They knew something was wrong before Rose woke up screaming.
Snow Team learned that chaos and intention differ. Chaos leaves wreckage: loud, clumsy, desperate, shattering doors, scarring walls, overturning furniture.
Intention yielded precision; this was exacting.
Their Tidehaven door hadn't been forced; bolts disengaged cleanly. No alarms or defensive wards tripped. The glass walls stayed whole, blue water drifting outside.
Outside, fish glided past the glass in silent schools. Light caught on scales. The ocean moved lazily around the pylons. The world outside decided nothing inside the fortress mattered.
Inside the room, Rose lay on the floor.
Dried blood darkened Rose's temple, binding her hair to her skin. Her vines were brittle, arms green faded to nearly grey.
"Rose," Luna cried, scrambling down from Victor's shoulders.
The small girl jumped down from Victor's shoulders and hit the floor running, bare feet slapping the polished stone. She skidded to her knees right beside the fallen lioness, reaching out immediately.
Voss was already moving.
Voss dropped beside Rose. He moved with careful precision: one knee to the ground, fingers hovering just above her skin. He paused, alert, watching her for a reaction before touching.
Plant magic lashed out when its host was injured, startled, or wronged; the vines could attack on instinct.
His hand hovered over her wrist, feeling a faint pulse of warmth without contact.
His expression was unreadable, which was never a good sign.
Victor didn't move.
He stood in the centre of the room, hands relaxed at his sides.
Still.
Too still.
His eyes moved slowly across the room once.
Twice.
Three times.
Not searching.
Recording.
The angle of the door, the absence of damage.
There was a faint scuff on the floor where something heavy had been dragged.
Entry point.
Timing.
Absence.
Felicity.
Rose jerked awake with a broken sound, half sob, half snarl. Her eyes snapped open, pupils wide as adrenaline flooded her, and she tried to surge up.
"They took her," she gasped.
The words rasped from her raw throat.
"They waited. I tried!"
Victor's aura flickered, void, not fire or ice.
Not fire.
Not ice.
Void.
The air pressure in the room dropped sharply enough that Luna's ears popped.
Voss looked up slowly.
"Victor."
"I know," Victor said softly.
The word softly terrified everyone—because everyone knew Victor only whispered when the axe had already fallen, and nothing could be put back.
Victor rarely raised his voice.
That wasn't the problem.
The problem was that when he spoke like that, calm and quiet and empty of visible anger, something inside him had already decided the outcome.
They moved fast, never frantic. Snow Team was never frantic.
Frantic was inefficient.
Voss strode to the console in three quick steps. He placed his fingers on the control panel and started forcing access through Tidehaven's systems.
Door records, camera loops, patrol paths.
His eyes flicked across the information once "They left through the east service corridor," he said.
Victor was already walking.
"Alive?" Rose demanded, pushing herself upright.
Voss didn't slow.
"Yes."
The word pierced the silence. Luna scrubbed her eyes hard and hurried after them.
Victor stepped into the corridor.
The scent was still there.
Fox.
Fear.
Dragged movement.
His jaw tightened once.
"Seal the docks," he said.
Voss didn't look up from the tablet he'd pulled from the wall.
It was already done.
Signals pulsed through the network before most in Tidehaven noticed the systems had been touched.
Dock locks engaged.
External gates stalled.
Shipping manifests rerouted.
Nothing dramatic.
Quiet fractures spread through the city's infrastructure.
Traps closing.
"They knew we were leaving," Voss said as he walked. "This wasn't opportunistic."
Rose's fists clenched hard enough that her knuckles went white.
"She trusted this place."
Victor didn't answer.
They reached the stairwell and hurried down three flights in seconds. Their boots struck in a synchronised, controlled rhythm with every step.
"Trail?" Ash asked.
Victor didn't stop moving.
"Fresh."
That was enough.
They burst out into the lower market district, and the city felt the shift immediately.
Snow Team didn't shout, they didn't warn, they simply moved.
The first group of mercenaries tried to block the street.
They recognised Victor. That hesitation cost them everything.
Victor walked straight through them.
Fire and frost rolled outward in the same breath; the street flashed freezing before erupting into white heat. Bodies folded under the impact.
The fight lasted three seconds.
Tommy vaulted the ruined barricade with a feral grin.
"This is your heaven?" he snorted, voice rough, water blades flashing as they sliced through two guards at once.
Blood sprayed across the stone.
"Kinda sucks."
He kicked a fallen helmet aside "Felicity would've hated the décor."
Ash vanished again, shadow slipping across rooftops and ending a fleeing scout cleanly. "She would've found something to like," he murmured.
His eyes never stopped searching.
They weren't fighting; they were moving.
Every person who tried to stand between them simply became something they stepped over.
Meanwhile, Voss walked at the centre of it all like the eye of a storm, his fingers never stopping moving across the tablet.
Quiet commands spread outward.
Signal towers glitched.
Dock authority codes invalidated themselves.
Merchant vessels tried to depart. Navigation permissions revoked.
Nothing loud.
Nothing obvious.
Every exit in Tidehaven slowly sealed itself shut.
The trap snapped closed. "They're moving toward the command sector," Voss said.
Victor didn't slow.
Good.
That meant Pia.
The streets ahead were already collapsing into chaos.
Soldiers tried to regroup when they realised who was moving through their city, but it was too late.
Victor didn't roar.
He didn't need to.
He walked forward, and the air around him warped with heat and cold so violently that the coralstone walls cracked under the pressure.
Anyone who stepped into his space simply ceased to exist inside it.
Bodies dropped behind him like discarded tools.
"She saw beauty in everything," Victor said to a guard who collapsed at his feet.
His voice was almost gentle "Even in this cesspool."
By the time they reached the command hall, Tidehaven already knew something catastrophic was happening.
Fire blazed across flooded canals, ice crawling through walls, Voss had weakened days before while studying the city.
Shields flickered and failed in cascading bursts.
Mercenary teams broke formation as Snow Team tore through streets that had once been safe.
Inside the command hall, Pia waited.
Trident raised.
Fury sharp enough to cut steel.
"You would doom this city for one woman?"
Victor stopped three paces away.
Frost spread slowly beneath his boots.
"Yes."
Voss stepped out of the shadows behind her.
Calculations complete.
"And you doomed it yourself when you took what was ours." His words settled cold as a winter tide, final and merciless as a closing door.
"She would have forgiven you."
A pause.
"We won't."
Pia never saw the blade slide between her ribs.
She fell.
Above them, Tidehaven burned.
But Snow Team didn't stop to watch.
Victor turned immediately.
"Trail."
Still moving.
Still alive.
"Still warm," he said.
They left the dying command hall behind them, and that was when the ground began to shake.
Not from collapse.
From movement.
A low, wet sound rolled through the outer districts.
Dragging limbs.
Broken throats.
A rising chorus of rot.
Then the screaming started.
Zombies, hundreds.
No.
Thousands.
They poured through shattered gates and tunnels in a tidal wave of decay. At their head walked Sarge, blood-soaked in his armour.
His grin was feral.
"I figured," Sarge roared up the ragged street, voice giddy, splattered wild with blood, "you wouldn't want anyone chasing us!" He sounded proud—almost like he'd brought a prize.
The gates of Tidehaven slammed shut.
Too late.
The horde crashed into the city like a tidal wave.
Guards died first, then mercenaries, then anyone too slow to run.
Snow Team moved on without looking back.
They kept walking.
Rose paused once, vines tightening around her arm.
"She trusted this place."
Victor didn't slow.
"She trusted us."
Behind them, Tidehaven drowned.
Screams faded under the wet, relentless roar of the horde. Smoke drifted. Fire still burned in the canals where Victor's flames refused to die, even under the tide.
None of them looked back.
Victor walked at the front, pace steady but relentless. His gaze fixed on the wasteland past the shattered gates.
He stopped once.
Only once.
His head tilted slightly.
The wind shifted across the ruined causeway, carrying the faintest trace of scent through the salt and smoke.
Fox.
Fear.
Alive.
His jaw tightened.
Behind him, the others felt it too.
Rose's vines wound tight around her forearms, muscle linking to magic. Ash lifted his nose, hunter-sharp, tracking hope. Luna stilled, fingers clutching Frost's sleeve in silent promise. They moved forward, instincts burning.
The scent was thin.
Fading.
But it was there.
Victor started walking again.
Faster this time.
No one needed to be told.
Snow Team moved, pace lengthening, following the invisible thread through the ashlands.
Somewhere ahead of them, Felicity was still breathing.
And the people who had taken her had just made the worst mistake of their lives.