The entire prison moved before Ferra finished securing the broken mechanisms. Nullstone walls detached from the chamber without falling, held inside a sudden spatial seam.
The child, extraction array, soul membrane, and glass shifted west as one sealed structure. Rumi struck the opening with her amber Wing, catching its nearest edge before the room vanished.
"Destination hidden," Rumi said, claws dragging through empty air, "road has no end."
Nari opened her smoke-gold plane behind the moving prison and prevented the seam from closing. The pressure forced both sisters apart across the chamber, their new Wings trembling under a mechanism built into the ancient foundation.
"Do not choose a direction," Hajin ordered, retrieving the Legendary Chain, "hold only the edge you can feel, because an unknown destination is another trap."
The First Prince’s blood signature traveled through the stolen foundation key. Every royal channel beneath the western wing rotated around the moving room, concealing its destination behind false corridors.
Divine Eye identified seven possible endpoints but rejected none in time. Ferra drove four mundane wedges into the outer chamber, preventing the transfer from carrying surrounding supports with the prison.
Loccy caught a descending arch when the severed foundation tried to follow. Juna cleared everyone from the collapsing corridor while Didi preserved the royal channel until Aria recorded its changing grammar.
The Prince had designed the relocation to destroy evidence behind him. Hajin refused to spend the child’s remaining seconds protecting stones, but the others kept the undercroft from burying their only retreat.
Hajin sent Collector’s Grasp through Rumi’s captured opening. Dark-gold lines crossed the spatial glass and touched the child’s soul membrane without pulling it.
The artifact could not stop the prison, but it preserved the living frequency where body, core, and soul remained joined. The child saw his left hand appear through the folding distance.
She recoiled from the reaching shape and covered her hair. Hajin stopped the artifact before it entered her side of the membrane.
"I will not touch you," Hajin said, though he did not know whether the words reached her, "I need the walls’ path, and I will stop if you pull away."
Collector’s Grasp followed the membrane’s outer resonance instead, and the frequency carried demonic circulation, damaged soul pressure, and the tiny pause she created before every twelfth needle.
Hajin held that pause without pulling on it as the artifact identified the child through the shifting prison, but identification was not rescue, and he refused to turn a successful lock into another command she had never accepted.
The prison crossed a second folded corridor while Rumi kept one amber edge visible, Nari preserved the retreat, and Ferra shouted the changing foundation angles as the team moved after the living frequency.
No copied mechanism could reproduce that living hesitation, so Aria said within his thoughts, "I have her pattern, but the transfer will shear it unless you maintain contact through the final fold."
The prison entered the seam as Rumi’s opening narrowed around her claws and pulled her across the floor.
Loccy caught her waist and anchored both feet beneath a cracked foundation brace. Nari slid in the opposite direction as the closing edge tried to consume her Wing.
Juna wrapped one arm around Nari’s middle while Didi froze the royal command that fed that edge and said, "Three breaths, his key is rewriting faster than I can deny it," as frost broke across her knuckles.
Hajin opened four Rings around his right forearm. The old Goddess Resonance mark flared beneath them as Aria projected the preserved frequency across Aegis.
He aligned the hybrid pathways through the exact living pause rather than the Dominion current surrounding it while the target moved through hostile spatial authority and the link threatened to strip the sample away at every fold.
"Phase Lock requires a sampled frequency and sustained pathway contact," Aria warned, "the target moves through hostile spatial authority."
"Then lock the sample, not the room," Hajin said, forcing his right arm into the copied rhythm.
Phase Lock caught the child’s frequency as the seam folded. The technique presented no system panel and granted no new authority.
It depended upon the old Resonance mark, the hybrid pathways Hajin had rebuilt through repeated damage, and the living sample Collector’s Grasp held. If any part slipped, the foundation would keep moving while his right arm burned for nothing.
Pain burned from his palm into the shoulder where incompatible currents scraped every recovered branch. The technique did not stop the transfer or create a territory he controlled.
It merely forced the child’s joined pattern to remain recognizable while the prison moved beyond ordinary distance, but the walls could no longer erase the person inside them from his record even if they hid their destination.
The First Prince increased pressure through the foundation key. False destinations collapsed one after another and tried to make Hajin’s lock choose an empty route.
Rumi snarled and held the opening without following any destination. Nari’s inward Wing kept the final edge from closing even when the spatial current cut smoke-gold lines across her back.
"Leave it," Nari said to her sister, her voice breaking under strain, "cannot chase blind."
"Not leave her," Rumi replied, refusing the pull.
"Leave road, keep scent," Nari said as she trusted Hajin’s preserved frequency over her own hunting instinct.
Rumi released the opening first as the captured route snapped away from her claws and took skin from two fingertips without pulling her into the unknown seam.
Nari closed her Wing immediately afterward so the transfer could finish rather than sacrifice her to an endpoint she could not see.
Collector’s Grasp withdrew along the final living resonance while Hajin maintained Phase Lock until the last spatial layer crossed, then closed his Rings before the right-arm pathways burned beyond recovery.
The prison vanished from the undercroft. Dust filled the space it left behind, and three disconnected needles remained embedded in the floor, severed from their dangerous current before the transfer.
Ferra sealed each fragment separately, while Didi marked the empty foundation channel as an active crime scene rather than an abandoned royal room.
No experience notification appeared because the Prince’s mechanisms had escaped with their occupied cores. Aria kept the laboratory ledger unchanged, so the distinction remained between obstructing a transfer and destroying its defenders.
Rumi struck the empty floor once and crouched over her bleeding fingers. Nari knelt beside her with her own hands nearby without interfering while Vella approached.
"May I close those cuts?" Vella asked, waiting for Rumi’s sharp nod.
Neutral Spirit mana repaired the shallow wounds because no extraction prison redirected the treatment. The simple success made Rumi stare toward the absent child with renewed anger.
Didi examined the royal channels after their false endpoints disappeared. Her brother had taken the prison beyond the mapped western wing, deeper into the ancient node where the King’s authority lost clarity.
"His key carried the room," Didi said as she followed residual frost, "my blood can identify the first command, but every branch afterward belongs to the older foundation."
Ferra placed Hajin’s right arm inside a temporary cooling brace. The skin remained unbroken, yet the internal pathways glowed across Aria’s projection.
"You burned the same lines Ring Five only finished repairing," Ferra said as she tightened one mundane strap, "use Phase Lock again tonight and the brace becomes decorative."
"I will not need the room’s route," Hajin replied as he showed the preserved pattern across Aegis, "Collector kept her frequency, and Phase Lock prevented the seam from stripping it apart."
Vella studied the record without touching as the living pause before each twelfth needle remained visible inside the combined signal.
"That is her," Vella said as she recognized the rhythm she had matched, "not merely the prison around her."
Hajin asked Aria to strip every identifier belonging to the walls from the tracking model while the remaining frequency looked weaker, but retained the child’s chosen breathing pause and irregular core recoil.
They would follow the living person rather than the cage’s louder signature. Aria used the frequency to reject six of the foundation’s seven false corridors.
The remaining trail descended beneath the old living orchard, where royal records showed no rooms at all. Rumi rose after Vella finished her fingers, and Nari stood beside her.
Both sisters turned toward the hidden direction as the Prince gained distance and another protected chamber, but failed to erase the frequency his prisoner created while she taught herself to survive.
"We follow the part she left behind," Hajin said, looking toward the orchard route, "the cage can move again, but her pattern has chosen to remain readable."