Ninjara's eyes remained fixed on the plate of food tucked away within the drawer, an intense yearning surging through her as her stomach protested loudly. The dimly lit room offered no comfort, and the meager portion of sustenance before her hardly met the needs of a growing girl. Nevertheless, it was the only ration she would receive for the day, while also being the fifth consecutive one she would refuse to eat.

Despite the relentless hunger gnawing at her, Ninjara clung to the conviction that had sustained her. She bit her lip to the point of bleeding as she stared at the plate of food with longing.

"Just a bit longer," she muttered to herself.desperately hoping that today would mark the end of it.

While she waited, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed from the other side of the door, and soon knocks reverberated through the thick, metallic door. Ninjara's prison featured a drawer that, at this specific hour, was being pulled open by the warden on the other side of the imposing metal door, allowing him to deposit her daily ration.

"You didn't eat again yesterday, did you?" a voice grumbled from the other side of the door. "Why?" The warden's tone grew harsher, and he began knocking impatiently. "You don't plan on dying on us, do you?"

Ninjara remained silent, refusing to respond.

"Do you hear me in there?!" the voice demanded, banging on the heavy metallic door. Despite the man's insistent and inquisitive calls, Ninjara held her silence. The prolonged quiet heightened her unease, even though she had no knowledge of what exactly was happening on the other side of the door. She continued to stare at it, praying that the Golden Matriarch and the Goddess Zara would grant her the opportunity to escape this place at last.

A long, tense moment of silence passed, and just as she was about to lose all hope, her prayers were answered. On the massive door that was her prison's door, there were only three things that gave her a glimpse of the outside world: the door itself, the drawer that was used to deliver her food, and a peephole that wardens could use to peek in on how she was doing in her cell from time to time. She was mostly expecting something from the latter, and it did eventually pan out.

The man, curious about Ninjara's whereabouts, opened up the small window to check on her for the first time in six days, only to realize that, unlike what it should have been, the layer of glass that should have separated him and Ninjara was gone, broken and carved out by none other than Ninjara herself.

"What the—"

Before the man could utter another word, a golden, vine-like appendage flew out the peephole, darting at him, only to coil itself around his neck, violently choking him.

The Warden from the other side of the door attempted to fight back, but this only prompted Ninjara to increase the strength with which she choked him. For more than a minute, the man let out choked and drowning noises until he became completely silent. From inside her prison, Ninjara was certain that the man was either unconscious or, in the worst case, dead. But at the moment, she didn't let herself dwell on the guilt of those thoughts. Instead, she used her golden appendage to blindly search the door for something that would open it.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Ninjara rejoiced quietly, feeling her appendage latch onto something that felt like a hatch wheel.

After a brief but intense struggle, Ninjara successfully manipulated the hatch wheel, resulting in a liberating "clang" as the door yielded. She retracted her gilded limb and embarked on the daunting task of pushing open the colossal and weighty door. Despite her exhaustion and gnawing hunger, Ninjara summoned her last ounce of strength to exert herself. As the massive door emitted a prolonged and grating groan, Ninjara, trembling, ventured forth from her confining cell. Inhaling deeply, she savored her first taste of revitalizing fresh air.

As Ninjara surveyed her surroundings, she found herself standing in the middle of a sprawling corridor, stretching out before her. Looking down, she saw the warden lying unconscious by her feet. Without a second thought, she knelt beside him and quickly grabbed the food meant for her on the ground. In a rush, she devoured every bit of it, hardly noticing the unconscious if not straight up lifeless warden beside her.

While greedily devouring her meal, Ninjara sensed slight signs of life from the man. Without pausing her eating, she let out a sigh of relief. Lately, she had gone through a strange and significant change in her odo-wielding capabilities, making it difficult for her to control the little Odo she was able to summon.

After finishing her meal, Ninjara stood up and continued down the corridor. Just a few steps later, she spotted another warden, who locked eyes with her, stunned to find her there.

"Oh, crap!" the man cursed, then turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, yelling, "The Dae Odoe girl is out of her cell!"

"Tsk."

Recognizing the futility and likely risks of pursuing the escaping man, Ninjara decided to go in the opposite direction down the corridor. Her primary objective remained unchanged—to escape from the facility, which she could only assume was some sort of prison or dungeon. She couldn't tell for sure; after all, she had been unconscious when brought there.

Quickly passing by several doors that resembled the one she had just escaped from, Ninjara curiously glanced through each peephole. Her heart yearned for a sight of familiar faces. However, every time she looked, she found either empty cells or detainees who were clearly not the people she was searching for.

As she approached the last door in the corridor, an alarming scene unfolded before her—prison wardens closing in from both ends, accompanied by heavily armed knights. Their voices echoed in unison, "Hey, you there! Halt!"

Panicking, Ninjara scanned her surroundings for an escape route. Her eyes locked onto a stairwell corridor leading to a lower level. Realizing it was her only option, she sprinted down the stairs. "No, no, no! Don't go there! Damn it!" she heard the men shout as she continued her descent.

Though clearly hesitant, they pursued her, their reluctance to take the stairs playing into Ninjara's advantage.

Clutching onto a glimmer of hope, Ninjara continued her descent, desperately searching for an exit. However, her confusion deepened when the stairs didn't lead to a lower floor or any recognizable destination. Instead, they abruptly ended at an imposing sealed door, devoid of any openings for observation or communication, there just there in the middle of the door a single hatch wheel.

It was a plain, imposing, nearly seamless door. Despite its plain appearance, it gave off the impression of being used to seal something that one could only hope remained sealed.

「Enter.」

Ninjara didn't know what awaited her beyond the door, but she realized it was her only option. Backtracking would mean confronting the guards and the prison warden; there was simply no other way out. At first she tried opening the door but quickly understood that with her strength alone she wouldn’t be able to, prompting her to summon her golden appendages to aid her in turning the hatch wheel to open the door, allowing her to enter a room unlike any of the previous cells she had encountered.

With the sounds of knights and wardens growing louder, shouting for her to stop, Ninjara made the deliberate choice to close the door behind her.

Upon doing so, she realized that the room was not a cell, as the door had suggested, but a large, dimly lit laboratory. Flasks, hammers, saws, and syringes lay scattered around, along with other tools that left Ninjara wondering about their potential purposes.

A sense of foreboding emanated from the room, but she pushed those thoughts aside, sensing that there might be something here that could lead her out of this place, wherever it was.

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"The guards didn't want me to enter this room,” she thought as she began to explore. "There must be something here that can hel—"

As Ninjara searched the room for an escape route, her eyes were captivated by a massive cubic structure nestled in one corner of the room. It was constructed of transparent, magical glass, filled with an iridescent liquid, and radiating an eerie, mystical energy. It was connected to a series of cables and pipes that seemed to endlessly supply the cubic structure with the strange liquid.

The glass structure enclosed what appeared to be a marble-like, crystalline coffin. Why call it a coffin? For the simple reason that within the crystal, a boy lay huddled in a fetal position, his eyes closed as if in a deep slumber. His short, dark hair resembled the shiny black material, ebonite. Curled up as he was, it was difficult to determine his age, but he appeared to be no older than nine or ten at best.

Despite her initial fear at the sight of the enormous cubic object, Ninjara reached out to touch it. Surprisingly, the magical cube surrounding the coffin didn't react aggressively to her touch.

Though there were no signs of movement or any visible reactions that could suggest so, she had a peculiar sensation that freeing the boy inside would somehow bring him back to life.

Ninjara couldn't fathom how the boy ended up inside the cube. "Who are you?" she asked.

「Free him.」

"Are you a prisoner like me?"

「Break the sphere on the ceiling.」

A strange and inexplicable desire overcame her, a longing to shatter the container. However, her desire to release the boy was interrupted by the sound of the room's door opening, and she saw wardens and knights pouring in. "Get away from that container!" one of the leading knights ordered from a distance.

Noticing the knights' anxious fixation on the boy in the crystal coffin, an idea flashed in Ninjara's mind.

"You're surrounded, and even your odo won't help. Surrender, and no harm will come to you," the knight suggested.

Noticing beads of sweat forming on the man's forehead as his eyes darted back and forth between her and the coffin, Ninjara called upon her odo, her skin began to glow, revealing golden scales covering her arms. Numerous snake-like golden appendages sprouted forth from her arms, forming into a scythe-like shape in her hand. She didn't direct them toward the wardens and knights but rather aimed it at the container holding the boy within his crystal prison.

"You fool! What are you doing?!" the leader screamed the moment she summoned her scythe and aimed it at the container.

"I don't know who he is, but he's important to all of you, right?" With a deliberate tap of her scythe twice against the container, Ninjara added, "You wouldn't want me to break this container, would you?"

"... You! Get away from that container; you have no idea what you’re playing with," the man mumbled panickedly, his voice more quivering than ever.

"Who is he? Why is he kept here?!" Ninjara asked.

The boy was young, very young, and in spite of herself being young, she couldn't find what reason they would have to keep a child like him in a prison like this—he was not Dae Odoe like her, for them to wish to exploit her.

"He…" The man hesitated, taking a nervous look around him.

Ninjara bared her scythe more threateningly.

"I have no right to speak about this!" The man screamed. "Besides, it doesn’t matter…”

Feeling that she wouldn't get much of an answer out of him, she instead chose to ask what was most important to her. "Where are my parents?! I didn't see them in any of your cells. Where did you send them?!"

"I… don't know…"

"You're lying!" Ninjara barked, furious.

"I am not! You were on your own when you were sent here. If your parents had been sent here, I would have known it."

「Free him. Break the container.」

His useless answer made Ninjara tap the surface of the container even more furiously. "Then who does?!"

The man's silent response further stoked Ninjara's already simmering anger. His anxious glance toward the boy trapped within the container pushed her to make a rash decision, one that she wasn't even certain was entirely her own.

With her scythe, she swung at the container with the full intention of breaking it and releasing the liquid within. "Stop this fo—" the leading knight screamed, bracing himself as if anticipating an explosive impact.

However, what happened next was far from the anticipated climax. Instead of exploding or displaying any extravagant reaction, Ninjara's scythe swing simply bounced off the container's surface, not even leaving a single scratch. "What!"

Relief was painted all over the knight's face, but just as he took steps toward Ninjara, he froze in place when he noticed Ninjara's next course of action. "What... are you doing? No, no, no. Don't! You're going to doom us all!"

「Break the sphere on the ceiling.」

Ninjara took a few steps back and adjusted her scythe, extending its length. She swung it once more, but this time her target was not the cubic container but the large orb hanging just above it.

「The orb manifests the container. Break the sphere on the ceiling. Break the container.」

Unlike the container, a single swing was enough to shatter the orb into a myriad of glimmering colors. Ninjara's intuition that the orb was somehow connected to the container was confirmed when it vanished almost instantly along with the shattering of the orb.

The cubic container disappeared, but the iridescent liquid remained, bursting forth in a massive wave into the room.

With the cubic container gone, the liquid spilled all over the room, and yet the spherical crystal remained, suggesting that it was not connected to either the container or the orb on the ceiling.

"Oh, God! No, no, no!" The knight frantically panicked, backing off. But once again as his attention paned back to Ninjara he gathered himself to order, "You…Quick, restrain her before she do—" He stopped mid-sentence upon hearing a strange noise.

The gentle sound of glass cracking resonated loudly through the otherwise silent room before the crystal-like container burst apart in a dramatic fashion, completely annihilating itself. Freed from the container, the boy's body tumbled toward the ground, but Ninjara swiftly extended her appendage and caught him, pulling him close to her side. Although as she held him, she detected no pulse or any signs of life, she had an inexplicable feeling that this was not a lifeless body she was holding.

"He... he's free. What have you done? Do you have any idea what you've done?" Ninjara stood up and gently placed the boy's body down. Although she had never used her odo to fight, she was determined not to give up without a fight. She couldn't bear the thought of spending any more time in those wretched cells.

"Get out of my way; we're leaving this place," Ninjara declared, her appendages taking on a menacing stance.

Despite her warning, the men who had approached her suddenly halted their steps, as if paralyzed by something they saw. Ninjara realized their reaction wasn't directed at her, but at something behind her. Following their gaze, her eyes landed on the boy who, just seconds ago, had been almost lifeless but was now standing on his own two feet.

The boy gazed at her with otherworldly blue eyes, his expression one of utter confusion. But in the next moment, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his mouth opened in a silent scream. His entire body stiffened before convulsions gripped him, while bolts of blue lightning danced uncontrollably across his skin.

Having seen his eyes and witnessed the spectacle, Ninjara immediately understood that the boy was a Raj, a blue eyed-mage, or at least something akin to one, but she still couldn't fathom why he had been imprisoned here.

She would soon get her answer.

"Shit, shit, shit! It's awake, get everyone out of here!" one of the knights shouted.

As they rushed to evacuate the room, lightning continued to course through the boy's body, causing his muscles to spasm and contort uncontrollably.

Ninjara stood frozen, unable to move, as the lightning produced by the boy wreaked havoc in the room, causing destruction wherever it struck.

"AAAAARGGGGH!!!" Amidst the chaos, a cry abruptly put an end to the lightning rampage.

Ninjara remained unmoved, standing in the same spot where she had been during the lightning rampage. She was the only person in the room to witness the culmination of the chaotic display. The air was heavy with the scent of burnt flesh, and the sound of crackling electricity still hung in the air. She briefly glanced at the spot where the knights and wardens had been, but quickly averted her eyes from the smoldering remnants left behind.

Turning her attention to the boy, Ninjara saw that the convulsions had ceased, but the lightning continued to play across his body, now seemingly under his control.

"Even in this weakened, you refuse to yield even a bit to me. Humph… there should be a limit on how stubborn one can be. In any case, it is time for you to wake up. You’ve slept for way too long, Alexei."

The boy stared at his own hand before raising his gaze to meet Ninjara's. It was at that moment, as their eyes locked, that she noticed his eyes had transformed from their earlier otherworldly blue to a golden, beast-like yellow.

Approaching Ninjara, the boy stared at her like one might glare at an invading pest. As he closed the distance, he extended his hand to her chest level. Ninjara couldn't understand what was happening, but she understood that she was in a dire situation. At that moment, she wanted to run, but something inside utterly forbade her from making any move.

Perhaps he was hesitating, or perhaps he was not, but for a moment, he remained like that, arm held out as though to reach for something.

"If only he’d learn to be as obedient as you are, none of us would be here," he suddenly declared with a sigh, lowering his hand before walking past her and announcing, "Come with me; I’ll get the two of you out of here before he regains control. When he does, look out for him."