The temperature dropped so rapidly that the air crystallized around them, transforming their exhaled breath into miniature ice sculptures that shattered against the floor. The Shades moved with a wrongness that made Ember's spine crawl—not gliding or floating but somehow displacing reality as they advanced, like holes cut into the fabric of the world.

"That's... not stealth anymore territory, right?" Cinder whispered, her eyes wide. "We can officially be unsubtle now?"

"Run first," Ember commanded, already backing away. "Dramatic pyrotechnics second."

They bolted down the corridor, the cold pursuing them like a hungry predator. Where shadow-substance brushed the walls, frost bloomed in fractal patterns, spreading with unnatural speed.

The sound of their footfalls echoed strangely, as if the Shades were swallowing the acoustics of the space itself.

"Find Pyra and Kindle!" Ember called, the book of research pressed tight against her ribs beneath her stolen tunic. "They've got to be heading for the upper levels!"

They rounded a corner at speed that would have shattered a normal human's ankles, only to collide with two figures racing from the opposite direction.

"Oof—watch it!" Pyra yelped, bouncing off Cinder's chest and nearly toppling backward. "Oh, hey! Great timing! We've got company!"

Behind Pyra and Kindle stood—or rather, hovered—what could only be their rescued subject. The being barely approximated humanoid, its form shimmering like heat rising from summer stones. Light played across its surface in rippling patterns that mimicked the flow of water, occasionally revealing glimpses of something structurally impossible beneath.

"Is that—" Ember began.

"Interdimensional tourist, apparently," Kindle supplied. "Not big on names or, you know, stable physical form, but definitely not from around here. We're calling it Khroma because it made a sound like that when it tried to communicate."

"Later," Cinder cut in, glancing over her shoulder. "We've got shadow-things coming, and they don't seem friendly."

"Shadow-things?" Pyra echoed, then her eyes widened as she spotted the approaching Shades. "Oh... those shadow-things. Creepy!"

The Shades had multiplied, flowing together and splitting apart like ink dropped in water, forming a wavering wall of darkness that advanced with relentless purpose. The corridor's temperature continued to plummet, now cold enough that the metal fixtures cracked with tiny, pitiful sounds.

"Plan?" Kindle asked, bouncing anxiously on her toes.

Ember's mind raced, calculating angles and escape routes. "Upper levels. We move as one unit. Pyra and Kindle on point, clearing path. Cinder and I flanking to protect—" she gestured at the shimmering entity, "—our new friend. Ash center rear for smoke cover."

"What about the guards?" Cinder asked. "And the silver masks Nasir warned us about?"

"Worry about shadows first, masks second," Ember decided. "Ready? Move!"

They surged forward as a coordinated unit, five identical women and one interdimensional entity forming a living battering ram that charged toward the nearest stairwell.

Pyra and Kindle led, their flames unwinding from their shoulders in twin spirals of destructive intent.

Khroma moved with them, not exactly running but flowing alongside, its form occasionally blurring into streaks of prismatic light before reconstituting. Whatever the Silent Hand had done to it had clearly left it weakened—its edges kept dissolving into static, requiring visible effort to maintain cohesion.

The first Shade lunged into their path, a limb-like appendage stretching toward Kindle's face with predatory intent. Before it could make contact, Pyra unleashed a concentrated blast that should have incinerated anything with physical form.

The flames passed through the Shade without effect, dissipating against the far wall in a shower of useless sparks.

"Oh, that's not fair!" Pyra complained, dodging as the Shade's reaching tendril froze the air where her head had been. "They're immune to fire? Who designed these things?"

"Probably the same people who don't like having their dimensional research stolen," Cinder snapped, shoving Pyra aside and driving her fist into the Shade's torso. Her hand passed through it with an audible crack of displaced air, momentarily disturbing the shadowy fabric before the Shade reformed, undamaged but enraged.

"Running!" Kindle shouted, grabbing Pyra and Cinder and hauling them toward the stairwell. "Time for hitting later!"

They dashed up the stairs, the frigid air nipping at their heels and their breath crystallizing before them. As they neared the top, Ember risked a glance backward and saw the Shades flowing up the walls, traveling parallel to the floor with boneless ease.

"Any suggestions for fighting non-corporeal shadow monsters?" she asked, pulling ahead to lead the charge into the next corridor.

Ash opened her mouth to reply, but Khroma made a sound—a vibration that bypassed their ears and resonated directly in their skulls, uncomfortably reminiscent of teeth grinding against metal. The shimmering entity gestured, its arm elongating as crystalline patterns formed along its surface.

"It's trying to tell us something," Kindle translated, though her expression suggested the attempted communication was giving her a headache. "Something about... light? Or... frequency?"

Another wave of Shades flowed around the corner behind them, merging with the first group to form a larger, more complex mass of darkness. The temperature dropped even further, cold enough that Ember's fingers ached inside her gloves.

"No time," Ember decided. "Just run. We'll figure it out on the move."

They sprinted toward the main stairwell, their enhanced speed becoming both blessing and curse in the narrow confines of the underground facility. They moved faster than normal humans could track, but the corridors weren't designed for such velocity, forcing them to bank off walls and occasionally slide under obstacles that appeared too suddenly to dodge.

A pair of guards appeared at the next junction, their shocked expressions barely registering before Cinder and Pyra sent them crashing into opposite walls with synchronized strikes. The guards' bodies hit with meaty thumps, leaving them groaning but conscious as the group raced past.

"Seven guards ahead," Ash called from the rear.

"Good!" Pyra grinned, the expression slightly manic beneath her stolen mask. "I've been wanting to try something!"

Before anyone could stop her, Pyra accelerated, pulling ahead of the group. She burst into the open chamber like a comet entering the atmosphere, trailing wisps of flame that sketched her trajectory in burning orange.

The guards barely had time to reach for weapons before Pyra unleashed what could only be described as a tantrum with tactical intent—she spun in a circle, both arms extended, releasing not a continuous stream of fire but pulsing balls of concentrated heat that bounced off every surface like demented fireflies, exploding wherever they made contact with organic material.

By the time the others reached the doorway, all seven guards were down, and Pyra stood in the center of the room looking very pleased with herself.

"Was that really necessary?" Cinder demanded, glancing back at the advancing Shades.

Pyra's grin widened. "No, but it was satisfying."

"Total lockdown initiated," announced the same cold, methodical voice from earlier. "Containment breach in progress. All agents evacuate to designated safe zones. Releasing additional Shades."

"Oh, come on!" Kindle protested. "How many of those things do they have?"

The shimmering entity—Khroma—made a sound like glass grinding against metal, its form wavering between humanoid and something decidedly less definable. It recoiled from the approaching shadows, its translucent body pulsing with what even Cinder could recognize as fear.

"It doesn't like those things any more than we do," Cinder observed, positioning herself between the entity and the nearest Shade. "Can't say I blame it."

"Less observing, more running," Ember commanded, already scanning for an exit route. "We've got the research, we've got our... guest. Time to go."

They bolted down a side corridor, the rescued entity flowing alongside them like spilled mercury trying to keep up with its container, leaving trails of refracted light. The Shades pursued, flowing over and through each other in a shifting mosaic of darkness.

"Main floor next," Ember directed, orienting herself among the magical chaos. "Then out into the city."

The temperature plummeted suddenly, frost crystallizing across their stolen tunics and skin. Shadows coalesced from the walls, forming into more Shades that oozed toward them.

"Wonderful," Cinder grumbled, dodging a shadowy tendril that threatened to freeze her arm to the bone. "More party guests."

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Pyra leaped forward, sweeping her arm in a wide arc that sent a torrent of fire ripping through the massed Shades. Flames guttered ineffectively against their immaterial forms, passing through them without resistance.

"I think," Kindle shouted over the crackling inferno, "we've established fire isn't their kryptonite!"

"Exit's blocked!" Ember called, backpedaling from a swarm of advancing shadows. "Find another way up!"

"On it!" Pyra announced, her orange flames spiraling up her arms in excited corkscrews. Her smile held the particular quality found only in pyromaniacs and children discovering matches for the first time. "Cover your eyes!"

The warning came approximately half a second before Pyra slammed both palms against the ceiling, channeling a concentrated blast that turned stone to shrapnel. The explosion rocked the corridor, sending chunks of masonry raining down on the advancing Shades. Dust and debris billowed outward in a choking cloud.

"Alternative exit," Pyra announced proudly, pointing upward where her demolition efforts had opened the way to the the mill's main floor. "All aboard!"

One by one, they boosted each other through the hole, clambering into the spacious room above. Silent Hand operatives scrambled everywhere, rushing to evacuate before the unleashed Shades overran the facility. Khroma's ethereal form flowed through the opening, its body refracting the chaotic light in a bewildering kaleidoscope of color.

"I think we can escape in the chaos," Ember suggested, already mapping an escape route through the disorganized panic. "Just keep your heads down, try to blend in."

"Blend in?" Cinder repeated incredulously, pointing at the shimmering entity. "With that?"

Before Ember could answer, a commanding voice rang out amid the clamor.

"Halt, intruders!"

The five of them—and Khroma—turned to find a woman standing before them. She wore an ornate black dress, its sleeves trimmed in silver, its design more appropriate for an aristocratic ball than a secret underground lair. Her silver mask, decorated with elaborate whorls, seemed to float over her face, obscuring her features.

"That must be the Puppetmaster Nasir warned us about," Kindle noted, backing up a step. "So... now what?"

"Now," the masked woman answered, her voice carrying an amused lilt, "you give back what you've stolen and surrender that creature to my—"

The quintet already ran by the time she finished her sentence, ignoring the offer and accelerating into a full sprint. Khroma kept pace, its form wavering between humanoid and abstract with each step, as if struggling to maintain cohesion.

"After them!" the Puppetmaster shrieked, her aristocratic composure fracturing like cheap dinnerware at a dwarven feast.

The five women paid her demand the exact same attention they'd give a restaurant's "Please Wait To Be Seated" sign during an avalanche—which is to say, absolutely none.

They bulleted through the chaos, carving a five-person wake of confusion and displaced air. Silent Hand operatives stumbled aside, some by choice, others because Pyra helpfully redirected them with strategic elbow placement.

"Front door's right there!" Kindle pointed, bouncing a hapless guard off a support beam without breaking stride. "Freedom in three, two—"

"Wait!" A wave of silver-tinged power rocketed from the Puppetmaster's hands, rippling across the room in concentric rings. Where it touched Silent Hand operatives, they froze like marionettes with tangled strings.

The quintet felt the wave wash over them like wet cobwebs across their skin—unpleasant but utterly ineffective. Khroma, however, jerked sideways as if struck, its amorphous form spasming in what looked uncomfortably like pain.

"Oh, that's just mean," Pyra complained, scooping an arm through the entity's shimmering midsection. Her flames didn't pass through it as expected—instead, they entwined with Khroma's light structure, momentarily stabilizing its wavering outline. "Interdimensional tag-team, coming through!"

They crashed through the front entrance, fresh night air slapping their faces like an overenthusiastic greeting from a long-lost friend. Stars scattered across the sky, indifferent witnesses to their explosive exit.

A handful of confused guards turned toward the commotion, but might as well have tried to catch shooting stars with butterfly nets.

"Hard left!" Ember directed, navigating from memory. "Safehouse is six blocks east!"

They blurred through Ebran's night streets, their passage marked only by scattered papers, billowing cloaks, and the occasional bewildered shriek from night-market vendors. At their speed, the city transformed into a funhouse of stretched architecture and smeared light, punctuated by momentary snapshots of startled faces.

"I think—" Ash began, only to be cut short as Khroma produced another metal-grinding vibration that bypassed their ears and resonated directly in their skulls. The entity's form fluctuated wildly, tendrils of light breaking away and dissolving into the night air.

"It's falling apart!" Kindle translated unnecessarily, golden eyes wide with concern.

"Almost there!" Ember called, the safehouse appearing around the corner like a neglected aunt at an inheritance reading—unremarkable but suddenly very important.

They skidded to a halt before the nondescript door, five perfect stops and one shimmering puddle of interdimensional tourist. Cinder slammed a palm against the wood, the impact making the entire frame rattle.

"Nasir! Open up before our new friend becomes abstract art!"

The door swung inward, revealing the merchant agent's expressionless face. His eyebrows twitched infinitesimally upward—the equivalent of a shocked scream from anyone else.

"That was... prompt," he observed, stepping aside as they barreled past him, dragging Khroma's increasingly insubstantial form. "I see you've brought company."

"This is Khroma," Kindle introduced, gesturing to the entity whose shimmering outline now pulsed with alarming irregularity, bits of its structure breaking apart and dissipating like steam from a kettle. "Interdimensional tourist, Silent Hand prisoner, currently disintegrating. We think."

"And the research?" Nasir's eyes tracked to the book clutched against Ember's side.

She extracted it, grimacing as she noticed a black stain spreading across its ancient cover—an oily discoloration that seemed to eat into the leather like acid through paper. "Retrieved, but I think it was damaged during the escape. One of the Shades brushed against it."

Nasir's composure cracked like ice in spring, alarm flashing across his features as he stepped forward. "Shadow corruption," he murmured, reaching toward the book but stopping just short of touching it. "The text may already be compromised."

"Can it be fixed?" Cinder demanded, amber eyes narrowed.

"Perhaps," Nasir replied, his tone suggesting a fifty-fifty chance at best. "But your dimensional friend appears to be in critical condition. The compression from physical form is likely unsustainable."

As if cued by his assessment, Khroma's structure shuddered violently, collapsing inward before flowering outward in a spray of prismatic light. The entity's rough humanoid shape dissolved, reforming into something that looked like a jellyfish designed by someone who'd heard of jellyfish but never actually seen one.

"I believe," Ash commented with the academic calm of someone observing a particularly interesting fungus rather than an interdimensional entity's existential crisis, "our new friend requires immediate intervention."

"You don't say," Cinder muttered, collapsing into a chair whose stuffing escaped through multiple slash marks like prison breaks in progress.

She raised a hand toward the nearest wall, which suddenly sprouted a series of neat amber burn marks corresponding precisely with where the silver-masked figures' heads would be if they were standing there.

"Rescued entity disintegrating, magic book corrupted, shadow monsters and psychic puppeteers probably still hunting us... just another day at the office."

"It's Thursday," Kindle corrected helpfully.

"Not helping," Cinder replied through teeth gritted enough to strain enamel.

"Time is indeed of the essence," Nasir said, moving to a cabinet and extracting what appeared to be an ornate crystal lantern. He lit it with a focused gesture, producing a soft blue-green light. "Those Shades won't be deterred by mere walls, and if they're tracking you, they'll be here shortly."

The temperature in the room dropped as if the universe had heard its cue and wanted to set the mood properly. Frost began forming in delicate spiderwebs across the windowpanes.

"So what you're saying," Pyra summarized, poking at Khroma's disintegrating form with a flame-wreathed finger, "is that we're still completely screwed, just in slightly nicer surroundings."

"Not screwed," Nasir corrected, his tone implying that distinguishing between 'screwed' and 'temporarily inconvenienced' was vitally important when facing interdimensional shadow monsters. "We have options."

He approached the damaged book, examining the spreading stain with narrowed eyes. "The corruption is consuming the text. Without intervention, the knowledge will be lost."

Outside, darkness pooled unnaturally in the street, thickening into familiar, unsettling forms. The Shades had found them.

"We need to move," Ember decided, glancing between the disintegrating Khroma and the corrupted book. "Both of these need specialized help, and we can't fight those things."

"Move where?" Kindle asked, peering through a frosting window. "They've surrounded the building."

"Not surrounded," Ash corrected, her eyes taking on that distant quality that meant she was accessing some obscure knowledge they didn't know she possessed. "They're concentrating at entry points—doors, windows, chimneys. They haven't yet materialized inside, which suggests limitations to their movement patterns."

"Or they're toying with us," Cinder muttered.

Khroma made that grinding sound again, but weaker now, like a music box winding down. The entity's form collapsed further, reduced to little more than a floating puddle of light with occasional structural spasms.

Nasir studied the deteriorating entity with sudden interest. "Your interdimensional friend and that book may be more connected than we realized. The Pattern Weaver's research focused on consciousness transference between dimensions. This being might be just what we need."

"Need for what?" Ember asked, suspicion edging her voice.

"To stabilize both problems at once." Nasir held up the crystal lantern, its light casting strange, shifting patterns across the walls. "This containment device was designed to hold magical energy in stasis. If we can store your friend temporarily, it might preserve them until we can find a more permanent solution."

"And the book?" Cinder asked.

"The corruption spreads through direct contact with organic material. If we seal it within a non-organic container—" Nasir gestured to an ornate box on a nearby shelf, "—we can slow the damage until proper countermeasures can be applied."

Frost crawled across the floor, advancing from the windows and door in fractal patterns that crackled beneath their boots. The temperature continued dropping, the air so cold it burned their lungs.

"I hate to be the practical one," Kindle said, hugging herself against the chill, "but even if we solve these two problems, we still have shadow monsters at the door. Exit strategy would be lovely."

Nasir stood perfectly still for three heartbeats, his expression cycling through calculations with the efficiency of an abacus in expert hands.

"There is a way," he said finally. "But it requires sacrifice."

"If you're about to suggest a virgin offering, I regret to inform you we're all disqualified," Pyra quipped, earning a scandalized look from Ember and an eye-roll from Cinder that could have powered a small windmill.

Ash leaned in to whisper into Pyra's ear. "Actually, when we got cursed and then isekai'd, it reset all our... credentials." She gestured vaguely towards her own body. "I checked."

Four heads swiveled simultaneously to stare at her.

"Really?" they asked in unison.

"...Moving on," Nasir interrupted, clearing his throat with deliberate force. "I meant sacrificing this safehouse. We can create a diversion—one significant enough to mask your departure."

"How significant are we talking?" Ember asked.

Nasir smiled thinly. "I believe your companion has already demonstrated a talent for structural redecoration."

All eyes turned to Pyra, whose expression bloomed into the particular smile that made insurance assessors wake in cold sweats.

"Oh," she said, orange flames already spiraling up her arms like eager pets sensing walkies, "you mean blowing stuff up."

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