Mid-afternoon filtered down through the forty-second floor's insulated glass, shading the Tower Resource Bureau's executive suite in a precise grayscale. The haze of city pollution cut the view to a matte backdrop; the upper half of Dublin Tower disappeared, as if it ended in another dimension. The only real light came from the overheads—perfectly neutral, color-adjusted to keep staff alert and compliant.
Ciarán O'Shea kept his desk at museum-level polish, the kind that absorbed sound and refused to hold onto fingerprints. Deputy Director Niamh sat opposite, her back straight enough to betray both Catholic upbringing and a chronic distrust of lumbar support. Between them, near the edge of the blotter, a secure display box held the Apostle's Radiant Circlet, Epic-grade, artifact class. Even triple-layered glass couldn't dampen the sense of alive, molten power inside that box. If Niamh looked directly at it, the gold filigree caught in the cube's reflection would pulse against her retinas for a full three seconds afterward.
O'Shea didn't look at the circlet. He focused on his pen, tapping out a regular staccato over budget printouts. In front of him, a legal pad absorbed notes in angular, almost runic handwriting. "We're three months behind on Guild Grant subsidies," he said, flicking through the pages with a thumbnail. "And if we don't clear Floor 45 by the end of this quarter, the Taoiseach will have my head delivered in a certified Tower-safe container."
Niamh didn't respond. The art of working with O'Shea was knowing when to talk and when to run system updates in your own head. She toggled between budget sheets, pending legal disputes, and a draft of a diplomatic memo to the Ministry of Defence. Her right hand kept flicking at the tablet, but her left thumb pressed a pressure point in her palm, a near-invisible tell that said she was thinking about the artifact more than any of the money or memos.
"If we can neutralize the Abyssal Miasma on 45, we shatter four decades of Irish failure in a single jump," O'Shea said, switching pens. The second pen was blue, for edits only. He used it to cross out a line item and write, with absolute intent, "Purify: Circulation Plan."
"That assumes we don't lose a full raid party testing the deployment," Niamh said, keeping her eyes on the tablet. "The artifact hasn't been verified under field conditions. We only have the Singapore case, and their team lost three before they got out. We've never had something this… potent."
Her thumb pressed harder into her palm. A bead of sweat formed on her hairline; the TRB was climate-controlled but the artifact radiated a slow, metabolic heat that made the skin crawl in a way she couldn't explain to her analyst.
O'Shea looked at her, but his gaze was all calculation. "If we hesitate, the Koreans and Americans will get to 60 before we hit 46. We're already under surveillance by at least two global guilds. We deploy first, or we die in place, slowly, like every other Irish attempt."
Niamh nodded, then finally looked up. She let herself meet his eyes for one full second—just long enough to confirm that he meant it, and that nothing, not even a ten percent chance of total raid wipe, would change his mind.
She closed the budget tab and opened her contact list. "Who do you want to run lead?"
O'Shea glanced at the artifact box, then back to his notes. "Call Kieran," he said, the name sliding out with no fanfare. "He's due for a field rotation anyway, and if he comes back in a bag, it's less of a scandal than if we burn a civil servant with a PhD."
Niamh keyed up the message, but didn't send. "He won't like being the first rat through the maze."
O'Shea's mouth twitched, not a smile but the ghost of one. "That's why we pay him more than God. Tell him it's a bonus cycle if he brings anyone else out alive." Then he stood up, smoothing his suit jacket, and left the room without a glance back.
Niamh sat alone, the circlet pulsing in its box, the afterimage burned into her visual cortex. She waited a full minute, letting her pulse settle, before opening the box's biometric catch.
Inside, the Apostle's Radiant Circlet glowed with the soft, unwelcome radiance of a foreign sun. Niamh reached in, hesitating only the briefest moment before her fingers made contact with the metal.
The gold was warm—not just room temperature, but living body temperature, like a cat's flank. The white stone at the center was milky, shot through with veins of light that moved if you stared long enough. She lifted the circlet out and set it, very gently, in the center of the blotter. The room went absolutely quiet.
Behind her, Dublin Tower loomed, half-shrouded in city haze. In here, nothing but her and the artifact. She looked at the blue edits on the legal pad: Purify: Circulation Plan. She didn't know what that meant for the next floor team. She just knew it would be her job to write the memo that made it official.
Niamh reached out and tilted the circlet so the light splintered across the desk, shattering the tidy lines of the modern office. She watched the pattern for a long, long time.
Then she sent the message to Kieran: "Come up. O'Shea wants you in the Chairman's office. Bring your best."
When O'Shea returned, he saw her still at the desk, the artifact centered between them, the overheads refracting a halo around the circlet's edges.
She didn't look up from her work. But when he sat, she nudged the box across the surface toward him, just close enough that the next person in would see it immediately. O'Shea's hand hovered over the gold, fingers splayed. He didn't touch it. He just stared at it for five slow breaths. Then he nodded.
"History's made by the ones who move first," he said.
The afterimage hung between them, growing brighter.
Kieran Colm Walsh didn't knock. He never knocked. The door opened and there he was, a full head taller than the rest of the office, still in sweat-darkened gym clothes and shaking out his hair with a towel like he'd just run through an Irish downpour. He took one look at O'Shea and Niamh and the artifact boxed on the desk, and flashed a grin that was a little too white to be completely human.
"Heard you were looking for trouble, boss," he said, planting himself against the doorframe with the casual tilt of a man immune to hierarchy. "Or am I finally getting that holiday you promised last Christmas?"
Niamh's eyes flicked up. She didn't bother hiding her distaste. "You're tracking mud," she said, "and the cleaners strike doesn't start until Thursday. Wipe your feet or they'll unionize just for you."
Kieran winked. "You wound me, Deputy." He flopped into the chair across from O'Shea, one leg over the armrest, towel draped around his neck. "What's the drama? Did the Brits edge us out of 44 again? Or are we prepping for another record-breaking raid wipe?"
O'Shea didn't smile. He just nodded at the artifact box and then at the chair, and Kieran straightened a little, suddenly aware that this was a call-in, not a banter session.
"Come in, Kieran. Shut the door," O'Shea said, and it was the tone that made three-star Generals and visiting Ministers alike sit up straighter.