The first wall swallowed mana, the second reflected distance, and the third breathed with somebody else’s pain. Hajin stood before the layered prison while Divine Eye separated its boundaries.
An outer nullstone shell concealed the chamber from every royal survey. Spatial glass occupied the space behind it, folding the child farther away than the room’s dimensions allowed.
A translucent soul membrane enclosed her body, while extraction needles braided directly into the black-red core beneath her sternum. She sat against the smallest wall with both knees pulled beneath an oversized gray shift.
Small black horns curved through tangled hair, one chipped near its base. Old bandages covered her forearms and throat, although darker marks beneath them revealed repeated treatment rather than one recent injury.
"She is awake," Vella said from outside the nullstone opening, "her breathing changed when your mana touched the room, so stop there until she decides whether to look at you."
Hajin kept his Rings closed, reduced his hybrid circulation until only Divine Eye remained active, and watched the child’s head lift gradually as dark eyes found him through four impossible distances.
Golden and demonic currents moved together beneath his skin. Hajin raised one empty hand, keeping every weapon stored, but the child recoiled before his palm reached the spatial glass.
Both arms covered her hair, and her back struck the extraction array with enough force to send needles vibrating through her core. A silent seizure tightened her body until Vella made Hajin step away.
"No closer," Vella said, placing one hand against his shoulder, "she associates reaching with whatever they did around her horns, and your good intention cannot erase that association in one moment."
Hajin lowered his arm before moving beyond the child’s direct sight while her breathing remained ragged as the extraction lattice stopped tightening after several moments.
Didi stared through the outer opening with silver-gold frost gathering beneath her fingernails. Her brother’s royal authorization ran along the nullstone frame, granting the prison permission to treat every external approach as theft from the Crown.
"He wrote ownership into the wall," Didi said, restraining her resonance before it touched the command, "not custody, not quarantine, and not protection."
"Record the exact grammar before contesting it," Hajin replied, watching the child’s core, "if that line carries the structure, breaking it blindly could pull through her."
Ferra fixed mundane lamps around the opening so nobody needed to feed light through the prison. Juna and Loccy guarded the corridor while Vella mapped the child’s circulation from a respectful distance.
Rumi paced along the left side of the chamber, ears turning toward sounds that did not exist in ordinary space, and said while touching empty air beside the spatial glass, "Road here."
Amber light outlined a route curving around the reflected distance instead of crossing it. Nari approached the opposite edge and placed both palms against the closing geometry.
Her smoke-gold mana traveled inward, then recoiled so sharply that her claws scored the floor as she shook her head and said, "No around, door closes there."
She pointed through the layers toward the child’s sternum. Aria reconstructed the route from both observations, and every apparent exit folded through the soul membrane before returning to physical space.
Rumi could open the outer distance, but the prison would use the child’s soul as the hinge. Nari could close the route behind them, yet the closing pressure would travel through the same living core.
"The room does not keep people away from her," Hajin said, following the inward arrows, "it makes her become the final part of every door."
The child flattened her ears and withdrew her hand immediately while Nari remained near Rumi without touching the dangerous edge again.
Vella knelt where the child could see her across the opening, placed both hands on her own knees, and said, "I will not enter, nobody will touch your hair, and nobody will move you today."
The child showed no sign of understanding the language, but her eyes followed Vella’s still hands. When Ferra adjusted a lamp behind them, the child flinched at the scrape and hid her horns again.
Hajin examined the extraction needles without shifting position. Divine channels entered the demonic core at twelve calculated points, forcing its natural circulation outward.
Black housings caught that displaced energy and returned it through a royal lattice, teaching the body that survival depended upon separation. The method matched the three preserved victims, refined after every death.
Ferra found repair dates carved into the needle housings while every assigned support remained intact. Each replacement followed one of the failures recorded outside, and later pieces included small adjustments that reduced visible bleeding while increasing pressure inside the core.
The Prince had not misunderstood the harm, he had learned how to conceal its outward signs.
Didi copied every date beneath her independent seal while keeping her hand steady until one housing revealed a royal festival stamp that showed palace workshops supplied parts while the capital celebrated above them.
"How long has she been inside?" Loccy asked from the corridor, keeping her voice low.
Didi found a maintenance record beneath her brother’s seal, read the dates twice, and said, "At least six years, the earliest stable cycle began before the palace tribunal found his first laboratory."
The child could not have been more than ten by human appearance, though demonic aging made every estimate uncertain. The experiment had occupied most of the life she remembered.
Hajin let Aegis form as a narrow transparent plate away from the prison. He copied the four boundaries onto its surface so Aria could test interactions without touching the original.
The old suppression grammar answered the spatial layer, while Underworld ownership language clung to the soul membrane and royal blood controlled the extraction needles.
Four systems made one cage, and Ferra said, "The Prince combined mechanisms that distrust one another, if one fails, the others pull toward what it restrained, making the child both safest anchor and worst place to apply force."
"Her," Didi said, looking through the walls, "they pull toward her."
The child shifted after the room remained quiet for several minutes. One hand left her hair and crept toward the floor.
She drew a crooked line in the dust, then another beside it, reproducing the paired tracks Rumi and Nari had left while walking. Rumi noticed and lowered herself to the floor outside the opening.
Loccy placed a folded blanket at the outer edge, but the membrane rejected it, so she left it visible and said, "It stays here until the wall stops deciding."
Rumi placed two fingers on the floor and walked them in an exaggerated human rhythm until the child watched. Nari joined her with slower movements, allowing both tiny figures to travel separately before meeting again.
No smile appeared behind the four walls, but the child’s hand stopped trembling. Hajin stored the copied Aegis record while Vella continued waiting in the same position.
"We learn every boundary before offering a way out," Hajin said, keeping his voice low enough not to claim the room, "the first choice belongs to the person inside it."
The prison had survived because every rescuer would reach for the frightened girl first. Hajin turned away from that instinct and began with the wall designed to weaponize it.
He marked the spatial glass as the first layer to study, not because it was the most visible, but because its distance made every later rescue attempt touch the child’s soul before reaching her body.
The room offered no clean door because speed used as kindness would complete the prison’s design for the First Prince.
Hajin asked Aria to compare the copied tracks with the membrane’s movement patterns, and the result showed a path between safe points rather than an imitation of command.
Vella shifted so the child could see her without losing the wall’s handhold, yet she offered no invitation and made no promise about the next opening.
Loccy set another blanket beside the first one outside the boundary, giving the child an object to approach or ignore while the membrane kept control of matter.
Rumi and Nari repeated their separate walking pattern until the child copied one more step, then stopped before their figures touched.
Hajin added the new line to the rescue plan and kept the first layer marked, because the child had created an opening the Prince had not designed.