The chilling implications of the Sutra Corps invitation, and its hidden Guild connections, gnawed at Elias. He had two months. Two months to uncover enough truth to either escape or neutralize the threat. His thoughts turned back to the Bloodkin merchant, Valerius, now imprisoned in the Celestial Sentinels' maximum-security penitentiary. If anyone held a piece of the deeper puzzle, it would be him.
Gaining access to a high-profile prisoner of the Sentinels was no easy feat, even for a Bureau analyst. Elias leveraged his carefully cultivated reputation for meticulousness and his apparent 'dedication to understanding karmic integrity.' He argued that a deeper, spiritual assessment of the Bloodkin's motivations could yield crucial intelligence for future human-Bloodkin relations. After navigating layers of bureaucracy and skeptical Sentinel officers, he was finally granted a brief, supervised interrogation.
Valerius sat across from him in the stark interrogation room, an energy field shimmering between them. He was thinner than before, his eyes shadowed, but his composure was unnerving. He was still a creature of secrets.
"Analyst Thorne," Valerius greeted, a faint, almost amused smile playing on his lips. "I confess, I'm surprised. Most humans prefer to see me suffer in silence."
"I prefer answers, Lord Valerius," Elias countered, keeping his tone even. "And you, I believe, have many. Starting with why you were truly here."
Valerius chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "You were the one who nudged the Ledger, weren't you? The one who tipped off the Sentinel captain about my 'true nature.' A fascinating human manipulation. Almost as good as our own." He paused, studying Elias with an unnervingly perceptive gaze. "You seek to understand the Ledger's flaws, don't you? Its biases. Its malleability."
Elias said nothing, his silence a tacit admission.
"Very well," Valerius continued, a flicker of something Elias couldn't quite discern—perhaps respect, perhaps a shared understanding of transgression—in his eyes. "My mission was never about trade or petty smuggling. We Bloodkin, we have long suspected the human Karmic Ledger is not merely a record, but an active force. A tool. A weapon, even. We were testing the Ledger's limits, its vulnerabilities, seeking ways to exploit human karma in wartime."
Elias felt a cold shock. He had suspected internal biases, but not deliberate weaponization on such a grand scale.
"Your Ledger, for all its purported infallibility, is built upon human concepts of good and evil, balance and imbalance," Valerius explained. "It struggles with the nuances of other species, other cultures. It can be subtly influenced to burden an opponent's karma, to induce misfortune, to erode their spiritual strength without direct conflict. We believe the Grand Council has been doing it for centuries, perhaps unknowingly, perhaps intentionally. We were simply attempting to understand how."
The revelation was staggering. It wasn't just about individual manipulations; it was about systemic, species-level karmic warfare.
"What do you want?" Elias finally asked, cutting to the core.
"Freedom, eventually," Valerius said. "Or at least, a significant reduction in my sentence. In exchange, I offer you knowledge. A full list of other Bloodkin operatives embedded within human society, their missions, their methods. And perhaps... a few names of human collaborators who aided our research into the Ledger's vulnerabilities."
It was a dangerous bargain. Sharing information with a known spy was treason. But the intelligence Valerius offered could provide Elias with the leverage he desperately needed to uncover the deeper secrets of the Ledger, to understand its true power players.
"Done," Elias agreed. "I will work to reduce your sentence, within what is feasible. But I expect full, unvarnished truth."
Valerius smiled, a genuine, unsettling smile. "Of course. Reciprocity, Analyst Thorne, is a universal law, even beyond your Ledger." He proceeded to recite a list of names, locations, and subtle codes. Bloodkin embedded in the Merchant's Guild, in minor noble houses, even within the Academy's research departments. Elias meticulously recorded every detail, his mind racing to connect the dots.
But as Valerius finished, Elias felt a prickle of unease. He had a sudden, intuitive certainty that something was being withheld. He used his Karma Lens, subtly, almost imperceptibly, scanning Valerius as the Bloodkin finished speaking. He saw a faint, almost invisible flicker, a suppressed thread of information. Valerius was holding back a name.
Elias, without a change in his expression, made a silent decision. He would accept the provided list, use it as leverage. But he would withhold one name from the Sentinels' report – the name he suspected Valerius had kept hidden. A single, crucial piece of information, perhaps the most dangerous of all. He had a hunch about its significance. A spy, not just embedded in society, but specifically in the Aegis Legions. That, he realized, was the final piece Valerius had kept. A spy deep within the Realm's military heart, capable of influencing the very wars that affected the Ledger.