"I don't like the smell of silence."
That was the first thing Darius said as he walked into the safehouse common room with his cloak still damp from rooftop dew, three knives missing from his belt and his boots covered in canal grit, a sure sign he'd been out watching corners where watchers usually watch back, but tonight he came back without a scrape, and that made Kaito pause his bullet assembly mid-stroke because that was the real warning.
Kaito looked up from the worktable where he had just finished modifying a Shockburst capsule into a disguised rune charm, its shell painted like a merchant token, light enough to pass through the mail system, deadly enough to fry the insides of a blood priest on contact.
"What do you mean silence?" he asked, spinning the capsule once between his fingers before tucking it into a cloth pouch.
"I mean no movement," Darius said, stepping fully into the room and tossing a folded cloak onto the nearest chair, "No Church agents asking questions about the preacher incident, no mercenaries at Legrain's gates, no messengers from the inside trying to buy the rumor back. It's like the whole sector's gone deaf."
Lilyeth leaned against the doorway from the archive room, arms crossed, bandage wrapping her left thumb, a fresh ink burn from too many copy batches in too little time.
"They're planning something."
"They're deciding something," Kaito corrected, standing and stretching his shoulders with a pop, "And when nobles start deciding things in the dark, someone always ends up poisoned."
Rook poked his head in from the hallway with a grin that didn't match the tension in his eyes.
"Good news," he said, waving a scorched charm strip in the air, "Bean intercepted a relic crate stamped with Legrain's seal. It wasn't going to the Church."
"Then who?" Lilyeth asked.
Rook tossed the charm onto the table, where the glyphs pulsed faint blue and projected a single name across the grain of the wood.
Averra Syndicate.
Kaito blinked.
"That's impossible."
Lilyeth stepped closer.
"They dissolved two years ago."
"No," Kaito said, picking up the charm and narrowing his eyes at the projection, "They went underground. Which means someone's trying to wake them up."
"And using our bullets to do it," Darius added, his voice suddenly sharper, "That means someone wants the Vault to be part of the chaos, or the excuse for it."
Kaito turned to the map board and pulled off two location pins: one from the old coin smuggler docks, one from the north shrine district.
"Patch and Sticky just mapped new message routes through these zones," he said, "If someone's passing fake Vault relics to awaken the Syndicate, they'll do it through places we abandoned last month."
"Then we reclaim them," Darius said.
"Too loud," Lilyeth interjected, "We do that, the Church notices, and we start another fire we can't put out."
Rook tapped the side of his temple.
"What if we don't take the routes back… but haunt them?"
Kaito raised an eyebrow.
Rook grinned wider.
"We scatter dummy relics in the old routes, cursed ones. Let the Syndicate think we're protecting something dangerous. Make them paranoid. Make them sloppy."
"That'll spook the Church too," Lilyeth said.
"Good," Kaito said, the grin now forming slowly on his own face, "Let's make everyone paranoid."
It was always more effective when your enemies attacked each other.
By nightfall, the Vault kids had disguised four relic decoys as shrine offerings and slipped them into forgotten shrines and sewer alcoves with just enough charm residue to trigger basic spiritual warnings, not enough to harm, but plenty to rumble the air when touched by the wrong hands.
At the same time, Lilyeth prepared three fake buyer logs—each one listing massive purchases of Gun Saint bullets, each traced to dummy identities scattered across the old Averra territories.
The result?
By morning, five factions were accusing each other of relic hoarding.
A masked informant from the blackglass district was spotted whispering Vault names to a Syndicate ghost caller in broad daylight.
And the Church?
They panicked.
They sent Inquisitor-level agents to snoop around taverns that hadn't seen holy boots in years.
And while they searched for answers…
Kaito's network kept listening.
Every whisper.
Every lie.
Every plan.
Because paranoia spreads faster than faith.
And that?
That was their weapon now.
"You ever think we're getting too good at this?" Lilyeth asked as she scraped the last of the holy wax from the charm paper, her gloves now coated in fine dust from powdered angelwood and iron ash, both highly illegal, both extremely useful when faking divine signatures that could throw off any Church scryer dumb enough to rely on outdated detection glyphs, she spoke without looking up, but Kaito didn't miss the tension in her voice, the kind that settled in your ribs after doing something clever that felt a little too close to evil.
Kaito was sitting across from her in the smoke-free kitchen of the secondary Vault node, a safehouse buried beneath a shuttered alchemy shop, the old walls laced with echo-silencing rune seals and fake rot charms to keep inspectors away, he was loading a new set of Frostbite Rounds, layering each one with a sub-rune designed to lock into holy field density, not for killing priests—but for disabling relics that responded to divine energy.
"We're not getting good at this," Kaito said, checking the casing edge with a flick of his thumb, "We're getting survivable."
"Same thing," she muttered, then stood and crossed the room to drop a rolled scroll into the flame-dampening jar.
He watched her out of the corner of his eye, then spoke again, softer this time.
"Does it bother you?"
She didn't pretend to misunderstand.
She just stared at the sealed jar for a second too long, like she was listening to the silence inside it.
"I joined the Vault because I thought we were doing something real," she said, "Building something that mattered. But now we're faking rumors, planting ghost relics, playing games with dead factions."
"And?"
She turned toward him.
"I'm starting to realize… that maybe this is what real looks like."
Kaito didn't respond right away.
Instead, he stood, crossed the room, and unrolled a map onto the table, one marked not with city districts, but with lines of influence—coin routes, rumor flows, charm drops, and known loyalty ties.
Red lines meant fire zones.
Blue lines meant silence.
Green meant "listening."
And right now?
The green lines were spreading.
"Two months ago, the Vault was just a workshop," he said, pointing at the center of the web, "Now we've got nine nodes, three outside the capital, five independent charm creators, and a dozen informants working from street gangs to noble houses."
He tapped a small black X on the edge.
"And now we're tracing the Averra revival through their relic buyers."
Rook appeared in the doorway, dust-covered and limping slightly from a rooftop stumble, but grinning like he'd just survived a tavern brawl and walked away with everyone's coin purse.
"You're going to love this," he said, tossing a small glass bead onto the table, which cracked and flared with a low blue pulse—recorded sound, high priority.
Kaito activated the bead.
Bean's voice spilled out, tight with excitement.
> "Intercepted a trade meeting at the southeast black shrine. One of the buyers used a Vault relic to fake a blessing. Claimed direct approval from the Gun Saint. Payment confirmed: twenty-two flame sigils, real coin."
Lilyeth's eyes widened.
"Twenty-two flame sigils? That's noble-level buying."
"Someone's laundering through fake priests," Rook added, "And getting rich off your name."
Kaito exhaled.
That was worse than a smear.
That was identity theft at theological scale.
"We follow the coin," he said, already pulling his coat on, "Trace the buyer, find the forger, and if they're connected to the Church or Averra, we dismantle everything. Quietly."
"No confrontation?" Lilyeth asked.
"Not yet," Kaito replied, "If they think we're reacting emotionally, they'll believe they can bait us again. But if we stay patient…"
Darius walked in behind them, silent as always, and tossed a folded charm slip on the table.
"It's already started," he said.
Kaito opened it.
It was a list.
Five names.
Four locations.
One phrase at the bottom:
> "Preachers of the Triggered Flame."
The cult had a name now.
And worse?
It wasn't just rumor anymore.
It was structured.
Darius nodded toward the door.
"They've got hierarchy, ritual, even symbols. Two Vault kids got approached in the alley and asked if they believed in the Shot of Judgment."
Rook gagged dramatically.
"Sounds like a bad novel title."
"No," Kaito said, his voice low, "It sounds like the beginning of a purge. The kind the Church can ride like a holy storm if we don't shut it down now."
He looked around the room.
No more jokes.
No more drift.
"From this point on, we're not just running a relic ring," he said, "We're running an intel war."
And everyone in the room nodded.
Because they understood what came next.
Burn the myth. Reclaim the truth. And bury the puppeteer behind it all.
The first false sermon was easy.
Kaito didn't even need to leave the safehouse. Lilyeth and Rook prepared the bait while he monitored the exchange from a distance, using the black-market communication networks to spread a false message about the "True Shot" and its powers—how it could purify any sin in the blink of an eye, how it would give you a weapon and a way out from the Church's tyrannical grip. They played on the fears of the disenfranchised, the ones already sick of the Church's lies, the ones who heard whispers of salvation and held their breath, waiting for the next false god to rise.
By dawn, the fake preacher was already circulating in the city, spreading pamphlets Kaito's runners had distributed through back alleyways and underground pubs. These weren't just for show—these were speaking stones, coded with subtle emotional triggers, just enough to make the audience believe what they saw and hear. And for every soul who took one of those pamphlets, the Vault's reach grew just a little bit wider.
But Kaito wasn't interested in expanding for the sake of expanding.
He was building a net.
A net that would catch the ones pulling the strings.
And when the night fell again, the real players would come to him.
Kaito had already received an anonymous message—delivered through a half-burned parchment, the words scrawled in rushed ink—about a meeting set to take place at an abandoned church near the south quarter, an old building rumored to be the seat of several Averra contacts that had long gone silent, and now, it was loud with new whispers, filled with rumors of fake relics and saints that could walk through walls. The buyers, the sellers, and the pawns—they were all coming together under one crumbling roof. And Kaito, as always, would be waiting in the dark.
That night, Kaito's team prepared without a word. No fancy armaments, no dramatic speeches—just cold calculation and steady nerves, each person knowing their place, moving without hesitation. They would hit fast, hit clean, and vanish before the first scream.
The church was already half-abandoned, the doors creaking as they pushed their way in, the musty smell of incense clinging to the air. A faint light flickered in the back, where a cloaked figure stood speaking in low tones to a group of men—nobles, by the looks of their rings and cloaks, though their faces were obscured by hoods.
Kaito slid silently behind the pillars, barely making a sound as he positioned himself, hand close to the gun hidden under his coat. He didn't need to shoot anyone tonight.
They needed answers.
Lilyeth stood at the door, her eyes scanning the room for any signs of betrayal.
Darius? He was already moving into position, a phantom in the shadows, ready to take out the first threat that made a move, his knives glinting like promises.
And then there was Rook.
Always the wild card.
Rook wasn't the one who threw the first punch—no, he wasn't that type—but he knew how to bait. His job was simple: He'd expose the rat hiding under the floorboards.
"Five minutes," Kaito whispered.
Lilyeth nodded, her hand resting lightly on the trigger of her charm launcher.
Then Rook smiled.
"Showtime."
It all went according to plan, like a symphony conducted by ghosts. Kaito slid through the back corridor while Rook dropped a distracting echo charm in the center of the room, disorienting the entire gathering, sending a wave of confusion and tension through their ranks. The buyer from Averra froze, eyes darting to the ceiling, searching for the source of the disruption.
And that's when Kaito made his move.
He stepped out of the shadows with a silenced charm case in his hand, a fake relic gleaming under the weak light.
"Looking for this?" he asked, voice calm, controlled.
The entire room froze.
The leader of the Averra group, a tall man with a crooked grin and too much gold on his fingers, sneered. "You think you can walk in here with that and leave?"
"You're not the one pulling the strings," Kaito replied, tossing the fake relic onto the floor in front of them, "But you're about to find out who is."
There was no hesitation in Kaito's movements as he clicked his fingers and activated the echo-chamber trap beneath the floor, the entire room suddenly flooded with false rumors and altered memories, leaving the Averra men confused and terrified, unable to trust their own minds.
Lilyeth stepped forward, her charm launcher aimed at the ceiling, ready to give them one final push into the pit of confusion.
The leader of the Averra Syndicate pulled a concealed knife, eyes wide, but Kaito was already there, hands moving faster than words could catch up. He grabbed the man by the wrist, twisted it with a sickening snap, and shoved him backward into the crowd of nobles, causing an uproar.
"Stop!" the leader of the nobles shouted, trying to assert control over the chaos, but he was met with nothing but the sound of panicked footsteps and the clinking of weapons being drawn by men who no longer understood who the enemy was.
"Your gods won't save you," Kaito said coldly, "But I'll let you live. For now."
With that, he motioned to his team.
They didn't waste time.
By the time the nobles realized they had been played, the room was empty.
The floor was littered with false relics, their power neutralized, their worth dropped.
And as the shadows of the Vault's team melted into the streets, leaving only whispers in the dark, Kaito smiled.
Because the game had changed.
And the real players were about to see that the Vault wasn't just a ghost story anymore.
It was the new truth.
And that truth was already rewriting the city's underworld, one whisper at a time.
But Kaito knew better than to celebrate.
Because when he and the team returned to the safehouse, passing through decoy alleys and code-locked sewer routes, what they found wasn't relief—
It was a letter.
One that hadn't been delivered by a runner, or slipped under the door, or left in the usual drop points.
No—this letter was on his workbench.
Inside the most secure Vault room.
Untouched.
Untraceable.
No sign of magic.
No footsteps.
No warning.
The paper was thick, pressed with noble gold leaf, but the seal wasn't one Kaito had seen before, not from any syndicate or guild—
It was a bullet.
A golden bullet.
Flattened.
Stamped with a sigil that made Darius flinch for the first time in weeks.
Lilyeth narrowed her eyes.
"That's not one of yours."
"No," Kaito said quietly.
He broke the seal.
Inside the envelope was a folded page and one sentence, written in blood-colored ink with perfect, steady strokes:
> "We've been watching longer than you've been aiming."
And beneath it—
A list of names.
Ten Vault members.
All real.
All still active.
All marked with a red X.
Kaito's fingers tightened around the paper.
Lilyeth stepped closer, her voice low.
"Who would know those names?"
"Someone inside," Darius said grimly.
Rook leaned against the wall, suddenly very quiet.
Kaito looked up at them, face hard.
"This isn't a warning," he said.
"It's a declaration."
And far away, hidden in the city's coldest cathedral crypt, a pair of silver eyes opened beneath a veil of ash.