Karz woke near midnight.
He did not wake gracefully.
His eyes snapped open, his fingers clawed at the sheet, and the first sound out of his throat was a broken gasp that had Airmid moving before anyone else in the room could stand.
Rayleigh was at the equipment table with Welf and Tsubaki, half-buried in sketches for the next batch of markers.
Eina had fallen asleep over a stack of reports some time before, her glasses crooked on her nose, and Shakti stood outside the door with Ganesha Familia's guards.
The moment Karz started fighting the blanket, Rayleigh's hand went to Benihime out of habit, though he didn't draw it.
Airmid reached the bed and rested one hand near Karz's shoulder without pinning him down.
"Karz. You're in Dian Cecht Familia's care. You were pulled out of the hidden passage. You're safe for now."
He didn't seem to hear her. His gaze skipped across faces, lamps, ceiling beams — still hunting for a wall that had moved away from him.
"No—no, don't close it! Lott's still—"
"Lott is alive," Airmid said.
The name reached him.
Karz stopped struggling so suddenly that the whole room seemed to lean toward him.
Airmid softened her voice but kept it level. "He came back before you did. He's hurt, but he's alive. You aren't the only survivor."
Karz's mouth trembled.
He tried to speak, failed, and covered his face with one hand.
The sound he made then wasn't loud, but it was harder to sit through than screaming would have been.
Eina had woken by then.
She sat up too fast, nearly knocking over her ink bottle, and looked mortified for having slept until Airmid gave her a small shake of the head.
Nobody needed a Guild clerk apologizing for being human after two days of crisis work.
Rayleigh stood and came closer, stopping where Karz could see him without feeling boxed in.
"You remember me?"
Karz blinked through the tears.
His eyes settled slowly on Rayleigh's face, then dropped to the sword at his waist.
"Yotosai," he said, hoarse.
"That's right. I'm Rayleigh. This is Airmid — she's the one keeping you alive, so if she tells you to breathe, drink, sleep, or stop being brave for five minutes, you listen to her."
Karz let out a shaky breath that might have been a laugh, if he'd had the strength for one.
"That sounds... easy to believe."
Airmid only gave Rayleigh a brief look, then lifted a cup to Karz's lips. "Small sips. Don't rush."
Karz drank, coughed once, and sank back against the pillow. His face was pale, dark hollows under his eyes, but the wild edge of the panic had loosened.
Airmid checked his pulse again and glanced at Rayleigh.
"He can answer a few questions if he wants to. A few. Not an interrogation."
"Understood."
Karz watched the small, ordinary exchange and seemed steadier for it.
It gave the room its edges back — real people, real voices, a table, a lamp, a healer who wouldn't let anyone push him into talking too long.
Eina came forward with her report board held close. "Karz, I'm Eina Tulle, from the Guild. We need to understand what happened, but you can stop whenever you need to. It doesn't have to come out neat."
Karz stared at the blanket for a while.
When he spoke, the words came slow, like each one had to be worked loose from somewhere deep.
"We took the side route because Bor said it would save time. It was supposed to loop back near the older stair. We'd used it once before. Nothing strange that time."
"Who was in your party?" Eina asked gently.
"Me, Lott, Bor, Nasha, and Will. Level Two party. Nothing fancy. We just wanted to finish the commission and get back before dinner." His throat worked. "The torches went out one by one. Will joked about ghosts, and Nasha threw a stone at him for sounding too happy about it. Then Bor found the crack."
Rayleigh listened without breaking in.
Karz's fingers twisted in the sheet. "He said there was air coming from behind the wall. Lott told him not to touch it, but Bor already had his knife in the seam. The wall opened before he found any mechanism. It just... breathed out."
Airmid's eyes flicked to Rayleigh for half a second.
'That matched Lott's story too closely.'
Karz swallowed. "After that, everything felt wrong. My feet were on the floor, but my head felt half a step behind. Will started talking and his mouth didn't line up with his voice. Nasha grabbed for my arm and I thought she missed — then her hand was already there. We tried to turn back. The corridor behind us was longer than it had been."
Eina kept writing, though her fingers had gone tight around the pen.
Karz closed his eyes. "The first voice sounded like Lott. That was the worst part, because he was right beside me. I could hear him calling from behind the wall and hear him breathing next to me at the same time. Bor panicked. He hit the wall with his sword, and something came out."
Rayleigh leaned in slightly. "The figure?"
Karz opened his eyes. "You saw it?"
"Only from a distance."
"It wasn't a monster. I mean — maybe it was, but it didn't move like one. One arm longer than the other, and cloth hanging off all of it. Or skin. I couldn't tell. It tapped the wall, and the corridor answered."
Rayleigh's face stayed calm, but his mind closed around that detail.
'Tapped the wall. Like giving a command.'
"What happened after it appeared?" he asked.
Karz looked sick. "Bor swung at it. His sword landed, but the sound came late, and the thing was already behind him. Nasha cast — the flames turned sideways and burned the ceiling instead. Lott grabbed me and we ran. I remember falling. Something wrapped around me. The cords were hot and cold at the same time."
His breathing had gone ragged.
Airmid raised a hand at once. "Stop there."
Karz looked like he wanted to argue, but his body decided for him. He sank into the pillow, shaking from the effort of having spoken at all.
Eina lowered her board. "Thank you. That's enough for tonight."
Karz turned his head toward the wall between his room and the next ward.
"Can I see Lott?"
Airmid didn't answer too quickly.
She checked his pulse, his eyes, the faint tremor in his fingers, before she spoke.
"Not tonight. If I let the two of you meet while your bodies are still unstable, the shock could set off both wounds. Tomorrow — if you rest properly — I'll arrange it."
Karz's face crumpled, but he nodded.
Rayleigh respected that.
The boy wanted to see with his own eyes that his friend was real, and Airmid had just asked him to wait, after everything the wall had done to his senses.
That was not a small thing to ask.
"I'll tell him you woke up," Eina said quietly. "Only that much. He should know you're alive."
Karz closed his eyes. "Please."
Airmid gave him a mild sedative, and the room stayed quiet until his breathing evened out.
Only then did anyone move.
Welf let out a slow breath and stared at the marker sketch as if it had turned into something else while he wasn't looking.
"It used Lott's voice while Lott was standing next to him."
"Yeah," Rayleigh said.
Welf didn't have anything to add to that, and neither did Rayleigh.
Tsubaki folded her arms, her eye fixed on the sealed tray that held the black-red cord.
"That thing tapping the wall bothers me. If it can command the route, maybe it isn't trapped in there the way the victims are."
Finn arrived not long after, called in by Shakti the moment Karz woke and Riveria came with him
Gareth was absent — forced to rest, probably, by someone with more sense than he had.
Alise, Kaguya, and Ryuu turned up a few minutes later, all three with the look of people who'd been waiting close by despite being told to sleep.
Airmid saw them and sighed.
Alise raised both hands before the healer could say a word. "I know. Quiet voices, don't crowd the patient, and if you say leave, we leave."
Airmid studied her a moment. "Good."
Finn read Eina's notes once, then again, in no hurry.
His thumb rested near his lips, his eyes moving through the details with the patience that made him dangerous in a command room.
"The figure tapped the wall," he said at last. "That points to control. Or at least communication with the passage."
Riveria looked at the black-red cord through the sealed tray. "And the binding kept Karz alive. If it only wanted death, it could have killed him in the chamber."
Alise's face tightened. "So it kept him as bait."
"Or storage," Kaguya said, her voice cool. "Bait is meant to be taken. Storage is meant to be used later."
No one in the room liked that.
Rayleigh liked it least, because it made sense.
Ryuu looked toward Karz's sleeping shape behind the screen. "The voices may come from people it's already taken. Even with no one behind the wall in that moment, the sound could have been stolen from them earlier."
"That would explain it using Lott's voice while Lott was standing right there," Rayleigh said. "And how it picked up Alise's title so fast. It may be recording sound through the stone."
Welf looked up. "Then talking inside the route just gives it more to work with."
"Probably."
Alise's jaw set. "So the evil wall hates rescue work and steals our conversations!"
"It is not funny," she added, before Kaguya could say anything.
Kaguya only inclined her head. "I wasn't going to laugh."
Finn set the report down. "Then the next operation needs stricter speech rules. Short commands only inside the hidden route. No names unless necessary. No titles. No emotional confirmation where the walls can hear it."
Alise winced — clearly remembering the whisper of Captain.
"A sound-dampening field might help," Riveria said, "but cast too strongly, it could disturb the wounded, or the passage itself. I can manage a low veil around the team. It won't block everything, but it should blur our voices past a short range."
Rayleigh nodded. "I can prepare written command cards for the common decisions. Stop. Withdraw. Living presence. False voice. Left, right. Wall movement. Injured. It sounds clumsy until the wall starts borrowing names."
"It doesn't sound clumsy," Ryuu said. "In the Dungeon, simple signals save lives."
Finn moved on. "We also need to decide whether the figure is even alive. Rayleigh's charm didn't react to it."
"Could be too far away," Rayleigh said. "Could be a puppet, a corpse moved by magic, a construct, or something that hides its life signs well enough to fool a rough charm. I built those tags in a hurry. I don't want to bet everyone's life on them being perfect."