Chapter Text
The ruins of Belobog's outer Administrative District offered no shelter from the cold, only the illusion of it as frozen buildings stood like monuments to a civilization that had forgotten how to survive its own winter.
The Eternal Freeze claimed this sector years ago and Dan Heng could see the evidence in the ice-rimmed windowsills, the snow drifts that reached second story balconies and the way the street lamps flickered with dying power as if the city itself was giving up. He pulled the collar of his coat tighter, the gesture doing little to fend off the chill that seemed to seep directly into his bones. The wind carried fine particles of ice that stung any exposed skin and it seemed to suck the energy from everything it touched.
He scanned the architecture, noting the severe, almost brutalist lines of the administrative buildings, now buried under mounds of snow. This place wasn't just cold; it felt petrified, a moment of civilization flash-frozen and left to crumble.
There’d be thirty seconds between patrol sweeps, maybe forty if the Silvermane Guards maintained their current pace but Dan Heng didn't trust in maybes. He tracked their footsteps echoing between the frozen structures, calculating trajectories and sightlines. The sound of the guards' steps was a metronome declaring their position and Dan Heng used it to visualize their paths. He noted the blind spots and the dead zones where their approach would be masked until it was too late as well as the high-ground vantage points a sniper might favor. Each piece of data was a tile in a mosaic of survival and he would not permit a single one to be out of place.
Cocolia betrayed them. The Supreme Guardian herself had turned against the Express crew with a coldness that rivaled her planet's eternal winter and now they were fugitives in a city that wanted them dead or captured. The memory was still stark, a fresh wound in his otherwise orderly thoughts. He should have sensed the shift in her demeanor and the sudden, chilling turn where their allies suddenly became enemies but there had been no time for shock, only for reaction.
Now, in the frozen quiet, the logic of it gnawed at him. Such a complete reversal was illogical; it suggested a motive or a pressure he couldn't yet see and he filed the thought away for later analysis. Emotion was a liability right now and understanding the threat was the priority.
They needed to disappear. Immediately.
The only functional infrastructure in this dead zone was an ancient and industrial gaslamp casting a small sphere of warmth into air. The extra heat caused Dan Heng's breath to crystallize instantly, each exhale becoming a visible reminder of how fragile human biology was against Jarilo-VI's climate.
He positioned himself near the lamp, not for comfort though his fingers were already going numb despite his gloves but for tactical advantage. The light created a perimeter, a small zone of visibility in the encroaching darkness, a beacon in the gloom that made it both a refuge and a target. Anyone could see them within its glow but from its center he could see the approach of anyone else first. It was a calculated risk that allowed him to track the patrol patterns, time the windows and calculate their escape routes.
Twenty-eight seconds since the last sweep. Another patrol would pass in…
"This is so cold." March's voice cut through his concentration, too loud, too present. She was shivering despite her heavy coat, her camera clutched in reddening fingers. "Like, really cold. Colder than it should be cold, you know?"
Dan Heng didn't respond; responding would encourage conversation and conversation created noise and noise drew attention. He remained perfectly still as his focus locked on the distant movement of torchlight between buildings and guards, systematic and methodical. Their discipline was admirable and that made them profoundly dangerous.
"I should document this," March continued, completely undeterred by his silence. She raised her camera, squinting through the viewfinder. "Every planet, every mission, that's what you always say, right Dan Heng? So I'm documenting." The camera's flash fired far too bright and Dan Heng felt every muscle in his body tense. The sudden, white light bleached the scene for a split second and erased the subtle shadows he was using to track movement, temporarily blinding him to the nuances of the environment. It was a tactical catastrophe.
"No flash," he said, voice flat and absolute. "No sound. No movement."
"Oh." March lowered the camera, finally registering the edge in his tone. "Right. Sorry. It's just…I'm freezing, and when I'm cold I get chatty, and…”
"March." He didn't raise his voice, the single word carried enough weight. It was a command, a plea, and a warning, all compressed into one syllable. He needed her to understand the lethality of a single mistake.
She fell silent for approximately fifteen seconds.
Then Stelle moved.
Dan Heng registered her approach before he consciously processed it, hearing the soft crunch of snow under boots and the displacement of cold air as another body entered the lamp’s radius. She didn't ask permission or announce intent, just moved into the small pocket of heat with the kind of intent that suggested she'd already calculated the same things he had: temperature, exposure time, survival margins.
She positioned herself close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her presence, close enough that their shoulders were adjacent through layers of winter gear, not touching but close enough that the shared warmth made a difference. It was a logical action, a simple matter of thermal dynamics and Dan Heng's breath caught for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold.
She wasn't looking at him. Her eyes tracked the same patrol routes he'd been monitoring, her hand resting on the bat she carried with unsettling casualness. The weapon was crude but he'd watched her fight with it during their entry to Belobog with brutal efficiency, wielding it not like a tool but like an extension of her own body.
They stood in parallel focus as he tracked the eastern approach, her covering the western angles. Two people watching different threats, weapons ready, sharing a sphere of warmth barely large enough for one person let alone two in a spontaneous, unspoken partnership, an instinctual division of labor that he hadn't anticipated but found he didn't question.
His shoulder registered her proximity with uncomfortable clarity. It felt like a low-grade electrical current against his senses, a persistent hum of data his brain was compelled to process as he felt the weight of her presence beside him; the way she breathed in a controlled rhythm, a steady cadence that spoke of a calm he found surprising; the faint scent of smoke that clung to her like she'd stood too close to a fire, like the Stellaron inside her chest was burning at a temperature her body couldn't quite contain.
Focus. The patrol was eighteen seconds out and he needed to track timing, not catalogue sensory data about the new Trailblazer's proximity. This was an unacceptable breach of his own discipline; he was the archivist, the observer, the one who remained detached, but his mind was already noting the way she held perfectly still, a stillness that wasn't passive but coiled with potential energy and power. He couldn't help but notice the way her eyes moved tracking, assessing, processing threats with the same systematic approach he used and the way she'd moved into his space without hesitation, as if standing this close to him was tactically sound rather than personally significant.
It was tactically sound, that was the only reason. The lamp's warmth dissipated quickly in air this cold so staying outside its radius meant risking exposure and exposure meant reduced reaction time and reduced reaction time meant failure. He repeated the logic to himself a thousand times until it became a mantra. This was utility, nothing more.
Stelle shifted weight fractionally and her shoulder brushed his arm through layers of coat and shirt and winter gear, contact so brief and so mediated by fabric that it shouldn't have registered at all.
It did register, as a jolt, sharp and distinct that traveled up his arm and short-circuited his train of thought and for one infuriating second, the map of patrol routes in his mind went blank, replaced by the overwhelming tactical significance of a single point of physical contact.
Dan Heng's fingers tightened on Cloud-Piercer's shaft with the sudden acute awareness that he was standing very close to someone who'd been a stranger eight days ago and was now occupying his personal space like she belonged there and like this proximity was normal and expected.
March's camera flash went off again.
"Oops!" Her voice was too loud, too careless. "Sorry! I forgot to turn off the…”
Dan Heng's hand shot out in a cutting gesture: silence, now, immediately. His other hand was already moving, adjusting his position to put himself between March and the most likely threat vector. Stelle had moved simultaneously, her bat coming up in a defensive ready position, her body angling to cover March's other side. They'd moved in perfect synchronization, no discussion, no planning, just two people responding to the same threat with the same tactical assessment in an instinctual choreography that felt both jarring and unnervingly natural.
The patrol passed twelve feet away, four guards, heavily armed and moving with the kind of careful precision that indicated they were searching for specific targets. Their torchlight swept across the frozen structures, creating moving shadows that turned the district into something from a gothic nightmare consisting of all sharp angles and deeper darkness, beauty twisted into threat. The beams cut through the air, illuminating swirling ice crystals, thankfully passing over the three of them huddled by the dimly heated lamp.
Dan Heng held absolutely still and slowed his breathing, minimizing the plume of breath from his mouth, pulling his very presence inward until he was nothing more than another shadow among shadows. Stelle did the same. March had finally frozen, her camera clutched against her chest, eyes wide with the belated realization that they were very close to being discovered and Dan Heng could feel the terrified tremor running through her from feet away.
The guards' boots crunched past and the torchlight moved on, the danger receding like a wave pulling back from shore. Only when the sound of synchronized footfalls had faded completely did Dan Heng allow himself to breathe, carefully and controlled. Four count in, hold, six count out, regulating his breathing to slow his heart rate back to operational levels. The adrenaline was a chemical fire in his veins and he methodically extinguished it.
Beside him, Stelle exhaled slowly and the cloud of her breath mingled with his in the lamp's small sphere of warmth.
"That was close," she said. Her voice was pitched low, just for him while March perched frozen in her frightened silence ten feet away. "Too close."
"Yes." Dan Heng forced himself to look away from the departed patrol and toward their next obstacle, the approach to the Underworld entrance. It was three hundred meters across exposed ground with minimal cover that would become a killing field if they were spotted. They'd need to time it perfectly.
"We should move," Stelle continued, still in that quiet tone that somehow made the words feel private despite March's presence. "Before the next sweep."
"Agreed." Dan Heng started to step away from the lamp, to put professional distance between himself and the uncomfortable awareness of Stelle's continued proximity. The logical move was to re-establish his personal space now that the tactical necessity had passed.
Stelle's hand came up, not touching him, just a small gesture in his peripheral vision, a question without words: You good? Ready to move? It was a check for readiness, a simple team-based gesture.
He nodded once. Functional. Proceeding.
They moved away from the lamp, leaving its small pocket of warmth behind. The cold hit immediately, vicious and absolute and Dan Heng's shoulder, the one that had been near Stelle's, registered the loss of her heat with uncomfortable specificity as if a shield had been lowered, exposing him to the full hostility of the planet once more.
He filed this observation away as irrelevant tactical data, forget immediately.
March caught up to them, still shaking. "That was terrifying. I thought we were dead. I thought they saw us. Did they see us? They didn't see us, right?"
"They didn't see us," Stelle confirmed, her tone steady and reassuring. It was the same tone one might use to soothe a frightened animal, yet it held no condescension. "We're clear. For now."
"Okay. Okay." March took a shaky breath and then because she was incapable of processing fear without deflecting it into enthusiasm, completely brightened. "But we're okay! We survived! That's worth documenting, right? I mean, once we're somewhere safe with lighting..."
"March." Dan Heng's voice was patient through sheer force of will. "No documentation until we've reached the Underworld."
"Right. Obviously. No documentation during active danger. I know that." She didn't know that. She'd tried to document active danger at least seven times in the past week alone. "So, uh, where exactly is the Underworld entrance?"
Dan Heng pointed toward a collapsed industrial structure in the distance, barely visible through the snow and darkness and marked only by the faint glow of what might be emergency lighting or might be something more sinister.
"There. Three hundred meters. We move fast, we move quiet, and we don't stop until we're underground."
"And if we encounter patrols?" Stelle asked. She wasn't challenging his assessment, just gathering information with an absolute focus, her gaze locked on the objective.
"We don't." Dan Heng met her eyes as they finally tore away from the Underworld opening. Her eyes were gold in the dim light, reflecting the lamp behind them like small flames and he felt the weight of that gaze and the clever mind working behind it. "If we encounter patrols, we've already failed."
Stelle nodded. They barely knew each other but she seemed to trust his judgment without question or hesitation. That trust was... significant. It was a weight, a responsibility he was accustomed to, yet coming from her, it felt different, unearned perhaps. He had given her no reason to trust him so implicitly, yet she did. Dan Heng wasn't certain what to do with it.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Ready," Stelle confirmed.
"Born ready!" March added, though her voice shook slightly.
They moved into the frozen darkness of Belobog's dying district and behind them, the lamp continued its lonely flicker. Ahead, the Underworld waited, warmer than the surface, more dangerous, and somehow the only path forward.
The guard tower wasn't much of a tower anymore, more like a skeletal framework of corroded metal and crumbling concrete that listed fifteen degrees to the left like a drunk trying to remember which way was home. Half of the observation deck had collapsed into the level below and wind howled through gaps in the walls, bringing with it the smell of snow and industrial rust.
Dan Heng tested a floorboard with his weight, listening to the groan of stressed metal and the grinding of fractured concrete. The structure was a death trap and every gust of wind threatened to bring the whole thing down and the air was thick with the scent of metal until he could taste the grit on his teeth. Despite that, it had a vantage point and in Belobog's frozen hell, vantage points were a currency. From here, he could see the entire sector laid out like a schematic, the patrol routes etched into the snow in the form of visible snow paths.
They'd made it here in thirty minutes of careful navigation through areas where the Silvermane Guard patrols didn't bother going because there was nothing left worth guarding. March had complained the entire way about the cold, the smell, and the 'general vibe of despair' but she'd kept pace, Dan Heng had to give her credit for that. Her resilience was often camouflaged by her chatter, but it was there, a stubborn constant.
Now they were three stories up in a structure that creaked ominously every time the wind shifted and they needed to scout the approach to the Underworld entrance before attempting descent. The Silvermane Guards had the route locked down tight via Cocolia's orders and they needed to know patrol patterns, shift changes and weak points in the coverage. A direct approach was suicide; their survival depended entirely on the quality of their information.
They needed intelligence and they only had one piece of equipment to gather it: a salvaged military scope that needed to be positioned precisely on an unstable ledge to get an accurate line-of-sight reading on the primary approach routes. The device was a relic, its housing scarred and its optics prone to fogging in the extreme cold. It was far from ideal, but it was all they had.
Dan Heng set the scope on the least-unstable section of the broken observation window and the metal frame groaned under the weight. He adjusted the legs of the tripod with minute, careful movements, anchoring it against the pitted concrete.
"Okay!" March bounced on her heels, eager despite the cold. "I can operate it! Let me try!"
Dan Heng should have said no immediately; the word formed in his mind, precise and absolute. He could see the future with painful clarity: March would be loud, distractible, and would miss half the relevant tactical data while documenting irrelevant details about the guards' posture or the color of a distant sign. Her focus was a wide, sweeping beam of light and he needed a laser.
...but March needed to feel useful and a demoralized team member was a liability. Plus it was technically part of Welt's suggestion that he 'encourage March's growth as an active team member rather than just treating her as support'. He'd not intended to treat her as support but her flighty, distracted personality sometimes made it hard for Dan Heng to convince her to lock in and pay attention and surveillance was just as good as any other opportunity for March to start honing her skills.
"Focus on movement patterns," Dan Heng instructed, positioning her at the scope. "Count guards per patrol and note the timing between sweeps. Identify their command structure if possible."
"Got it! I can do this!" March pressed her eye to the scope with determined enthusiasm.
She lasted forty-five seconds before the problems started.
"Oh! There's a patrol! Three guards...no, wait, four! One just came around the corner, they're heading toward the warehouse district...wait, no, they're turning back...oh, that's interesting, their uniforms are different from the other..." Her voice was a running commentary of unfiltered observation, a stream of raw, unprocessed data that was functionally useless.
"March." Dan Heng's voice was patient through effort alone. "Which patrol? Cardinal direction?"
"Um." March squinted through the scope. "North? Or...wait, is that north? Which way is north?"
Stelle, leaning against the far wall checking her bat for damage, caught Dan Heng's eye. Her expression was carefully neutral, but there was something in the set of her mouth that suggested she was suppressing a smile. The shared glance was a moment of silent, mutual exasperation, and it was, to his annoyance, slightly grounding.
"Northeast," Dan Heng clarified. "Continue."
"Right! Northeast! They're...oh wait, now there's ANOTHER patrol coming from the west! Five guards this time, no, six! They're carrying something...I can't tell what...maybe supplies? Or weapons? It looks heavy..."
She was tracking the wrong patrol entirely. She had switched targets without realizing it, drawn to the more immediate movement and Dan Heng could see the actual threat: a seven-guard heavy patrol approaching from the southwest, the kind of unit that indicated high-value target protection or command staff movement. That was the patrol they needed to track; their tight formation, the presence of what looked like a squad leader, their deliberate path, every detail screamed priority while the one March was enthusiastically narrating was a standard supply run, operationally irrelevant.
"March," Dan Heng tried again. "Southwest. Focus southwest."
"I AM looking southwest!"
She wasn't. She was still tracking the supply patrol, now narrating their probable conversation based on their body language. "...and that one guard looks really tired, you can tell by how he's walking, and the one in front keeps checking his watch, so they're probably on a tight schedule..." He could feel a headache forming behind his eyes, a throbbing that matched the rhythm of the groaning tower.
Stelle pushed off the wall and crossed to the window in three quiet steps.
"Let me help," Stelle said, not making it a request. She positioned herself beside March, assessing the scope's alignment. "You're doing great, March, but the angle's off. Here..."
She adjusted the tripod height by two inches, a small butprecise correction that shifted the scope's field of view forty degrees to the southwest.
March's face lit up. "Oh! There they are! That's WAY more guards than the other group!"
"That's the priority patrol," Dan Heng confirmed, sounding exasperated.
There wasn't much space at the window as the collapsed section meant only a narrow strip of stable floor and Stelle had positioned herself to steady the tripod with one hand while giving March room to operate with the other. Dan Heng needed to read the display overlay, which meant getting close enough to see the tactical readout in the scope's secondary viewport.
That meant standing immediately to Stelle's right, close enough that their shoulders were parallel, separated by maybe three inches of cold air. The proximity was a tactical necessity. He told himself this twice.
The scope wasn't designed for collaborative use but someone had jerry-rigged a secondary viewport that displayed targeting data-range, estimated headcount, movement vectors and other useful information. The viewport was positioned low and to the right of the main optic and to read it, Dan Heng had to lean in, tilting his head down to align his line of sight with the small digital screen. The air he displaced by moving closer was immediately filled by the subtle warmth radiating from her.
Stelle's hand on the tripod was steady, adjusting the scope's position fractionally as the patrol moved through the district below. Her other hand was braced on the window frame for balance and she was focused on keeping the equipment stable, her profile etched against the grey light, a study in concentration.
Dan Heng was focused on the tactical display, running threat assessments: seven guards, heavy armor, military precision in formation. Command escort. High priority. His mind raced, cataloging routes, timing, probable destination. He committed the pattern to memory, running simulations, predicting their next move.
March provided enthusiastic narration. "They're moving so fast! And in formation! Very professional! Should I take a picture?"
"No," Dan Heng and Stelle said simultaneously.
March pouted but kept watching.
The patrol reached the intersection. Dan Heng tracked the lead guard's hand signals, directing the unit east toward the administrative district. They were not heading for the Underworld entrance which meant the window for descent was still open. Their opportunity was confirmed.
Stelle shifted fractionally, adjusting the tripod to follow the patrol's movement and her shoulder brushed Dan Heng's arm, light contact through layers of coat and tactical gear, brief as a heartbeat. The touch was incidental, a consequence of the cramped space, yet it sent a distracting signal flare through his nervous system.
Dan Heng's eyes flicked sideways, just a glance, just half a second.
Stelle was still watching the patrol through her peripheral vision, her expression concentrated but there was something in the angle of her jaw, the slight tightness around her eyes that suggested she was tracking more than just the guards below. She was aware of him, aware of the shared space, processing it with the same quiet intensity she applied to everything else.
Her gaze flicked over and their eyes met.
Just for a moment, one second of shared acknowledgment: We're watching the right thing. March isn't. We see the actual threat. It was a communication faster than words, a seamless transfer of understanding, a quiet confirmation that they were operating on the same level, seeing the same critical details in the chaos.
Then Dan Heng refocused on the tactical display. The green-tinged numbers seemed sharper, more defined and Stelle steadied the tripod. The moment passed.
March, oblivious, continued her commentary. "Ooh, they're splitting up now! Two going left, five going right...wait, should we be worried about that?"
"No," Dan Heng said, still reading the movement patterns. "Standard patrol division. They're covering more ground, not responding to threats."
"Oh. Okay! That's good!" March relaxed. "So we're safe?"
"For the next six minutes." Dan Heng straightened, stepping back from the viewport. The tactical assessment was complete and the cold air rushed into the space he had occupied, the absence of her proximity as noticeable as its presence had been. "That's the primary patrol window. Secondary patrol sweeps in seven-minute intervals. We have a ninety-second gap between coverage to reach the Underworld entrance if we move fast."
"Ninety seconds?!" March's voice pitched up. "That's not very long!"
"It's sufficient." Dan Heng's tone was flat, confident. "If we don't waste time."
Stelle nodded, releasing the tripod. "What's the route?"
Dan Heng moved to the window, pointing to the industrial complex visible in the distance. "Through the warehouse district, then south along the frozen canal. The entrance is hidden under the old transit station. It is a collapsed structure but the access tunnel is still intact according to Seele's intel."
"And if we run into patrols?" Stelle asked. Her questions were always precise, focused on contingencies.
Dan Heng met her eyes again, his expression serious. "If we encounter guards in that window, we've already failed. The entire plan depends on speed and timing."
March made a small, worried sound. "No pressure, then."
"You'll be fine." Stelle's voice was steady, reassuring. "We've done harder."
"Have we though?" March looked genuinely uncertain. "Because this feels pretty hard."
"When we arrived you landed in a snowbank and still made it to the city."
"Oh. Yeah." March brightened. "That WAS hard! And I did great!"
"Exactly. Same principle, just faster."
Dan Heng watched this exchange with something that might have been approval if he allowed himself to recognize the emotion. Stelle had a knack for reassuring March without condescension, acknowledging her fear while reinforcing her capability; she identified March's core anxiety and deployed a targeted, effective countermeasure in the form of a relevant past success. It was effective. March's shoulders relaxed and her breathing steadied.
"Okay," March said, determination replacing anxiety. "Ninety seconds. I can do that."
"Good." Dan Heng returned to the scope for one final sweep of the patrol routes, confirming the timing windows. Behind him, he could hear Stelle and March organizing their gear, checking weapons, tightening pack straps and preparing for the sprint. The small sounds of preparation were a comfort, a sign of a team readying for action.
The scope's tactical display showed clear approach routes. The patrol patterns were predictable, the window of opportunity was real. This would work.
It had to because the alternative, remaining on the surface, trying to evade Cocolia's forces indefinitely simply wasn't sustainable. The Underworld was their only option. Seele's Wildfire resistance had resources, safety and information.
And Stelle had already survived one near-death encounter with the Silvermane Guards. Dan Heng wasn't interested in testing whether she'd survive another. This thought was not a tactical assessment. It was something else, something he refused to analyze.
He straightened from the scope, turning to face the team. March was bouncing on her heels, working off nervous energy and Stelle was calm, centered, ready. Her gaze met his, unwavering.
"We move in three minutes," Dan Heng said. "Stay close, stay quiet, and trust the timing."
"Got it!" March gave a determined nod.
Stelle's eyes met his and she nodded once. Dan Heng felt something shift in his chest, not anxiety exactly, but a weight of responsibility that went beyond tactical command. These two people were relying on him to get them through this safely; March with her enthusiasm and vulnerability and Stelle with her strange calm and unshakable confidence in his judgment. It was a heavy, specific burden and he couldn't fail them.
"Let's go," Dan Heng said and led them out into the frozen ruins of Belobog's dying districts.