Beneath Sarielle's purposeful finger, a perfect circle around the knot retracts, leaving an indent in the wall. A mechanical click sounds, cutting into the alley's silence with the swift sharpness of a blade.

As she straightens, she sees Dalton twitch in the corner of her eye. "I hope no-one heard that," he murmurs.

A hairline gap splits the centre of the panel. It pauses there, leaving a few tense, heavy seconds before hidden cogs grind against each other and it resumes its jarring movement. The entire wall shudders, fresh grey clouds of dust billowing out into the air until Sarielle has to blink hard to clear her eyes of the particles' sting, but it's all worth it. The opening succeeds in pulling itself apart. Beyond it, the gaping maw of a passageway yawns dark and cold, curving sharply downwards beneath the foundations and lit only by a single, flickering torch perched on a plinth at the bottom of a steep staircase. She swallows, heart thumping. Freedom and escape have a way of disguising themselves with fear's black cloak.

Another scraping click sounds as the doorway settles into position, and the corridor creaks. A crack at the wall's uppermost corner gains another fork. A few stones spill from the ceiling above obscured by dust, scattering in front of her feet. She draws a breath, rolls her shoulders, and tries not to look up to examine the full extent of the expanding damage. It isn't going to collapse on them. It can't, not yet.

"If they did hear," she says to Dalton, "we'll be long gone." She turns to face him and digs for a playful grin, something light and easy. "Care to traverse the way royalty once trod?"

He doesn't respond with anything of the same casual nature. His expression is dark, drawn in wary lines. "I don't know about this, Sarie."

She stops, confused. "Why?"

He runs his tongue over his lips, casting an uncertain gesture at the ceiling, the fallen debris, the empty darkness cowering within the tunnel. "We can't be sure it's safe down there."

Impatience fans the burn in her chest, fiery ribbons entwined with rocky anxiety, hard, slate-like fear with edges that cut. "It's the only option we have," she whispers back, hearing her own urgency. Her uninjured leg bounces. "We have to go, Dalton. It'll be fine. I promise."

"You can't promise that." There's something strange about his voice. Like his tone has become rote, repetitive, his gaze stony and emotions like muted, flickering shadows cast by a weak candle. It still hurts when he adds, "You're naive, Sarielle. How can I trust you?"

Shame's warmth flows into her cheeks, rubbing against frustration. She crosses the couple of steps back towards him and grabs for his hand, startled when he jerks it out of reach but seeking it out again anyway, seizing his wrist and pulling, yet his feet seem melded to the floor and refuse to budge. "Dalton," she hisses. "This is silly. Come on."

"Oh, I'm--" The sharp words cut off as quickly as they came as if bitten and torn away. He flinches with the abruptness, a hard blink shaking away the flatness to his eyes and bringing back the sparks of heartfelt blue-grey. Fear shimmers within the glitter. "I..."

Panic surfaces in Sarielle's gut. It wields wheeling tentacles. "What's wrong?"

Numbly, he drops his gaze to stare down at his feet and forcibly blinks again. He presses the heel of a palm to his forehead, inhale ragged. "My head's..." His frown deepens. "I can't move."

"Like you're stuck?"

He nods slowly, thought spilling a new, more real darkness over his features. His gaze flicks back up to meet hers. "I think there's someone... in my head."

Foreboding leaks into her chest, clenching like a fist. "Magic?" The word comes with none of its usual enticing sparkle.

His jaw is tight as he nods.

"You can fight it?"

His mouth forms a thin line, compressing silence. His expression is a forced mask. Dull colours flit beneath its surface.

"You can," she answers for him, desperation stinging her tongue. "You have to." Wrapping both hands around his arm, she yanks, and he stumbles, his boots squeaking as they're dragged against their will. His arm fights her, trying to wriggle free as if a creature of its own, out of his control.

"I'm sorry," he stammers out, the syllables fluid and tripping. "I didn't mean to say you were naive. It just slipped out, and..." He lets out a short, shaky chuckle. "I'm having trouble speaking at all. This is..." His voice trails briefly into mouthed silence before he battles in a breath and tries again. "Not pleasant."

"It's alright. Just stay with me." The tears are coming back. Sarielle blinks them away furiously, muscles straining and heels skidding over uneven stone floor as she pulls at Dalton's arm. They're inching, slowly but surely, too slowly, towards the passage's opening. Dalton jerks back again, and they gasp in sync as pain jars them both. His momentum shoves her forward into him, their foreheads knocking together.

Thundering sound peels through the halls. Footsteps.

Dalton gently shifts her grip on him, interlacing their fingers. I'm sorry, he mouths.

A victorious cheer swoops from somewhere awfully nearby.

His lips touch her forehead. The lightest kiss is left behind there, her skin tingling as he retracts. "Run," he manages to whisper, voice quaking. "Be safe."

She shakes her head, throat constricted. Why does she have to cry? It blurs her mind as much as her vision. "Not without you," she chokes out.

"Got them, General!"

Against her desires, her gaze drags itself from Dalton's face and over his shoulder, and she catches sight of the figure skidding into view at the dead-end hallway's entrance. Terrible navy clothes him in baggy swathes. He dashes forward just as a second soldier appears, then a third, though neither of these move. The second draws a bow. The first wields a sword. The third merely stares, a dark hood drawn over his coal-coloured hair and his stance almost inhumanly rigid.

General Harlow Rakis. Sarielle hasn't understood the full depths of her hatred towards that man until this very moment.

Her fists curl into Dalton's sleeve as she pulls again, but the material slides from her grip; he's extracting himself purposefully now, his eyes like steel drilling into her. "Go," he says. "That's an order, Sarie."

Rejection fills her mind, swamping her thoughts. There's a blindness to it. Its strings wrap her limbs, and she lets them dig into her skin, their biting refusal to move seeping inward and coiling around her heart like a drifting, dread-glazed tangle of vines. She isn't abandoning another friend, not so soon. She can't lose Dalton too.

She can't have lost everything.

Like a sudden rush of wind, his feet finally move. They carry him in a blurred spin, just in time for him to bring his sword up to block the charging Neyaibet soldier. Metal grinds against metal. Teeth bared in a grin, the soldier pulls back, feints left, then skitters to the side in an attempt to drive his sword into Sarielle. She jumps back with a bitten yelp, injured leg smarting and pulsing with annoyance at all the work it's had to do. Dalton is there to protect her. He parries the attack and shoots her another pointed glance over his shoulder as he does so, gaze steely. "Go!"

Her head shakes vehemently. Adrenaline pumps the fear through her veins in prickling surges. She can't go. How can she go? She's sentencing him to capturement or death along with her father, with Fiesi. She has to stay right here. Her mind flings that notion in wild circles, over and over.

Dalton looks over again and inhales through gritted teeth. "Not you, too."

What? she tries to ask, but her tongue is numb. Realisation bubbles to the surface and then pops. It's too slippery to catch hold of.

Muscles in his arm tense, Dalton shoulders the soldier away with a heavy thrust of his sword and lifts the tip to point at his chest, warding him away. The soldier is unfazed. He lifts his chin, dancing lightly on his toes, his sword twirled between his fingers without striking again. The cocky gleam in his eyes is somewhat hollow, as if someone else stares through the pinprick hole it creates.

"Captain Heathe," he greets with a flourish of his weapon, then jerks his gaze to Sarielle. "Lady Diraldi. You realise it's pointless to resist us, right? We've got you. You can't run."

"You Neyaibet bastard," Sarielle grinds out, finding the feeling behind that statement is strong enough to leap out in a lick of fire. She hopes Harlow can hear her, though he still lurks several paces away like an ominous, shadowy puppeteer. He's certainly watching.

The soldier only shrugs and spins his sword again. "Better us than the monster prowling around here. Would you rather he caught you?" His gaze settles on Sarielle, simmering shades of lava and obsidian in the dim light, harsh, rolling waves of heat and malice and delight stirring his fountain of emotions. "General tells us he's very eager to get his hands on you, miss."

A startlingly angry growl shudders from Dalton's jaw. He throws an arm out, blocking her off, his spine taut as an unwound spring. His sword extends further to poke at the soldier's chest, yet all he does in return is laugh.

His head sways side to side as if to a song only he can hear. "He's coming for you," he sings. "Better come with us before he eats you alive."

"He's not a monster," Sarielle snaps.

The soldier snorts, expression twisted with amusement. "Whatever."

Hand curled around her hilt, she makes to draw it, the fury boiling in her veins surely hot enough to melt the sticky sap glueing her boots to the floor and let her advance, but Dalton acts before she can. His sword cuts towards the soldier's chest. Caught off guard, he stumbles into a wobbly pivot, feet slipping from under him as he brings his own blade up to block, though his smile is hoisted back up the moment he hits the ground. He slides with the momentum of the fall. His feet thunk into the wall, and the rumbling sound of stone-brick breaking apart cracks like thunder all around them.

Dalton whirls, eyes wide and snapping to Sarielle immediately. She stares back. Like a flock of birds released from a packed cage, panic's wings flutter a storm in her chest, whipped up by some cold, foreign finger until its darkness seals out her ability to think. If he says something, she doesn't hear it. The next she knows, his sword is in his sheath, both of his hands are locked into her tunic, and he's shoving her.

Something snaps. Her muscles cry out, desperate to stay rigid yet forced to keel backwards, and her feet have forgotten how to catch her. Her shoulders fall further than the distance her senses calculate. They hit stone with a jarring force that twangs agony up her spine, bent too far back, and then grate awfully over a series of pointed bumps, her weight and momentum propelling her into a spiralling cloud of blackness. Her bones rattle and throb. Her head takes a knock and her vision flickers, the world spinning meaninglessly. By the time she finally comes to rest, winded and packed with her body's dry, pulsing screams, she can barely remember how she came to be there.

Clattering thuds ring, a collection of bells with pitch deepened beyond recognition. The sound of a passage's opening caving in.

Sense rushes back in. "Dalton," she breathes, barely working her tongue around his name as she fights to suck in enough air to form it; black spots dance before her eyes as she sits up too fast. She blinks them back and scrambles to her feet, sweeping back the curtains of pain pressing at her vision's edges. He's there. A short staircase stretches up above her, the basement tunnel's rickety opening, and he stands so close to the top of it. One foot advances in front of the other as if pushing to follow her, but he doesn't move. He's stuck again.

He holds her gaze, helpless. A larger piece of debris tumbles from the creaking ceiling and lands dangerously close to him, forcing him to flinch back, but still he looks her way. Resignation folds over his fear. He nods.

No. He wants her to take the chance he's given her and run, but she can't. She has to go back. She has to get back to him. Inhaling a hissing breath through her teeth, she raises a foot to the bottom stair and pushes up, stumbling as her limp drags her down. The dust in the air drags a cough from her throat.

Go back, she thinks again, her thoughts stuttering in a row all to that same conclusion, and climbs the next stair. A crack digs into the sole of her boot. Everything is cracking.

The soldier is back on his feet. She looks up to see him dive at Dalton again, yet Dalton grabs his arm, manoeuvring him in a shove that flings them both into the breaking wall. The impact tremors through the stone at her feet, and the opening finally loses the strength to stand.

It all collapses at once.

"Dalton!" Sarielle screams, his name raw and painful as it rakes the roof of her mouth. Panic shouts to sprint for him with all her might, though she only makes it one stair before the ceiling above her crumbles and a different kind of terror plunges into her gut. She spins on her heel and leaps. Her feet smack into stone with more force than her legs can handle. They fold underneath her, and all she can do is tuck herself into a ball and roll until her back is to the cave-in and her arms are brought up to shield her face. The noise is immense. It punches her eardrums again and again, each strike quaking with the possibility of some huge boulder plummeting down to shatter her ribcage, each tiny stone that comes in its place raining down upon her back like hail. It feels as if the entire castle is coming down all around her, and as silly as that thought is in its drama, fear's sour taste doesn't leave her tongue even as it all eventually fades away.

Popping silence floods into the emptiness. It takes several seconds before she finds the courage to lift her head and slowly, achingly, turn over to survey the damage. The weak, straining amber glow the nearby torch casts is just enough to illuminate it.

The staircase is all but ruined. Half of it is obscured entirely by a spilling stack of rubble, walls either side leaning heavily upon the collapsed structure. Flecks of the upper floor are visible through tiny gaps high above, little more than spots of faraway colour through holes no bigger than a few fingers could fit through, yet the corridor on the other side is hidden entirely. Perhaps it's all gone. Perhaps the whole hall has been crushed beneath the weight of blank, fragile, uncaring stone. Dread as thick as blood swims in her stomach, lurching up into her throat with a burning flavour. Tears sting her eyes.

"Dalton," she whispers, her voice echoing eerily. It makes her wince. Her tone cracks right through the middle, a crater wide enough to swallow every glint of light.

With some effort, she clambers to her feet, legs trembling as if clumsily constructed of leaves and twigs. She hobbles to the wall, leans heavily against it as she unscrews the torch from its plinth with shaky fingers, and then ventures with breath held towards the blocked-off exit. The torch's flickeringly warm caress to the side of her face does little to erase the sticky cobweb chill crawling over her skin.

Her palm grazes rough, cold rock and rests there. Her mind feels clear of the haze of Harlow's interference now, and yet she finds herself stuck again, numbly staring at the greyness of the broken wall. She thinks again of Dalton, of his storm-coloured eyes and tireless determination and soft, gentle touch. Salt is tangy in her throat as the tears spill free.

She drops to her knees, holding in a sob. "I'm so sorry."

The shadows press in around her with bony, groping hands, and all she does is duck her head. A chasm has opened in her chest.

For as long as she can remember, Sarielle has always had a plan. A goal, a quest, a desire, a hope to follow and a wish for something better. A spark cradled close that guided her through everything. Now, huddled in the muted darkness and surrounded by pieces of an old, beaten home, she can't find anything. She can't even find the will to stand.

She simply lets herself cry.

───── ⋆⋅♛⋅⋆ ─────

Something about breaking Sarielle feels worse than any other character. Maybe because it's so much harder with her. I've had to put in prolonged effort to make it to this moment :(

Although I do find it oddly funny that Dalton saved her by pushing her down the stairs send help I think I spent so long on this chapter I've gone crazy--

- Pup