The night was as thick as ink, and the air in the lower levels of the Sanctum was heavy with its usual, viscous stench.
When Soren stepped into Vesper's suite, he immediately detected the suffocating shift in the atmosphere. Vesper wasn't seated at her customary vanity. She stood by the shadowed window, clutching a half-empty glass of crimson wine.
"The Overseer has made his move," she said without turning around, her voice raspy in the cavernous room. "He formally submitted a request to the high echelons. In three days, there will be an 'Annual Evaluation Deathmatch' in the Crucible. My apprentices are mandated to fight, and he is personally selecting their opponents."
Standing in the shadows, Soren wasn't the least bit surprised. He had planted the seed of paranoia in the Overseer's direct jurisdiction. The Tier-4 master had clearly completed his "re-evaluation" of Vesper and decided to publicly test—or rather, publicly execute—this rusting blade.
But what truly caught Soren's attention was Vesper's tone.
Under the sweep of his Death-Star Sight, the terror and blind fury in her astrolabe had miraculously subsided. In its place was the freezing calm of someone who had just made a cataclysmic decision, laced with a complex fluctuation hovering between extreme vigilance and fatal temptation.
"Someone came to see me." Vesper finally turned, her cloudy eyes locking onto Soren.
Soren tilted his head slightly. Beneath his mask of obedience, his mind accelerated to maximum capacity. "Who?"
"A ghost with no face. Their mannerisms and methods... they absolutely do not belong to the Sanctum," Vesper said, slamming her wine glass onto the table. "They offered me a deal I cannot refuse. During the deathmatch in three days, if I order my apprentice to intentionally expose a specific flaw at a specific moment and lose the fight... they will give me the one thing I have always dreamed of."
"The Overseer's fatal weakness," Soren finished softly.
Vesper's pupils contracted, but a cold sneer quickly followed. "You really are sharp. Yes. A weakness devastating enough to shatter him from his Tier-4 throne."
Soren didn't reply. His consciousness instantly vaulted across the dimensions of the room, linking this new variable directly to the blank disposal records from eighteen years ago hidden in the Archive.
The third-party faction knows the Overseer's weakness. Their true target lies in the upper echelons, but the Overseer is blocking their path. So, they are willing to weaponize his Achilles' heel to buy Vesper as an inside piece.
The fragmented puzzle suddenly locked together. The Overseer's role in that erased bloodbath eighteen years ago was absolutely not that of a mere spectator.
The scale of this chessboard was expanding at a terrifying velocity.
〘 BOARD UPDATE — NEW VARIABLE 〙
〘 Third-Party Faction: Actively recruiting Vesper as inside asset 〙
〘 Offer: Overseer's fatal weakness in exchange for fixed deathmatch 〙
〘 Implication: Third party possesses intel on Overseer's Twelfth House fracture 〙
〘 Assessment: Four threads now converging toward singularity 〙
Three days later. The Crucible.
This was a genuine feast of carnage. High-ranking guild officials were in attendance. The tiered seating was packed to capacity, and the air was asphyxiating, thick with the scent of rusted iron, sweat, and concentrated killing intent.
Soren did not sit on Vesper's side of the arena.
Clad in pristine white robes, he sat quietly beside the Tier-4 Overseer as a member of his direct retinue.
This microscopically subtle seating arrangement was a political nuke. Hundreds of eyes in the arena were silently deciphering the signal: Vesper's favored blind toy had been claimed by the Overseer. This wasn't just a transfer of power; it was the public trampling of Vesper's dignity.
The whispers raced through the stands.
"The blind one is sitting with the Overseer now."
"Not beside him. Beside him. Like an equal."
"Vesper's face... have you ever seen her look like that?"
"He looks so fragile. What could the Overseer possibly want with him?"
Down below, the heavy iron gates of the deathmatch arena slowly rose.
Vesper sent out her sharpest blade: Elara.
But as the opponent handpicked by the Overseer stepped onto the blood-stained sand, Soren's eyes narrowed infinitesimally behind his white silk blindfold.
Through the Death-Star Sight, the opponent's astrolabe was grotesquely abnormal. There was no bloodlust. No fear. The perimeter of his soul was violently welded shut by a freezing layer of artificial armor.
Artificial suppression.
Soren knew this scent all too well. It was identical to the cold-blue foreign infiltrator from the unsanctioned deathmatch! The Overseer had actually inserted a ruthless, emotionless killing machine—professionally brainwashed by an elite foreign intelligence agency—into the Sanctum's annual evaluation!
This wasn't a fair assessment. It was a one-sided slaughter with a predetermined script.
〘 THREAT DETECTED — ARENA 〙
〘 Subject: Elara's Opponent 〙
〘 Star Chart: Artificially suppressed — identical signature to foreign operative 〙
〘 Origin: Professional intelligence agency, NOT Sanctum 〙
〘 Assessment: This is a setup, not a fair fight 〙
Simultaneously, Soren cast his psychic net soundlessly over the frenzied audience. Amidst the boiling chaos of countless astrolabes, he surgically locked onto a single prey.
It was an unnervingly calm, gray astrolabe that had deliberately suppressed its own presence. He sat in the most inconspicuous corner, yet held the absolute best vantage point over the entire arena and Vesper's seat.
The third-party observer.
They were waiting. Waiting for Vesper to break under the crushing despair and send the signal to throw the match.
CLANG—!
The death knell struck. The slaughter began.
There was no probing, no testing of waters. The air in the arena was instantly torn apart! The artificially suppressed opponent launched forward like a mechanical beast devoid of pain, carrying a terrifying, destructive momentum straight at Elara. The shriek of his blade slicing the air made the eardrums of the front-row audience bleed.
Elara's silver daggers carved lethal arcs through the air. Clang! Clang! Clang! Sparks showered the arena as the explosive sound of metal colliding erupted like heavy artillery.
In that exact moment, Soren's brain split into three absolute, parallel threads, operating at an unprecedented, maximum overload:
Line One: The Arena. In Elara's cold-silver astrolabe, the strings were pulled to their absolute breaking point. The opponent's power and precision were designed for a meat grinder. Elara was intentionally holding back; she had to find a one-in-a-million opening within his torrential assault.
Line Two: Vesper. Sitting across the arena, Vesper's fingers were white-knuckled, twisting the fabric of her lavish gown. Her astrolabe was tearing itself apart. Elara was being pushed to the brink of death. Vesper's mind was frantically weighing the scales: watch her final trump card be shredded by the Overseer, or bow to the third party to obtain the ultimate weapon for a comeback?
Line Three: The Observer. The hidden gray astrolabe remained dead-locked onto Vesper's hands. He was waiting for the agreed-upon signal.
Schwing—!
In the arena, the opponent executed a highly professional, continuous strangulation technique that absolutely did not belong to the Sanctum's curriculum. Elara's footwork was entirely sealed off. The opponent's heavy blade, carrying the howling wind of death, chopped directly toward her carotid artery!
The crowd gasped. Half the audience was on their feet!
Now!
Vesper's fingers, which had been twisting her dress, suddenly released. Her astrolabe had made its decision—she was compromising! She was preparing to send the signal for Elara to drop her guard!
If she sent that signal, she would get the Overseer's weakness, but she would become the absolute puppet of the third party, and Soren would owe them a massive debt.
Absolutely not.
Soren issued a cold verdict in his mind. He chose to intervene. But he didn't need to stop Vesper; he just needed to make her signal... utterly meaningless.
Sitting beside the Overseer, the blind boy's breathing didn't shift by a single beat. But in the deepest abyss of his mind, the cold-steel Page of Swords instantly materialized into an invisible stinger. It crossed a hundred meters of empty space in absolute silence and surgically pierced the motor nerve nodes of the opponent in the arena!
He didn't need to shatter the man's will. He didn't need to induce paralyzing fear.
Soren only did one thing: in the absolute peak microsecond before the opponent's heavy blade struck Elara, Soren's psychic piercing forcefully jammed a 0.1-second hesitation into his motor commands.
To a commoner, 0.1 seconds isn't even enough time to blink.
But in a life-and-death clash between elite apex predators, a 0.1-second flaw is wider than an ocean!
The opponent's heavy blade experienced a microscopic, violently unnatural stutter in mid-air.
Elara's cold, silver eyes instantly caught that fatal dead angle. She didn't retreat. Instead, she leaned into the blade, her own dagger morphing into a stunning half-moon arc that sliced through his defensive vacuum at an impossible angle.
Squelch!
Blood erupted across the arena like a crimson fountain! The opponent's carotid artery was surgically severed, and his massive frame collapsed onto the blood-soaked sand.
The arena fell into a dead silence, followed instantly by a deafening roar that threatened to tear off the roof!
Elara had won.
〘 Page of Swords — Combat Deployment Confirmed 〙
〘 Action: 0.1-second motor hesitation inserted at critical strike moment 〙
〘 Result: Target eliminated. Elara victorious. 〙
〘 Cost: Moderate mental stamina drain 〙
〘 Collateral Effect: Outcome reversed without visible intervention 〙
Vesper's hand, which had just loosened to send the signal, froze rigidly in mid-air.
And in the darkest corner of the stands, the third-party's gray astrolabe produced an incredibly sharp fluctuation the second Elara reversed the kill.
It wasn't the disappointment of a failed plan. It was the marrow-deep, bloodcurdling terror unique to elite intelligence operatives. They keenly realized that in this supposedly airtight execution, an invisible, god-like hand had forcefully warped physical reality.
They didn't know what it was. But they knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that there was a monster playing on this board.
Sitting quietly on the high platform, Soren smoothly filed that reaction into his memory banks.
Beside him, the Overseer slowly stood up. He took a long, deep look at the blood on the arena floor, then turned his head. Those silver-gray eyes lingered on Soren's blindfolded face for two full seconds. He said nothing, turned, and swept out of the box.
But Soren caught it—a micro-fluctuation in the Overseer's glacier-like astrolabe. Not surprise. Not anger. Something far more unsettling.
Recognition.
The Tier-4 master had felt it. Not the Page of Swords itself—that was invisible even to him—but the effect. The impossible 0.1-second stutter in a brainwashed operative who had been professionally conditioned to have zero hesitation.
The Overseer now knew, with absolute certainty, that someone in that arena had the power to reach into a human mind and bend motor commands at will.
And he had looked at Soren.
〘 WARNING 〙
〘 Overseer's Suspicion Level: ELEVATED 〙
〘 Trigger: Unexplained motor failure in brainwashed operative 〙
〘 Assessment: Overseer cannot identify the mechanism, but has narrowed suspicion to immediate vicinity 〙
〘 Recommendation: Accelerate Hermit fusion. Prepare for direct confrontation. 〙
In the chaotic, echoing tunnels after the match, Vesper dragged Soren into the shadows of a blind corner.
"It was you." Her voice trembled. It wasn't a question; it was a shuddering affirmation.
Soren smiled slightly, the expression looking both gentle and utterly cruel in the dim light. "Your apprentice won, Madam. She viciously slapped the Overseer across the face in public. Isn't that the most important thing?"
Vesper stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. After a long moment, she took a deep breath and made an incredibly bold decision.
"The ghost who came to me... he left a method of contact. I didn't burn it."
She shoved a tightly folded scrap of parchment into Soren's palm, then turned and walked away rapidly without looking back.
Soren stood alone in the cold, damp tunnel. He didn't unfold the paper. Instead, his Death-Star Sight pierced straight through the folds, reading the words written in arcane ink.
It wasn't an address. It wasn't a time. It wasn't a cipher.
It was a single, blood-freezing declarative sentence:
"We know who she is."
Soren's fingers violently clenched in the dark, his knuckles turning bone-white.
She.
Who were they talking about? Vesper? Elara, who had just displayed terrifying potential in the arena?
Or... the mother who died eighteen years ago, the absolute taboo of the Sanctum's ruling class, the woman branded as the "Heretic"?
Soren didn't finish the thought. He closed his eyes, ruthlessly crushing this nuclear question into the deepest vault of his consciousness.
But he knew the question hadn't disappeared. It was simply waiting for him in the abyss.
〘 The Hermit IX — Fusion: 18% 〙
〘 Minor Arcana: Page of Swords [FORGED] 〙
〘 Selene's Legacy: 0/22 Messages | Fragments: 2 collected 〙
〘 Third-Party Message: "We know who she is." 〙
〘 Board Status: 4 threads — convergence point DETECTED 〙
〘 CRITICAL QUESTION: Who is "she"? 〙