The moment the call connected, Voyage confirmed everything Eric had already suspected, and the confession came so easily, so readily, that it almost felt anticlimactic. Eric had expected to have to pry the truth out, maybe threaten, maybe bargain. Instead, Voyage handed it over like a man discussing the weather. It made a certain kind of sense, Eric supposed. They were allies, after all, and allies didn't need to lie to each other. That was the arrangement. That had always been the arrangement.
It was, if Eric let himself sit with it for even a moment, a rather remarkable morning. He had knelt in a grieving mother's living room only hours ago, hand pressed to his chest, and promised her he would do everything in his power to bring her daughter home. He had meant it too, in whatever way a man like him could mean something like that. He had chased down leads, coerced an addict, kicked in a door hard enough to end a man's career as a functioning human being, and carried three sobbing children out of a cage with his own partner's arms wrapped around them like they were something precious. By every account that mattered to the people writing his commendation, he was a hero. There would probably be a small write-up. Officer Eric Heisenberg, exemplary conduct, missing child recovered within hours.
And now, standing in the cooling evening air with the taste of that woman's gratitude still fresh, he was on the phone with the man who had ordered it all in the first place, calmly working out the terms of a partnership.
There was something almost funny about that, if he thought about it in exactly the wrong way. He had spent the morning being someone's savior and was about to spend the evening becoming someone's accomplice, and the strange part was that neither role felt like it cost him anything. He wasn't angry at Voyage. He wasn't even particularly bothered. Voyage was useful, Voyage was strong, and strength backed by a Hypernova wasn't something a man in Eric's position could afford to burn over a handful of children he'd never meet and wouldn't remember by next week. He had a Hypernova of his own standing behind him now, invisible but present, and two directionless Lysi Novas with no real leverage weren't worth losing that kind of asset over some misplaced sense of principle.
He had already worked out who the mastermind was before he'd even dialed. The divine puppets had given it away, small, precise things belonging unmistakably to the Overseeing Pathway, and the Overseeing Pathway's deepest resources, among the four great bodies, sat squarely in the hands of Divine Karma. Voyage was Divine Karma's man in this city. The math wasn't difficult. There had been perhaps a ten percent chance it was someone else entirely, the Hypernova pulling strings from somewhere higher up, but that possibility had always felt thin, more theoretical than real.
Confirmation in hand, there was really only one thing left to ask.
"Why go to all this trouble?" Eric asked. "Even using an Overseeing Pathway relic just to run a small kidnapping gang seems excessive. If you wanted children, your organization could have arranged that for you quietly through proper channels. Why put yourself through something this messy instead?"
He didn't expect an answer. It was mostly idle curiosity at this point, a loose thread he wanted tied off before he moved on to more useful questions. So it caught him off guard when Voyage actually answered.
There was a pause first, a long one, long enough that Eric almost thought the connection had dropped. Then Voyage sighed, the sound carrying a strange, worn-out weight to it.
"I suppose there's no real harm in telling you. My liquid's core ability lets me be reborn, in a manner of speaking. It's complicated; more factors are involved than I could explain in an afternoon, but the short version is that once I'm reborn, I come back in something like an infant state, being Vulnerable. My ability offers some protection during that stage, but not nearly enough to feel safe."
He let that settle for a moment before continuing, his tone shifting into something almost philosophical.
"Everything in this universe balances itself out eventually. Where there's light, darkness is born. A sun implies a moon somewhere. Hope only grows because despair gave it soil to root in. It's the same principle with me. My ability comes with a passive trait attached, a cost to balance the gift, if you will. I need blood to grow quickly. Human blood, ideally from healthy teenagers."
Eric said nothing, letting him continue.
"It's most effective when it comes from people native to the planet I've been reborn on. Blood from elsewhere works, technically, but poorly, and it comes with its own complications." Voyage's voice sharpened suddenly, the philosophical calm cracking into something rawer. "And wouldn't you know it, right before I was finally set to collect what I needed, you had to go and ruin the whole thing."
The last line came out closer to a shout than a sentence, sharp enough that Eric had to pull the mental connection back slightly. It was a fair reaction, all things considered. Eric hadn't planned any of this around Voyage specifically, but that hardly mattered from where Voyage was standing. Still, sympathy wasn't really the point of this call, and neither was guilt. An idea had already started forming.
"I know, I know. It wasn't intentional, for what it's worth." Eric let the apology sit there for exactly as long as it needed to, and no longer. "But listen, I've got a thought. The other bodies clearly have some idea what you're capable of, don't they? That's the only reason you'd bother running something this small and this quiet instead of doing it properly. You're being watched. Interrupted. Slowed down every time you try to move. That's dangerous for you, and it's only going to get worse the longer this drags on."
He let the silence stretch just long enough to make his next words land harder.
"So here's what I'm offering. I help you hunt down a healthy teenager, somewhere no one's watching, and I keep you protected while you do what you need to do. In exchange, you hand over the relic to me on Saturday, plus some Aura stones on top."
There was another pause on the other end, this one different in texture entirely, thoughtful rather than pained. Voyage had lived through more years than Eric could probably guess at, had negotiated with kings and monsters and everything in between, and even he found himself faintly impressed. Something about Eric's proposal sat oddly well with him, the sheer, unbothered efficiency of it. Whatever image he'd been building of this young officer in his head, it had just grown another layer.
"Very nice," Voyage said slowly, something like admiration creeping into his voice. "You press right on the wound, remind me exactly how vulnerable I am, let me sit in the dark with that for a moment, and then, right on cue, you offer me the way out. The concerned guardian, extending a hand. Except we both know that's not really what this is. You're just here for what you can get out of it."
He laughed, short and genuine.
"Not that I'm holding it against you. I could manage this on my own eventually; it would just take longer and cost me more patience than I currently have to spare. Time isn't exactly a luxury I have right now. So, fine. Since this benefits us both, I'll accept. When were you thinking?"
Eric considered it for a moment, turning the question over.
"Monday," he said finally.
"Monday works." A beat passed, comfortable enough now that neither felt the need to fill it. "Well then. I believe that settles everything."
There was nothing left to discuss after that, and the call ended cleanly, the golden thread between them dissolving back into nothing.
He heaved a sigh and rubbed his head for a few seconds. These calls took quite a lot of mental energy, but he had long been used to it and could talk for hours. Still, it was best to rest and be in perfect condition.
Eric tipped his head back and let his eyes settle on the sky, which had turned a deep, burning orange as the sun sank lower behind the rooftops, streaking the clouds in shades of amber and rose that seemed almost too vivid to be real. A cold breeze swept past them, brushing against his face and carrying with it the faint, mineral scent of the river somewhere beyond the buildings. Somewhere far off, church bells rang out the hour, slow and resonant, marking just how much time had already slipped past them.
"We're really late," Max said, glancing around at the emptying street with a small frown tugging at his mouth. "What if he already left? What if he thought we weren't coming?"
Eric let out a quiet laugh, low and unbothered. "He hasn't left."
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually." Eric finally lowered his gaze from the sky, a faint smile still lingering at the corner of his mouth. "Think about it. He already knows exactly what kept us. If he still wants to talk to us, and he clearly does, he'll wait. A being like that doesn't have anywhere else pressing to be, and patience isn't exactly something Hypernovas run short on."
Max didn't look entirely convinced, but he let it go, rubbing the back of his neck instead.
Eric reached into his pocket and drew out the Imperator's Cross, turning it once between his fingers before holding it up. "Uriel. Pixie." His voice dropped, quieter now, meant only for them. "Keep someone with dimensional strength ready. If this goes badly, I want a way out before I even have to ask for one."
For a moment nothing happened, and then the silver cross caught the last of the sunlight and pulsed once with a soft, golden glow, a quiet acknowledgment that the message had been received and already acted upon. Eric nodded to himself and slid it back into his pocket.
"Feels a bit much, doesn't it?" Max asked, watching him. "Preparing an escape route before we've even said hello."
"It's not much of anything," Eric said. "It's just enough."
They stood there a little longer, neither of them in any real hurry to move, letting the last of that burning sky hold their attention for one more quiet moment before the evening properly began. Max let out a low whistle, tilting his head up at the clouds. "You have to admit, it's a nice one tonight."
"It is," Eric agreed, something almost wistful passing behind his eyes before it vanished again.
Finally Max drew out his golden liquid, letting it spill warm and bright over his palm, and rested his right hand on Eric's shoulder. The light spread between them, wrapping around both of them at once until neither one was fully visible beneath it, and then, with barely a sound, they were gone.
They reappeared a heartbeat later on a quiet street in the Pariellete district, right in front of a small ice-cream shop with its shutters already drawn for the evening.
Max's easy expression faded almost instantly the moment he recognized where they were standing. This was the same street, the same shop, the same stretch of pavement where he'd been trapped days ago by a stranger with no name and no clear purpose, helpless and unable to reach Eric while he was caught in a domain of his own, an assassin from the Inversion Pathway closing in on him with nothing standing in her way.
Max pointed Eric to the table at which he had sat and where the note was left by the trapper.
Eric was just about to take out his pink liquid and cover the area so that no sound could reach outsiders, but before he could even take out a drop, a green wall covered the entire area. The entire place became extremely quiet. All the people who were here vanished; only silence remained.
"It is just like when I was trapped," Max exclaimed. His gaze looked around the wall thoughtlessly.
"He is still here indeed," Eric nodded his head. He then walked up to the table which Max had pointed out, pulled back a chair, and sat on it. Unlike Max, he sat in a professional posture, his fingers interlocked as he stared at the seat opposite the one where the trapper sat.
For the next few minutes, there was only silence—an ominous silence. Eric snorted and took out a paper note, wrote "Introduce yourself, please" on it, and threw it to the other side of the table. He didn't try to use his vision to see the Hypernova because it simply wouldn't work. The difference between Lysi Nova and Hypernova may look small, but it was as large as the distance between the land and the sky. He was simply too weak.
Max was standing behind Eric's seat and wasn't sitting. Suddenly, both of their eyes widened as they felt a huge, formless pressure forming on their bodies, immobilising all their movements. Eric used all the strength in his body and was only then able to raise his head and look at the seat opposite to his. A green light was oozing out from a human-shaped shadow as a person revealed himself.
The more he revealed himself, the higher the pressure became. Eric was unable to continue looking for more than a few seconds before his head drooped. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the pressure disappeared, and Max and Eric finally sucked in huge amounts of cold air. Max subconsciously moved closer to Eric.
Eric forced his head up, sweat beading cold against his skin, strands of damp hair clinging stubbornly to his forehead. Whatever he'd braced himself to see, it wasn't this.
The figure across the table looked barely seventeen, with pale skin stretched over sharp, almost delicate features, framed by hair the color of fresh spring leaves, and eyes to match, bright and clear and entirely too calm for someone who'd just crushed two grown men into their chairs without lifting a finger. His lips curved into an easy smile as he leaned back, one arm draped loosely over the chair's edge, radiating the kind of relaxed confidence that only ever belonged to people who had never once needed to earn it the hard way.
He straightened after a moment, pressed his right hand lightly to his chest, and inclined his head just slightly, more courtesy than reverence.
"Edward Blackknight," he said, voice smooth and unhurried. "Greetings to the second and third."
Eric didn't look away. He didn't drop his gaze the way instinct screamed he should, didn't let his spine curve into the small, obedient posture that centuries of hierarchy had trained into people far stronger than him. He simply held Edward's eyes with his own, steady and level, his jaw set, his hands still loosely folded in front of him as though the pressure from moments ago had never touched him at all.
Something flickered behind Edward's easy expression, gone almost before it registered. Small and contained. But there.
His gaze slid past Eric toward Max instead, who hadn't managed nearly the same composure, still gripping the back of Eric's chair, breathing hard, glaring at Edward like he was one wrong word away from throwing himself across the table regardless of what it might cost him. Edward's eyes lingered on him for exactly a second before dismissing him entirely, sliding back to Eric without another thought spared. He already understood who did the talking here.
Then his head tilted, slow and idle, angling toward something neither Eric nor Max could see, as if listening to a conversation happening just out of earshot. A small smile tugged at his mouth. He nodded once, to no one visible at all, before straightening back up and letting his expression settle into something more irritated.
"You're both very late, you know," he said, drumming two fingers lightly against the table. "We should have wrapped this up ages ago. Instead I've been sitting here, wasting my evening." His eyes flicked briefly toward Eric, something sharper glinting beneath the surface of his tone. "Though I suppose that's not entirely your fault. Trouble from your allies tends to have a way of running late, doesn't it?"
The words themselves meant almost nothing. Late meetings, wasted time, small complaints anyone might make while waiting on a friend. But the way his eyes had moved when he said allies, the faint emphasis resting just slightly too long on that single word, made the real message impossible to miss.
He knew exactly who they'd been dealing with.
That gaze Edward had acknowledged with a nod and a smile could only belong to one person. The Hypernova of Divine Karma, watching from wherever they were watching from, and Edward had known it the entire time. He hadn't so much as flinched at being observed. If anything, he seemed to welcome it, letting that unseen presence linger over the conversation without the faintest hint of concern. It was a small thing, barely a gesture, but it told Eric everything he needed to know about the kind of confidence a Hypernova carried as a matter of course.
Eric understood all of it in that single exchange, the meaning folded into a glance and a tilt of the head, and he filed it away without a word. Max understood less of the subtlety, but even he could feel the shape of what had just passed between the two of them, the weight of something unspoken settling over the table.
Eric let the silence stretch a moment longer, turning over exactly what to ask first, before finally breaking it. "Why did you trap Max, Senior Edward?"
Edward waved a hand dismissively, a short laugh escaping him. "Just Edward is fine. I know I don't look it, but I'm not secretly some ancient thing wearing a young face. I'm twenty-two. Younger than you, actually."
Something in Eric's chest tightened at that, sharp and sudden, though nothing of it reached his expression. Twenty-two. A Hypernova at twenty-two. That single fact told him more than Edward probably realized he was giving away. Reaching that rank so young meant either monstrous natural talent or resources so vast they could carry a person there regardless of talent, and more likely than not, it meant both at once. Someone didn't simply stumble into that kind of power. They were built for it, deliberately, by people who had decided long ago that Edward was worth the investment.
Edward watched him for a moment, something knowing flickering behind his easy smile. Whatever composure Eric managed to keep on the surface clearly wasn't fooling him in the slightest. He let the moment sit anyway, giving Eric space to absorb it before continuing.
"The reason I trapped him," Edward said, nodding toward Max, "while you were off getting ambushed, comes down to two things, really. First, I needed a way to get your attention, an invitation of sorts. Second, he's strong enough that if I'd left him free, he would have reached you in time and dealt with your assassin problem himself, which would have defeated the purpose. So I kept him here instead. If things had gone badly enough for you, if you'd been on the verge of dying, I would have stepped in myself. Saved you. Made you indebted to me in the process." He shrugged lightly, almost apologetic. "Turns out you handled yourself just fine without needing rescuing. And before you ask, no, I wasn't worried about the other Hypernovas showing up to interfere. I would have managed."
He said it plainly, without a trace of hesitation, the kind of statement that would have sounded absurd from anyone weaker and simply sounded like fact coming from him.
Max's jaw tightened, understanding landing all at once. "So it was insurance," he said, voice low and clipped, each word bitten off sharper than the last. His grip on the back of Eric's chair tightened until the wood groaned in protest, thin cracks spidering out beneath his fingers. "You trapped me like some backup plan. In case Eric happened to die, and you needed something to feel good about afterward."
Eric let the matter of the trap drop, deciding it wasn't worth pressing further, at least not yet. Instead, he shifted the conversation somewhere more careful.
"Blackknight," he said slowly, letting the name sit in the air between them. "Are you, by any chance, from the Blackknight family of Lumenia?"
Edward's smile didn't waver, but something behind his eyes sharpened, as though he'd been waiting for exactly this question and was pleased it had finally arrived. "I could ask you the same thing, couldn't I? Heisenberg. You carry the name well. There's a resemblance there, whether you realize it or not." He paused, letting that land before continuing. "But yes. I am from the Lumenia faction. You guessed that correctly."
Eric shook his head, and for once the confusion in his expression wasn't manufactured. "I don't know anything about that family. It's a question that's followed me for a long time now, longer than I'd like to admit. If I really do carry their blood, then perhaps my family was cast out at some point, which would explain why I ended up here instead of there. But I've never had the means to confirm it, and at this point, I've stopped letting it matter to me."
Neither of them pushed further after that. Both understood the shape of this conversation for what it was, a careful exchange where each side would only ever offer as much as they chose to, and pressing harder would yield nothing but silence. Some doors were better left unforced.
Edward, for his part, was running out of patience to keep circling the subject. Time wasn't something he had in abundance today, and he'd already decided there was little point in dragging this out further. Still, what Eric had gathered in that brief exchange mattered more than either of them said aloud. Edward was a Hypernova of Lumenia, and in all likelihood, a member of the Blackknight family itself. That single fact reorganized everything Eric had assumed about this meeting.
It made sense, once he actually sat with it. Edward carried himself like someone who had been trained for exactly this kind of work, composed, deliberate, entrusted with an operation important enough that all four great bodies had felt compelled to send their own people to oversee it personally. That alone told Eric how serious this situation truly was. Nothing this quiet drew that much attention unless something significant was buried underneath it.
And operations at this level required resources on a scale most people never touched in their lifetimes. A family like the Blackknights could provide that without hesitation, opening doors that would otherwise take decades to force open through merit alone.
The Blackknight family held dominion over the Dimension Pathway, and their reach within it was almost absolute. Even the Organisation, backed by a True Supernova of that same pathway, hadn't managed to erode a foundation the Blackknights had spent centuries building and defending. Their bloodline carried a signature that was difficult to mistake: green hair, green eyes, sometimes deepening toward black at the edges, and Edward matched that description without a single detail out of place.
Edward cleared his throat, and something in the gesture felt oddly rehearsed, like a man preparing to launch into a speech he'd delivered before, perhaps to someone else entirely.
"I won't dance around this any longer," he said. "Second, third, I haven't come here to harm either of you. All I want is an alliance, the same kind you already have with Divine Karma. And if you ever wanted more than that down the line, the door would be open. So let me just say it plainly. Divine Karma isn't nearly as trustworthy as you probably think they are."
Max and Eric exchanged a glance, neither quite sure yet where this was heading.
"They're a mess, honestly," Edward continued, his pace picking up now, words tumbling out faster than either of them had expected from him. "Thin on manpower, and from what I've seen, more than willing to burn people like you two through as cannon fodder if it gets them what they want. Did you know their leader's been missing for over a thousand years? No one's heard a whisper from him in all that time. He could be dead in a ditch somewhere, for all anyone knows." He waved a hand dismissively. "The whole organization's split into factions now, tearing itself apart from the inside while the other three bodies close in on them from every direction. If it weren't for whatever inheritance their old leader left behind, they'd have collapsed years ago. And they still haven't handed you that relic they promised, have they? That alone should tell you everything about how little they actually have to offer."
Max's brow furrowed slightly, though he said nothing, letting Edward keep going.
"Lumenia is different. Bigger, steadier, actually built to last, and we wouldn't hesitate to give you real resources, and we'd protect more than just the two of you. Your families. Anyone close to you. I understand there isn't much trust between us yet, so I'll be the one to move first here. Unlike them, I'm not going to make you wait around for something that may never come."
He leaned forward slightly, warming further into the pitch. "And it doesn't even have to be exclusive. Keep your alliance with Divine Karma if you want. If the Truth Seekers ever come knocking, take that too. Stack every advantage you can get your hands on. Just, please, whatever you do, don't trust the Organisation. They've made their hostility toward both of you clear enough already."
He finally paused for breath, and the silence that followed felt almost louder than everything he'd just said.
Eric sat there for a moment, faintly stunned, not by the content so much as the sheer volume of it. This was the same person who'd trapped Max with a wave of pressure powerful enough to bring two grown men to their knees, who'd spoken maybe a dozen sentences total before this, mostly clipped and composed. And now here he was, talking like a nervous salesman who'd lost the thread of his own pitch halfway through and was simply trying to power through to the end of it.
Max leaned in slightly, murmuring low enough that only Eric could hear. "Is he... okay? He seems a little worked up for someone who could probably kill us without standing up."
Eric didn't answer, but privately, he was wondering the same thing. A Hypernova, rattling off this much information unprompted, with this much urgency behind it. It didn't track with anything he understood about how someone at that level should behave. He and Max were still Lysi Novas, unremarkable by any real measure, without a fraction of the standing that would normally justify this kind of effort. So why did someone this powerful sound almost desperate to secure them?
He also noted, quietly, that Edward hadn't shown any sign of sensing the Rank 0 relic sitting in his pocket this entire time. That tracked, at least. The concealment carried by the angel bound within it would have masked its presence from someone far stronger than Edward. Nor had Edward said a single word that suggested he knew anything about the voice occasionally surfacing in the back of Eric's mind. If he'd known, surely he would have used it. A man laying his cards out this openly wasn't the type to hold back a detail that useful.
Eric set that thought aside for later and refocused on the matter directly in front of him. If Edward wanted to prove his sincerity, there was really only one way to do that convincingly. Words were cheap, alliances built on promises alone tended to be worth exactly as much as the promise itself, and the only currency that actually meant anything here was a relic, handed over freely, with nothing owed in return.
Eric put his left hand on his chin and thought for a few seconds. There were a lot of options. Lumenia was huge, and the Blackknight family had no shortage of relics, but he needed a relic he needed the most at this time. Suddenly, a light of inspiration glowed in his mind as he was thinking. He raised his head, looked at Edward, and said,
"I would like a Rank three relic that can change my appearance, ideally from the Deceiver Pathway."
Edward gave a small nod at the request and raised his right hand, a thin thread of green light spilling from his palm and sparking against the air until a narrow rift tore open in front of him. He reached inside without hesitation, fingers searching through whatever lay beyond, until something caught. His eyes widened slightly as he drew his hand back out, and resting in his palm was a silver mask, sized perfectly to fit Eric's face.
He set it down on the table and slid it across. Eric picked it up, turning it slowly to catch the light, and found he genuinely liked what he saw.
"Rank 4 relic, Deceiver Pathway," Edward explained. "It lets you change your appearance at will. It'll shift the color of your primary liquid too, though the finer details of what it can do won't reveal themselves until you actually bond it with your golden liquid. It doesn't have a name yet. Since it's yours now, that's your call to make."
Eric turned the mask over once more in his hands, considering it in silence for a moment. Then something settled behind his eyes, a small, private amusement he didn't bother hiding.
"Truth," he said. "I'll call it Truth."
Edward blinked, and then laughed outright, sharp and delighted. "A relic built entirely to lie about who you are, and you name it Truth. That's either very clever or deeply concerning. Possibly both."
"Possibly both," Eric agreed, and said nothing further to explain himself.
Edward let the moment pass, then straightened slightly, glancing between the two of them with a more practical look now. "Neither of you has a bodysuit, do you. Standard equipment, really, one of the basics for anyone doing this kind of work. It's woven from a specialized silicone blend, mixed with a few rarer fibers, and it molds to a skin-tight fit in whatever color you'd like. Wears comfortably under regular clothing without anyone noticing, and it sharpens your control over your liquid considerably. Genuinely useful. Most people wouldn't go without one if they had the choice."
Eric let out a short, wry laugh. "You're not wrong. But bodysuits like that only go to members of the four great bodies. What's left over gets sold, and even then, someone like us, who's never once left Earth, doesn't exactly have access to that market. Even if I could buy one, it never occurred to me that I'd need it badly enough to bother."
Edward studied him for a moment, something calculating behind his easy expression. "That's easily fixed. I'll have custom ones made for both of you. Consider it a thank-you gift for agreeing to the alliance." He tapped the table lightly with two fingers. "Now. Shall we exchange contacts?"
Eric nodded once, and both of them drew out their golden liquid in near unison, letting thin threads of it rise into the air between them and Edward. The strings wove together for a moment, gold meeting gold, exchanging whatever quiet signature marked one person's liquid from another's, until the connection settled and the threads dissolved back into nothing.
Edward watched it happen with the same easy smile he'd worn through most of the conversation, and once it was done, he gave a small, satisfied nod. "Well then," he said, rising from his seat. "I believe that's everything."
He didn't linger after that. With a slight incline of his head toward each of them, more courtesy than reverence, he raised his hand, and the green wall surrounding the street began to peel away, folding back into nothing until the ordinary sounds of the city came rushing back in: footsteps, distant traffic, the low hum of a world that had never actually stopped moving. A moment later, a soft ripple of green light gathered around Edward's frame, and he was simply gone, the space where he'd been sitting left empty as though no one had ever occupied it at all.
For a while, neither Max nor Eric said anything.
Max let out a long breath first, dragging a hand down his face. "I feel like I just ran a marathon," he muttered, "and I didn't even move."
Eric didn't answer right away. He was still looking at the empty chair across from him, turning the mask over once more in his hands before finally letting himself exhale, the tension he'd been holding in his shoulders easing out all at once. He slid the mask carefully into his right pocket, the one that didn't already hold the Imperator's Cross, and gave it a light pat, as though confirming it was really there and not some fever dream conjured up by an overly long evening.
"Come on," he said finally, glancing at Max. "Let's head back before something else decides to ruin our night."
Max managed a tired laugh at that, and together they drew out their golden liquid one final time, the familiar warmth wrapping around them both before the world blinked away entirely.
...
Edward hung suspended above the city, the lights of Paris scattered beneath him like something small and fragile, barely worth noticing from this height. Behind his back, two wings unfurled from nothing, built entirely of green flame that burned without sound, without smoke, casting long shadows across the clouds gathered around him.
He should have felt satisfied. The alliance was secured, the relic given, the meeting concluded exactly as planned. And yet something about it sat wrong in his chest, some instinct he'd learned never to ignore, refusing to settle even now.
They had been too calm.
Two Lysi Novas, sitting across from a Hypernova who could have ended either of them without so much as rising from his chair, and neither had so much as flinched beyond the moment the pressure actually hit them. No pleading. No desperate bargaining. No trembling attempts to appease him the way he'd seen from stronger cultivators than these two, more times than he cared to count. Eric had looked him dead in the eye and held it there, unblinking, as though rank meant nothing at all in that moment.
That wasn't bravery. Bravery had a texture to it, something Edward could usually recognize instantly, a kind of forced steadiness people wore over genuine fear. What he'd seen in Eric's eyes hadn't been forced. It had been closer to certainty, the look of a man who somehow already knew he wasn't in as much danger as he should have been.
Edward's jaw tightened slightly. Yes, they had a Hypernova of Divine Karma watching over them; that much he'd confirmed himself. But Divine Karma was fractured, thin on resources, hemorrhaging influence by the year. Could that kind of backing really account for the sheer, unshaken composure he'd just witnessed? He didn't believe it. Not fully.
And there had been something else too, a feeling he couldn't quite name, cold and quiet, curling low in his gut the moment he'd first considered what might happen if this meeting had gone differently. If he'd decided, even briefly, to test them the way he sometimes tested others. The thought alone had sent something through him that felt uncomfortably close to a warning, some deep, wordless instinct screaming that whatever lay beneath the surface of those two men was not something he wanted to provoke.
He exhaled slowly, watching the city lights blur beneath the drifting clouds.
Whoever, or whatever, Eric Heisenberg truly was, Edward was now fairly certain of one thing. The order he'd been given to secure an alliance with them, quickly, before anyone else could, hadn't been caution born of politeness.
It had been caution born of fear.
With that thought settling heavy and unresolved in his chest, Edward turned his gaze upward, away from the city, and let the flames behind him flare brighter as he tore free of the sky entirely before opening a dimensional rift and entering it, leaving Earth, and whatever answers still waited down there, behind him.