you hurt?” Lyza asked, voice dry. Her gaze flicked between Jared’s calm face and the limp, half-dead Quentin dangling from his grip.
“I’m fine.” With a curt flick of his wrist, Jared let go of Quentin. The Grand Chamberlain’s body hit the stone floor with a dull thud, as if Jared had tossed out a sack of garbage. Jared’s voice stayed flat. “Pick the most hidden, sound-proof room you have. Wake him. I’ve questions. As for these two…” His eyes slid toward the unconscious guards Luther had dumped in the corner. “Hold them for now,” he said, the words soft but final. “They might still be useful.”
“Understood!” Panther blurted, straightening so fast his shoulders snapped back. “Deepest level’s got a custom interrogation cell, sir! Full array work. Nothing gets in or out.”
Without waiting, Panther strode forward and caught Quentin under the arms. Meanwhile, Monkey grabbed the man’s legs. Together they lifted the limp weight and started toward the stairwell that led below. At Jared’s side, Lyza drew a long breath, forcing the tremor out of her voice. She turned on her heel, barking orders that kept the safehouse moving.
“Activate top-tier concealment,” she called. “No one leaves!” She jabbed a finger at Panther on his return. “Circle the perimeter. Make sure we’re clean! Monkey, team up with Master Luther. Deal with those two,” she added, nodding at the guards.
Luther’s silent tilt of the head signaled agreement. The room split into motion. Boots scuffed, charms clicked, low voices traded confirmations. In seconds each person had a task and a direction. Watching them fan out, Jared felt the safehouse transform. The ordinary walls became gears, every corridor a hidden spindle turning in perfect sync. He pivoted toward the stairwell. The dim passage yawned below, and he descended without hurry, Quentin’s fate already written in his mind.
Step after step, Jared weighed the coming exchange. Dragging answers from a man like Quentin would be work, not slaughter. He doubted mere pain would crack the Grand Chamberlain. Julian’s wrath and the celestials’ shadow likely terrified the man more than dying ever could. But Sidney and Cadence deserved the truth, no matter how deep it lay buried. Quentin was the lock, and the key, standing between Jared and that truth.
The underground interrogation chamber smelled of cold iron and wet stone. Runes crawled over every surface, their dull glow reflecting off the metal chair bolted to the floor. Quentin sat there, arms and ankles secured by Spirit-Suppressing Chains that hummed like angry insects. Each link pulsed, draining his mana and pricking his soul with a steady, needle-thin sting meant to keep him lucid yet weak.
Jared pulled a plain wooden chair across the floor and settled in face-to-face with the captive. Behind him, Luther stood motionless, presence as heavy as a monument. Lyza took her position at the door, eyes narrowed, shoulders tense, ready to seal the room at the first sign of trouble. Panther returned, hefting a bucket rimmed with frost. He upended it without ceremony.
Ice-cold water slammed into Quentin’s face and chest, scattering across the floor.
“Khh… Cough! Cough!”
The man gagged, head jerking against the restraints. His eyelids fluttered, then fixed open, confusion giving way to dawning horror. The freezing shock met the chain’s soul-bite, ripping him fully back to awareness in a single cruel heartbeat. Struggling to focus, he lifted his head. The first thing he saw was Jared’s calm, depthless stare—star-dark, merciless. A hollow weight dropped in his chest, colder than the water still dripping from his hair. Those were the eyes from Pine-Whisper Path, the eyes that had torn through every defense and carried him here.
Recognition tightened his throat. “W-Who are you?” he croaked. The words rasped out thin and broken, stretched over terror and exhaustion. He reached inward for aura. Nothing moved. His core felt sealed in molten iron, his channels wound tight with cables of lead. Even his mindspace lay under a lid he could not lift. The realization hit like free fall; the man who once commanded life and death now sat powerless, naked beneath their gaze.
Jared ignored the question, letting silence stretch until Quentin’s breathing turned ragged. Then he spoke, voice low enough to make the chains vibrate. “Sidney… Cadence… Soulfall Slope. Soul-Refining Crystal. A11-73.”
Quentin’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. Color drained from his cheeks until his skin matched the gray walls. The flash of terror was brief but bright enough for Jared and Lyza to see it clearly. So Jared had guessed right. Quentin knew. And the revelation rattled him even harder than Jared had hoped.
Jared leaned in, elbows on his knees, voice slicing off any last refuge. “Why did they die, Quentin? Who ordered it? What are you hiding? Where is the crystal? All of it, now… Answer, and I’ll make your end swift,” he added, each word deliberate.
Quentin shook so hard the chains rattled. Fear tangled with calculation behind his eyes. His lips parted, closed, parted again. At last he clamped his jaw and dropped his gaze—the stubborn silence of a pig led to slaughter. Quentin’s gaze flickered toward the floor, then the ceiling. The veins at his neck tightened, and the chains rattled as he tensed. Jared spotted frantic calculations behind those eyes before they froze.
He knew that if he spoke, death was certain, and even his soul would face unspeakable torment. He understood better than anyone Julian’s cruelty—and the dread power of the celestials backing him. Yet Quentin looked back at Jared as if measuring whether this unfamiliar tormentor might still leave him a sliver of hope.
A desperate spark flashed—the look of a cornered beast grasping at hope. Maybe the man was only bluffing?
“Not willing to talk?” Jared asked.
The words hung like frost. Cold bled into the room, and Quentin’s next breath left in a ragged mist. Jared stood and closed the distance. Gray light gathered at his fingertip, the cell’s only glow, eerie and hungry.
“You can feel the power I left inside you,” he said, voice steady. “It can snuff out your body in an instant, or peel your soul grain by grain—slower, crueler than any Soul-Refining Crystal. And I can stretch that slow for a very, very long time.”
Quentin’s knees rattled against the chair. The alien chill inside him writhed, tasting him. Every instinct screamed the threat was real; Jared saw it when Quentin’s eyes rolled white for a heartbeat.
