The Bureau had many interrogation rooms. This one sat unusually quiet. Same table. Same chairs. The crystal pendant rested in its metal stand at the center.
Inside it, Aldric Marune stood with both hands folded behind his back.
Miniature. Sealed away. And somehow still the one running the room.
He was alone now — Sebastian had already gone back up to oversee the structural recovery and manage the growing pile of press leaks.
—
Knock. Knock.
The door opened. A large hand appeared first, gripping the frame.
Then another, dragging something backward.
"...Get in there."
"No."
"Get in."
"I said no."
A muffled struggle spilled out into the hallway.
A second later Helden Mirch hauled someone through the door by the collar of his coat, the man's shoes scraping loud across the floor the whole way.
"No — no, I don't want to go in—"
"Stop resisting."
"This is a misunderstanding, I'm telling you!"
"Explain it once you're inside."
After a brief tug-of-war, Helden shoved him through and let go. The man stumbled forward, straightened his coat, and adjusted a pair of dark sunglasses.
The same person who'd been hiding somewhere inside BSA headquarters the whole time.
Eyemac.His smile froze the instant he spotted the crystal pendant on the table.
"...Chief."
Inside the crystal, Aldric's expression darkened the moment he registered who'd walked in. A vein twitched at his temple.
"...Look who finally decided to show up."
"Where the hell were you during a Level 4 facility breach?"
Eyemac's whole body locked up. Whatever confidence he usually carried evaporated on the spot.
His hands and feet refused to cooperate. He stood there, awkward, coming up empty.
"...Uh."
"...Well."
He scratched the back of his head. Nothing followed.
"...You see—"
Helden smirked. "He thought hiding in your office cupboard would keep him safe."
"Unfortunately for him, I found him first."
"So I dragged him down here."
Eyemac looked genuinely wounded. "It wasn't a cupboard. It was tactical concealment."
"It had cleaning supplies in it."
"...Exactly."
Aldric pressed one tiny hand to his forehead. "...What am I supposed to do with you." A tired breath echoed through the room.
"You possess one of the most broken sensory Grave Arts in the entire Bureau."
"You can watch nearly every corner of headquarters at once."
"...and somehow he's still a walking disaster."
Eyemac flashed an innocent grin, showing every single tooth.
Helden answered flatly. "And somehow he's still mentally twelve."
The grin faded off Eyemac's face.
Helden turned toward him, dead serious. "...Should we just kill him?"
Eyemac shot him the most pitiful look he could manage.
Chief might forgive me...
...but this man definitely won't.
Even Aldric, sealed in crystal, couldn't help letting out a sigh. Nothing they did ever seemed to fix Eyemac.
"...Enough." His gaze settled back on him. "Forget the theatrics. What exactly were you doing while terrorists walked into my headquarters?"
Eyemac blinked, then shrugged. "Oh — funny story, actually."
Helden already looked exhausted. "It had better not actually be funny."
Eyemac cleared his throat. "So — this morning, breakfast didn't agree with me. I was in the bathroom."
Silence.
"...For several hours."
Helden stared at him. "...I'm burying you alive."
Eyemac's hands shot up. "Wait, wait — I was busy! Naturally I wasn't watching the feeds." An awkward smile. "I really don't think today has anything to do with me. I'm innocent here."
Helden looked toward the ceiling, expressionless. "...Chief. Requesting permission to end him."
Aldric ignored both of them. His voice dropped serious. "No. You can lie to everyone else in this building. Not to me." His tiny eyes stayed locked on Eyemac. "I don't care what 'important business' you claim kept you occupied."
"Nothing escapes your sight. So — you tell me the truth, or I let Helden finally live his dream."
Eyemac swallowed. The smile slid off his face for good this time. He finally understood there wasn't another way out of this.
One long breath.
"...Alright."
"...I'll explain."
The memory pulled him straight back into it.
—
The room around him faded to black.
A pitch-dark chamber lit only by dozens of floating blue surveillance screens.
Eyemac sat sprawled in front of them, a mountain of snacks piled at his side, munching through a bag like he was watching a movie instead of guarding an entire Bureau facility. One hand dug lazily into another bag.
"...Hm!"
Crunch. Crunch.
"...Peaceful day today."
Then he stopped chewing mid-bite.
Something strange brushed against his Grave Energy. Wrong. Off.
"No—"
The chip dropped from his hand. His smile vanished.
He pulled off his sunglasses and closed both eyes.
Darkness swallowed his vision, and something enormous opened — not above headquarters. Somewhere beyond it, in the unseen space stitched between reality's layers.
A gigantic emerald eye unfolded across that unseen dark, iris burning bright green, ringed by a star-shaped structure rotating slow, like petals on some impossible flower.
This wasn't ordinary sight. It was his Grave Art.
[Eye — Overseer]
The eye drifted loose from him, gliding out across headquarters — down hallways, through storage rooms, past elevators, into the restricted archives, out to reception. It saw whatever it looked at. Nothing it passed over stayed hidden.
One image caught his attention.
Reception.
A young woman stood at the security desk. Pink hair. She stared at the officer on duty and smiled, warm, easy.
He smiled back.
Every Graver carried their own Grave Resonance — as distinct as a face, easy enough for another Graver to feel up close. But the eye only carried sight back to him, not sensation. Whatever she gave off, it never reached him through it.
For a second, neither of them blinked.
"..."
Eyemac's eyes narrowed. "...That's strange."
The guard reached for his access card.
Beep. Access Granted.
The door opened. No questions asked. He waved her through.
She stepped inside.
Something in the guard's head had gone quietly, deeply wrong.
Eyemac watched her vanish around the corner. A minute later, another unfamiliar face walked in.
Then another.
Then another.
He leaned forward, a grin creeping across his face.
"...Interesting." His fingers tapped against the desk. "Stop the first rat, I catch one rat." The grin widened. "Leave the door open — maybe I find the whole nest."
So he watched.
One infiltrator became five.
Five became ten.
Ten became thirty.
Thirty became... sixty.
"...That's a bit more than I expected."
Still, he didn't move.
More red dots crept across his map, one after another. By the time he actually bothered counting, the number sat at one hundred and twelve.
Silence.
He lowered the chips in his hand.
"...Ah."
"...Oh no."
"...Maybe—"
"—I let that run a little too far."
For exactly three seconds he considered filing a report.
Then explosions rolled through the building. Alarms tore through every corridor. Bureau agents flooded out — Special Investigation Teams One and Three, Containment, Barrier, every squad moving exactly the way they'd trained for.
Eyemac watched the infiltrators get crushed one after another, methodical, efficient.
"...Never mind. They've got it handled."
He reached for another chip. Crunch.
The memory ended there.
—
Silence filled the interrogation room. Eyemac finished the story with a satisfied nod, like he'd just explained something entirely reasonable.
Helden stared at him, expressionless. Slowly, he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"...You let a hundred and twelve terrorists walk into headquarters."
"...because you were curious."
Eyemac nodded, confident. "It was a security inspection."
Silence.
"Headquarters needs realistic stress-testing. I simply provided realistic conditions." A proud smile. "If anything, you should be thanking me."
Helden stared at him.
"...Keep talking."
"We will?"
Eyemac's face lit up. "Really?"
"At your funeral."
Eyemac's eyes shot toward the pendant. "...Chief?"
Aldric sighed. "...Enough." He turned toward Helden. "Don't kill him." A beat. "Just — don't feed him either."
"Assign him uninterrupted surveillance duty. Twenty-four hours. No breaks worth mentioning."
Eyemac froze solid.
"...Chief."
His shoulders sagged.
"I'd have preferred execution."
"Please. Have mercy."
"Somebody save me—"
Nobody did.
—
A few minutes later, Helden walked alone through one of the Bureau's lower corridors, expression unusually serious. Something about Eyemac's story hadn't stopped bothering him since he'd heard it.
Then it surfaced — a memory from earlier, right after the attack.
He'd been walking through headquarters when someone passed quietly beside him.
A young woman. Pink hair. Head down as she moved past.
Helden had frowned. Something in his gut hadn't sat right.
"Stop."
She'd stopped mid-step, back still turned to him.
For one second, a faint smile curled across her lips before she turned.
"...Yes, sir?" Her expression looked perfectly normal.
Too normal.
He'd studied her carefully. Everything checked out — the Bureau coat, the badge, the regulation uniform.
Something still didn't sit right.
Every Bureau officer carried a faint, distinct trace of Grave Resonance. Hers felt... strangely absent.
...Am I imagining it?
"Who are you?"
She'd smiled, polite, immediate. "Reporting Officer Lara."
Before he could push further—
BOOOOOOM!
An explosion had ripped through headquarters. His head snapped toward the sound on pure instinct.
"...What now?!"
He'd sprinted toward the blast without another thought.
Leaving her standing right where she was.
—
Back in the present, Helden stopped dead in the corridor. His expression went dark.
"...Damn it." He turned sharp.
"...That pink-haired girl." His fists closed. "She was the one."
Eyemac had unknowingly waved the real infiltrator straight through the front door.
"...I let her walk away." A bitter smile crossed his face. "...Idiot."
Only now, after hearing Eyemac's confession, did the full shape of it land.
He hadn't let a stranger walk away.
He had let the very first infiltrator walk directly into the heart of the Bureau.
A cold certainty settled through him.
She hadn't been escaping.
She'd been leaving — with whatever she'd actually come here to take.
The corridor felt colder than it had a minute ago.
Far beyond Bureau Headquarters, a young woman with pink hair melted into the afternoon crowd without looking back.
✦ End of Chapter 45 — Eyemac: Overseer ✦