The water in the sewer artery bit through Eloy’s boots. Cold, like it was trying to leach the warmth from his bones before anything else got the chance. He kept moving, one hand on the dressed stone wall, the other hovering near his belt pouch where two potion vials clicked with every step.

His HUD painted the tunnel in faint red. The blood trail marker pulsed ahead, a breadcrumb of light that only he could see.

[dondabomba]: bro this sewer walk is giving me subnautica vibes

[ghostrunner_X]: blood trail looking THICK today 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

[magnusopum]: eloy your mp is 22% dont do anything stupid

Eloy didn’t answer. Chat could wait. Valen couldn’t.

The marker veered left. Eloy followed it into a side channel, and the temperature dropped further. His breath fogged. The water here was shallower, barely ankle-deep, but it moved slower. Stagnant. Something had blocked the flow.

Scorch marks blackened the stone walls. Circular patterns, radiating outward like a starburst frozen in soot. Eloy knew that pattern. He’d seen it in the Academy courtyard when Isolde’s lightning had torn through Caldwell’s guards.

But this was different. Bigger. The scorch marks reached shoulder height, and at their center, the stone wasn’t just blackened. It was shattered. Crumbled into gravel that crunched under his boots.

"Eloy." Isolde’s voice came from behind him, flat and stripped of everything except the fact of speech. "Slow down."

"Trail’s getting brighter..." he mutters before raising his tone to the rest of the group. "We’re close. I can feel it."

"Then look at what you’re walking into."

He stopped. Turned.

Isolde stood at the channel’s mouth, silver hair catching the faint luminescence of whatever algae or mold or ancient magic clung to these walls. Maya was behind her, fan closed, wind-sense probably reading the dead air for threats.

Isolde didn’t look at them. She was looking at the floor.

Eloy followed her gaze.

A helmet lay in the water. Inquisition standard issue. The crest on the brow was scratched but intact. Inside it, the leather lining was dark with blood that hadn’t dried yet.

"Fresh," Maya said. She crouched, not touching it. "Within the hour."

Eloy’s jaw tightened. He checked his HUD. Still green.

"One guard," he said. "Maybe two. Valen took them out."

"Or they took him," Maya said

Isolde moved past him. She didn’t step around the helmet. She stepped through the water, boots splashing, and knelt at the far wall where the scorch marks ended.

Her fingers found a smear on the stone. Dark. Wet. She touched it, rubbed thumb against forefinger, then held her hand up to catch the faint light.

Blood. Cooling but not cold.

Her expression didn’t change. That was the thing about Isolde. Her face was a flat line, a wall of stripped inflection that made every emotion land harder for being absent. But her shoulders drew inward. Just a fraction. A tightening of muscle that Eloy had learned to read.

"His," she said. Not a question.

"How do you know?" Maya asked.

Isolde looked at her. "Trust me. I know."

She stood. Wiped her fingers on her tunic, leaving a dark streak on fabric already ruined by sewer water and worse. Her hands flexed once, twice, the same check she’d done in the alley. Making sure they still worked. Making sure she could still use them when the time came.

Eloy watched her. Isolde, mana-depleted, exhausted, physically compromised. Still the most dangerous person in this tunnel. Still the one who’d stepped between him and an execution order without hesitating.

"We keep moving then," he said.

Isolde nodded. Maya closed her fan with a snap.

They followed the channel as it narrowed, then widened, then narrowed again. The ancient symbols carved into the walls grew denser here, spiraling patterns that predated anything Eloy recognized from the game files. He’d memorized every texture, every asset, every hidden corner of Chronicle of the Fading Crest. These weren’t in the data.

[ghostrunner_X]: those symbols look like the ones from before ig

[LMAO_cat]: cut content confirmed???

[IsoldeSimp47]: eloy be careful omg

Eloy ignored the chat. The blood trail marker pulsed brighter with every step, a heartbeat of red light guiding him through passages that twisted like veins. Left. Right. Left again. The water deepened, then shallowed, then deepened again.

His ankle twinged. He didn’t slow down.

The channel opened into a junction chamber.

Eloy stopped. Isolde and Maya halted behind him, silent, reading the space.

The chamber was massive. Thirty meters across, maybe more, the ceiling lost in darkness above. Stone pillars rose from the water like the ribs of some buried leviathan, supporting arches that disappeared into the black. The water here was still, mirror-flat, reflecting the faint luminescence of the walls in ripples that moved without wind.

And in the center of it all, a single pillar stood alone.

Valen was chained to it.

Eloy’s HUD locked onto the marker. The red blood trail converged on the pillar like a targeting reticle, and beneath it, Valen’s status bar pulsed once.

[ Valen Croi — HP: 20% ]

The number was wrong. It had been 24% when they entered the channel. Four percent gone. The structured drain continuing, patient as a clock.

Valen’s head hung forward. His coat was torn, scorched at the edges, the same pattern as the walls. His hands were bound above his head by chains that glowed with a faint silver light. Not standard iron. Something else. Something that hummed with mana even from this distance.

Beside him, a figure stood motionless.

A woman.

Inquisition uniform, pristine despite the sewer damp. Silver mask covering her entire face, featureless, reflecting the chamber’s faint light in a blank oval. She wasn’t looking at Valen. She wasn’t looking at anything. She just stood there, hands at her sides, still as a statue in a temple.

Eloy’s Shadow Mark tingled. A low-frequency hum, like standing too close to a power line.

"Eloy," Maya whispered. "What do you see?"

"Valen. Center pillar. Chained." Eloy’s voice came out tighter than he wanted. "And... company. Not the good kind."

Isolde’s hand found his shoulder. Her fingers dug in, warning or grounding, he couldn’t tell.

"How many," she asked.

"One. Uniform. Mask." Eloy swallowed. "She’s not moving."

"It’s a trap," Maya said.

"Obviously."

"Then we retreat. Find another approach."

Eloy looked at the HUD. Valen’s HP ticked. 20% to 19%. The number changed like a scoreboard updating.

"No time," he said. "He’s draining. If we leave and come back later, he’s dead."

Isolde’s grip on his shoulder tightened, then released. "Then we go through."

"Isolde—"

"I fought without magic before." She moved past him, steps silent even in ankle-deep water. "I will again."

Eloy grabbed her arm. She stopped, didn’t pull away, just looked at his hand on her sleeve with the same flat stare she applied to everything.

"Wait," he said. "She hasn’t moved. She hasn’t looked at us. We don’t know what she is."

"She’s Inquisition," Maya said. "The mask. The uniform. That’s Purifier rank. They don’t negotiate."

"Then we don’t negotiate either." Eloy let go of Isolde’s arm. "We observe. Thirty seconds. Then we move."

He crouched behind a fallen pillar, pulling Isolde and Maya down with him. The stone was cold and slick with moss. Eloy peered over the edge, HUD tracking the masked figure, Valen’s status bar, the geometry of the room.

The chamber was open. No cover between the pillars and the center. The water was still, no current to mask movement. The masked woman stood between Valen and any approach vector.

But she hadn’t moved. Not a twitch. Not a turn of the head.

Eloy checked his MP. 22%. Enough to clip through... something. Maybe. If he timed it perfectly. If he made sure to stay vulnerable and with 0% MP. It was really not a reassuring thought.

[evilbobbryan]: shes just standing there... menacingly

[nachtfalter]: purifier??? this is like late game stuff, hell, even after that. dlc content

[wo1flion]: eloy your mp is too low for a direct engage

[coldfront44]: chat we need to vote on approach

Eloy shook his head. No poll this time. Chat could watch. He was making this call.

"Isolde," he whispered. "Can you flank? Right side, behind that pillar cluster. Get angle on her back."

"Yes."

"Don’t engage. Just position. If she moves, you move."

Isolde nodded. She didn’t ask about the plan’s holes. She just rose, silent as smoke, and melted into the shadows along the chamber’s edge.

Maya stayed beside him. Her fan was open, half-covering her face, wind affinity stirring the dust motes around them.

"What do I do," she asked.

"Stay here. If this goes bad, you run. Get the ledgers to someone who can use them."

"House Alne does not run."

"House Alne survives," Eloy shot back. "That’s what you told me. Surviving means knowing when to to get out when it matters."

Maya’s eyes narrowed behind her fan, but she didn’t argue.

Eloy counted to ten. Then he stood.

He didn’t hide. Didn’t sneak. He walked into the open, boots splashing in the still water, each step loud in the chamber’s silence. The sound carried, echoed, bounced off stone pillars and came back to him like applause.

The masked woman didn’t turn.

Eloy kept walking. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.

Valen’s head lifted. Just slightly. Just enough for Eloy to see one eye open, bloodshot, tracking him with the slow focus of someone who’d been beaten close to unconscious.

"Don’t," Valen rasped. The word barely made it out. His throat was bruised, dark marks circling like a collar. "Eloy. Don’t."

Eloy kept walking. Five meters. The masked woman was close enough to touch. Close enough to see the weave of her uniform, the precise stitching, the way her hands hung empty at her sides.

She still didn’t move.

Eloy stopped. Three meters away. Close enough to see that the mask wasn’t reflecting light, but emitting it. A faint silver glow from within, like there was something behind the featureless surface.

"Hey," Eloy said. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. "I’m here for my friend. You can let him go, or we can do this the hard way."

The masked woman didn’t turn her head.

But her voice cut across the chamber like a blade through silk.

"I was wondering how long it would take the token thieves to follow their bleeding scout."

Eloy’s blood went cold.

She knew about the token. She knew they’d used it. She’d been waiting.

The HUD screamed. Valen’s status bar pulsed once, sharp and red.

[ Valen Croi — HP: 19% ]

The masked woman raised one hand. The silver mask glowed brighter.

The glow in the mask matched the glow in the chains. A circuit, complete, draining Valen.