Chapter Text
The Viridis Parus Hotel had survived centuries of political scheming, irregular duels, and the particular brand of chaos that accompanied any gathering of Zahard's Princesses. It had not, in its long and storied history, survived giant crabs.
The first impact shook the chandeliers. The second cracked the marble floor down the center of the lobby. By the third, the ornamental columns along the east wing had begun to lean at angles that suggested structural opinions about the evening's events.
Outside, clinging to a ledge three floors up, Lo Po Bia Zamzam pressed both hands to his head.
"This is not — this was not in the plan!" he shrieked, his compound eyes reflecting the enormous claw that raked past him close enough to rattle his teeth. "Lord Traumerei's plan was a marriage tournament! A dignified, carefully orchestrated marriage tournament! Not — not this!"
The crab responsible for nearly removing his head was approximately the size of a guest suite. Its shell burned a deep volcanic orange, and from its back spread two great wings — feathered in gold and crimson, unmistakably phoenix-touched — that beat slow and massive against the hotel's outer facade. Where the feathers dragged along the stone, they left scorched lines. The creature did not seem to be attacking with any particular intelligence. It was simply climbing, and the hotel was simply in the way.
There were six more behind it.
---
Inside, on the fourth floor, 25th Baam ran.
He was not running with any particular strategy. He was running because the wall behind him had just been replaced by a claw.
"Left!" Androssi Zahard grabbed his sleeve without looking at him, yanked him through a set of double doors, and released him the moment they were through. She smoothed her crop top as if she had simply stepped around a puddle. Her golden eyes swept the corridor ahead — calculating, already moving.
"Did you know crabs could fly?" Baam asked, catching his breath.
"Did you know you run like you've never used your legs before?" she shot back.
He decided not to answer that.
The corridor was a long one, lined with numbered doors and the kind of carpet that cost more than most people's livelihoods. At the far end, framed in the light from a narrow window, stood someone who had clearly not been running at all.
Lo Po Bia Shilial Zahard turned to face them.
Her expression arrived before her words did — sharp and immediate, the particular kind of displeasure that came not from being surprised but from being found in the same space as someone she preferred to avoid. Her long pink hair shifted as she turned, the small black horns at her crown catching the light. Her eyes, red and still, moved from Baam to Androssi.
Androssi's expression matched it exactly, beat for beat.
"You," they said, in the same breath, in the same tone.
The silence that followed lasted approximately two seconds.
Then the floor shook. Somewhere below, a crab took out a load-bearing wall.
Shilial looked at the ceiling. Androssi looked at the ceiling. Baam looked at both of them.
"Truce," Shilial said.
"Truce," Androssi agreed.
Neither of them looked at the other when they said it.
---
They moved fast — Shilial taking point, Androssi covering the rear, Baam between them in a position that felt diplomatically chosen by both parties to keep him out of the crossfire. The crabs had punched through the eastern stairwell, which meant the western was their only remaining option. They made it to the third floor landing before the wall to their left detonated inward.
The crab that emerged was not large by the standards of its companions. This made it only roughly the size of a carriage. Its wings were still folded — a small mercy — and its eyes, arranged in two rows across its face, blinked at the three of them with what seemed like dim curiosity.
Then it charged.
The impact sent all three of them through the emergency exit and out into the open air of the exterior terrace, where the noise hit them all at once. Below and around the hotel, the battle had already spread. Shinsu crackled between the crabs and the figures moving to stop them. Barriers flared. Someone was shouting in a voice large enough to echo off the neighboring spires.
Ha Jinsung moved through the lower terrace like he was irritated about being interrupted. He did not fight with effort. He fought with the particular economy of someone who had been doing this longer than most people had been alive, and who found the current situation mildly beneath his attention. One crab — the large one, the first one — was pressed against the terrace railing under his hand. It was no longer moving.
He dropped it. Turned. Took in the remaining crabs with a single sweep of his gaze.
"Honestly," he muttered.
Then his eyes went to the terrace above.
The spot where he had seen Baam — where he had clocked the boy the moment the crabs arrived, out of reflex and nothing else — was empty. Androssi, who had been the easiest to track by virtue of being loud, was gone. And the pink-haired Princess he had noticed near the east corridor window was no longer there either.
Ha Jinsung straightened.
He looked at the space where three people had been, and were no longer.
He looked at it for a long moment.
"...What," he said.
The crabs continued their assault behind him. He did not look at them. He was still looking at the empty terrace, and the empty corridor beyond it, and the very precise, very deliberate absence of his student.
His eyes narrowed.
This was not part of Traumerei's plan either.