The Broken Halo

The spatial tear closed a heartbeat before the reinforced door burst inward.

BOOM!

Broken metal and pieces of black stone flew across the treatment chamber. Ossik entered through the opening first, with Containment Captain Rasken and several guards following close behind.

Black-green mist rolled toward them.

One guard took half a breath before the exposed skin around his eyes darkened.

"Back!" Rasken roared.

Ossik caught the demon by the shoulder and threw him into the corridor. The others retreated as two runemasters immediately placed talismans on the emergency plates beside the door.

The crimson lines along the ceiling turned white.

Several narrow openings appeared above the chamber, and the poisonous gas was dragged upward in twisting streams. Even then, nobody entered immediately. The mist produced by a Nethri Half-Step Greater Demon was not something an Archfiend could casually endure.

That danger was also why the door had taken so long to break.

The Fourth Shroud had destroyed the controls and reversed the chamber’s cleansing array. If Rasken and Ossik shattered the entrance without first separating the door from the damaged array, the stored poison would have been forced into the entire lower ward.

They had spent precious time disabling the outer runes one after another while the Hazard Officers approached from the sides.

When neither Officer answered the captain’s signal, preserving the prisoner stopped being the first priority.

They broke the door.

The concentration of poison finally weakened enough for the protected officials to enter.

Rasken stepped through the opening with murder in his eyes.

Then he stopped.

Three corpses lay inside.

The First Hazard Officer was sprawled beside the treatment frame, black veins covering his face and neck. A bloodstained short blade remained in his hand.

The Second Hazard Officer lay closer to the eastern grate. His neck rested at an unnatural angle.

Between them was the headless body of a Nethri Demon.

And... the prisoner was gone.

Rasken’s gaze moved toward the empty restraints. They had been cut so cleanly that their severed ends reflected the chamber lights.

"Where is he?"

No one answered.

A fading silver line hung in the air near the treatment frame. It trembled once, then broke into tiny sparks.

One of the runemasters hurried toward it. He placed two fingers beneath the final sparks, and his expression changed.

"A spatial passage."

Rasken looked at him sharply.

"That is impossible. Every level beneath the Office is locked."

"The lock was not broken," the runemaster replied. "This road was prepared somewhere else and connected through an artifact. It followed an existing path instead of opening one here."

"Can you trace it?"

The last silver spark vanished.

"No."

Rasken’s jaw clenched hard enough for the muscles along his face to twitch.

Ossik had already crouched beside the Second Hazard Officer and removed the smooth mask.

Rasken’s expression changed.

"Second."

He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists in anger as he stared at the lifeless eyes of Second.

A healer knelt beside the corpse and placed two fingers against its neck. Moments later, his expression changed.

"Containment Captain Rasken."

Rasken looked at him.

"What?"

"He did not die here."

The healer opened part of the protective garment and examined the darkened skin beneath it.

"His neck was broken. But the blood has already settled, and his Demon Heart has been inactive for at least an hour."

Rasken became still.

They had left Malkir Apothecary far less than an hour ago.

He looked down at Second’s face again and the gears in his mind began spinning rapidly. Slowly, the veil covering his eyes was being lifted.

The demon who had reported finding nothing in the side passage...

The demon who ran beside them through the western district...

The demon Rasken had personally brought through Black Horn’s gate...

Could not have been Second.

Rasken’s voice became low.

"Then who returned with us?"

No one answered because everybody also realized the same thing.

The real Second Hazard Officer had already been dead at Malkir. Someone had taken his equipment, copied his face and voice, and allowed Rasken himself to escort an intruder directly into Lower Ward Three.

The humiliation was almost worse than the breach.

Rasken’s expression became as dark as the bottom of a pot.

"Seal the entire Office. Nobody leaves."

"It is too late for that," Ossik said.

Rasken turned toward him.

The Senior Inspector gestured at the empty frame.

"The intruder already left."

"Then seal the city."

"With what description?" Ossik asked coldly. "A demon who can copy a Black Horn officer’s face, voice, scent, aura, and movements well enough to deceive his own captain?"

The words struck harder than an insult.

Rasken stepped closer.

"You have a great deal to say for someone who delayed us outside this door."

Ossik’s eyes narrowed.

"I stopped you from flooding the lower ward with Nethri poison."

"You arrived before my unit, wearing a torn coat, and you already knew the Fourth Shroud had entered. Where were you when the breach began?"

A dangerous silence followed.

Ossik stood.

"I was carrying out a containment inspection."

"At Malkir Apothecary."

"Yes."

"And somehow an intruder appeared there, another entered this Office, and you were connected to both locations."

Metal threads moved faintly beneath Ossik’s damaged sleeve.

"Choose your next words carefully, Captain."

Rasken’s aura rose.

"You are inside my ward. I will choose whatever words I please."

"Enough!"

A runemaster’s shout pulled their attention toward the corpses.

He knelt beside the headless Nethri while another official examined the short blade in the First Officer’s hand.

"This weapon did not cut off his head."

Rasken looked over.

"His blood is on it."

"Only on the surface. There is no flesh on the edge, and the wound is too clean. The blade was dragged through the blood after the decapitation."

One of the healers beside the First Hazard Officer added, "He was already paralysed before the Nethri died. The poison had reached his neck. He could not have made that strike."

Silence returned, and everybody realized what was going on.

The current scene had been arranged.

The restraints had also been cut by a weapon far sharper than anything carried by the Hazard Officers.

Rasken’s expression became ugly.

"So the impostor killed the Nethri, staged the bodies, took the prisoner, and escaped while all of us stood outside."

A guard captain near the door lowered his head.

"The Fourth Shroud’s temporary position was approved through Internal Duty Routing. We are tracing the slate now."

"And the western gate?" Rasken demanded.

"The returning unit had an active assignment. The role clasp was genuine, and the white flame found no foreign poison, curse, or hidden parasite."

"Then what exactly does our security detect?" Rasken snapped. "Honest demons?"

The guard’s face darkened, but he said nothing.

Ossik looked toward the empty frame.

"The intruder did not create every weakness used tonight. Someone inside Black Horn prepared the Fourth Shroud. Someone else gave the impostor a genuine Hazard clasp by dying for it."

His gaze shifted toward Rasken.

"You can keep shouting, or you can accept that this Office has more than one enemy inside its walls."

Rasken’s killing intent surged.

"And you expect me to believe you are not one of them?"

The metal threads beneath Ossik’s sleeve stopped moving, and several guards tightened their grips on their weapons.

The argument was one breath away from becoming a fight. But in the next moment, a heavier presence descended over Lower Ward Three.

Every voice died.

Every aura was forced back into its owner.

Slow and unhurried footsteps approached through the corridor, and a few seconds later... Korran appeared at the broken entrance.

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