After long moments in the dark, Makoto began toying with the worry that there really was no way out of the arena. She was moving slowly, walking along the walls with her fingertips scraping along the scorched rock. A few times she thought she had felt a faint gasp of cooler air, but closer inspection found nothing, and she was forced to accept the sensation as a form of wishful thinking.

Ryuji was on the opposite end of the octagonal room, silhouetted by his lantern, searching the walls, too. Ren was somewhere doing the same thing, Makoto assumed, but he apparently didn't need or want a lantern, so she had no idea where he actually was in the yawning space. Meanwhile, Ann lay somewhere alone in the dark, breathing shallowly- a worry for them all. Makoto didn't like leaving her alone (what if she woke up?) but the absolute best and only help for the girl was for them all to get the hell out of this place.

Frustration and worry building inside her, Makoto bit back the urge to call out to Ren and check on his progress. If he found anything, he would certainly announce it. She was too focused on him, probably some left-over fear from when they'd been separated previously. Makoto tried to recall the confidence she'd kindled in herself at that time. They would find the exit. They would get out of here. Ann would be fine.

The silent search continued.

Click! Kshhhhhhhh…..

Makoto focused on the sound, the first they'd heard since Ann's firestorm. Her lantern illuminated a section of wall roughly between her position and Ryuji's. A door was opening, a section of stone scraping open. Almost immediately, Ren sprinted into the light, grabbed the stone door and wrenched it fully open. A young man came stumbling into the arena, pulled in by the unexpected acceleration of the door he was opening.

Yusuke! The bastard!

Ren seemed of similar opinion: keeping one foot at the base of the door- Ren snagged Yusuke by the shirt, jerked him forward, and then reset his grip on the man's beck.

"Ren! Don't kill him!" yelled Makoto as she ran forward.

"Kill the bastard!" shouted Ryuji, almost simultaneously.

Ren ignored them both and pulled Yusuke in close. God! Was Ren going to bite him?! Alarm bells rang through Makoto's mind as she sprinted at the pair. Was Ren that angry!? Was he that hungry?! He'd told her that he was tempted when he was hungry, but he hadn't seemed particularly twitchy- even with the grievous wounds he'd suffered.

"Ren! Don't-" shouted Makoto, but then Ren released Yusuke with a gentle shove backwards, unbitten and unharmed. Makoto came to a relieved stop before them.

"He's not-" said Ren.

Ryuji arrived, his face an angry mask of soot and blood. He cocked a fist back and drove it into Yusuke's wide-eyed face. Yusuke fell and Ryuji moved forward aggressively to follow him to the ground, but Makoto jumped into his path.

"Ryuji! Wait!" Makoto felt herself get pushed back under Ryuji's momentum. He shoved her arms away and pushed forward, but Makoto put her shoulder into the center of his chest and shoved, barely setting him back a step. God! Ryuji was stronger than he looked.

"Wait for fucking what?!" snarled Ryuji, eyes still intent on Yusuke, who was sitting dazedly on the ground, tenderly checking a bleeding nose. But either momentarily pacified or unwilling to bulldoze Makoto entirely, he halted his advance.

"He's not enthralled," said Ren, his strangely soft voice grabbing their attention. "He was before- when he led us in here. But he's not now."

"He-!" grunted Ryuji. "He's not what?!"

"Mind-controlled, dummy," said Morgana's snarky voice.

"So?!" said Ryuji.

"So," said Makoto, giving Ryuji a final shove at the center of his chest: "Madarame led us in here, not Yusuke. Not really."

Ryuji stood quietly for a moment, breathing heavily. "Well- what if he gets controlled again? We gonna risk that?"

That was a good point. Makoto looked back at Yusuke who seemed aware of his precarious situation and was remaining quiet on the ground. How could they keep the man from further mischief?

"There's no enchantment on him," said Morgana. "It's gone."

"For real?"

"Morgana would know," said Ren, suddenly seeming very ancy. "Go get your sister, Ryuji. We don't have time for this. We need to get her out of here."

Ryuji's eyes grew and the anger left his face. Worry replaced it. "R-right!"

"Sorry," said Yusuke, as Ryuji ran back into the darkness of the arena. "I don't know what I did. But I came to let you out."

Makoto found herself staring into Yusuke's softly sad face, unsure if she should believe what she saw there. She believed that Ren and Morgana knew what they were talking about it- but it was one thing to know that intellectually, and another to toss aside her nervous misgivings about Yusuke. He may be innocent, but his face was now that of the betrayer; Maybe if she understood a bit more…

"Ren…" said Makoto, "how do we know he can't get controlled again?"

"Because the spell is gone- the influence," said Ren, "and that means Madarame is dead."

Makoto's mind went blank for a moment. What!? Dead?! Madarame?! The vampire they came to hunt?! The one they hadn't even seen yet?! Dead!?

"W-what!? How? Did killing that monster-"

Ren shook his head. "No. And I don't know. But we're not going to find out down here. I'm going up. Help Ryuji with Ann and follow when you can."

"What!? Wait-!"

But as Makoto stuttered an objection, Ren moved into the darkness of the hidden doorway. Makoto swung her lantern and caught the tail end of Ren's black cape whipping around the corner of a wooden stairway. Damn! Where was he rushing off to? She wanted to go after him, but she couldn't leave Ryuji alone to deal with Ann- especially not with Yusuke here. Whatever Ren and Morgana said, she couldn't trust the man.

Ren took the steps two at a time. If Madarame was dead, then some unknown party of formidable force had arrived on the scene. There was only one possibility that Ren could think of, but that was so incredibly unlikely…

It didn't matter. Whoever had arrived, Ren needed to find out what he could before this situation fell even further out of his control. Not that he'd been in control since they stepped in the front door of Madaramae's mansion. The Thorn Forest! Here, of all places! Damn! If he'd even watched it once, he probably would have recognized Madarame's name and saved himself a lot of trouble… but even the idea of that sick show...

Regardless: like a total fool, he'd led Makoto and the Sakamotos into a damn blood sport. And then he'd revealed his location to the entire fucking island, to boot. Ren knew there would be repercussions for that- but he'd thought that would be a distant threat. Now, with Madarame dead at the hands of... someone! Maybe that wasn't the case… maybe that threat was closer and much more immediate than he'd thought. Maybe Madarame was involved in something much bigger than some idle human profiteering.

And that was an exciting prospect.

The top of the stairwell terminated at a plain wooden door. Ren forced himself to slow and move cautiously. He gently cracked the door, revealing a small room surrounded with solid black paintings. A persona altar was in the middle of the room, its hatch open and empty. Whatever persona had been there was gone now- Madarame probably having taken it with him. If Ren had to guess, this was the control room for the Thorn Forest- now black and dead.

He stepped into the room, listening and sniffing. There was one other door out of the room, presumably the passage back into the main part of the Madarame Mansion, but for the moment, Ren heard no one and smelled nothing fresh.

Ren's roving eyes locked onto a desk against the far corner of the room. Sudden excitement tingling at the tips of Ren's fingers, he strode to the desk. There were papers strewn over the top- ledgers of some sort. Ledgers with names! Some of which he recognized: Yamoto, Sayuri, Takai... It would take time to riddle out what story the ledgers told, and Ren wasn't even sure any of it was relevant to what he was looking for. He didn't have time to decide, so he gathered all the loose sheets into a pile, then he attacked the desk drawers.

The top drawer was pens and ink and random junk. Ren ripped it from the desk and shook it like someone looking for flecks of gold in a pail of river water. Nothing caught his eye. He set the drawer aside and pulled open the next one down. This one contained a few files of neatly organized papers. Ren pulled these out and looked them over. More ledgers and maybe some inventory documents? Again, nothing he could really examine right now. He added them to the stack of papers on top of the desk. There was only one more drawer. Ren reached down and opened it.

This one was mostly empty. There was a small glass box and an envelope. Ren reached for the glass box with his left hand. As he grabbed it, he felt Morgana shudder inside his mind.

*Ren! It's a symbiote!*

That was interesting. Another Morgana? They were extremely rare. Much more so than even war persona. Ren held the glass container up to his eyes. A small fetus of something or other floated peaceably in an unknown liquid.

Can you talk to it?

*No… I think it might be dead…*

You think?

*I- I can't tell. It's old. Very, very old.*

Well, another mystery for later. Ren carefully placed the glass box into his armored belt pouch. Then he reached back down for the envelope. It didn't look like anything special. It was blank, plain paper on the front. Ren flipped it over and his heart skipped a beat.

A dull red wax seal had been used to close the envelope. The seal was broken now, but the symbol was still clearly legible in the wax: a diamond encompassing a stately roman letter 'Y'.

Yaldabaoth. Clan Yaldabaoth.

Mother was right... of course.

"Ren?"

Ren's head shot up. Makoto was holding open the stairway door as Ryuji and Yusuke gently carried Ann into the room, still unconscious and very pale.

"Ren, what are you doing?"