A week after the confrontation with Kaya, the silent war escalated. The summons came not as a shouted order, but as a grim, formal procession. Three senior clansmen, their faces etched with the severe lines of unwavering duty, appeared at his chamber door at the noon hour. Their leader, a man named Jin with a scar bisecting his lip, did not meet Rael's eyes.
"The Patriarch demands your presence," Jin intoned, his voice devoid of inflection. "A matter of clan security has arisen. Your… unique insight is required."
It was a transparent trap, its mechanisms crude but effective. Refusal would be branded as insubordination, giving Lord Kaito the public justification he craved to take more direct action. Acceptance meant walking into a lion's den of his father's design. Rael simply nodded, his expression as unreadable as stone. He followed them through the winding corridors, not toward the main audience hall where matters of state were discussed, but downward, into the bedrock upon which the palace was built. The air grew cold and damp, the torches casting long, dancing shadows on the rough-hewn stone walls. They arrived at a heavy, iron-banded door—the entrance to the clan's interrogation chamber, a place of whispers and forgotten screams.
Inside, the room was bare save for a single wooden table and two chairs. Lord Kaito stood with his back to the door, observing a map of the continent carved into the far wall. He turned as they entered, his face a mask of detached authority. The clansmen took positions by the door, their hands resting on the hilts of their swords.
"The energy you manifested," Kaito began, bypassing any greeting, his voice echoing slightly in the cavernous room. "It is an anomaly. Unregistered in the clan's spiritual archives. For the security and prosperity of the Plum Blossom, its nature, origin, and principles of manifestation must be documented and controlled." He gestured to a scroll and inkstone on the table. "You will provide a full account. Begin with the incantation you used."
The demand was breathtaking in its audacity. It was not a request; it was an order to surrender the very core of his being, the Divine Authority that was his second chance at life, to be dissected and weaponized by the man who had already tried to have him killed. The bureaucratic language was a thin veneer over a brutal power grab.
Rael remained standing, his arms at his sides. "The energy is mine," he stated, his voice calm and firm, cutting through the oppressive atmosphere. "It is not a technique to be transcribed. It is not a clan secret to be archived. It is my own."
Kaito's eyes narrowed, a flicker of impatience breaking through his controlled facade. "You are a child of this clan. Your blood, your breath, your very spirit belongs to the Plum Blossom. What is 'yours' is, by definition, ours. You owe us everything."
The words were a spiritual cage, designed to entrap him with obligation and guilt. But Saturu had lived five hundred years and died once already to betrayal; he was immune to such emotional poison. He saw the truth laid bare in his father's eyes—this was not a father addressing a son, but a warlord assessing a captured asset. He saw the calculation, the greed, the utter lack of paternal connection.
"I owe you nothing," Rael's voice was low, but it carried a finality that seemed to suck the air from the room. "You provided a name I did not ask for and a roof under which I was hunted. The debt, if it ever existed, was canceled the moment you ordered my death." He took a step toward the door, his gaze sweeping over the stunned clansmen. "The account you seek is closed."
He walked to the door. The guards looked to Lord Kaito, whose face had gone pale with a suppressed rage. For a long moment, no one moved. Then, with a barely perceptible jerk of his chin, Kaito signaled them to stand down. The door was opened, and Rael walked out, leaving his father in the cold, silent dark of the chamber. The formal betrayal was now complete. The unbreachable chasm between them was no longer just emotional; it was a matter of official record. The next move in the game would not be an interrogation. It would be an annihilation.