The first thing that hit him was the smell.

Adom dropped into the prison courtyard and immediately started coughing. The air tasted like metal and something sweet-sick that made his eyes water. A thin, yellowish haze drifted across the ground like fog, pooling in corners and clinging to the walls.

Guards were scattered across the cobblestones. Some lay completely still. Others twitched weakly, their hands clawing at their throats as they tried to breathe through whatever was in the air.

"Shit," Adom muttered, then immediately regretted opening his mouth as more of the gas hit his throat.

He wove an air manipulation spell with more urgency than finesse, pulling clean air down from above the walls and pushing the contaminated atmosphere away from the courtyard. The spell felt clumsy but it worked well enough to clear a breathing space around himself.

The gas began to dissipate, swirling away from the center of the courtyard in lazy spirals. As it cleared, Adom could see the full extent of the infiltration.

At least a dozen guards were down. The ones who were still moving looked like they'd be unconscious within minutes. No blood, no obvious injuries. Just the gas, doing its work efficiently and quietly.

Adom had seen this before.

Chemical warfare. Specifically, the kind of alchemical gas attacks that had made the Farmusian Empire so effective during their expansion campaigns two decades from now. The technology wasn't widespread—most kingdoms considered it dishonorable, and the alchemical knowledge required was closely guarded.

Which meant this wasn't just a prison break. This was a Farmusian operation.

Three figures emerged from the main building, moving with the kind of coordinated efficiency that spoke of military training. They wore dark clothing and masks that covered their entire faces—not simple cloth, but elaborate devices with runes and protruding filters and goggled eye pieces that looked like the faces of giant insects.

Gas masks. Of course.

The lead figure spotted Adom and immediately began reaching for something at his belt. The other two spread out, moving to flank him.

Adom didn't give them the chance.

A flick of his wrist, a quick manipulation spell of the gravitational field around all three targets, and suddenly they weren't on the ground anymore.

The spell hit them like invisible hands grabbing their entire bodies and yanking upward. They rose fifteen feet into the air in less than a second, their coordinated advance becoming a cluster of flailing limbs and muffled shouts.

Adom reversed the spell.

Gravity reasserted itself with enthusiasm. All three Farmusians came down hard, hitting the cobblestones with impacts that sounded like sacks of grain being dropped from a significant height. Two of them screamed—sharp, agonized sounds that cut through their gas masks. The third made a wet, choking noise and went still.

Broken bones. Definitely broken bones.

Adom stepped over the nearest one, who was clutching his leg and making the kind of sounds people make when their femur is no longer straight. The man's gas mask had cracked during the fall, revealing part of a face that was definitely not local. Olive skin, sharp features, the kind of mustache that was fashionable in Farmusian military circles.

"Stay down," Adom said, though he suspected the man wasn't going anywhere regardless of his advice.

The main building loomed ahead, its windows dark except for a few scattered lights in the upper floors. If Prince Kalyon was still here, he'd be in the high-security section. Which meant Adom needed to get through whatever else the Farmusians had left between the courtyard and the prison's interior.

He stepped over another groaning infiltrator and kept walking toward the entrance.

The main entrance was a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. It was also locked, barred from the inside, and probably had at least three guards stationed behind it.

Adom didn't feel like knocking.

He pressed both hands against the wood and wove [Push] with significantly more force than he'd used on Merrick. The spell hit the door like a battering ram. The iron reinforcements screamed as they bent, the wooden planks splintered, and the entire assembly exploded inward with a crash that echoed through the corridors beyond.

Arrows came at him immediately.

Three of them, fired from crossbows by figures positioned at the far end of the entry hall. The bolts moved fast—professional military issue, not hunting arrows. They would have punched through leather armor without slowing down.

Adom wove [Aegis Barrier] almost in the time it took to blink.

The translucent shield materialized two feet in front of him, a disc of hardened air that caught all three arrows with sharp cracking sounds. The bolts hung there for a moment, their tips embedded in the barrier's surface, before clattering to the floor.

The archers were already reloading. Fast, coordinated, probably Farmusian regulars rather than hired help.

Adom expanded the barrier.

The shield grew from a small disc to a wall of force that filled the entire width of the corridor, then kept expanding. It moved forward like an invisible wave, pushing air and debris ahead of it with increasing momentum.

The three archers had just enough time to look confused before the barrier hit them.

They went flying. Not up this time—straight back, carried by the expanding force until they slammed into the stone wall at the far end of the hall. The impacts sounded like meat hitting a cutting board. Two of them screamed. The third made a wet choking noise and went limp.

Adom let the barrier dissipate and walked over the wreckage of the door.

The nearest archer was trying to crawl away, his left arm bent at an angle that suggested several broken bones. Adom grabbed him by the collar and hauled him upright, ignoring the man's yelp of pain.

"Where's Prince Kalyon?" Adom asked.

The archer was young, maybe twenty, with the kind of mustache that suggested he'd been trying to look older for years. His eyes were wide with shock and pain, but there was something else there. Training. The look of someone who'd been prepared for interrogation.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the archer said through gritted teeth.

"How far along is the operation? How many of you are there?"

"I don't—"

"Oh, for God's sake." Adom tightened his grip on the man's collar and lifted him off the ground. "Let me be very clear about something. You people are directly responsible for every person who's going to die in the next few years. Your empire's obsession with power, your experiments, your politics—all of it leads to the end of everything. So my patience for Farmusian loyalty is approximately zero."

The archer's eyes widened further, but his jaw remained set. Whatever they'd done to train these people, it was thorough.

"Go ahead," the man said. "Torture me. Kill me. I'm not telling you anything."

Adom stared at him for a moment, then shrugged and threw him across the hallway.

The archer hit the opposite wall and slumped to the floor with a grunt of pain. He didn't get back up.

"I tried," Adom said to no one in particular, stepping over the man's legs as he continued down the corridor.

The thing about bitterness was that it made everything simpler. These weren't just enemy soldiers—they were the people whose actions would eventually create Dragon's Breath, the weapon that would turn the world into a wasteland. They were the reason millions of innocent people would die choking on their own blood while their skin melted off their bones.

Adom had seen those mass graves in his previous life. He'd helped dig some of them. Including his own parents.

So no, he didn't particularly care if a few Farmusian infiltrators ended up with broken bones. They'd chosen their side.

The corridor branched ahead, but the choice was obvious. The prison was barely a year old, built specifically to house high-value political prisoners. It currently held exactly two inmates: Gale, and Prince Kalyon.

Two prisoners meant two cell blocks. The signs on the walls were helpful enough to point the way: "High Security - Authorized Personnel Only" with an arrow pointing to the right.

Adom went right.

His footsteps echoed off stone walls as he walked deeper into the facility, past empty guard stations and abandoned checkpoints. The Farmusians had been thorough—they'd neutralized the entire staff before starting their extraction. Professional work, if you ignored the fact that it was going to end with the destruction of civilization.

Another door appeared ahead, this one still intact. Voices came from beyond it, speaking in rapid Farmusian. Something about schedules and timing. How much longer they needed.

Adom pressed his ear to the wood and listened.

The voices stopped.

Complete silence, the kind that made your ears ring and your skin crawl. Adom had just enough time to think that's not good before the door exploded outward in a shower of splinters and flame.

He'd already moved, throwing himself sideways as the blast wave hit the opposite wall where he'd been standing. Stone chips pelted his back as he rolled, coming up in a crouch just as a fireball punched through the smoke and debris.

This one he had to dodge properly. The spell was too focused, too controlled to deflect. He dropped flat as orange fire seared the air above him, hot enough to singe the hair on the back of his neck.

A mage. He was dealing with another mage.

The smoke began to clear, revealing a woman in her thirties with short-cropped dark hair and scars on her hands. She wore practical leather armor reinforced with metal plates, and her stance suggested combat training beyond the academic variety.

Behind her, two more figures—one carrying what looked like an orb, the other with a sword.

The woman's eyes locked onto Adom's face, and her expression shifted from wariness to something approaching shock.

"Wait." Her voice cut through the settling dust. "I know you."

Adom said nothing, already weaving the threads for his next spell.

"You're the boy," she continued, taking a step forward. "The one who caused all this in the first place."

Still nothing from Adom. His mana coiled around his hands like invisible smoke, ready to strike.

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The woman seemed to take his silence as confirmation. "Do you have any idea what you've—"

Adom moved.

Not toward her—past her, using a controlled gravity shift to launch himself sideways along the wall. The woman tried to track him, her own spell half-formed, but Adom had already calculated her reaction time. By the time she'd pivoted to face him, he was behind her line of fire.

Her second attack came faster—a pressure wave designed to knock him off the wall. Adom let gravity take him, dropping straight down as the spell passed overhead. He hit the ground in a roll, came up directly in front of her, and thrust both palms forward.

Lightning crackled between his fingers.

The spell hit her center mass like a concentrated thunderbolt. Her body went rigid, back arching as electricity coursed through her nervous system. The woman dropped, convulsing on the stone floor, small sparks still dancing across her armor.

Realistic electroshock behavior: muscle spasms, involuntary twitching, the smell of singed hair and leather. She'd live, probably, but she wouldn't be weaving anything for a while.

The man with the sword stepped forward, fluid rippling across his skin. The one with the orb stayed behind him, raising the artifact that was now glowing.

Adom felt his mana channels constrict immediately.

With Riddler's Bane, he recognized the artifact immediately. A mana suppression device. His spells were somehow still possible, but they felt like trying to breathe through wet cloth.

"Is he supposed to be able to still weave?" the man with the sword asked, voice tight with fear.

The one with the orb frowned, examining the artifact more closely. "No, he shouldn't be able to—"

Adom was already moving.

The suppression made his magic weak, but it did nothing to his speed or strength. He closed the distance in two strides, grabbed the artifact-holder by the throat, and lifted him off the ground.

The man tried to hit him with the orb itself, swinging it like a club. Adom caught his hand with his free hand and squeezed.

Bones broke with wet snapping sounds.

The man screamed, dropping the orb as his wrist folded at an unnatural angle. Adom threw him across the corridor with enough force to crack stone. The man hit the wall and slumped, blood trickling from his scalp. He was breathing, though. Barely.

"How can you still use spells?" the remaining man stammered, backing away as his sword trembled in his grip.

Adom didn't answer. He picked up the orb, feeling its weight—solid crystal, probably worth more than most people made in a year—and crushed it in his bare hands.

The crystal shattered like an egg, fragments falling through his fingers. The suppression effect died immediately, his mana flowing freely again. Thank God for [Silverback's Might]. Enhanced physical strength had never felt more satisfying.

The swordsman was still backing away. The Fluid would make him faster, stronger, more durable. It would also make him overconfident.

"Look," the man said, voice cracking slightly, "we can work something out here. You want the prince, right? We can—"

Adom stepped toward him.

The swordsman's training kicked in. He lunged forward, blade aimed at Adom's chest in a thrust.

Adom sidestepped, grabbed the man's extended wrist, and used his momentum to spin him into the wall. The sword clattered away as the swordsman hit stone face-first.

But Fluid-enhanced reflexes were no joke. The man recovered faster than a normal human would, pushing off the wall and swinging a backhand that would have shattered ribs.

Adom ducked under it and drove his elbow into the man's kidney. The armor absorbed some of the impact, but not all of it. The swordsman grunted and stumbled forward.

He spun, trying to grab Adom in a wrestling hold.

A quick [Push] spell sent the man sliding backward across the stone floor. Not enough to do serious damage, but enough to create distance.

The swordsman rolled to his feet and charged again, this time keeping low to avoid another spell. He tackled Adom around the waist, trying to drive him into the ground.

Adom let himself fall backward, but grabbed the man's shoulders as they went down. As they hit the floor, he drove both knees up into the swordsman's stomach.

The armor cracked under the impact, and the man doubled over with a whoosh of expelled air.

Adom rolled out from under him and stood. The swordsman was already trying to get up, but he was too damaged by the knee strike.

Time to end this.

Adom grabbed the man by the back of the neck and introduced his face to the stone floor. Once, twice, three times in rapid succession. By the third impact, the swordsman went limp.

The corridor fell silent except for the sound of Adom's breathing and the occasional spasm from the electrocuted woman.

Three down. Now to find the prince.