Location: The Fold — Node 01
Time: Undefined — The Interrogation
---
Wilder's fist drove into Zhang Han's stomach like a piston.
The air went out of the man in a single, ugly rush—a wheeze that turned into a cough that turned into a retch. His body folded forward against the shackles, the chains snapping taut, the iron chair creaking beneath him.
Wilder didn't wait. His second punch came up into the same place, harder, and this time Zhang Han's cough brought something red.
"I asked you a question, champ." Wilder's voice was flat and calm and did not sound like a man who had just thrown two punches. "Why were you sending your goons to wreck my goods?"
Zhang Han spat onto the floor. He did not answer.
Elijah stood by the wall with his hands in his pockets, watching. Erickson stood beside him, arms folded, his face unreadable.
Wilder hit him again.
---
Zhang Han lifted his head. His eyes were wet, but his jaw was set, and his expression was the expression of a man who had spent his whole life never having to answer to anyone and was only now discovering what that felt like.
And then the air changed.
It came off Erickson slowly—not a pulse, not a wave, just a thickening. The room seemed to lean toward him. Wilder felt it in his teeth, in his sinuses, in the space behind his eyes. It smelled faintly of cold iron and something older—something like the air in a room that had been sealed for a very long time. It was not pressure exactly. It was presence. As though the man standing beside Elijah had stopped being only a man and had become a space that the room was trying to occupy.
Zhang Han felt it.
He could not have named it. He had no words for what was happening in the air around him. But some part of him—the part that had been trained since childhood to recognize danger before it arrived—understood that he was no longer the most dangerous thing in the room.
The space between him and the world had been taken. Not blocked. Not sealed. Just... taken. As if something else had stepped into it and closed the door behind itself.
He could kill me, Zhang Han thought. He could kill me and no one would ever know. Not the clan. Not the council. Not anyone. I would just be gone.
His jaw worked. His eyes darted to Erickson. Then to the floor.
"He's opened it," Zhang Han whispered. His voice was thin and very small, and it did not sound like him at all. "The door inside himself. The one where he can tell the difference between what the world is handing him and what he is handing himself. Where the two things stop being separate. I—I cannot—" He swallowed. "The only one stronger than him in this room is—"
He did not finish. He did not need to.
His voice was quiet and very tired.
"It was an order," he said. "From the Mysterium clan itself."
Wilder's head snapped toward him.
"What?"
"I was ordered to go after your goods. It wasn't my idea. It wasn't even my operation." Zhang Han's eyes were fixed on the floor. "The order came down from the top. I was told to make it look like a territorial dispute. I was told not to leave a trail."
Wilder's voice was very low. "Why."
Zhang Han was silent for a moment.
"Because your sister," he said, "is in possession of something the Mysterium clan considers extremely dangerous. A weapon. Something that threatens the sub-branches of the clans and the operations of the Mysterium itself."
Wilder turned to Erickson.
"Why the hell am I only hearing about this now?"
Erickson held up one hand. "I think we should stop there."
---
"No."
Wilder's voice cracked.
"This concerns my sister. There shouldn't be any secrets between us. Not about this. Not about her. You don't get to decide what I'm allowed to know about my own family." He crossed the room in three steps and grabbed Erickson by the collar. His fist pulled back—
Elijah caught it before it landed.
"Easy," he said. "Both of you. Easy."
He had not raised his voice. He had not moved quickly. He had simply crossed the room and put his hands on either side of Wilder's head, and the gesture was gentle—almost tender—and absolutely unbreakable.
Wilder went still.
Elijah looked at him, and his voice was quiet and steady and carried something Wilder had not heard from him before—not coldness, not calculation, but something almost like patience.
"Wilder. Listen to me. If there's a reason he doesn't want you to know—think about it. It's the best for you. Because even if you did know—then what? If he can't solve it with his strength, what makes you think you could? Some things are not good to know. They are kept hidden for your own safety. And the more you know them, the more you wound yourself. The deeper you sink." He paused. "So stop thinking with your childish attitude. And start being a man. For once."
Wilder's jaw worked. His hands were still clenched. His eyes were wet.
But he did not pull away.
---
The room was quiet for a long time.
Then Wilder let go of Erickson's collar, and Elijah let go of Wilder's head, and the three of them stood in the middle of the room not looking at each other.
Erickson exhaled. He straightened his collar. He walked to the far end of the room and looked at the wall.
"I'm aware," he said, "that you want to know what Elena Turner had in her possession."
Elijah leaned against the wall with his hands in his pockets. "Let me guess. Something that could tick off the Mysterium clan. Something that made them start shaking in their boots." He tilted his head. "You're referring to an Asurima. A weapon forged from the blood, or the bones, or the soul—or all three—of an Asurim."
Erickson was quiet for a moment.
"As expected of a Mandater," he said. "There isn't anything you can't figure out."
He sighed. It was a long sigh, the sigh of a man who had been carrying something heavy for a very long time.
"The Asurima in question belonged to the first Lathari."
Elijah's brow furrowed. "The first what?"
Erickson did not answer immediately. He looked at the wall, and then at the ceiling, and then at his own hands, as though he were looking for the right words in the air between them.
"The word is old," he said at last. "Older than the clans. Older than the Sutran. Older, perhaps, than the language I am speaking it in. In the old tongue, it was a single word. It meant the root and the branch at the same time. The source and the first of the source. The one from whom the line descends." He paused. "The First Mother. The First Father. Both. The word did not distinguish."
He turned away from the wall.
"That Asurima was the heirloom of a clan whose name I will not say aloud in this room. It was theirs. It is theirs. It has been theirs since before the first Sutran set foot on this world."
Elijah's face had gone still.
"The clans you know today," Erickson said, "are not the clans that were. The ones who carry the old blood—they did not take the hand that Gilgamesh offered. They did not fold themselves into the new order. They kept what they were." His lip curled. "Unlike the others. The ones who are loudest now. The ones who wear the great names. They are not the great names. They are the echo of the great names. They interbred, and they diluted, and what walks around in their skin today is a copy of something older. A counterfeit wearing the skin of the real thing."
He paused.
"Whether Gilgamesh himself had any connection to the old blood, I doubt. The founding of the current order came after the Asurim king's death. Long after. What the great clans are today is a copy of something older. A fake. A mask."
Elijah was quiet.
"I was raised in a monastery," Erickson said. "In the mountains. In a place whose name I will not speak. The ones who carry the old blood dwell there. They taught me what is buried in the clans and in the world. They told me about Elena Turner. They told me she was in hiding there. They told me what she carried."
He met Elijah's eyes.
"And they told me she did not want Wilder to know. Because if Wilder knew—if Wilder went looking for her—he would die. The Mysterium clan would see to it. They would see to it in ways that Wilder could not possibly imagine."
Elijah stared at him.
"Why are you telling me all this?"
Erickson looked at him for a long moment.
"Because you are the foretold Mandater," he said. "The one who would end the hundred-thousand-year rule of the current regime. The regime of the Proto-Aerva and their false children. The regime of the interbred clans—the ones who pretend to be the heirs of Gilgamesh while wearing the skin of something far older and far worse."
He paused.
"I do not care whether you fail or succeed. I do not care whether you live or die. I care only that you try. I care only that something—anything—is attempted against the Sutran Dominion."
The word landed like a stone.
"Even if it is only a gesture," Erickson said. "Even if it is only a child throwing a stone at a giant. It is better than nothing. It is better than another thousand years of silence."
The room was very quiet.
Wilder was staring at Erickson. Elijah was staring at Erickson. Zhang Han was staring at the floor.
And somewhere outside the Fold, in the deep and the dark and the spiral, something moved.