My Food Stall Serves SSS-Grade Delicacies!

She understood Elena's fear, but couldn't just show up and expect the Captain to give up Comfort & Crunch. "I'll try," she mouthed, and Elena gave a shaky nod. Her steps were a little stronger now, a little more confident.

But as Marron pressed deeper into the corridor, she knew the bitter truth. She didn't have a team to help Elena escape, and each step felt like cold betrayal. The bone shard at her hip pulsed erratically—warm approval one moment, cold reproach the next, as if it couldn't decide whether her choice was wisdom or cowardice.

Between you and me, she thought, looking at the bone shard. I don't know either. Maybe both.

The stealth broth still cloaked her movements, but guilt moved heavier than any armor. Elena's face burned in her memory: recognition and hope. She was praying that Marron would reveal herself and Elena could go free.

But she didn't sign up to get caught.

I have to get the cart, she told herself. That's the mission. Get the cart, get out, get help. But the justifications felt thin as paper, and she knew it. The truth was simpler and uglier: she was choosing her own freedom over Elena's life, and no amount of tactical reasoning could wash that clean.

The corridor sloped downward, following the dungeon's hungry pull toward its heart. Marron moved like a ghost through the shadows, tracking the sound of wheels on stone that grew fainter with each step. The Captain was taking his time—too much time. What was he doing down there?

She found out twenty minutes later when she reached a wider chamber and pressed herself behind a pillar of black stone.

The food cart sat in the center of the space, its familiar bulk both comforting and strange. Elena knelt beside it, tears streaming down her face as she struggled with something at the cart's base. The Captain stood over her, arms crossed, expression carved from ice.

"Again," he said. "The cart doesn't respond because you're afraid of it. Fear makes the magic weak."

Elena's voice cracked. "What difference does this day make? I've been struggling because this isn't my cart. It doesn't know me. It doesn't want to work with me."

Marron felt the bone shard go cold against her hip. She knew that frustration—the cart was bonded to her magic. To her intentions, and her weeks of use.

It would naturally resist another owner, because it had been waiting for Marron to return.

The Captain's voice dropped to a whisper that carried perfectly in the stone chamber. "Then cook like your life depends on it. Because it does. I need you to cook the dish that will feed this dungeon and make it evolve. I gave you the recipe."

Elena wiped her face with the back of her hand, leaving streaks of flour and grime. "This is not my cart. It does not respond to my magic like the original owner's. Why didn't you find her instead of me?"

The Captain's smile was sharp as a blade. "Because if I keep you down here long enough, I will either find her, or you will be sacrificed to keep this dungeon fed. Either way works. The place doesn't care how the sausage is made."

Marron's blood turned to ice water.

Bait. Elena wasn't just a replacement—she was bait. The Captain knew Marron was still in the dungeon somewhere, knew she'd bonded with the cart, knew she might try to reclaim it. So he'd grabbed someone from the Guild, someone Marron might know, someone who would make her hesitate.

The bone shard pulsed frantically now, hot and cold and hot again. It was trying to tell her something, but the message was chaos: Run. Stay. Fight. Hide. Save her. Save yourself.

Elena struggled with the cart's mechanisms, her movements clumsy and desperate. The cart's drawers stuck under her touch, the heating elements flickered weakly, the storage compartments sealed themselves against her magic. It was painful to watch—like seeing someone try to play a song on an instrument that refused to hold tune.

"Please," Elena whispered to the cart. "Please work with me. I know you miss her, but she's not coming back."

But I am, Marron thought, and felt the bone shard pulse warm approval. I'm right here.

The Captain circled Elena like a predator. "The dungeon is hungry, girl. It's been days since it had a proper meal. If you can't feed it what it wants, it will feed on what it can get. Starting with you."

Elena's hands shook as she pulled ingredients from the cart's stores—ingredients Marron recognized, arranged in combinations that made her stomach clench. The recipe the Captain had given Elena wasn't just food for the dungeon. It was transformation food. Evolution food. The kind of cooking that would make the dungeon stronger, hungrier, more dangerous.

And Elena was going to cook it with Marron's own cart.

I have to stop this. The thought came clear and cold. If Elena makes that dish, if the dungeon evolves, if it gets stronger...

How many more people would disappear into its depths? How many more Guild chefs would be chained to carts and forced to feed the thing that devoured them?

The stealth broth was wearing thin—she could feel her outline solidifying, the cloak of invisibility fraying at the edges. Soon the Captain would see her, and then what? Fight him here, in the dungeon's heart, with Elena caught between them?

The bone shard pulsed once more, and this time the message was clear: Choose.

Save Elena and doom everyone else, or let Elena die to save everyone else.

Or find a third option that she couldn't see yet.

Marron closed her eyes, thinking of her mother's hands on warm dough, of Elena's voice singing while she worked, of the Lieutenant's measured trust, of all the people above who had no idea what fed in the darkness below.

When she opened them again, her knives were already in her hands.

Time to cook.