One hour passed in quiet tension before another report ca.
A Limbo Tier Divine Construct appeared beside Kivas and Blanchette once again, its ethereal form flickering with glyph-light of its blessings from Yoiglah.
Its voice mirrored Samael’s cadence—precise, reserved, and authoritative in a way that was unwilling to show any kind of weakness.
"Caya is missing."
Kivas and Blanchette turned imdiately, leaning in their ears to this new and juicy information that was about to be laid on the table.
"All Chapters of Karasu Association are conducting searches," the Construct continued. "At present, Director Caya is unaccounted for within the bastion. Her last synced resonance signature from her own mber tag is null."
Blanchette raised an amused eyebrow. "Perhaps she’s been assassinated as well."
Samael’s tone broke through on the Construct’s next breath. That comnt is as reckless jumping from a cliff to a pool of lava filled with volatile Voidlings waiting to lunge at any idiots who want to end their life peacefully. You know nothing about what you speak."
Blanchette maintained her smile, unfazed. "Well, Samael—what do you actually know about this very situation right now?"
Samael’s presence rippled through the Construct’s voice. "Kivas, raise a barrier. Eavesdroppers should not hear this."
Kivas inclined her head and flicked her wrist. "The barrier has been up for more than an hour already."
Samael’s voice softened, but remained clipped in its authoritative tone. "That barrier is so complete that even my Construct cannot detect."
Kivas grinned soft, knowing how far she had achieved in terms of divinity and miracle-bringing as a deity. "In Fathomi, miracles obey their own laws—separate from stats or skill points."
"Should I worry about what kind of miracles you’re going to concoct for in the future?" Blanchette obviously jested.
"I think you should be in despair."
"Regardless of how I wanted to hear more about Blanchette’s future torture, but I must retract back the conversation back to its initial path." Samael resud. "My soul was imprinted upon Caya. I would know if she was dead or under duress, and I can track her location..."
Blanchette laughed airily. "Where is she, then? If you have tracking—"
Samael appeared to be annoyed in her response to that, "I will tell you imdiately if I have the coordinate, but the fact that I didn’t ant that there should be sothing preventing it, like in an obvious conclusion made through caring and thinking more than a second."
"You’re mad mad," Blanchette smiled even wider.
"I’m not," the construct pouted.
Kivas just couldn’t believe what she saw. "Does the pouting co from you Samael, or is that the Limbo Tier’s doing?"
"Wait, I’m pouting? Does the Limbo Tier even have a face?" Samael questioned herself, as if she had forgotten the design of her own Divine Construct. "No," she added imdiately. "This is the doing of the vessel I’m using as a ans to communicate. Huh, that is interesting to know that a Divine Construct can perform an unplanned variables when their self network is unsupervised...
"Regardless," Samael’s tone reverted back to normal. "It appears Caya noticed the essence imprint. She masked the tracking function entirely. Yet she left only one still-active link: a pulse that can confirm life or death—but nothing more."
Kivas felt a pinprick in her chest. She studied the Divine Construct briefly. "Her choice then. She disabled control, but left a heartbeat sensing link. She wants us to know she lives—but nothing else."
Blanchette smirked. "That’s quite a calculated move."
Kivas nodded, a flicker of admiration passing her lips. "It may an sothing else. Perhaps she is choosing to settle on sothing personal—without us. She is relying on us instead to stop the Nihil now that she cannot."
Blanchette’s smile sharpened. "That feels irresponsible for soone holding her position."
Samael interjected. "Perhaps she has compromised. She left the tracking barely open knowing only Kivas and I could sense it, trusting we will use that link to break the Nihil, fulfilling her goal."
Kivas let a snicker escape. It ca quietly, but with an edge. "It’s her way of letting the Consortium shine. Rewarding us with the absence of effort on Karasu’s side, giving the Consortium a chance to rise in their stead. Also, more rewards!"
Kivas sat back gently, face lit by wry amusent. Her fingertips tapped the armrest. She looked more relaxed, yet her eyes glimred with villainous ruthlessness.
"Yes," the construct admitted softly. "She banked on our strength when she needed it. Truly, a generous and natural way to give us the stage to shine. Also, more loots to acquire after this whole saga!"
Blanchette leaned forward, keyed back in on the original question. "Where is Caya, though?"
Beneath the outer walls of Monochara, below the infrastructure even Karasu staff were aware of, Caya moved like a shadow imbued with unrelenting obsession.
Not a word had been spoken. Not since she felt the signature of a soul-burnt blade sever sothing so deeply personal, sothing important and dear to her.
Vervendi’s death had left a fracture—not only in Monochara’s political hierarchy, but in Caya’s heart.
Sothing Caya had known was coming, where despair will co eventually, but she knew that life must go on, no longer how long it will take.
Her senses pulsed outward again. Faint trails from the killer still lingered in etheric space.
A mark of soone who moved as if they had rewritten the permissions of reality.
Caya’s gaze had been nothing but hateful. She saw the essence left behind from Vervendi’s killer.
It moved in specific directions, through corners where the geotric laws of the world grew strange.
She pressed her hand against the glyphless wall of a freight conduit under one of the towers within Monochara. Her claws scraped lightly along the surface until one hooked into a divot only she could perceive.
With a flick, a narrow passage pulled apart, leading into a spiraling stair hidden behind fused architecture.
She didn’t hesitate.
The tunnel slled of dried copper and buried paper. No artificial lights either. Only pale sigils glowing in unreadable rhythms along the seams of the spiral.
Each step downward distorted the air around her—a slow implosion of normalcy.
Caya murmured a prayer from a language that predated Karasu’s foundation.
A slipstream opened under her feet—unrenelting to enact her vengeance.
She descended faster now, her silhouette splitting across mirrored walls as though different versions of her were watching the descent in parallel.
When the spiral opened, she erged into the Hollow Atrium—a sub-chamber forgotten by anyone not inducted during Monochara’s original seal-forging days.
The floor here wasn’t flat. It twisted into impossible geotry.
Old glyph-stamped tiles shifted subtly when she stepped on them, testing if she had forgotten the sequence.
She hadn’t.
Her path was confird when a thin filant of the killer’s signature sparked again. It didn’t want to be found, but it wasn’t perfect.
Not yet.
Beyond the atrium, an old transit channel activated with her presence.
A ring of bone-white light circled around her, and she felt herself siphoned through space. When the pressure ended, she found herself standing inside the Underspires.
It was colder here.
The walls bled condensation. Every few ters, pulsing monitors ticked across divine indexes and old Monarcha’s logs.
Caya ignored them.
She moved fast through the narrow bridges suspended over data-pools of long-dead constructs.
Sotis the killer’s trail splintered, but it always rejoined a few paths ahead. It knew she was following. It just didn’t care enough to stop her.
Yet.
A hatch led her through the back access of Monochara’s outer sanctum, across a catwalk that spiraled into a collapsed research center.
She passed by broken sanctum gates, shattered warden chanisms, and murals depicting the pact of union between Monarcha blood and the Great Engines that once powered the bastion’s many inheritance.
Everything here had been decommissioned hundreds of years ago.
But Caya knew better. So of it still whispered in code to anyone who could still listen.
Her path turned vertical again.
Using a gravity skill, she hoisted her massive form into the hanging annex beneath the forr Council Archive—a structure suspended by three rusted chains over an artificial trench.
The chains groaned, tal tired from decades of neglect.
There was no sound except her own breath.
Then, a doorway appeared.
There were three mirrored surfaces across the door’s fra, reflecting her from slightly wrong angles—her smile upside down, her eyes blinking out of sync. It asked her identity without words.
Not a word coming out of her mouth still.
Instead, she leaned forward, placed her forehead against the left mirror, and whispered sothing too old for vowels.
The door parted.
On the other side was a passage of smooth stone and glass—clean, polished, and humming with life.
Lights reacted to her steps. The first modern corridor she’d seen since descending into these depths.
Whoever the killer was, they had passed through here—and the infrastructure changed to suit them.
She then passed through a prisd corridor that phased between different aesthetic layers—each architectural pulse represented different governance periods of Monochara.
From the founding period, the fracture era, and until now.
Each one updated in real ti as she passed.
Until the corridor narrowed into sothing simpler: a stone platform facing outward over a ruin beyond the Monochara boundaries.
Caya stepped out onto a dais, the final thread of the killer’s essence leading straight across a skeletal bridge made of living glass.
Mist churned below. Wind pulled upward in low spirals, forming an invisible funnel.
And there, on the far end of the glass bridge—
A man stood.
The sa figure from the security footage. Over five ters tall, trench coat drawn tight around his shoulders.
A blade rested on his back.
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