The figure blocking their path stepped forward, boots grinding against the loose gravel. In the flickering tunnel light, his face emerged — cold, brutal, and all too familiar. One of Wellington's top enforcers. A living shadow that had haunted their steps for weeks.
"End of the line," the enforcer said, voice cutting through the heavy silence.
In a flash, Dimitri and Zayn raised their guns. Silas shifted instinctively, positioning himself between the threat and Ayla, shielding her without a second thought.
For a heartbeat, everything was still — a fragile moment balanced on the knife's edge.
Then the first gunshot rang out.
Chaos exploded around them. Dimitri fired, sending a shockwave of noise bouncing off the tight stone walls. Sparks rained from a shattered light fixture overhead as Zayn returned fire, forcing the enforcer to duck behind a rusted support beam.
Silas gritted his teeth, yanking Ayla backward as bullets tore past them. She stumbled, eyes wide, the roar of gunfire drowning out her heartbeat. She crouched low behind a broken water main, adrenaline surging through her veins.
"Stay down!" Silas barked, firing two quick shots that drove another attacker back.
But more men flooded into the corridor — armed, armored, ruthless.
"We're pinned!" Zayn shouted, squeezing off another round.
Silas scanned for options — none good. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and trapped.
A shadow moved toward Ayla. One of Wellington's thugs, sneering, thinking her an easy kill.
Ayla's fingers brushed against something cold. She seized a heavy steel pipe lying against the wall. Before fear could paralyze her, she surged up, swinging the pipe with both hands. It connected with a sickening crack against the man's temple. He dropped, unconscious.
For a second, Ayla just stood there, panting, the pipe trembling in her hands. She had never fought like this before. She had never needed to.
But tonight, there was no choice.
Silas caught her eye across the chaos — a fierce, proud look — then nodded once before turning back to fire again.
"Fall back!" Dimitri barked. "Deeper into the tunnels!"
Without hesitation, they moved — weaving through narrow side corridors, bullets chasing their heels.
The tunnels twisted and turned, unfamiliar and treacherous. Every footstep echoed like a gunshot.
"Split up!" Silas called. "Throw them off!"
Zayn and Dimitri broke left. Silas grabbed Ayla's hand without warning and pulled her right, down a cramped maintenance shaft just wide enough for two.
They didn't slow until the gunfire faded into the distance.
Silas kicked open a rusted door and shoved them inside a dim maintenance room. The walls were lined with ancient machines and crumbling lockers. A thin shaft of light filtered through a crack in the ceiling.
He barred the door quickly, checking it twice.
Only then did he let himself sag against the wall, breathing hard.
Ayla slid down onto an overturned crate, clutching the pipe like a lifeline. Her palms were raw, her arms trembling.
"You okay?" Silas asked, voice low.
"I hit him," she whispered, staring at her scraped hands. "I actually... hit him."
"You did good," Silas said. "You stayed alive."
He tore a strip from his shirt and quickly wrapped a shallow graze on his arm.
"You're hurt," Ayla said, forcing herself to her feet.
"I've had worse," he said, not looking at her.
"You keep saying that," Ayla snapped, frustration boiling over. "You keep acting like you have to carry everything by yourself. Like you can't trust anyone."
Silas stiffened but didn't reply.
Ayla crossed the room, standing over him. "Talk to me. Why are they after you? Why am I in the middle of this?"
For a moment, he said nothing. The silence thickened between them.
Finally, Silas looked up. His expression was hard, but there was something vulnerable behind it — something rare.
"It's not just me," he said quietly. "It's about Valthera. About what's hidden beneath it."
Ayla blinked. "What do you mean?"
"There are things buried here — old secrets, dangerous ones. Wellington isn't just a criminal; he's a puppet for something bigger. I found something that wasn't meant to be found."
He shook his head, jaw clenched. "And now they'll kill anyone who knows too much."
Ayla swallowed, the weight of it sinking into her bones.
She had thought this was just about murder. Revenge. Maybe greed.
But it was something far worse.
Before she could ask more, a sharp knock at the door snapped them both into motion.
Silas whipped his gun up — but a familiar voice cut through the tension.
"It's us! Open up!"
He unbarred the door quickly. Zayn and Dimitri stumbled in, battered but alive.
"We lost them for now," Zayn said, glancing over his shoulder. "But it won't last."
"They're sweeping the tunnels," Dimitri added. "Systematically. We'll be boxed in if we stay."
"We have one chance," Dimitri continued. "There's an old smuggler's path behind the eastern sewer lines. It's risky — unstable, half-collapsed — but it's our best shot."
"Then we move," Silas said, clapping Dimitri on the shoulder.
They moved quickly, the tunnels growing darker and more twisted the farther they went. The air grew damp, metallic. Strange shapes loomed out of the shadows — broken support beams, ancient rusted pipes, graffiti in languages long forgotten.
Dimitri led confidently, but even he paused now and then, checking landmarks only he seemed to recognize.
Ayla stayed close to Silas, the stolen pipe still gripped tightly in her hand. Fear gnawed at her, but she forced herself forward. Step by step.
They were nearly at the exit — a battered iron door barely visible behind a collapsed section of wall — when the ground trembled.
An instant later, a deafening explosion rocked the passageway.
The tunnel shuddered. Cracks split the ceiling. A section of wall collapsed in a spray of stone and dust, sealing off the smugglers' path completely.
"No!" Dimitri swore, pounding a fist against the rubble.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence and dust. The way out was gone.
"We're not getting out the way we planned," Silas muttered, squinting into the gaping darkness of a side tunnel that yawned open beside them — a tunnel not marked on any map.
The darkness seemed to breathe, waiting.
Silas tightened his grip on his gun and turned to the others.
"Now," he said, voice grim, steady.
"Now we see where this rabbit hole really leads."