Kyra fell silent, because she understood his logic.
"We captured ’Sia Novelth,’" Kaiser continued, his tone growing colder.
"The sole survivor of the Alpha terrorist squad. The girl who crawled out from beneath the rubble with half her body disfigured by acid. The investigators, and our mory extractors, have been grinding her mind for weeks in the FBI basents. They’re interrogating her about every second, every breath she took in that hospital."
Sia Novelth. The sadistic doctor who once danced in the middle of blood now sat in a dark cell, bound by Eitra chains, her mind opened and dissected daily to pull out her mories of that nightmarish evening.
mories of Eva’s splitting, Damian’s burning, Aiden’s tearing apart, the Black Joker’s betrayal, and Valisera’s withdrawal through the gate.
Kyra raised her teacup delicately to her lips and took a small, calculated sip.
She lowered the cup slowly, and her violet eyes shimred in the candlelight, as if she had reached a conclusion legends had long feared to ntion.
"Could it be..." Kyra began, her voice dropping to a whisper carrying genuine dread.
"...that what was used to hide the hospital... is a ’Cursed Artifact’?"
The mont Kyra uttered those two words, the atmosphere of the entire Grand Office changed.
Damiron Falzark, standing in the darkness, unconsciously tightened his grip on his sword’s handle, and the glow of his red eyes suddenly widened.
Kaiser Dravion stopped breathing for a fraction of a second, his expression stiffening.
Everyone fell silent. A terrifying silence, as if death itself had entered the room and sat among them.
In the history of Elysium, "Cursed Artifact" were not rely powerful magical weapons or S-rank armor.
They were objects that existed before the age of the Awakened and before the current system.
Objects saturated with "original sin" or unstable cosmic signatures capable of manipulating the laws of physics, ti, and spaceti.
rely possessing one was a cri punishable by total annihilation, because these masterpieces fed on souls and corrupted reality.
"A Cursed Artifact?" Kaiser repeated the word as if tasting poison on his tongue.
"In Ilarion’s hands?"
"Ilarion was a saint who collected religious relics and claid to purify them," Kyra continued, her cold smile fading completely, leaving behind a serious and stern face.
"It wouldn’t be impossible for sothing like that to fall into his hands. That may be the reason the hospital hid all those cris. A masterpiece capable of folding space and silencing Eitra."
"But it doesn’t make sense," Kaiser interrupted firmly. "Cursed Artifact have a ’backlash signature.’ If he had used it to hide the hospital for years, it would have devoured his soul and turned him into a mindless abomination. Ilarion was fully conscious and in control of his false exalted power. And if he possessed a Cursed Artifact, why didn’t he use it to kill that old Volider?"
Kaiser placed his elbows on the table and leaned his face closer to the candle.
"Then there’s the most important point... who do you think was truly responsible for all those experints on humans? The blood farms? The chira laboratories for DNA fusion? I don’t think it was Ilarion. Ilarion was obsessed with light and purification, and those experints were purely biological, bloody, and dark. Ilarion may have been a subordinate... or a partner with a religious façade, but he wasn’t the mastermind. I don’t know who is."
"Wasn’t it the Voliders?" Kyra asked, narrowing her eyes.
"The nursery was preparing embryos by rging aberration Eitra. That’s a project that suits their ambitions to form an army."
"If it were entirely their project, they would have protected it," Damiron Falzark spoke from the darkness.
His voice sounded like two steel blades scraping together—tallic, rough, and terrifying.
It was the first ti he spoke.
"But they sent the ’Sleeping’ Volider to end everything."
Kaiser turned toward Kyra.
"Didn’t you hear what Sia said during the extraction interrogations? She clearly stated that the old man—Volider Kiroshi—was the one who killed Ilarion and cut off his head coldly. It’s not entirely impossible that the Voliders funded the project, but why the execution? Why would the old man kill his partner and let the hospital collapse? Ilarion was trying to expose them by triggering the supernova, and the old man silenced him. That ans Ilarion was either rebelling against them, or rely a tool that had outlived its usefulness and decided to expose his masters when he realized he would be left to die."
Kaiser inhaled deeply, his eyes staring into the void of the dark office.
"And then there’s the mystery of the Black Joker. The boy who manipulated Alpha Squad and used them to breach the Regional Kings, then made a deal with the Voliders to hand over Valisera in exchange for... what? And in exchange for a secret door he opened with Saint Ilarion’s severed hand, descending into an unknown place beneath the depths?"
Kyra leaned back against the sofa and placed her elegant hand beneath her chin.
The cold, provocative smile slowly returned to her crimson lips.
"All these intertwined threads... the lie, the possible Cursed Artifact, the biological experints, Ilarion’s betrayal and execution, and the Joker’s complex plan..."
Kyra spoke in a calm, relaxed tone, as if playing a ga of chess.
"I have a preliminary idea about who caused all of this. I have an idea of who possesses the mind, the resources, and the madness to arrange this bloody board in the darkness away from our eyes."
"Who?"
Kaiser asked very calmly.
A calm Kyra knew carried the threat of cutting off her neck if she played with his nerves any further.
Kyra took one final sip of her tea and slowly placed the cup down.
She looked directly into Kaiser’s gray eyes, and her smile widened, revealing pure challenge between Exalteds.
"No,"
Kyra answered in a playful yet decisive tone.
"I won’t tell you. At least not before I confirm it myself. The accusation in my mind is far too big, and if I speak the na without decisive proof... we might start a war that burns what remains of this miserable city."
Kaiser kept looking at her, the candle fla dancing between them, illuminating the faces that ruled the world—while below, in the sewers and dark basents, a Joker smiled, and a new plan was about to tear the sky apart.
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