The engineered conflict between the Guild and the Bloodkin bought Elias a desperate sliver of time, a brief distraction for the forces arrayed against him. But even as he navigated this chaotic new front, a personal tragedy struck, a direct consequence of his past actions.
A coded, distress signal, faint but unmistakable, reached Elias through a deep-network channel, originating from a remote, heavily guarded Artificer facility. It was from Juro. Elias's stomach clenched. He had told Juro to disappear, to fake his death.
The fragmented message was clear: Juro had been captured by Artificer enforcers. They were interrogating him, undoubtedly about Elias, about the true nature of the bootleg cores, about his discoveries regarding the karmic weapon. Juro, caught in the heart of the enemy, was undoubtedly under extreme pressure, subjected to soul-rending interrogations designed to extract every secret.
Elias tried to respond, to send a warning, a desperate plea for him to resist, but the channel went dead. The Artificers had severed the connection.
He waited, a sickening dread growing within him. He pulled up the facility's limited public data, but it offered no answers. The silence was deafening.
Then, hours later, a massive, uncontrolled surge of chaotic Prana erupted from the coordinates of the Artificer facility. It wasn't the controlled detonation of the resonance bomb. This was a wild, destructive explosion of raw spiritual energy, tearing through the facility, reducing it to a crater. A torrent of uncontained karmic feedback rippled through the immediate area, causing widespread localized chaos.
Elias knew instantly. Juro had overloaded his core. He had activated the unstable bootleg Earth Core he had undoubtedly carried, turning its destructive power inwards. It was a desperate, ultimate act of defiance, a final, agonizing sacrifice. He had killed himself and his captors, ensuring that Elias's identity, his mission, and the devastating truth of the Artificers' weapon would remain secret.
A wave of profound guilt and sorrow washed over Elias. Juro, his loyal, terrified ally, had paid the ultimate price for Elias's secrets. He had sacrificed himself to protect Elias, to prevent the Artificers from uncovering the full extent of Elias's manipulations. The burden of that sacrifice pressed down on Elias, heavy and suffocating.
With trembling hands, working under the midnight window, Elias accessed Juro's karmic record within the Ledger. He meticulously erased Juro's karmic ties to him, severing any connection that might betray his involvement. He scrubbed away their meetings, their communications, every digital fingerprint that linked them. He created a false narrative of Juro's death as an accidental lab explosion, a rogue Artificer undone by his own dangerous experiments.
But he couldn't erase everything. Juro's final act, the overload of his Earth Core, had imprinted a unique, chaotic energy signature onto the Ledger's deeper layers. Elias identified this fragment, isolated it, and kept his core's data fragment. It was a piece of Juro, a testament to his sacrifice, and perhaps, a potential key to understanding the Artificers' true weapon. It was the only thing he could salvage from the tragedy, a haunting reminder of the lives he was risking, and losing, in this desperate war for karmic truth.