The heart monitor's steady beeping felt like the only tether holding the room together. Ava lay there, unmoving, her skin pale under the dim lights of the bunker, while Dan sat beside her, hands clenched, trying to ignore the ache in his chest. Three days. Three days since the fight that nearly tore everything apart, and she still hadn't woken up. The quiet was oppressive, filled with each unspoken question, the wait gnawing away at him.
Dan's laptop glowed faintly on the makeshift desk beside him, the screen crowded with tabs: game logs, encrypted forums, every dark corner of the web where Elias might've left a trace. And always, there was the same name, a breadcrumb leading him deeper into unfamiliar shadows: BlackBlade.
Naomi's silhouette appeared in the doorway, her expression unreadable, a thick notebook clutched in her arms. She stepped inside, her eyes flickering to Ava before settling on Dan. She looked as worn out as he felt—eyes dark-rimmed, her shoulders tense from days of worry that neither of them could shake.
"Any change?" Naomi's voice was soft, almost resigned.
Dan shook his head, glancing back at the monitor as if willing it to flash a sign, any sign, of improvement. "She's stable. Just... not waking up yet." He paused, then sighed, a frustration creeping into his tone. "But I think I've figured out where Elias went."
Naomi slid into a chair beside him, peering over his shoulder. Her focus stayed on her notes, expression hardening as she sifted through everything they'd uncovered about the sword, the Devourers, and the corruption that seemed to be spreading out of control. "I don't care," she murmured.
Dan's shoulders tensed, his voice dropping. "Naomi, come on. He's dealing with a lot—"
"You think I don't know that?" Her tone was low but laced with anger, and for a moment, she pressed her fingers into the notebook, staring down at the chaotic notes. "But he ran, Dan. We're out here trying to piece this all together, and he just... ran." She looked away, her voice a little softer. "He doesn't get a free pass until he comes back."
The tension between them simmered in the silence. Dan continued typing, determined to find any lead that would help them pull Elias back before he became lost to the weapon's pull. Naomi resumed leafing through her notes, her mind already skipping ahead to the person she knew they needed: Lucius, the only one who truly understood the sword's nature, and possibly the only one who could help save Elias from himself.
A sudden hum from the old television in the corner caught their attention, the news anchor's voice low but urgent.
"This just in—emergency reports from the estate of Viktor Volkov suggest an unexplained environmental phenomenon."
Dan's eyes narrowed as he looked up at the footage of Volkov's manor. The camera panned over the estate, revealing grounds twisted and warped, the once-grand trees now skeletal and brittle, the earth cracking open in jagged lines that pulsed with an unnatural energy.
"Officials remain uncertain as to the cause, though speculation points to a chemical or geological incident," the anchor said, her tone brittle with forced calm.
Dan let out a dry laugh. "Yeah, right. They have no idea what's going on."
Naomi's jaw tightened as she watched the screen. The corruption. It's affecting everything. Slow but relentless, like a shadow stretching across everything. "They're stalling," she muttered. "They don't know what they're dealing with."
Dan's gaze flicked to her. "Do we?"
She didn't respond.
The hours crawled by, the two of them working in parallel silence, only occasionally breaking it to exchange a word or two. The weight of exhaustion hung over them, but neither could bear to stop, not when so much depended on their findings. Dan's eyes drifted back to Ava now and then, searching for the smallest sign of life, a twitch, a breath stronger than the last.
Finally, his gaze softened as he noticed her fingers shift, just barely. He almost leaned in, holding his breath, but then she went still again, the brief movement swallowed by the quiet.
"She'll wake up," he whispered, more to reassure himself than anyone else. The silence between beeps filled with tension, with a desperate need for something to break the waiting.
Naomi glanced over, a flicker of worry beneath her hardened expression. She nodded, though her mind was elsewhere, her thoughts circling back to Elias, to the Devourers, to the twisted trail leading toward BlackBlade and Lucius. Each passing minute felt like a grain slipping through the hourglass, and soon, she knew, there wouldn't be any time left.