POV: Kaiden
---
The lobby of Elysium Global Defense looked like a spaceship had mated with a cathedral — all white marble, high arches, and tech so sleek it made Kaiden feel like a walking crime scene just by existing.
He strode through the entry like he owned the place. Because technically? He kind of did.
Coffee in one hand. Eyes half-lidded behind smart-tinted lenses. His coat sweeping behind him like some rebellious cloak of charisma and casual violence.
"Morning, Commander," chirped the security assistant behind the obsidian front desk.
Kaiden raised his coffee cup. "Did the espresso machine finally get fixed, or should I prepare for another tragic betrayal?"
"The demons in R&D swore a blood pact over it last night."
"Then we're all doomed."
He breezed past enchanted glass panels and whispered voice-linked comms, the scent of ink, ozone, and stressed-out spell-coders filling the air like performance anxiety and unwashed ambition.
A kelpie cursed at the espresso machine again. Someone on the third floor dropped a rune tablet with a muffled "Shit!" Normal.
"Commander!" piped a pixie intern zipping past. "Do dragons dream?"
"Yes," Kaiden replied without breaking stride, "and it's usually about setting their accountants on fire."
Ding. Elevator.
Access crystal tapped.
Destination: Sector 07 — Intelligence Division.
---
If the rest of Elysium looked like a magical Google campus, Sector 07 looked like a Pentagon built by caffeine-guzzling supernatural misfits with trauma and top-level clearance.
Officially, it was known as the IMD — Intelligence, Monitoring & Deep Response.
Unofficially? The Pit.
It ran like a magical war room inside a haunted beehive — runes pulsing like veins, floating files stacked midair, magical comms blinking like anxious familiars. The energy here was barely contained brilliance — and several undiagnosed personality disorders.
Most of the staff were adopted by Silas in some form or another. Kaiden had helped raise half of them.
And when he walked in?
They straightened like naughty children watching their cool older brother roll in with a gun, a grin, and an overdue therapy bill.
He passed rooms shielded with transparent wards, half-listening to arguments about misinformation hexes, arcane loopholes, and a broken curse-tracker that now only identified emotionally unavailable men.
He reached R&D.
Door: hissed open like a nervous mouth.
Inside, chaos and genius sat on beanbags and floating sigils.
Fae chemists. Vampire bio-mancers. A shifter alchemist with one red eye and a boba cup that had probably seen war.
Kaiden tossed a small black bottle onto the glowing center slab like it owed him rent.
"Alright, nerdlings. Impress me."
Dr. Elira caught the bottle mid-slide, adjusting her goggles with the weariness of someone who hadn't blinked in three hours. "We ran it through every known substance registry. Standard. Black market. Supernatural. Fairy tale. Nothing."
"No matches," rumbled a gargoyle from the far left, poking at a levitating vial.
"No curses," added the vampire with two pens jammed into his hair like horns. "No soul siphons. No nasty echo enchantments. It's… clean."
Kaiden sipped his coffee. "What does it do?"
"Suppresses hunger," Elira said. "Succubus-specific. Not permanent. No sedatives. Doesn't block power — just tones it down. Like someone slid the craving dial to 'doable' without shutting it off."
Jeremy, the junior mage, lifted a hand. "It's calibrated. Like… genetically."
Kaiden raised a brow. "So it's custom."
"Very," Elira confirmed. "One-of-a-kind custom. Not even the illegal good kind. This is artisan-level alchemy."
"Someone made this for her," Jeremy said.
Kaiden's smirk twitched, then flattened. "And they cared enough to make it perfect."
That quieted the room.
Kaiden picked up the bottle again. Turned it in his fingers.
A feather mark. Barely visible.
Not a logo. Not a registry sigil. But personal.
The kind of detail you only etched for someone that mattered.
Jeremy tilted his head. "Should we be worried?"
Another researcher: "More importantly… who is she?"
Kaiden pocketed the bottle.
"She's got someone looking out for her," he muttered.
"Does that make your job easier?" someone tried.
Kaiden shot a half-smile. "Nah. Just makes things more interesting."
He walked out before anyone could ask again.
The door closed.
A beat.
"Damn it!" the gargoyle shouted. "He escaped again!"
Jeremy flailed. "He does that teleport-ghost-wraith-thing every time!"
The vampire sighed. "No, Jeremy. That's just what it looks like when someone's done with your shit."
---
Kaiden hit the main ops floor.
Within seconds, the gossip vultures circled.
A demon with spiraled horns: "He smiled in the lab."
A dryad hissed: "He only smiles like that when someone dies or he meets a woman with standards."
And then: Ayla.
Hovering shoes. Cropped jacket. Tablet in hand. Mischief incarnate.
"Commander Kaiden~!"
"No."
"Too late." She beamed. "Let's say someone detected a recent burst of succubus-aligned energy on you—hypothetically. Is it true love, or should I prep HR for flames?"
"Did you scan me again?"
"Company protocol."
"You made that protocol."
"I stand by it."
Another intern shouted: "DOES SHE HAVE WINGS?"
"I BET SHE SMELLS LIKE SIN!"
Kaiden kept walking. "I'm going to kill Silas for not installing soundproof cubicles."
Ayla grinned, skating beside him. "So is she the one? The 'finally-someone-can-handle-your-emotional-damage' kind of one?"
"I'm too old for this."
"Too old to flirt or too old to lie?"
"I'm gonna write you up."
"For what?"
"Being awake."
A roar of laughter rolled across the department.
Kaiden reached his office, turned halfway, deadpan.
"You're all very lucky I'm the nice one."
"You once threatened to put me in a summoning circle for taking your mug," someone shouted.
"And I didn't."
"YES YOU DID."
Door slam.
Peace returned only when the glass door of Kaiden's office hissed shut.
The light inside was low, tinted blue like a slow breath. One wall flickered with live maps, sigils, and threat markers; the other — knives, heirlooms, and hidden shelves stacked with hard-copy files no one else had access to.
His gaze drifted toward the back wall.
There sat a cluttered shelf — not armor or weapons, but memory.
A crude friendship bracelet from the half-witch in Ops — disappeared three weeks ago.
A painted coffee mug from a kelpie intern who swore he'd be the next Zaire — now listed as "No Exit Record."
A thumb-sized phoenix feather in resin. A gift from his best tracker, Mira. Gone two months.
Kaiden rested his hand on the shelf's edge.
"I'm sorry I'm nowhere near finding you," he murmured. "Please don't give up on Elysium. On us. I won't either."
He exhaled once, then snapped back into motion.
Back to work.
---
He sat, pulled up footage logs.
No sabotage. No enemy infiltration. Not yet.
But there were patterns.
Too many supernaturals going off-grid.
Resignations perfectly timed or Staff with no resignation letters. No incident reports. No visible threats. Just—gone.
Like they walked off the map.
Only they didn't.
Kaiden hit comms.
"Zaire."
From across the complex: "If this is about replacing the alarms again—"
"They worked, didn't they?"
"You made them scream like a dying banshee every 30 minutes."
"I call that effective."
Zaire sighed. "What is it?"
Kaiden's tone cooled.
"That suppressant. Suc-a-bust. I ran it through the lab."
"And?"
"Custom job. Tailored to one person. Succubus type. Pure magic, clean craft. No bindings. No debt hooks. No supplier. Not on the market."
Zaire went quiet.
"So she's not some mind-controlled sleeper weapon?"
"Nope."
"She has someone who actually cares about her?"
"Looks like it."
Zaire exhaled. "Then she's not the threat."
Kaiden leaned back in his chair. "No. But someone still might want her off the board."
Another pause.
Then Zaire: "Our people are vanishing."
"They're not vanishing. They're being erased. No trace left behind. All supernaturals."
"And no one's panicking."
"Exactly."
Kaiden rubbed his temples, looking at the feather-marked bottle still on his desk.
"I'm not worried for her," he said softly. "I'm worried for us."
Zaire replied: "I'll dig. Quietly. See what we missed."
Kaiden nodded once. "Good."
He ended the call.
Silence again.
Until the lights flickered.
Exactly 3.5 seconds.
Kaiden's pupils tightened.
He glanced up at the screen. Timestamp. Pattern.
"…Again?" he muttered.
He hit the team-wide comms.
"Check for blackout anomalies across the week. I want timestamps, locations, proximity tags. Start from 3:47 AM. Push results to my archive."
No hesitation. They were already on it.
Kaiden stood, slipped on his coat, and headed out.
---
Parking garage, 11:40 PM.
Elysium's underground garage was a cross between a Bond villain bunker and a luxury showroom. Even the motorcycles looked expensive enough to swear loyalty.
Kaiden approached his sleek matte bike, paused.
Looked right.
Nothing there.
Still, a strange tug in his gut.
He muttered, "Must be all the stress," and kicked the engine alive.
---
Halfway down the road, wind threading through his coat, he tapped his earpiece.
"Theodore."
A pause. "Yo."
"Thermal cameras. Full parking lots. Set them up."
"You noticed it too, huh?"
"Three blackouts in five days. Always at 3:47. That's too clean."
"You're starting to sound like Zaire."
Kaiden grinned faintly. "Don't insult me."
"Already done. Cameras will be up tonight."
"Thanks."
Kaiden hung up.
---
He arrived at the penthouse complex just past midnight. His bike slid into its usual slot, engine purring down like a lullaby.
Zaire's space was empty.
"Working late again," Kaiden muttered. "Or brooding over a sword rack."
He strolled into the elevator, rubbing his neck, brain buzzing.
He thought about food.
He thought about how exhausted he was.
And then…
He thought about last night.
Seraphine.
The glittering apartment. The chaos. The laughter. The women with way too many opinions and not enough personal boundaries. That damn third drawer.
The taste of something alive again.
Ping.
The elevator opened.
Four others already inside.
Kaiden stepped in, blinking once.
A demon. Draped in tailored black-on-black. Skin a deep obsidian gleam. His features too perfect — high cheekbones, sin incarnate, jawline sculpted like a blade made for luxury ads. He smelled like cigars, crushed velvet, and expensive disappointment. His bored look screamed: I've seen worse... and charged extra.
CEO of Vÿce Luxuria: the global lifestyle empire for supernatural vice. Every illegal club, high-stakes auction, and designer sin product came from this guy.
Next: the fae with fire-hued hair. Red, alive, glowing faintly — like the embers of a phoenix who'd married a solar flare. His suit was too nice for someone with that much "Don't Fuck With Me" radiating off him. Heat shimmered in the air around him.
Kaiden thought: This guy definitely burns down boardrooms when bored.
Beside him: a second fae. Pale blue hair, ice-slicked and shimmering like fresh frost. His skin had a bluish sheen under the lights, suit tailored and cold. No emotion — just analysis. If the redhead was a wildfire, this one was a glacier, and the only reason the elevator hadn't combusted was because these two cancelled each other out with silent loathing.
And then — a snake shifter. Lean, eyes too golden, with a forked tongue that flicked out when he said, "Floor twenty-six, please."
He wore a half-buttoned black shirt like rules bored him. His aura? Pure chaos . Kaiden could practically smell the sarcasm.
Elevator's crowded tonight, Kaiden thought.
Then...
Ping.
They all exited. Same floor.
Floor 26.
Kaiden blinked.
Only four penthouses here.
All four of them turned down the same hallway.
26C.
The one with Seraphine's apartment.
Kaiden stopped walking.
His eyebrow twitched.
"…What the hell is going on here?"