"No. This is bad." Zekai turned. The street told him before his mind caught up — Linoria. The place he'd fled two years ago—the day his parents died. The city he'd left behind when he'd gone to live with Marcus in Greyhaven. "How am I back in this city?"
He kept walking down the main road, boots hitting the pedestrian platform in a steady rhythm.
A few lamp posts along the way were papered with posters — missing photos, faces ranging from small children to teenage girls, each one tagged with a different city.
He passed them without slowing.
Zzzzsup!
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ARCANA INTERFACE
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Authority Title: The Fool
Authority Level: 98
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Authority Bearer: Zekai Krystan
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HP: 100%
AP: 100%
STR: 100 AGI: 100 DEX: 100 VIT: 100
PER: 100 WIL: 61
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1. Authorities 2. Armament 3. Arcana Path
2. Unbroken Ledger 5. Condition 6. Records
3. Observation
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His feet stopped on their own, eyes locked on the numbers. "Huh."
He frowned at the number. A hundred, clean across five stats at once — that wasn't growth, that was a wall. "...Is that a cap?" No answer came. Filed away for later, then.
One finger pressed against his lower lip.
'How did this happen?'
The sanctuary crashed back into his head all at once — every death, every collapse.
'I died over and over in there, and it just... leveled me up. My body. My power. All of it.'
He kept walking.
A ten-year-old boy came barreling toward him, too fast to stop, lost in his own thoughts the same way Zekai was lost in his — and Zekai shifted his weight out of the way without even registering the kid was there.
The boy cleared him and lost his footing a step later, stumbling off the platform edge toward the road, a car already bearing down.
Zekai's hand shot out before his brain caught up, yanking the kid back by the collar in one clean pull. Saved by a margin thinner than a thread.
Zekai kept walking like nothing had happened.
Behind him, the boy stared, stunned. "Thank you, mister!" Then he bolted off toward school, still catching his breath.
'Still got a lot of this system left to figure out.'
Caught up in his own head, he walked without paying attention to where his feet were taking him — until they stopped on their own, and he found himself standing in front of his childhood home. He hadn't set foot on this street in two years.
—
The table was drowning in black — Folders stacked in uneven towers across the table, CONFIDENTIAL stamped in white ink across every spine.
Loose pages slipped free between covers. Photographs sat clipped tight at the corners — faces caught mid-laugh, mid-turn, mid-sentence, every one labeled the same way underneath.
MISSING.
A hand reached forward and lifted the top folder. It opened with a dry rustle. Ink preserved names. Storage preserved failure.
The man behind the desk didn't turn the page right away. His thumb rested against the margin, like he expected the paper to argue back.
The only sound in the room came from the building's ventilation, faint and constant. He preferred it that way — noise got in the way of accuracy.
He turned the page. Slow.
White hair combed back caught the edge of the desk lamp. Not a single crease sat out of place in his suit. Nothing about him looked rushed.
Another page. Another name.
A brass plate at the edge of the desk caught a thin line of light.
[ Director Cassian Mourn ]
Central Investigation Bureau (CIB)
The engraving sat immaculate. The files piled beside it did not.
A knock sounded.
He didn't look up. "Come."
The door opened. A woman stepped in — early thirties, brown hair tied back, posture measured down to the millimeter.
"Director." She set another folder on top of the pile. "Latest case reports."
He glanced at the stack. It had grown again — not in weight, in repetition. Different districts, different ages.
Same disappearance, over and over.
"Nora." He pushed the new folder aside without opening it. "Stop bringing them."
Her fingers stayed at the edge of the desk. "There are more cases pending, Director." She'd submitted it as routine — because that's what it should have been.
"Then what exactly are the assigned investigators doing with these?" No anger in his voice. Just exhaustion.
She was just as tired of it. "They're investigating." A pause. "But they're filing them as ordinary missing-persons cases. That's why nobody's flagged anything unusual yet."
Nothing stood out on paper. That was the actual problem for the CIB.
He turned the file to face her. "Every confirmed victim is a child. Or a teenage girl."
His gaze dropped to a photograph half-buried under another file. A girl, seventeen. Last seen near Graveholt City, laughing in the frame, afternoon light caught in her hair.
No sign she'd known what was coming.
He closed the file slow. This wasn't coincidence. It was a pattern — and patterns meant something ugly underneath them.
He leaned back, leather creaking under his weight. "How many this month?"
"Thirty-two confirmed. Twelve unverified."
He tapped the desk once. He only ever tapped the desk once he'd already decided something.
"No connection between them?"
"Nothing links them. No witnesses, no ransom demands, no crime scenes." She hesitated. "It's like they just stopped existing."
"Then we handle it differently."
He knew closing one folder wouldn't fix a system this broken. His fingers drifted, unconscious, to the bronze amulet under his collar — a dull emerald sitting at its center.
The instant his thumb brushed the stone, a faint green pulse lit it once. Barely visible.
Nora missed it entirely.
His eyes dropped. "...I hope they're still alive."
The light died out as fast as it had come. He released the pendant and slid the folder across the desk.
"Transfer this to the BSA."
She went rigid. That unit only touched cases that broke the laws of physics outright.
"If this goes to the BSA—" Something close to excitement crept into her voice. "—this isn't an ordinary case anymore. Is it, Director?"
"No." He didn't raise his voice. "It's not ours anymore."
Reassigning it wasn't surrender. It just meant something else now had to be the one to carry it.
Past the tall window behind him, Greyhaven kept its mechanical rhythm going — smoke rising off factory stacks, trams grinding along their rails. Nothing about the city looked like it was missing a single thing.
That was exactly the problem.
✦ End of chapter 75 - The Unseen Connection ✦