Mayo's head came up and the air went in like something being torn open.
He coughed, breathed, coughed again, his whole chest working just to stay functional.
His eyes were wide and streaming, not from crying but from the cold water and the body's reflex after being deprived of something basic.
He stayed bent forward for a long moment, each breath longer and more deliberate than the last, until the room stopped moving.
The man behind him released his neck.
Then Mayo felt it. A presence at his back, close, and the sound of something forming that he couldn't identify by sound alone.
He turned his head as far as the position allowed and saw it.
The man behind him raised his right arm. From the forearm upward, stone and earth began forming around it, not rising from the ground but pulling from the man himself, building outward into a massive gauntlet of compacted rock that covered his fist and ran to the elbow.
Its weight was visible in the way he moved, slowly lifting the enormous stone-covered arm above and behind Mayo's head.
He hadn't swung it yet.
"This is your last chance brat," the man said. "Where is Princess Amera?"
Mayo looked at that stone fist and something in him that had been holding itself together stopped holding.
"Please," he said, his voice cracking on the word. "Please don't. I'm telling you the truth. I don't know where the princess is. I didn't take her." He was breathing through it, forcing each word out. "I am telling you the truth."
The man's eyes sharpened. The stone fist pulled back another inch.
Across the corridor, behind the bars of the opposite cell, the other prisoner watched. His face remained completely still, his eyes moving between Mayo and the raised fist with the calm of someone watching events unfold exactly as expected.
Then the corner of his mouth moved.
Just slightly. Just enough for someone paying close attention to notice.
The stone fist came forward.
Mayo closed his eyes. The names left him before he could stop them, pulled out by something more instinct than thought.
"Mom. Ozair. Aryan. Someone please—"
"Stop."
The word hit the room like a stone dropped into still water, the echo of it reaching every wall before the sound finished.
Everyone's eyes went to the source.
The man in white was no longer standing still.
He had taken one step forward and his voice had the quality of someone who doesn't need volume to be heard, because the people around him have learned that volume is not what makes a voice carry weight.
The man behind Mayo held his position with the stone fist an inch from contact. He looked at the man in white and his jaw tightened. "Commander. This one won't talk. We've been at it long enough—"
"You heard me, Eylor."
The name landed with a specific weight. Eylor pressed his teeth together. Then, slowly, he stepped back.
The stone gauntlet began to break apart from the knuckles downward, fragments of rock falling to the floor until his arm was normal again and the room fell quiet.
In the opposite cell, the prisoner's faint smile disappeared. His expression returned to blankness as he lowered his eyes toward the floor.
The commander stepped forward.
Mayo heard the footsteps approaching, and his body reacted before his mind could.
He tensed and pulled inward, eyes shutting tightly as he waited for whatever was coming next. His heartbeat pounded so hard he could feel it in his throat.
The footsteps stopped directly in front of him.
"General," the commander said.
From behind Mayo, the armored man in silver and red said, "Yes, X-Marshall." His voice carried the faint quality of someone surprised but trained not to show it.
"Open the chains."
A silence.
"Yes." The general stepped forward. He pulled a set of keys from beneath part of his armor, crouched beside Mayo, and unlocked the chains around his wrists.
The metal fell away with a heavy clatter, and only then did Mayo realize how much weight they had been putting on him.
Mayo slowly brought his hands in front of him. He opened and closed his fingers, staring at the marks the chains had left across his wrists.
Then he raised his head.
The X-Marshall stood before him, younger than his authority suggested. His white clothing was immaculate despite the damp stone room, and his face carried the calm, measured look of someone who weighed every word before speaking.
He studied Mayo's eyes for a quiet moment, the way someone studies a page they are trying to understand.
Then he sat down.
Not on a chair, but on the cold stone floor beside Mayo. He did it naturally, without hesitation, like a man who had nothing to prove about his authority.
Behind them, the general went completely still. Near the door, the other white-clothed figure looked at his commander sitting beside a chained prisoner, and something unreadable passed briefly across his face.
The X-Marshall kept his eyes on the stone wall ahead instead of looking directly at Mayo. "What's your name?" he asked quietly.
Mayo looked at him. The proximity disturbed him in a different way than everything before it had. "M-Mayo," he said.
X-Marshall nodded. "That's a good name." He said it simply, without any quality of condescension, just a man who meant what he said. "I am X-Marshall. Commander of the Six Heirs."
The Six Heirs? Mayo thought. Should I ask what that is?
He hesitated. No. Don't ruin this.
Before he could think further, X-Marshall continued. "One of our duties is the protection of the royal family. That includes the princess."
He looked at the floor in front of him.
"I don't enjoy what happened in this room. I want you to know that."
He turned his head and looked at Mayo directly. "But I need to find her. And I will use every available avenue to do it."
Another quiet pause passed between them. "I see something in your eyes that doesn't look like a man who is lying to me. So tell me, Mayo. What actually happened to you. From the beginning?"
The room was completely quiet.
Mayo looked at him. The fear was still there, but something inside it had shifted, replaced by a feeling he couldn't quite name, only the faint possibility that, for the first time since arriving here, someone might actually listen.
He breathed out slowly.
"Me and my friends were running," he began. "From a wave. A giant wall of water swallowing our entire world. Everything behind us was disappearing under it, our land, our homes, everything we knew."
His voice grew quieter.
"We were the only ones who escaped. We drove as far as we could, and when the land ended, we used everything we had left to make it to the other side."
He paused, the memory still painfully clear.
"When it was over, we ended up on a cliff. There was green grass, trees ahead of us, the ocean behind us..." He swallowed once. "And the world we came from was just gone. Underwater."
X-Marshall listened without moving.
"We went into the trees, all six of us. Somewhere in the dark, I slipped." Mayo looked down at his hands. "There was a slope I didn't see. The ground just disappeared under me."
He swallowed lightly before continuing.
"I crashed through some bushes and rolled all the way down. By the time I stopped, the others were already gone."
A brief silence passed.
"I tried to climb back up," he said, "but there was a snake on the slope, so I ran the other way instead." He shook his head faintly. "When I finally stopped running, I had no idea where I was."
He looked up.
"That's when I heard the horses," he said quietly. "Then a light hit my face, someone shouted arrest him, and after that..." He shook his head slightly. "I still don't fully understand why any of this is happening."
X-Marshall studied him in silence.
It was not an uncomfortable silence, but a deliberate one, the silence of a man carefully deciding what to believe.
Then Eylor moved.
He had been standing near the far wall with his arms crossed, carrying the kind of patience that always looked close to running out. When he stepped forward, his voice came sharp and flat.
"You actually expect us to believe that?" he asked. "A world sinking under waves? Running through forests? Falling down slopes?"
He stopped in front of Mayo, his expression caught somewhere between boredom and contempt. "We've heard creative stories before."
No one answered.
X-Marshall didn't even turn toward him. He simply remained where he was, eyes resting on the stone wall ahead.
After a moment, Eylor looked away from Mayo and continued down the corridor. His gaze, still carrying that cold professional sharpness, settled on the opposite cell. Across the corridor, the prisoner looked back at him.
"What are you looking at?" he asked lazily.
Something passed between the two men then, not quite communication, more like recognition.
Eylor's expression shifted slightly, subtle enough that most people would have missed it. A faint tightening around the eyes, the look of someone who had just confirmed a suspicion instead of discovering one.
Slowly, he raised a hand. The gesture was casual, almost careless, like someone calling over a dog.
The wall behind the prisoner responded instantly.
Stone and earth burst outward from the back of the cell and slammed into him, driving him hard against the iron bars.
His cheek crushed against the metal, his teeth clenched shut as the impact forced the air violently from his lungs.
Eylor walked to the cell and lowered himself until his face was level with the prisoner's, the iron bars between them.
"We're not finished," Eylor said coldly. "The others gave you up for a reason. And when I figure out what that reason is, your situation here gets much worse."
He stayed there another moment, studying the prisoner's face closely. "The princess's location," he said quietly. "You'll tell me eventually. Everyone does."
Then he stepped back.
The earth released him at once. The prisoner dropped against the bars, catching himself before falling completely. One hand rose to the red mark pressed into his cheek by the iron.
He lowered his eyes to the floor and breathed slowly.
Then, very quietly, he muttered toward the stone beneath him, "Son of a bitch... out of all my colleagues, I'm the one who got caught because of him."
Eylor turned and walked back down the corridor, his eyes fixed ahead on nothing in particular.
"A sinking world, huh," he murmured to himself, his tone sounding less dismissive than thoughtful, like something he was quietly storing away.
A small smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Then he stepped through the door and disappeared.