"This won't do…" Kael whispered under his breath as he turned a corner.
He did not bother changing out of his dress uniform, and as he moved through the mortal district, gazes followed him from every direction. Some stepped aside, others bowed instinctively, unwilling to risk offending a Luminaire or someone of noble descent.
"This does not align at all with what Torin told me."
Buildings blurred past as he picked up speed, boots striking stone with growing urgency.
'Did he lie… or was his information simply outdated?'
He pushed into a hotel lobby, and the murmur of voices died instantly.
Kael walked straight to the counter.
"Has someone from Eireindaile checked in?"
he asked flatly.
The receptionist stiffened, color draining from her face as her eyes traced his posture, his uniform, the quiet authority that radiated from him. Why would someone like this be in the mortal district at all?
"We… We can't give out information about our guests," she stammered.
Kael's hand shot forward.
His fingers closed around her throat, lifting her off the floor as if she weighed nothing.
"Has someone from Eireindaile checked in?"
he repeated.
Her hands clawed weakly at his wrist as breath shattered into ragged gasps, panic flooding her widening eyes.
"No," she rasped, "No Eireindaile has been under this roof, I promise—"
He released her.
She crumpled to the floor in a choking heap as Kael turned away.
The lobby remained frozen in silence long after he stepped back into the street.
Kael mapped the district in his mind, selecting the shortest route to the next hotel, only to meet the same empty answers.
'Then they must be in a motel.'
He moved from one to the next until he reached the last place that fit his mental grid.
'If they are not here, I am out of time.'
At the Claymore estate, he had overheard rumors of an Eireindaile peace convoy waiting in the mortal district for Valthorne's approval, and he had instantly started moving.
He approached the counter once more.
"Has someone from Eireindaile checked in here?"
The receptionist froze for a heartbeat before forcing a smile onto his face.
"Y– Yes."
"Where are they?" Kael asked.
The man hesitated, professionalism screaming at him to refuse, but Kael raised a single finger.
"Where. Are. They."
"They… they might be at a nearby cafeteria," He said, color draining from his face. "They have been going there every day. That is all I know."
Kael turned and left without another word.
For most people, a peace treaty represented relief, hope, or even salvation, but to Kael it was a tightening noose. His current bounty was suffocating, yes, but if Valthorne and Eireindaile reconciled, their divided attention would converge into a single, merciless focus aimed at him and Syleena.
And while others believed peace to be impossible after everything that had happened, Kael saw no such certainty. Noble families were not ruled by emotion but by arithmetic. War was expensive. Stability was profitable. Prosperity favored restraint, not prideful slaughter.
People had died under Valthorne's banner, but death alone was rarely enough to justify war. Lives were currency in the Luminaire world, traded quietly and written off without ceremony. What truly mattered was not the blood spilled, but that it had been seen.
Public exposure was the real wound.
Kael and Syleena had dragged violence into the light, forcing the noble families into a corner where inaction would appear as weakness. And in this world, weakness was an invitation, leading not to open conflict but to tightening trade, shifting prices, cooling alliances, and slow, methodical erosion of influence.
In the Luminaire world, pride, reputation, and history were not abstract concepts, but structural pillars holding society upright. To appear weak was to invite dismantling, piece by piece.
This was how political power truly worked. Not through open conquest, but through perception, leverage, and the quiet fear of being seen as something lesser.
Obvious, yet intricate. Inevitable, yet rarely acknowledged.
Kael stepped into the café, the warm sound of conversation brushing past him as his gaze swept across the room with surgical precision, weighing every face, posture and breath.
Three well dressed Luminaires sat near the counter, laughing and relaxed.
He closed the distance in long, unhurried strides and placed his hand on one of their shoulders, leaning in just enough for his presence to become unavoidable.
"Eireindaile?" he asked.
The man scoffed, rolling his shoulder dismissively.
"A mortal touching me?"
He turned mid sentence, smirk ready, only for it to freeze on his lips as a white haired, blindfolded figure filled his vision.
"Who are you—"
Too late.
Point Blank ignited.
A dull, brutal impact rippled through the man's frame as his shoulder collapsed downward with a wet crack, bone giving way under compressed force. His knee slammed into the floor hard enough to fracture the stone.
Kael pivoted as golden threads erupted from the man's fingers, slicing past him in a glittering arc that carved into the café wall instead.
Kael's fingers brushed the man's chin.
Thunder roared.
The man's head snapped sideways with grotesque violence, eyes twisting to meet Kael's at an impossible angle as his body crumpled into a broken heap.
A sudden shift in the air prickled at Kael's senses.
He snapped his head backward on instinct.
A blue crest tore past where his throat had been a heartbeat earlier, shrieking through the café wall and exploding into the open sky beyond.
Mortals recoiled in horror.
Chairs scraped. Cups shattered.
"Luminaires! They're fighting— Run! RUN!"
Panic detonated through the room as civilians surged for the exit, trampling over fallen chairs and spilled drinks in blind terror.
Kael ignored them.
He kicked the table, sending it skidding across the floor, then flicked it with a sharp motion.
The wood exploded into splinters mid air.
The remaining two Luminaires raised their arms, bracing against the storm of debris as shards.
Kael stepped forward through the chaos.
He seized the female Luminaire by the throat and twisted his torso, snapping out a kick that sent the other man crashing backward through the window in a storm of glass, his body tumbling onto the street below.
Muscles coiled across Kael's back as he lifted the woman off the ground with one hand, then drove her down with crushing force.
"GAHH—!"
The air tore from her lungs as her back slammed into the floor.
Gritting her teeth, she clawed at Kael's throat, a dim blue glow igniting in her palm as blood leaked between her lips.
"Die," she gargled.
Point Aegis flared.
A shrill, agonized scream ripped through the café as her hand detonated against his skin, flesh and bone spraying back across her face.
Kael tightened his grip and twisted.
A sickening crack echoed.
Her arm fell limp.
Kael straightened to his full height, flicking blood from his fingers.
Outside, amid shattered glass and scattered debris, the remaining Luminaire staggered to his feet. He turned back toward the café, only to be met by a flying body.
He slashed through the air.
The corpse split in two mid-flight, organs and blood bursting outward and coating him in steaming gore.
He stared at the bisected remains of his companion at his feet, then folded forward, retching uncontrollably onto the street.
Kael stepped out after them, glass raining off his shoulders as he crossed the threshold.
The man straightened, eyes burning with raw hatred as he locked onto Kael.
"There's no peace with you beasts."
He slashed through the air.
Kael barely reacted.
'Is the blade made of air?'
He lifted his hand.
Something invisible struck his palm.
Sparks burst outward, scattering like dying fireflies before fading into the daylight.
The man stared in horror as his trump card was stopped by nothing more than a raised arm.
He swung again.
Kael flicked his wrist.
A deep, clean gash ripped open the wooden wall behind him, as though the air itself had been carved.
"What… who are you?" the man screamed, desperation cracking his voice as he launched one final strike.
Kael reached out and closed his hand around empty space.
Sparks detonated outward, and a shrill metallic resonance screamed through the air, like a thousand birds crying at once.
The invisible arc ground against Point Aegis.
For a heartbeat, it resisted.
Then it went silent.
Kael bent down, picked up a single nail from the ground, and flicked it forward with lazy indifference.
The nail vanished in a blink.
It punched straight through the man's skull from temple to temple, bursting out the other side in a spray of blood and bone.
His eyes went empty.
He toppled backward into the snow, blood blooming outward beneath his head in a dark, spreading stain.
Kael walked over and crouched beside the body.
'So they only sent rank one Luminaires?' His fingers moved through the man's pockets. 'I suppose that is their version of trust.'
If Eireindaile had sent someone like Torin, a rank four, it could have been interpreted as a show of dominance or a direct challenge. Sending low ranks instead was safer, and politically quieter.
Kael straightened and stepped back into the café, moving from corpse to corpse in silence.
Then he stilled.
'Someone is watching.'
Since wearing the blindfold, the Weeping Eye had sharpened his perception close to that of a normal sensory motes. In confined spaces, he could almost "see" through walls, not with sight but through impressions of rank, presence and shapes.
But now he did not see anything.
He felt it.
Kael turned his head toward an empty table in the corner.
Then he dropped low and surged forward.
His arm snapped out, fingers slicing through the space where a throat should have been.
Nothing.
Something brushed his chin.
And his mind fractured.
'Velthoria. I should choose Velthoria. I hate Eireindaile. I must die for Valthorne.'
The thoughts flooded in like a violent tide.
Kael bared his teeth and swung his knife in a sharp arc.
It cut nothing.
An invisible palm pressed against his chin.
His thoughts detonated.
The need to die for Valthorne felt absolute, self-evident, unquestionable. The instant he tried to think otherwise, pride flared so violently it burned.
He had to die for Valthorne.
Kael staggered backward and dropped to one knee.
The knife slipped from his hand.
He clutched his head as if trying to physically restrain his mind.
His consciousness fractured inward.
In his inner realm, his river of Will writhed under foreign influence. Golden tendrils, fewer than those of the Weeping Eye but sharper, more aggressive, tore through his Thoughts, dragging them against the current, wrenching intent from their natural flow.
His fingers dug into his hair as he fought to reclaim himself.
A chair scraped across the floor in front of him and tipped, then the café door creaked open before closing just as quickly.
Silence reclaimed the room.
In his inner realm, the white tendrils of the Weeping Eye suddenly stirred within his river of Will.
As if sensing the foreign presence, they twitched, then surged outward from the Thoughts the golden tendrils had been tearing at, moving with a coordination Kael had never witnessed before.
White tendrils threaded through gold, ripping and tearing until nothing foreign remained. One by one, the golden strands dissolved, shredded into nothingness, until only Kael's Thoughts and the Eye's tendrils remained within the current.
At the same time, clarity returned to his mind.
He felt no hatred for Valthorne. No admiration. No false pride. No urge to die for them. The suffocating sense of obligation evaporated as if it had never existed.
Only his own thoughts remained.
Kael straightened and rolled his neck, muscles settling as control returned.
'…I caused too much of a scene.'
He stepped back onto the street, blending into the maze of buildings, and vanished from sight.