Chapter 154: Sinister Halls Of Stone

The basement vault’s amber light dimmed as Mochi sealed the armory behind them, the runes flickering once before going dark.

The three spirits climbed the creaking stairs in heavy silence. Every second they spent preparing was another second Kane remained in Elias’s claws.

They reached the Lamborghini in the alley behind the shop, its sleek lines gleaming under the late afternoon sun.

Cyrus slid behind the wheel, the engine roaring to life with a predator’s growl.

Mochi sprinted toward the passenger door, goggles bouncing on his forehead.

"Shotgun! I call—"

Ginsei’s hand shot out, catching the cat spirit’s shoulder and stopping him cold.

"Backseat."

His voice carried the authority of someone accustomed to obedience.

"That seat belongs to Kane."

Mochi’s ears flattened against his skull, but he didn’t argue.

Even chaos had its hierarchy.

"Fine, but I get window privileges," he grumbled, climbing into the back.

Ginsei settled into the leather seat beside Mochi.

"Okay, so how exactly do we find Kane? Elias could have taken him anywhere."

His voice carried the practical edge of someone accustomed to tracking fugitives through Feilun’s sprawling districts.

Cyrus’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, knuckles whitening against the leather.

"I gave Kane a diamond pendant. It’s infused with tracking magic."

The Lamborghini pulled away from the curb with a low growl, heading toward the industrial district where Moonfall Industries maintained its operations.

Ginsei’s eyebrow arched, a fleeting expression of surprise crossing his pale features.

Perhaps even grudging respect.

It was a pragmatic solution, even if the method raised questions about boundaries and consent.

"Tracking jewelry," he mused. "Effective, if somewhat..."

"Possessive?" Cyrus finished, his voice tight. "I’m aware."

From the backseat, Mochi’s ears perked up.

"Wait, that pretty black diamond thing? I knew there was something about that pendant when I saw it at Kagura."

He leaned forward between the seats, goggles sliding down his nose.

"You sneaky dragon. Making declarations and keeping tabs simultaneously."

Cyrus closed his eyes, letting the familiar weight of his dragon essence settle through his bones like molten gold.

The city’s chaos—honking horns, distant sirens, the hum of thousands of human lives—faded to background noise as he reached deeper into the ancient power that defined his very core.

There. A warmth bloomed in his chest, faint but unmistakable.

The tracking magic in Kane’s pendant pulsed like a distant heartbeat, tugging at his consciousness with invisible threads.

"Northeast," he murmured, turning the Lamborghini toward the industrial district.

"He’s... underground."

The sensation wasn’t precise—no GPS coordinates or street addresses materialized in his mind.

But the pull grew stronger as they drove, and with it came impressions that made his skin crawl.

The pendant’s pull grew stronger as they drove deeper into the industrial district, but with it came something else—impressions that crawled beneath Cyrus’s skin like ice water through his veins.

Stone. Ancient stone worn smooth by centuries of footsteps and tears.

The scent of dampness and despair, thick enough to taste.

Echoes of voices long silenced, their final words absorbed by walls that had witnessed too much suffering.

"Where mercy sleeps beneath the weight of bone..."

Madam Xiu’s riddle surfaced in his mind, each word carrying new meaning.

He’d initially interpreted it as a battlefield reference—some ancient site where warriors had fallen seeking the healing shard.

But this place Kane was trapped in... it wasn’t a battlefield at all.

Madam Xiu wasn’t describing where to find the Mercy Fragment; she was describing where Kane would end up."

Maybe she was trying to help without breaking whatever agreements bind her silence.

The pendant’s pull intensified, guiding them toward a cluster of abandoned buildings that squatted like gargoyles against the late afternoon sky.

But beneath that surface impression, Cyrus felt the deeper truth that made his dragon instincts recoil.

Underground chambers. Stone corridors carved from living rock, their walls stained with decades of anguish.

A place where mercy had indeed died, buried beneath the weight of countless bones.

Where desperate souls had been brought to suffer in darkness, their cries echoing off uncaring stone until even the walls themselves seemed to weep.

"Halls of stone," Cyrus whispered, the words tasting like ash on his tongue.

The pendant’s pull intensified, and with it came a terrible clarity that made Cyrus’s blood run cold.

Elias wouldn’t choose any random underground facility for his operations.

He was too calculating and methodical. Every decision served a purpose, every location carefully selected for maximum advantage.

Moonfall’s public face dealt in wilderness reclamation and natural magic resources.

But their black market reputation, the whispered rumors about containment technology and spirit trafficking—it all pointed to something far more sinister than simple smuggling.

Elias would need a place where the veil between worlds was already thin. Somewhere spirit energy pooled naturally, where the boundaries between life and death, hope and despair, had been worn gossamer-fine by decades of accumulated anguish.

Where mercy sleeps beneath the weight of bone.

Not literal bones. The metaphorical weight of countless spirits who had suffered and died in the same location, their final moments of agony and terror seeping into the very stones until the place itself became a reservoir of concentrated pain.

"There," he said, pointing toward a nine-story structure that dominated the skyline.

"St. Mariel’s Medical Center."

The abandoned hospital squatted like a monument to suffering, its broken windows staring down at them like hollow eye sockets.

Vines crept up the weathered brick walls, nature attempting to reclaim what humanity had abandoned.

Ginsei’s pale eyes widened in recognition.

"St. Mariel’s is on the Bureau’s restricted list. We’ve had reports of anomalous readings there for years, but every investigation team sent in reported equipment malfunctions."

From the backseat, Mochi bounced excitedly against the leather seats.

"Oh, this is perfect! I’ve been dying to explore St. Mariel’s for years!"

His goggles gleamed as he pressed his face to the window.

"They say the basement morgue connects to pre-war catacombs. Think of all the cursed medical equipment just waiting to be liberated!"

The perfect place for someone like Elias to build his underground laboratory.

Whatever unholy work Elias was conducting could feed off the residual spiritual energy of a place where mercy had indeed died countless times over.

Kane was down there, somewhere in those stone halls where suffering had been refined into an art form.