Chapter 74: Five

Chapter 74: Chapter 74: Five

Jason was returning the supply case to its corner when his fingers caught on something.

The bottom of the case sat a finger’s width too high. He pressed along the seam, and a thin panel lifted away, revealing a folded sheet of heavy paper that had somehow survived the scorching.

He unfolded it under the light of Skyler’s lantern.

It was a ledger page. Neat columns ran down its face: a name, a cultivation rank, a date, and a final column labeled *Contribution*. The handwriting was precise and unhurried, belonging to a person who had never once doubted his authority.

At the top of the page, pressed into red wax, was a seal.

Jason knew it before he finished looking at it.

The very same seal on the letter that announced his marriage.

A coiled serpent with a crown of flame. The Veryon crest.

His breath stopped, and for a moment the cold of the recess pressed against his skin like a hand. He kept his face blank. When he glanced up, Reeve’s eyes met his for half a second and slid away.

’Does he know where I’m from?’

"This is from one of the great clans." Skyler whispered.

"It is Veryon," Wen said.

"What is the Veryon clan seal doing in a Gate with an Association expedition?" Cassius asked from the floor.

Nobody answered.

Jason ran his finger down the page.

There were more than forty names. Third Level. Second Level. A dozen First Level cultivators, a handful at Peak Second. Every line carried a date, spread across the last several years, and each had been struck through with a single clean stroke.

Four months back, Jason found a Third Level hunter whose rank and date matched the bent plate in his pack. Beside each name, in the final column, the same word repeated.

’Spent.’

Jason read it again.

"They were not killed by monsters," he said quietly.

"What?" Skyler asked.

"You guys know what this looks like? To me this looks like accounting." He turned the page toward the light.

"Someone has been bringing Hunters into this place for years, at every rank, and recording what each of them was worth."

Wen made a small sound in her throat.

At the foot of the page was a heading in the same careful hand.

*Substrate: draconic. Stability: declining.*

Jason’s chest tightened.

It was the azure dragon bloodline. It had gone very still, the way an animal goes still when it hears a footstep in the grass.

He did not understand why, and he did not like it.

He thought of the egg. He thought of the pillars and the pulse of mana sinking into the floor.

’What are they feeding? And why does my Core feel like it recognizes the question?’

"There is one more line," Reeve said.

His voice was strange. He was standing over Jason’s shoulder, and his finger was pointing at the last row of the ledger, where the ink was fresher than the rest.

It had no names.

{Intake: five. Mixed rank. Scheduled this date.}

Jason knew the date. It was today’s.

The recess went quiet.

"Five," Cassius said slowly.

"There are five of us," Wen whispered.

Skyler stood up so fast her quiver rattled. "We were sent here to be used up. Just like them"

"I did not know," Reeve said. His voice cracked. "I swear to you all that I did not know."

"Who gave you the assignment?" Skyler demanded.

"A man at the Association annex. He said the order came from above."

"From whom?"

"He would not say."

Jason simply nodded in affirmation.

Reeve looked at him with something like disbelief.

"Your hands were shaking when you read the plate," Jason said. "A man who knew would have been calm. But your contact knew, Reeve.

Someone told you where to go and what to say, and I suspect they expected you to walk us in here without asking questions."

Reeve’s face twisted. He turned away and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.

Nobody spoke again for several breaths.

"Then what do we do? The ledger says we are already spent." Wen asked.

"We prove that it is wrong," Jason said.

Then the wall groaned.

It was a deep, grinding sound that rolled through the tunnel behind them, and the stone beneath their feet trembled.

Jason was moving before he had decided to. He reached the mouth of the recess in three strides and looked back along the passage.

The smooth wall they had stopped at was glowing.

The narrow grooves across its surface had lit from within, thin lines of pale light crawling across the stone, and the whole slab was sliding slowly to one side. Behind it, a wide stone stairway descended into the dark, thin veins of red light pulsing along its edges in time with the mana’s slow rhythm. A faint, cold draft rolled up out of it.

It smelled of old blood and hot metal.

"It is inviting us in." Jason said.

Cassius dragged himself upright against the wall. "Then we should leave. We should go back to the other tunnels and find another route."

"There is no other route," Jason said.

"You do not know that."

"I know that the wall was not here when Reeve came this way. I know that the mana in the Gate is being pulled toward the structure beneath us, and every path we take eventually bends toward it." He gestured at the stairway. "They closed the road behind us. Now they have opened the only door left."

"That is a trap," Wen said.

"Any five year old could tell that much at this point."

"Then why would we walk into it?"

"Because if we wait here, they will come up that staircase and find five tired hunters in a dead end."

Jason turned to face them. "And because I would rather walk in on my own legs than be carried."

From deep below, something echoed up the stairs.

It was the slow, heavy, even tread of boots, many of them, marching in perfect step.

Skyler checked her quiver and recounted all six arrows as though counting them would increase their number.

Wen steadied Cassius with a hand that shook but held. Cassius tested his weight on the bad leg and managed a thin grin.

"Walking into a trap," he said. "My favorite."

Jason let a thread of Perception slip down the stairway.

What he felt made his skin crawl. Many signatures, dense and disciplined, moving in perfect formation, far heavier than anything on the plain.

He could not read their cultivation levels, but he just knew that none of them could be beaten by five exhausted people.

Jason might’ve been able to try something himself if his Soul core wasn’t currently being surpressed by whatever it is that was being refined.

Reeve lifted his head.

For the first time that day, the lost look left his face. He drew his shield from his back and settled it on his arm.

"Then let’s move quietly," he said, "and we move now."

Jason thought of Novaria waiting at home, and the promise he had made to return.

’Whatever is down there, I am coming back.’

Jason slipped the ledger inside his jacket, tucked the recording crystal beside it, and took Cassius’s arm.

Together, they stepped toward the stairs.