<h4>Chapter 366: Teleportation</h4>


    Hades


    We tore the room apart.


    Every panel, every joint. We unscrewed the bolts from the canopy frame, peeled back the carpet, pried at the floorboards with sonic des calibrated to expose even microfractures.


    Still nothing.


    No seams.


    No trapdoors.


    No signs of life.


    Just dust and air and the rising scent of defeat.


    I stalked the perimeter again, jaw clenched tight enough to snap bone. "She’s not here," I muttered. "She’s not fucking here."


    "Hades—" Cain started, but I cut him off with a wave of my hand.


    Elliot had cried himself hoarse this morning, his fingers digging into my coat when I promised I’d bring Kael back.


    I told him it would be okay.


    I told him I would fix it.


    I told him lies.


    A five-year-old boy who buried his mother just days ago had been forced to listen through the walls as the man who saved him—was taken. Dragged. Hurt.


    And all I’d done was fail.


    I aligned with Cain, of all people. A man with ties to every ck market, every crime ring in Obsidian. I’d humbled myself to him—to hiswork, his men, his ego.


    And still.


    Nothing.


    Felicia had slipped through every like smoke and Darius was going to win this round.


    He would have Kael.


    And we would have nothing.


    A phantom pressure built behind my eyes—tight, sharp, raw. I turned back to the dresser mirror. My reflection stared at me like a ghost.


    I didn’t see myself.


    I saw failure.


    "Hades," Cain said again, slower now. "Don’t."


    But it was already toote.


    I reared back and mmed my fist through the ss.


    The mirror shattered with a violent crack, shards bursting like splintered teeth across the vanity. My hand throbbed with a white-hot jolt—followed by the warm, slow spill of blood down my knuckles.


    Cain swore under his breath and barked an order to one of his men, but I wasn’t listening.


    I watched the blood drip.


    One drop.


    Two.


    Three—


    Then a shriek pierced the air.


    Sharp. Piercing. Female.


    I froze.


    My breath hitched.


    "Did you hear that?" I said sharply, turning. "That scream—did anyone else—?"


    Cain raised a brow. "What scream?"


    I stared at him. "That scream, Cain. It was right here!"


    He looked to his men. They shook their heads.


    My Gammas didn’t move.


    They didn’t even twitch.


    No one heard it.


    Except me.


    Then it came again—louder, higher, teeth-grinding. A cry that seemed to w straight into my spine and pull.


    Shrieeeeeeeeek—


    I staggered backward as the sound crescendoed, curling like a live wire in my skull.


    Then the blood on the floor began to glow.


    The drops from my knuckles—scarlet seconds ago—now pulsed with a strange silver light, veins of moonlit energy threading through them like cracks in ss.


    Cain took a cautious step forward. "What the fuck..."


    And then, the air shifted.


    The walls hummed.


    The mirror fragments started to rattle where they’d fallen.


    And somewhere beneath us—beneath this room—something answered.


    Something locked.


    Something screaming.


    But this time, it wasn’t just me who heard it.


    Because every light in the manor flickered.


    And the floor beneath my feet began to breathe.


    The floor drank the blood.


    Not soaked it—drank it.


    Each glowing drop sank slowly, unnaturally, into the boards like water pulled through parched stone. The wood darkened where it vanished, veins of silver webbing outward like frostbite.


    Then it stopped.


    The breathless stillness returned.


    Until—


    A symbol red to life beneath my boots.


    One letter but oddified and as strange as the first time I saw it. My body had recoiled then but this time it was soul that revolted.


    Old. Ancient. Etched in light not of this world.


    M.


    Not Montegue.


    The symbol that were on the Ferals, the one that Eve had said Vassir referred to as the symbol of Malrik.


    Cain cursed and stumbled back. "That’s not a crest. That’s a—"


    The floor copsed.


    No warning.


    No cracks.


    Just a violent whoomph as the boards beneath us gave way like paper, and the air dropped out from under my ribs. I had enough time to see Cain and two of his men vanish into the light below—then the rest of us were sucked down like dust in a cyclone.


    Screams.


    Metal nging.


    Weapons hitting the air, useless.


    We fell through silence, through ck, through the bones of the manor that no one remembered.


    Then—


    We hit.


    Not hard. Not bone-shattering.


    Like we’d been caught.


    The light dimmed, adjusting to our presence. A low, bioluminescent glow traced the room, showing smooth obsidian walls lined with mirrored veins. It wasn’t dirt or stone. It was crafted. Designed.


    ---


    My eyes snapped open.


    White. Blinding.


    I jolted upright, hand already reaching for my weapon, only to find the grip cold in my fingers—functional, but unfamiliar in this light.


    The chamber wended in was vast. Wide. White. Seamless.


    The walls weren’t stone, weren’t metal—at least not any alloy I recognized. They curved with unnatural symmetry, smooth and silent, absorbing sound like a vacuum. No seams. No cracks. Just an endless stretch of off-white architecture with no markings and no sky.


    My men stirred around me, coughing, disoriented but alive. The Gammas rose first, moving into a defensive posture with muscle memory alone. Cain’s rogues weren’t far behind, shaking off the fall in confused, silent nces. Even Cain looked shaken—his mouth set in a grim line as he scanned the space with narrowed eyes.


    "What the hell is this ce?" he muttered, pacing in a slow circle.


    "Not ab I know," I answered, voice low.


    But it was ab.


    Of some kind.


    The floor was immacte. The light source had no origin—no bulb, no fixture—just a soft glow that seemed to breathe with us. There were no windows. No shadows. No tech interface.


    I reached for mym and brought it to my ear.


    Nothing.


    Dead silence.


    Cain tried his too. His expression darkened. "No signal. No pulse. It’s like this ce eats frequency."


    "Then we’re blind," I said. "And deaf."


    The tension shifted.


    Every operative in the room felt it—that slow, awful coil of realization.


    We weren’t just underground.


    We were elsewhere.


    "Fan out," I ordered, cutting through the hush. "Scan for anything—air vents, soundproofing, exits. This ce was built. And whoever built it knew what they were doing."


    Movement began. Tense. Controlled.


    But even that control shattered a momentter when one of Cain’s men slipped.


    Hard.


    The man hit the ground with a grunt and swore, clutching his side.


    I was already moving.


    "Hold still," I said, crouching beside him.


    My hand found the slick patch beneath his boot.


    Warm.


    Dark.


    I brought it to my nose.


    Blood.


    But not just any blood.


    Kael’s.


    I stood so fast my spine snapped straight. My pulse surged with cold fury.


    "It’s his," I said aloud. "Kael was here. This is his blood."


    Cain tensed. "How can you be sure?"


    "Because I know his scent. I trained him. He was one of mine before he was my Beta."


    Cain stared at the blood like it was a lifeline—or a curse.


    I followed the stter with my eyes.


    It wasn’t random.


    A trail.


    Faint. But present.


    It disappeared toward one seamless section of the wall that suddenly hissed, then opened with a mechanical whisper.


    An automatic door.


    A hallwayy beyond.


    White.


    Endless.


    Empty.


    _{f|re(e)web.n\ovel. (c)o.m}


    Except for the blood.


    Smears now. Then droplets. Then heavier again.


    Like he’d stumbled. Been dragged. Or worse—run and fallen.


    I turned to my men.


    "All of this," I said, voice dark with urgency, "means they passed through Felicia’s room. It was a threshold. A portal. A decoy."


    Cain nodded once. "And Kael’s not gone."


    "Not yet," I growled. "He’s bleeding. That means he’s alive."


    For now.


    We moved.


    The hallway swallowed us in rows—Gamma and rogue, side by side. No more arguing. No more tension. We were hunting something now.


    The light ahead shifted as we marched.


    The white grew deeper. Sharper. Colder.


    And the trail of blood kept going.


    Kael was leaving pieces of himself behind.


    We kept moving.


    The blood trail snaked ahead, thin and desperate. Every few feet, it deepened—Kael had stumbled more than once. Or been dragged. The white floor drank it up like ink on snow, but the scent never lied.


    He was still close.


    But time was thinning around him.


    Around us.


    Then we saw it.


    An end—but not a door.


    Not exactly.


    Just more hallway.


    Until one of my Gammas struck something mid-step and reeled back like he’d walked into a wall of steel.


    "What the hell—?" he hissed, clutching his face.


    He hadn’t seen it. None of us had.


    Cain stepped forward, eyes narrowing. "A barrier?"


    I approached and reached out, slowly.


    My palm stopped midair.


    Nothing visible.


    But something there.


    It hummed faintly beneath my skin, like electricity tasting the air.


    Then—


    Snap.


    A shock ran through my hand, sharp and invasive—like needles threading into the bone.


    The force field lit up.


    Veins of red light slithered through the air, forming glyphs in the shape of jagged runesnguage not born of our world. The hallway behind us sealed with a hiss.


    Then came the voice.


    Mechanical. Inhuman.


    "IDENTITIES UNCONFIRMED. PRESENCE UNAUTHORIZED. INITIATING DNA SEQUENCE SCAN."


    Every Gamma lifted their weapons.


    The rogues fell into nking positions, forming a defensive wall around Cain.


    Red lines of lightshed out from the barrier—thread-thinsers scanning our retinas, pulsing over our bodies, reading everything from bone structure to heartbeat.


    "LYCAN. HYBRID. ROGUE. HOSTILE."


    The hallway turned crimson.


    "ENGAGE."


    Doors we hadn’t even noticed along the walls mmed open with hydraulic screams.


    And then they came.


    The Ferals.


    wing, rabid, malformed.


    Mouths too wide, eyes too pale, limbs warped from Flux exposure. Their shrieks drowned the air as they surged forward in a coordinated wave.


    Dozens.


    No—hundreds.


    "Shift!" I roared, already feeling my bones snap and lengthen, fur tearing through my skin as my body exploded into its beast form.


    My Gammas followed suit instantly—howls splitting the air as ws met steel, fang met flesh.