Aaron advanced. The staff in his hands blurred — steel howling through air dense with mana. Each swing cracked the torches sideways, scattering sparks against the walls. The sound alone made Ludger’s skin crawl.

He ducked under a horizontal sweep; the gust it left behind hit like a hammer. The impact tore dust from the ceiling. One clean hit from that thing and his ribs would fold — or worse, his useless arms.

Gaius tried to counter, one hand raised, stone trembling under his palm — but his chains had drunk most of his mana. The spell fizzled, only managing to spit a handful of gravel.

Aaron laughed, pivoting into a thrust that would’ve split Gaius’ chest — until Ludger moved.

He stepped in, faster than his broken body should’ve allowed, using his shoulder as a wedge. The staff slammed into his side instead. Pain flared, white and electric. He bit down on it and let the impact carry him back, sliding on one knee.

Too strong. Even at full strength, this would have been a challenge.

The room wasn’t made for fighting. No space for flanking, no line for ranged casting — just raw reflex.

Aaron didn’t waste the gap. He reversed the staff and came down again, aiming for Ludger’s skull.

Ludger forced mana through what was left of his core. The floor bulged — a half-formed pillar that took the hit for him. Steel met stone, detonating in a burst of sound. Shards peppered Ludger’s face; he didn’t flinch.

He threw himself sideways, using the recoil to dive toward Gaius.

“Buy me two seconds,” he hissed.

Gaius’s mouth twitched — not quite a smile. “One’s all I’ve got.”

The old mage lifted his hand, and for a heartbeat, the floor rippled. Not the heavy tremor of geomancy, but a subtle vibration that crawled up the walls. The ceiling groaned.

Aaron hesitated, feeling the change. That was all Ludger needed.

He slammed his right heel down, channeling what little mana he had left. A faint rune pulsed under his boot — Heaviness.

The ground snapped downward under Aaron like a trapdoor.

He dropped half a meter before he could react, balance lost.

Ludger moved in that instant, his broken arms hanging useless, but his head clear. He twisted his hips, driving a knee into Aaron’s thigh with a bone-cracking sound. The man grunted, more surprised than hurt, and retaliated with a backhanded sweep that sent Ludger spinning into the wall.

Stone met spine. The world went dark for half a breath.

When he blinked the dust out of his eyes, Aaron was already recovering — standing atop the sunken floor, grinning again.

“Not bad for a cripple,” he said. “But I’ve broken better mages than you.”

Ludger spat blood and grinned back. “Guess you’re due for a worse one.”

The ceiling above Aaron split with a thunderous crack.

Gaius, both hands now pressed to the ground, whispered through gritted teeth, “Down you go.”

A slab of stone, the size of a wagon, tore loose and crashed down toward Aaron.

He raised his staff instinctively, runes flaring — but he couldn’t fully deflect the mass. The impact threw him to his knees, half-buried under the rubble, steel singing as it absorbed the blow.

Ludger staggered upright, breathing ragged, vision tunneling. He could barely stand, but he could still move dirt.

He reached out with his senses — the way Gaius had taught him. The broken floor. The unstable ceiling. The veins of loose gravel around the fallen slab. He pulled.

Stone shifted. Pressure built. The air screamed.

Aaron tore free from the rubble, face bloodied but eyes burning bright. He pointed the staff at Ludger.

“Let’s end this, brat.”

Ludger met his gaze, calm, dead-tired, smiling through the blood. “Yeah. Let’s.”

He stomped once more.

The floor gave way all at once.

Not a clean collapse — it liquefied. The stone cracked, shattered, then melted into a rolling surge of sand. Torches snapped out, swallowed whole. The air filled with dust and a deep, hungry hiss as the whole chamber turned fluid.

Aaron cursed, staggering as the ground turned to sludge beneath his boots. Every step sank deeper. He drove his staff down, but the sand swallowed it halfway before he could brace. The pull was merciless.

Across the room, Gaius and Ludger stood on the same quicksand — but it didn’t take them. Their feet glowed faintly, earth mana thrumming in perfect sync. They didn’t stand on the sand so much as within it, guiding its flow beneath them like an invisible raft.

Ludger’s breath came in short, ragged bursts. His arms still hung useless at his sides, but his focus didn’t waver. The sand answered him — sluggish, heavy, but obedient.

Aaron, on the other hand, was already waist-deep. His teeth clenched, muscles bulging as he tried to wrench free. “You little—”

He didn’t finish. The sand climbed to his ribs.

Then he moved — a flash of motion born of desperation. He swung his staff straight down. The glyphs along its length blazed, channeling a shockwave so dense it turned the sand beneath him to solid rock for a split second.

The rebound threw him upward, body arching like a missile out of a pit. He landed hard on the stone table Gaius was chained  before, gasping, half-coated in grit.

When he looked up—

Ludger was already gone.

Only a flicker of shadow at the ceiling, a blur against the jagged edges of the tunnel he’d carved earlier. Sand poured upward like an obedient serpent, lifting him and Gaius toward the light.

Aaron roared, thrusting his staff forward. The tip flared — too slow.

Ludger didn’t look back. He just raised one foot and drove it into the ceiling rim. The earth responded, sealing itself in thick, heavy slabs.

The hole closed in a heartbeat, chunks of stone slamming down one after another until only silence remained.

Aaron stood alone, knee-deep in the sand that was already turning cold and still. The air reeked of mana discharge and blood.

He laughed — once, sharp and bitter — then slammed the butt of his staff against the hardened ground. “You think you’ve won, kid?” he rasped to the empty chamber. “You just buried yourself somewhere else.”

Above, far beyond the muffled ceiling, a tremor rolled across the area— the sound of collapsing tunnels and retreating earth.

Ludger’s breathing was ragged in the dark shaft, but his eyes stayed open. He and Gaius rose through the sand like ghosts, the air growing thinner and cleaner with every meter.

When they finally broke through to the surface, dawn light hit them like a blade.

They didn’t speak. Both knew they’d pushed too far. Both knew Aaron was still alive down there.

But for now, they’d escaped. And that was enough.

The wind in the area was sharp and cold, carrying the smell of dust and iron. Gaius leaned against a tree, every breath slow but measured. Ludger knelt beside him, his arms trembling from the pain that hadn’t yet caught up to him.

“How much time did that buy us?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Gaius shook his head. “A couple of hours, maybe. Aaron’s scum, but he’s the third-strongest fighter in Meira. He’ll claw his way out once the ceiling stops trying to kill him.”

Ludger’s jaw tightened. “Third strongest,” he muttered. “That’s still two too many.”

The boy sank cross-legged onto the dirt, closing his eyes. He forced his breathing steady, drawing in the thin thread of mana trickling back toward his core. Healing Touch shimmered faintly across his right arm — light seeping into flesh and bone like molten gold through cracks. It didn’t fix everything. It just made the pain sharper and the bones less wrong.

Each pulse left him drier. His mana control was precise, but running on fumes turned precision into torture. The dull ache of broken bones gave way to an electric sting as he stitched the limb enough to move it.

“You shouldn’t waste what you have left,” Gaius said. His voice was low, pragmatic. “We regroup, and deal with him properly. Not like this.”

Ludger opened one eye. “You think he’ll stay quiet after getting humiliated underground?”

“He’ll spread your name if he’s smart. Use it to draw more snakes to him.”

“Exactly,” Ludger said. He flexed his half-healed fingers; they twitched, but they obeyed. “If he gets topside and starts talking, the whole network learns I’m alive. That can’t happen.”

Gaius stared at him for a long moment, then sighed — that heavy, father-of-too-many-idiots sound. “You’re going to go back down there.”

“Not yet.” Ludger’s eyes opened fully, sharp and cold. “First I need my arms. Then I’ll finish what I started.”

For a moment, they just listened to the mountain breathe — the distant grind of settling stone below, the hiss of sand falling through unseen cracks. Somewhere under all that, a man named Aaron was clawing his way back to the surface.

Ludger felt it in his bones. The next fight wouldn’t be in a cage. It’d be in the open — and one of them wouldn’t be walking away.

He closed his eyes again, forcing his focus back inward, steadying his mana flow. The mountain had given him a few hours. He intended to make them count.

“What the hell were you even doing here, kid? You don’t just crawl under Meira for sightseeing.”

Ludger exhaled through his nose, still shaping small streams of sand through his fingers — more to keep his focus than anything. “I was looking for you. We’re heading south soon—The guild took a job. Building a bridge over the sea.”

Gaius raised a brow. “A bridge? That’s… ambitious. And stupid.”

“Yeah,” Ludger said flatly. “Exactly why I need you. Too many unknowns—currents, sea, monsters. My earth shaping won’t mean much without someone who knows how to anchor deep formations.”

Gaius rubbed his beard, wincing as his still-raw wrists brushed the edge of his cloak. “So you came looking for your half-dead teacher instead of hiring a proper architect.”

“I needed someone I trust,” Ludger said. “There are other factors as well.”

The old mage huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Trust. You’re gonna get wrinkles before puberty talking like that.”

Silence settled between them for a moment, filled only by the scrape of wind through loose gravel. Then Gaius sighed, his tone softening. “I owe you for the rescue, kid. So… fine. I’ll help with your damn bridge. Sounds like a pain, but a favor’s a favor.”

Ludger’s mouth twitched into a dry smirk. “We’re even.”

Gaius blinked. “Even?”

“You got caught trying to track the bastards who ambushed me, Viola, and Luna two years ago. You nearly got yourself killed because of that.”

Gaius stared at him for a beat, then barked a rough laugh that ended in a cough. “That’s how you measure debt? Kid, I was the one dumb enough to chase leads alone.”

“Then we’re both dumb,” Ludger said. “Call it balanced.”

The old mage’s grin faded slowly, replaced by something quieter — not quite pride, not quite worry.

“Rest while you can,” Ludger added. “Once Aaron’s up, we finish this before nightfall.”

Gaius tilted his head back, eyes closing again. “You sure you’re not ten going on forty?”

Ludger didn’t answer. He just stepped closer to the hole, watching the dust plume far below where the buried tunnels began to stir again.

Aaron was alive down there. And if he crawled back into the light, Ludger would be waiting.

Ludger had moved quietly through the area, leaving only faint prints in the dust. When he came back, he carried three rabbits strung by their legs and a canteen full of water.

Gaius opened one eye when the smell of singed fur reached him. “You hunt now?”

“Earth mage privilege,” Ludger said, kneeling beside a small pit he’d carved into the ground and adding some wood. A thin tongue of flame licked at the meat—nothing fancy, just a spark of recovered mana “The area is full of them. They probably moved up after your tremors scared off the bigger beasts.”

He flipped one rabbit with a stick, the motion methodical. His right arm shook slightly but obeyed. His left remained still at his side, bandaged from elbow to wrist thanks to his spare clothes.

“Drink some water. You’re not going anywhere on just mana.”

Gaius grunted but took it. His hands trembled more than he liked, the water spilling down his chin before he wiped it away. “You sound like my wife used to.”

“Then she was right.” Ludger handed him a skewer of meat, half-cooked but edible. “Eat. You’ve been starved and drained for days. Mana recovery means nothing if your body can’t hold it.”

The old mage bit into it, chewing slowly. His face didn’t show it, but Ludger saw the faint twitch of relief when the first swallow hit his stomach.

They ate in silence for a while. Wind hissed through the stones. Somewhere in the distance, a hawk cried.

Gaius finally set the stick aside, staring at the faint shimmer of heat over the pit. “You’ve changed,” he said. “Not just stronger. Colder.”

“Efficient,” Ludger corrected.

“Same thing, when you’re ten.”

Ludger didn’t rise to it. He stood and walked a few steps from the fire, letting his senses sink through the dirt. He could feel the faint tremor again—deep, rhythmic, like the slow heartbeat of the mountain. The tunnels below were shifting. Aaron was moving.

He looked back over his shoulder. “You’ll need another hour. Keep drinking.”

Gaius frowned. “You plan to face him alone again?”

“Not by choice.” Ludger flexed his arm, the half-healed bones grinding faintly. “If he surfaces before you can stand, I’ll have to stall him. Actually, I will defeat him. I have an idea.”

“That’s suicide.”

Ludger’s tone stayed calm. “It’s math.”

Ludger almost smiled at that, the expression faint as dust in sunlight. “You heal, old man. I’ll handle the scum.”

He stood again, gaze fixed on the ridge below. The tremors were closer now—stronger, angrier.

The mountain was about to spit Aaron back out.

And Ludger was ready to bury him again.

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