Every time he breathed in, the taste of iron caught in his mouth.
Rynel sat inside the cell.
The ceiling was low, and the walls weren’t stone—they were iron bars.
Bars, not walls, split the space.
That was why.
Even in the dimness, he could just barely make out the child sitting in the cage across from him.
This wasn’t an ordinary prison.
A section that selectively locked up only children who showed magical reactions.
A place made to gather “valuable goods” with talent—and keep them under control.
And around Rynel’s neck,
a silver suppressor collar had been fastened.
The collar fit tight against the back of his neck.
It gave a small vibration whenever he moved,
locking down his mana at the root.
‘···Nothing comes up at all.’
Even when he closed his eyes and tried to draw his mana up,
all he felt was a suffocating pressure squeezing his lungs.
The suppressor wasn’t a simple restraint.
It was a device meant to break the will itself.
Rynel leaned his head back and let out a breath.
The chains were short,
his movement cut off at the waist.
In this place, what was allowed
was only breathing and thinking.
Everything else—
was permitted only according to “usefulness.”
“Hey. Can you hear me?”
A voice that sounded like it was waking quietly inside the dark.
Rynel lifted his head.
The suppressor collar around his neck trembled faintly, metal scraping soft.
“You… can you talk?”
The voice was clear, unshaken.
Its owner sat beyond the bars opposite him,
perched slightly higher than the level of the cage wall.
In the faint glow of a light-stone, the tip of a girl’s ear
caught Rynel’s eye.
Pointed.
But not sharply swept like an elf’s.
Somewhere along the boundary between human and another race—
a shape that seemed to have stopped at that in-between point.
Green eyes glimpsed through tangled golden hair.
A gaze that seized people without a word.
Pure, yet edged—
with something alien mixed in.
A half-elf who looked about fifteen.
And a being
who didn’t fully belong anywhere.
In a village where plague had spread, people chose fear over reason.
In the end, the arrow of anxiety aimed for her blood.
“It’s because of that kid.”
“Those eyes, those ears··· she’s why the village is sick.”
On a night when the witch-hunt swept through,
her parents pushed Aira out first.
Run far away—meet us in Elpensia.
That was all they left behind.
Aira still didn’t know.
That the place she could return to was already gone.
Caught while fleeing, Aira
was meant to become a noble’s plaything.
But during transport, something unexpected happened.
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The blood flowing from a slash—
the girl healed it herself.
Spirit-branch healing magic.
Her fingertips already knew how to mend her own body.
And that talent soon changed her “value.”
From a mere toy,
to a target for surveillance by an organization hidden in the shadows.
Too valuable to sell off.
Too valuable to leave alone.
Yet Aira still believed in the world.
That her parents were alive somewhere out there.
That one day they would come for her.
And until that day came—
she would find a way to get out of this place with her own feet.
“I’m Aira.
What’s your name?”
Rynel didn’t answer.
He only blinked.
The girl let out a small smile and kept talking.
“It’s okay.
You don’t have to say it right away.
Everyone’s quiet. At first.”
Her voice was gentle, but
her tone sounded like someone reciting a familiar rite.
“This place··· is probably where they lock up only kids with mana.”
Aira leaned back against the bars and closed her eyes.
“So you can’t run, they put suppressors on your neck, too.”
At that, Rynel
instinctively grabbed at the back of his neck.
Cold metal.
“At first, I didn’t even realize my mana was blocked.
But··· my connection to the spirits was cut off, too.”
After a brief breath, Aira said softly,
“That’s when I knew.
This isn’t just a seal—
it’s a device that severs me as a person.”
Spirits.
At that word, Rynel’s eyes trembled faintly.
An adventurer who once visited the orphanage had said it.
Spirit-branch magic wasn’t something anyone could use.
A rare gift.
A power only a chosen few were born with—like fate.
Aira didn’t even try to hide it,
saying it like it was nothing.
“···Why are you here?”
Rynel spoke for the first time.
His throat was so dry his voice cracked.
Aira didn’t answer right away.
For a moment, her eyes drifted somewhere far away.
“That’s··· a long story.
Later, if there’s a chance, I’ll tell you.”
She lowered her head again,
and Rynel watched her in silence.
“At first, I thought it was just a holding cell.”
Aira stared quietly past the bars.
“But this place is different.
They don’t take you right away, and barely anyone comes.”
Her voice sank.
“Kids with unusual abilities.
The kind they can’t send elsewhere immediately···
This is probably where those kids gather.”
Calm.
The tone of someone who had already accepted it—and spent a long time thinking about how to survive.
“You’re thinking about escaping… right?”
Aira asked quietly.
Her voice was so even it sounded like she was changing the subject.
Rynel didn’t answer.
There was no need to—no words to offer.
Aira shrugged lightly.
“They’ll all think no one can get out.
I did, too.”
Her eyes didn’t break.
If anything, they shone harder.
“At night, the guard always sits at the desk and dozes off.”
Rynel’s gaze shifted slightly.
Aira nodded once.
“He has a habit of leaving his key ring on the desk.
It kept sticking in my mind···
So I’ve been watching it since the first day I got locked in here.”
“···You’re going to steal the keys?”
“Yeah. Maybe we can.”
Aira trailed off briefly, then
smiled a little.
“Just reaching out is hard, but···”
That single line carried a quiet confidence.
“I’ve got a friend who can help.”
“···A friend?”
“This rat.”
Aira carefully opened her palm.
A small rat was sitting there.
Tiny, round,
its little feet unusually busy.
Its plump belly wobbled faintly,
and its round ears twitched at the smallest sound.
Aira handled the rat
carefully—as if it were a real friend.
Rynel said nothing.
But his brow twitched, just slightly.
Could they really get out?
No—was this girl truly
serious when she said it?
“Escape.”
As that word seeped through the damp air,
it began to change shape.
Not empty noise,
but a quiet resolve.
◇
From then on, Rynel began to observe Aira’s movements, little by little.
At every meal,
Aira carefully saved a piece of bread she didn’t eat.
She wrapped it in a scrap of cloth and stacked it in the corner.
“What rats respond to best
is food that still has a warm smell.”
Aira murmured,
so naturally it wasn’t even clear who she was speaking to.
Next came thread.
“It’s not tough,
but it’s light and flexible—good enough to hook something.”
She braided the thread with dried straw
into a small knot.
Not strong,
but enough to pull up something weightless.
“What matters here is timing.
More than movement··· it’s waiting.”
Watching her, Rynel
pressed his lips together.
Aira gently lifted the rat from her palm
and sent it through the bars.
“Let it get used to your scent, too.”
Rynel hesitated.
The rat sniffed at the unfamiliar hand, then
carefully placed its forepaws on his finger.
A small, round paw pad.
The plump body settling on his hand—
and for some reason,
something inside him loosened quietly.
This girl wasn’t just talking into the air.
She was preparing—calmly, concretely.
As Aira offered crumbs to the rat,
she turned her head and said softly,
“I can’t do it alone.
- ··You’ll help too, right?”
It wasn’t an order, and it wasn’t a plea.
More like—
the way she said it made it sound decided already,
as if it was the natural course.
Rynel looked at her without speaking.
His hands and feet were still chained, but
somewhere inside, for the first time,
something felt slightly less tight.
At some point,
he had stopped declaring this plan would fail.
No.
For the first time, the thought that it might succeed
slipped into his mind.
◇
That night was unusually quiet.
The guard, as always,
sat at the desk with his head bowed, asleep.
Beside him, a key ring tossed down carelessly.
And on Aira’s palm,
a rat sat in silence.
Its small body trembled faintly,
but it didn’t run.
A single thread tied to its wrist.
The other end connected to a thin cord twisted from straw.
Rynel pressed close to the bars.
His eyes met Aira’s.
The girl nodded gently.
“Now.”
Aira carefully extended her hand forward.
The rat hesitated, then
sniffed and slipped along the floor.
Knowing every corner, it slid under the watch stand.
As those tiny feet
climbed up the desk leg,
Rynel held his breath without realizing.
On the desk—
one crumb.
The rat bent toward it,
and the thread swayed loose.
A large key ring hung near the desk edge,
and the rat passed through it without hesitation.
In that instant,
the thread tied to its back brushed the inner side of the ring
and caught—lightly, like it was meant to.
Then, *click.*
One bundle of keys
shifted—just a little.
The rat kept moving,
toward the bread crumbs Rynel had hidden deeper inside the cell.
A single small shadow crawling along the floor.
It slipped under the bars and reached Rynel’s feet in silence.
Rynel held his breath,
and slowly reached out a hand.
On the rat’s back,
a thin thread.
He carefully loosened
the small ring caught at the end.
Now the thread’s two ends
were held in Aira’s hand and Rynel’s.
They looked at each other without a word.
A short breath.
A short look.
And together—
they pulled the thread taut.
Along the slanted line,
the key ring
slid, slowly—so slowly.
A small metallic scrape mixed into the iron floor.
*Clack.*
With a secret tremor,
the keys slipped into the cell.
In that moment, both of them breathed out.
No one spoke,
but their eyes were aimed at the same thing.
The keys were small, cold.
The metal ring hooked at Rynel’s fingertips
tapped the floor lightly,
making the faintest sound.
“We did it··· it worked.”
Aira kept her voice low, but
her eyes had clearly changed.
A small tremor.
The sensation that one mistake
could shatter everything clung to their fingertips.
The guard’s breathing
still came from not far away.
Aira whispered through the bars.
“Not yet···
wait a little longer.”
She knew exactly when—
when his head sank fully,
when his breath evened out.
In a silence that felt like time had stopped,
Rynel held the keys
and stared into the darkness beyond the bars.
Until now,
he had never once believed
he could leave this place.
But now—
that single key,
that single line—
was shaking something inside him,
like a crack spreading.
◇
There were more keys than expected.
Inside the ring in his hand,
large and small keys tangled together.
Rynel carefully
tried them one by one in the lock.
The first—didn’t fit.
The second—wouldn’t turn.
When he inserted the third—
*Click.*
The iron door trembled, just slightly.
“Got it. At least the door opens.”
Aira’s voice came.
She had her hand extended toward her own bars as well.
But when Rynel looked again at the key ring,
his hand rose to his neck.
“Do you think··· one of these opens the mana suppressor?”
Aira nodded faintly.
“It should.
I saw the guards keep them all together.
I don’t know which one fits, but···”
Slowly, Rynel
pulled out a small key
and slid it into the suppressor’s slot at the back of his neck.
*Click.*
A sound like a paper-thin crack
opening inside a suffocating space.
At last—
the collar loosened.
Metal that had been locked tight
slid down off his neck, scraping.
In that moment,
mana that had been held down for so long
spread from his fingertips, like a current
pushing through a thin membrane.