All the guards began to see what all the fuss was about, at that moment, we snuck through the entrance and went into a secure storage closet, putting a box on the door, making it need much more force to open.

She sighed in my mind and then told me to come out now. I focused on a certain spot and then slowly, I could feel my vision become blurred and black and white light began to grow brighter and brighter. Everything went black for a moment, and then everything was fine again.

My body was numb and even colder than I could handle. It felt dizzy and nauseous, almost passing out, hitting some wooden boxes on my left side. With the feeling growing worse and worse, I covered my mouth with my right hand and covered my face with ice.

Vomit began to fill up my mouth, stopping after it hit the ice, freezing in my mouth. After nausea had gone away, I very regrettably, drank the vomit back down to my throat. I looked at Sashal, her face filled with disgust, but she was thankful for what I did.

My mouth began to thaw so I began to stretch it left to right, very quietly humming for a few seconds. After a minute, we looked at each other dead in the eye, before I began to speak.

“No one is on this floor, for now, let’s find a way down,”

“Got it.” Sashal also nodded.

We moved the box back to where it came from, not wondering what was in them, although the room smelt a lot like rotting flesh, so we guessed that they held the makings of chimeras. We quickly left, closing the door and running around the place, looking for some stairs going into the lower levels.

By the time we found a flight of stairs, people were already coming out of it. Guards were beginning to go back to the barracks, taking the train home. Sashal quickly turned herself into the blood and placed herself in the wall which was a mixture of stone and wood, filling in the creases, but I had nowhere to go, unless.

I focused for a moment, my head feeling like it was splitting into three and then there I was, inside the soul world. I looked towards the guards and let them pass, before then hiding behind a wooden pillar.

I then exited the soul world back to Antral, my legs feeling like nothing before I collapsed. I began to breathe heavily whilst Sashal was begging to reform. Although she thought I was acting strange, it wasn’t strange.

Whenever I go into the soul world, I always feel that part of my being is ripped away for a while and I just lose myself for a while. I have barely used this ability, but still, it frightened me. I put myself back up and we headed deeper into the base.

There were little to no guards, but I could see and feel that they were much more powerful than the ones on the surface. Looking around, it seems that their sleeping quarters were actually inside the stronghold.

Sashal and I were able to sneak past them with little to no ease and found more and more flights of stairs leading down. In an hour, we had already come across seven flights of stairs, it was much deeper than we originally thought.

After a while, we were close to a wall and I saw it. Iron bars that allow light inside, the stronghold was on the edge of the cliff. I quickly told Sashal by signing to her to come here and her reaction was the same as mine.

We nodded at each other before going down again, why eight levels down, they began to light the corridors with torches and lamps as well as natural light. It was confusing to me, what was this little scheme doing, and how was everyone else.

Erasing the thoughts out of my mind, we were finally at the bottom, or so we thought. By the tenth floor, there were no more stairs, and Sashal and I were stuck to where to go. We looked in every nook and cranny, nothing.

It was only until I used my eyes to see the souls and sources of people. It was very vague, but I saw someone a floor lower. I told Sashal to copy my soul ability and we went through the floor, stopping when our feet touched the one underneath.

As soon as we got down there, our noses were immediately felt with a putrid smell. It was like that storage closet, but it felt like something died at the beginning of the universe. With the tears in my eyes, I looked around and saw it.

A skeleton, in a cell, was there. Although it looked like a skeleton, there was still clothes and flesh on it, so we guessed that the corpse was only a few months old. After freezing the corpse in a block of ice, we noticed that there were more, so I froze the rest.

Sashal and I opened the doors and examined the corpses within the ice. They were decomposing, but as expected, it only happened for a few months. Carefully, we examined each corpse, before, at the end of the room, we found a new one.

The corpse was recently killed, the only difference was that his skin had the slightest drop of light blue. Like we practised, told Sashal to go with Quinn’s plan and she quickly knocked me out, before I was then woken up by a pain in my chest.

Sashal had plunged her hand into my chest before removing it, her hand absorbing the blood. Quickly, my body healed and then a light blue portal opened up in front of us, Quinn jumping through it and meeting with us.

I pointed at this corpse, saying it was different, Quinn looked at and his face changed. From his usual calm and collected look quickly turned into a face of horror. He knelt and examined the corpse, which I thawed out for him.

After a while, Quinn muttered to himself, before looking at a necklace around its throat. He grabbed the necklace and pulled it away from the corpse's body and examined it. It seemed to be made out of shiny platinum.

With a closer inspection, Quinn noticed it was a pendant and he opened it, before standing up slowly and looking at this.

“Dyestral and Sashal, may I introduce my relative to you, Ace Königshaus, my uncle whom we were hunting.”