My Infinite System.

Lucian crossed the courtyard first.

Marc and Silas followed without needing orders. The gates stood open the way they had left them, but the air inside felt wrong—too still, too carefully arranged. No voices. No footsteps. No distant clatter from the training yard. Even the evening insects seemed quieter than they should have been.

Silas broke the silence first. "I don’t like this."

"Neither do I," Marc said.

Lucian didn’t answer. He moved toward the main hall, senses stretched wide. There was no blood on the stones. No scorch marks. No signs of a hard fight. That almost made it worse. A battle left evidence. This felt like someone had reached in and removed everyone cleanly.

The main hall was empty.

Chairs sat pushed back from the long table as if people had stood up in the middle of a conversation. A cup still held water. A cloak hung over the back of one seat. The hearth was cold.

Marc crouched near the table, fingers brushing the floor. "No struggle here. Whoever did this didn’t give them time to react."

Silas checked the side corridor, then the doorway that led toward the kitchens. "Same that way. Nothing broken. Nothing overturned."

Lucian went upstairs.

The room Evelyn had been recovering in was neat. The bed was made. The window stood open, letting in the evening air. For a moment he just stood there, taking in the absence. Her presence still clung faintly to the space, but it was already thinning. He touched the frame of the bed once, then turned away.

Down the hall, Mira’s staff lay on the floor near the wall. Not dropped in panic—placed, or knocked aside cleanly. A thin residual thread of spirit energy still clung to it, frayed at the edges. Lucian picked it up. The wood was cool.

When he came back down, Marc and Silas were waiting in the hall.

"Anything?" Marc asked.

"They were taken," Lucian said. "Not killed. Not scattered. Removed."

Silas’s jaw tightened. "Reia?"

"No sign of her. Or Lucy. Or the others." Lucian held up the staff. "Mira was here. Recently. The residue is still fresh."

Marc exhaled through his nose. "Professional work. No wasted movement. No noise. Whoever did this knew exactly when we were gone."

"The Warden, the woman you told us about, she must be so brave to come back and pulled this off," Silas said.

"Possibly." Lucian’s voice stayed even. "Or someone working with her. The pressure I felt on the way in wasn’t pure Outer God. It was cleaner. More controlled."

They moved through the rest of the keep together.

The training yard was empty. The outer rooms showed the same pattern—personal items left behind, no blood, no bodies. In the small side chamber Althea had been using, a half-finished sketch sat on the table. In the room Vyn and Reia had shared, a cloak still hung from a peg. Everything pointed to the same conclusion: the keep had been emptied with precision.

Silas stopped in the doorway of the last room and stared at it for a long moment. "She would’ve fought."

"She may have," Marc said. "If she did, it didn’t last long enough to leave a mark."

Lucian stood in the center of the main hall again, turning slowly. The lingering presence was faint but deliberate, like a fingerprint left on purpose. Not a taunt exactly. More like a trail marker.

"They want us to follow," he said.

Marc looked at him. "You’re sure?"

"If they wanted us blind, they would’ve erased the residue completely. They left enough to track."

Silas flexed the fingers of his good hand. Residual energy flickered weakly around them. "Then we track it."

They went back outside.

The courtyard held more traces once they knew what to look for. Faint disturbances in the dust near the eastern wall. A thin line of displaced energy leading toward the hills. Lucian crouched and pressed his fingers to the stone. The signature was cold and precise, carrying the same controlled weight he had felt earlier.

"This way," he said.

They followed the trail away from the keep. The evening had deepened into early night by then, the sky clear and hard above them. The path led into the low hills, then toward a narrow cut in the land where residual rift energy still clung to the air. Not a full gate. More like a temporary tear that had already begun to close.

Marc studied the edges. "They moved fast. This was never meant to stay open long."

Silas stared into the thinning tear. "Can you open it again?"

"I can force it," Marc said. "But if they’ve already taken them through, we won’t be far behind."

Lucian stood at the edge of the cut, eyes narrowed. The pressure beyond it was distant now, but not gone. Whoever had emptied the keep was still moving, still carrying the people he had left behind.

He thought of Evelyn. Of Lucy. Of Althea. Of the kids who had followed him into fights they weren’t ready for. Of Reia, who would never have gone quietly.

None of them were disposable.

"Do it," Lucian said.

Marc raised his hand. The air around the residual tear thickened, then split wider under the pressure of his will. The edges strained, resisting, but they gave. A narrow path opened into darker space beyond.

Silas glanced at Lucian. "You think this is the Warden?"

"I think she has help now." Lucian stepped toward the opening. "And I think she wants me away from the keep for a reason."

Marc held the tear stable. "Then we don’t give her time."

They crossed together.

The keep stood empty behind them, doors still open to the night, chairs still pushed back from the table, Mira’s staff gone from the hall where Lucian had found it. The trail ahead was thin but clear.

Somewhere beyond the closing dark, the people they were looking for were still alive.

Lucian intended to reach them before that changed.

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