Penelope stood at the dome's edge, watching the team prepare to leave. The late afternoon light caught the barrier's surface, making it shimmer like oil on water.
"Safe travels," she called out, her voice carrying across the distance.
Jay waved back enthusiastically. Lira nodded. Kaelen raised a hand in acknowledgment before they disappeared beyond the tree line.
Penelope turned to head back inside when Mel's footsteps caught up to her. The guards shifted into formation around them without being asked, a choreographed movement they'd done a thousand times before.
"Do you think they should know?" Penelope asked, keeping her eyes forward.
Mel's expression stayed neutral, unreadable as always. "It's your decision to make. But do they deserve to?"
"It's not about deserving."
"Then do you trust them enough?" Mel glanced at her briefly.
Penelope didn't answer.
"They're a peculiar group," Mel continued after a moment. "Especially Kaelen."
"You think he could help?"
"Not necessarily. But he's caring enough to be observant." Mel paused. "Too observant."
The words hung in the air between them as they walked back toward the manor.
...
The journey to the seventh tier felt longer than usual.
Jay tried filling the silence with jokes about billionaire problems and Penelope's mysterious family situation, but even her energy seemed strained. Her laugh came half a beat too late, and her punchlines landed flat against the weight of whatever Kaelen was thinking about.
Lira noticed. She was distracted herself, caught up in the strangeness of the day, but Kaelen's silence was different from his usual quiet. This wasn't the comfortable silence of someone content to listen. This was the churning silence of someone working through a problem.
They reached Jay's district first. The buildings here were older, the streets narrower.
"Same time tomorrow?" Jay asked, already backing toward her district. "Kaelen's place before we head out?"
"Yeah," Lira confirmed.
"Cool. Try not to solve all the mysteries without me." Jay grinned, but it didn't quite reach her eyes before she disappeared inside.
Now it was just Kaelen and Lira.
The silence became impossible to ignore.
"Are you okay?" Lira finally asked.
Kaelen startled slightly, pulled from wherever his thoughts had taken him. "Yeah. Yeah, I am."
"You seem like you have something on your mind. You're not your usual quiet. This is the thinking quiet."
"I'm fine, really."
"Kaelen—"
"I'm okay, Lira." His voice rose without him meaning it to.
Lira's expression didn't shift. She wasn't backing down, and they both knew it.
"You're doing it again. The thing you do when your brain is chewing on some mystery you can't figure out yet."
"Look, Lira, you're imagining things." He paused, hearing how that sounded. "I'm sorry I raised my voice. You're just exhausted from today's 'mystery,' as you call it."
"I'm not delusional, Kaelen."
"I never said you were."
Silence filled the space between them again. Lira counted to five before breaking it.
"Kaelen, we don't keep things from each other." She paused, letting the weight of that settle. "I don't see why you'd keep an observation about Penelope from me."
"It's not about Penelope."
Lira gave him a look that said: stop messing around and just talk.
"Okay, okay." Kaelen gave in with a sigh. "Doesn't it strike you that Penelope has a weird relationship with her family?"
"News flash, Kaelen," Lira replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
"I'm serious."
"I'm joking." Lira rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Jay pointed that out too. What exactly are you getting at?"
"This is just a hypothesis, but I suspect whatever's in the dome was put there by someone."
"But the digging—"
"Jay identified that it wasn't digging," Kaelen cut in. "Pressure from the inside. Like something trying to break out, not break in. But there's no sign of digging on the outside of the barrier."
"Then it's coming from inside," Lira said slowly, working through it. "And that could only be done by someone with access."
"The old guards."
"The problems of billionaires are so exhausting," Lira muttered.
"It's hard putting pieces together when you don't have the full picture."
"Well, this is my stop." Lira paused at the entrance to her district. "We'll meet tomorrow as planned."
"Stay safe, Lira."
She walked a few steps, then turned back. "If anyone can solve it, Kaelen, it's you."
...
The Divian estate loomed against the evening sky.
Penelope had barely returned when the summons came. A servant, stone-faced and efficient, delivered the message: Evander required her presence. Immediately.
The entire family seemed caught off guard. Even Aldren looked surprised when Penelope passed him in the hallway, his eyebrows lifting fractionally before his face returned to its usual neutrality.
Evander's private office was exactly what she expected. Cold. A desk that looked more like a judge's bench. A chair positioned to make whoever sat in it feel small. And Evander himself, sitting behind it like judgment made flesh.
He didn't waste time on pleasantries.
"You were born of a maid's blood," he said, his voice flat. "You are nobody in this family by right. You know this."
Penelope knows. But hearing the words spoken aloud by the patriarch himself still landed heavy in her chest. Her expression didn't shift.
"The Luminharts struck a deal with us," Evander continued, watching her face for any reaction. "Because of Cean. Because of you."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"You are of low blood. But the Divian blood that runs through you, however thinly, made your conversation with Cean smooth. Enjoyable. Productive. For that, you have value."
Penelope felt genuinely surprised. She hadn't been expecting praise, however backhanded it might be.
"I am feeling generous," Evander said. "What do you want?"
The question hung in the air. This was a rare opening, maybe the only one she'd ever get. Penelope thought carefully before answering.
"I'd like recognition," she said. "A formal place in the family registry."
"No."
The refusal was immediate. Door to the conversation slammed shut before she'd even finished crossing the threshold.
Penelope's jaw tightened, but she pivoted quickly. "Then let me bargain with you."
Evander laughed. It was a short, dry sound that held no warmth. "Bargain? You?"
"You said you're feeling generous. Shouldn't I at least get the chance?"
Evander studied her, his eyes sharp and calculating. Then, to her shock, he nodded once. "Speak."
"Give me leverage over a property," Penelope said, the words coming faster now. "Any property you choose. If I can make more profit than it's currently generating, you give me what I originally asked for. If I fail, you do what you see fit."
Evander considered this. The silence stretched long enough that Penelope's heart started hammering against her ribs.
Then he spoke.
"I'll do better. I'll will a property to you outright. You may do with it as you see fit." He paused, and something like a smile touched his lips. "But the moment you ask the family for help, money, influence, connections, anything at all, everything you've built collapses. You'll lose the property. And any standing you think you've earned."
Penelope hesitated.
Evander's smile widened at that hesitation. He was waiting for her to refuse, to back down, and prove him right about her limitations.
Then she nodded. "I accept."
The smile faltered. He hadn't expected that.
"The Cane District farmland," Evander said, recovering quickly. "It's yours."
...
The next morning, Jay and Lira met Kaelen outside his building.
"Quick stop," Kaelen said, already heading toward the hover tram station.
"Where?" Jay asked, jogging to keep up.
"Fifth tier. The Ash Guild."
They boarded the tram in silence. Jay kept glancing at Kaelen like she wanted to ask questions but couldn't figure out which one to start with. Lira just watched the city blur past the windows.
The fifth tier was busier than the seventh. The Ash Guild sat in the middle of it all, its crest worn smooth by decades of weather.
Inside, the clerk barely looked up as Kaelen approached the counter.
Kaelen glanced toward the reception desk, half expecting to see May's sharp eyes and sharper wit, but the desk was empty, which was unusual for this time of morning.
He presented his collection slip to the clerk, who scanned it with the kind of boredom that came from doing the same task a thousand times.
"Kaelen Burn," the clerk read off the screen, his voice flat. "Seven hundred and fifty thousand credits. Pending payout approved two days ago."
"That's correct," Kaelen said.
The clerk tapped a few more keys. "This'll take a few minutes. The system needs to verify the amount and process the transfer."
"That's fine."
They waited. The clerk worked in silence, occasionally frowning at his screen and typing something else. Minutes stretched. Jay started fidgeting, tapping her foot against the floor. Lira leaned against a nearby pillar, arms crossed, patient as stone.
Around the eight-minute mark, the clerk's screen finally chimed.
"Transfer complete," he said, turning the display toward Kaelen. "Verify the amount."
Kaelen checked. Seven hundred and fifty thousand credits, sitting in his account like it had always been there. He nodded.
"Confirmed."
The clerk made a note in his system, then slid a receipt across the counter. "You're all set."
"Thanks."
They left the guild hall, stepping back out into the morning bustle of the fifth tier. They headed to tram station.
Upon reaching the fourth tier, they retraced their steps to the Cane District, through yesterday's path.
The barrier shimmered in the morning light, beautiful and impenetrable.
At the entrance, they realized their mistake.
"We don't have her contact," Lira said flatly.
"Perfect," Jay muttered. "Great planning, team."
But luck shifted in their favor. An old guard on patrol, not one of Penelope's hires but someone who'd been stationed here longer, recognized them from yesterday. He studied them for a moment, then nodded.
"Wait here. I'll send word."
They waited. And waited. Long enough that Jay started fidgeting, long enough that Lira began to wonder if they'd been forgotten.
Finally, Penelope and Mel appeared.
Penelope's face brightened when she saw them. "I didn't think you'd keep your word. Would you like something to eat?"
Jay started to say yes. Lira shut her down with a look. Kaelen simply said, "No, thank you."
Then Kaelen spoke, his tone more direct than usual. "I need you to give me the full picture. Your story."
Everyone went still. Even Lira looked surprised.
Penelope hesitated. Mel said nothing, her expression unreadable.
Kaelen saw the hesitation and continued, softer now. "You don't have to if you don't want to. But if you don't, I can't really understand what's happening here."
Penelope nodded slowly. "Come with me."
...
They walked west, deeper into the dome's territory.
After a while, the team saw something they hadn't noticed yesterday.
A manor.
It rose from the landscape like something out of another era. Grand. Gray stone. And embedded on the front was the Divian crest: a spear, tip upward, with a halo above it. Impossible to miss with its golden radiance.
"Holy pen," Jay breathed.
Inside, the manor hummed with activity. Workers moved through the halls with purpose, tending to the farm's operations, managing the infrastructure, coordinating the dome's various systems. It was less a house and more a command center.
"They manage everything here," Penelope explained, gesturing to the bustling workers. "The farm, the grounds, the barrier maintenance. All of it."
She led them through a series of hallways to an empty private room. The door closed behind them with a soft click.
Penelope took a breath. "Where should I start?"
"Wherever it began," Kaelen said.
...
"My mother's name was Amy," Penelope said.
She sat down, her hands folded in her lap. Mel stood by the door, silent but attentive.
"She was a maid. Low origin. The kind of person the Divians would normally never notice, except my father did. Aldren." Penelope's voice carried no bitterness, just tired acceptance. "They had a relationship. A forbidden one. And I was the result."
Jay shifted uncomfortably. Lira stayed perfectly still, listening.
"Aldren never publicly acknowledged me. Never acknowledged Amy, either. He has a wife, Maren. She's not my mother. She was never cruel to me, but she never needed to be. I wasn't a threat. I was barely a footnote."
Penelope stood, pacing slightly as she talked.
"The Divian family is... complicated. Evander is the patriarch. The ceiling no one touches. Everything flows from him. Aldren is his son, my father. Then there's Aldren's wife, Maren. His children with her: Sorin and Calix, my half-brothers."
She ticked them off on her fingers, her voice taking on a rehearsed quality, like she'd explained this before.
"Sorin is the eldest. Pride of the family. He doesn't mistreat me. He just doesn't think about me. His wife, Thessaly, is different. She's ambitious. She knows exactly where everyone stands in the hierarchy. Especially me."
"Calix is charming. Forgets I exist between visits. Then there's Aldren's siblings. Isolde, his sister. She's a thread reader. Dangerous in negotiation, deliberate in her silences. Her ability is different to the family's own and that gives her an edge. There's Brennan, Aldren's younger brother. He uses an ability aligned to Soul weight. I avoid him instinctively. Everyone does."
"Why?" Kaelen asked.
Penelope paused. "I don't know. I just always felt like he saw too much. Like he could feel what I was thinking."
"Soulweight users often can," Mel said quietly from the door.
Penelope nodded. "Then there's Cassiel, Aldren's cousin. He prefers beasts to people. Honestly, he's the least complicated of all of them."
She continued, listing the third generation. Her nieces, nephews, cousins. Most her age or older.
"Sorin's children: Reva, Serath, Dael. Reva leads. Serath watches. Dael follows. Calix's sons: Dorian and Niven. Dorian is celebrated, reckless. Niven is sharper, quieter. Brennan's sons: Aldric and Mael. Aldric is sensitive, empathic like his mother. Mael is volatile, and sharp."
Jay let out a low whistle. "That's a lot of people."
"That's just the inner circle," Penelope said. "There are more extended family members, but they don't matter much to this story."
She stopped pacing and turned to face them fully.
"What matters is the Crown of Radiance."
"The what?" Jay asked.
"Our family ability," Penelope said. "Light manipulation. It's the Divian signature. Most member of the bloodline has some version of it. Except Brennan and Isolde."
"Including you?" Lira asked.
"Especially me." Penelope's voice dropped. "That's the problem."
She sat back down, her hands gripping the edge of the chair.
"My ability manifested differently. Stronger. Stranger. More refined than most of my generation. I could do things they couldn't, shape light in ways that shouldn't have been possible for someone my age. And that made me a target."
The room went quiet.
"The pranks started small," Penelope continued, her voice steady but strained. "Little things. My things going missing. Whispers when I walked into a room. Then it escalated. They'd use their abilities against me during training. 'Accidents,' they called them. Burns. One time, Reva shaped light so bright it blinded me for three days."
Jay's hands clenched into fists. "What did the adults do?"
"Nothing," Penelope said simply. "Tradition, they called it. Character building. The jealousy was masked as family bonding. The cruelty as preparation for the real world."
"But you didn't fight back," Kaelen said.
"No." Penelope looked down. "I learned to endure. To stay quiet. To survive. Fighting back would've made it worse."
She forced a laugh, but the pain underneath was obvious. "So I became very good at being invisible."
The team said nothing. What could they say?
...
When Penelope finally stopped talking, the silence felt heavy.
Then Kaelen spoke.
"I've been making a bunch of hypotheses. But they're all just guesses."
Jay actually laughed, the sound startling in the quiet room. "Did you just admit you're guessing? That's growth."
Lira shot her a look. "Focus."
Kaelen continued, his eyes on Penelope. "Penelope, are you aware that your family might be behind this?"
The question landed like a stone in still water.
Penelope's hands tightened on the chair. "I suspected it. But I didn't want it to be true." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Now that I've accepted it, I don't know how to accept it."
---
Kaelen leaned forward, his expression shifting into the sharp focus Lira had seen a thousand times before. This was Kaelen working through a problem, all the pieces finally starting to fit together.
"The barrier wasn't breached from the outside. The earth's being pressured from the inside. That means someone with access placed something there."
"The old guards," Lira added.
"Right. But why?"
Jay leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "Sabotage? Make her look incompetent?"
"Maybe," Kaelen said. "But I think it's more than that."
He paused, thinking through the logic.
"The Cane District was given to Penelope as a test. Maybe even a trap. If she asks for help, she loses everything. If she fails on her own, she's dismissed. Either way, the family wins."
"If something goes wrong," Lira picked up the thread, "something catastrophic, they can blame her and take the land back without breaking the deal."
Penelope's face went pale.
"The old guards aren't loyal to me," she said slowly, the realization hitting her in real time. "They're loyal to the family. To Evander. To Aldren."
Kaelen shook his head. "No. Not to them."
Everyone looked at him.
"It can't be Aldren," Kaelen said firmly. "And it definitely can't be Evander."
"Why not?" Mel asked, speaking for the first time in a while.
Kaelen stood, pacing as he worked through his thoughts out loud.
"Because Evander doesn't need to sabotage Penelope. He already controls everything. If he wanted her gone, he'd just take the land back. He wouldn't bother with elaborate schemes." He paused mid-step. "And the deal he made with her? He was surprised when she accepted. That means he expected her to hesitate longer or refuse outright. He wasn't trying to trap her. He was testing her."
"And Aldren?" Penelope asked, her voice quiet.
"Aldren doesn't acknowledge you, but he doesn't actively harm you either," Kaelen said. "He's passive. Neglectful, yes. Absolutely. But not malicious. If he wanted to sabotage you, he would've done it years ago. He wouldn't wait until now, after you've been given property through a legitimate deal with Evander."
Lira nodded slowly, following the logic. "That makes sense. Aldren benefits more from ignoring her than from destroying her."
"Exactly," Kaelen said. "But someone in that family does want her to fail. Someone who sees her success as a threat."
"Her siblings," Jay said suddenly.
Kaelen nodded. "Her half-brothers. Sorin and Isolde."
Penelope's breath caught in her throat.
"Think about it," Kaelen continued, his pace quickening. "Sorin is the eldest. The pride of the family. The heir apparent. But Penelope's ability manifested stronger than anyone in his generation. That's a direct threat to his position. To his children's future standing. If she rises, if she's legitimized, that changes the entire power structure."
"And Isolde?" Lira asked.
"Isolde is the negotiator. The diplomat. She's good at playing the family game, at winning people over. But Penelope's success with the Luminharts, her ability to negotiate and connect with Cean, that's her territory. She just proved she can do it better than she can."
Jay whistled low. "So they both have motive."
"But which one is it?" Mel asked.
Kaelen stopped pacing, turning to face them. "Maybe both. Maybe one is acting and the other is turning a blind eye. Or maybe one of them has convinced someone else in the family to act on their behalf."
"Like who?" Penelope asked.
"Thessaly," Kaelen said immediately. "Sorin's wife. She's ambitious. She's aware of hierarchies. And if Penelope rises, that threatens her children's inheritance. Their entire future."
"Or Brennan," Lira added, picking up the thread. "If Sorin or Isolde needed something done quietly, they'd go to him."
Penelope looked shaken, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. "Brennan has always unsettled me. I never knew why. I just avoided him."
"That's instinct," Kaelen said gently. "You sensed something off."
He turned back to the group, his voice taking on a more ordered tone.
"Here's what we know. Someone with influence over the old guards ordered them to place something inside the dome. That someone wants Penelope to fail publicly and catastrophically. That someone has clear motive to see her removed from the family's consideration entirely."
"Sorin or Isolde," Jay said.
"Possibly Thessaly acting on Sorin's behalf," Lira added.
"Or Brennan acting on orders from either of them," Mel finished.
Kaelen nodded. "The question is: which old guard was involved? And can we prove it?"
Penelope looked down at her hands, her voice barely audible. "Most of the old guards report to Brennan. He oversees security for family properties. If any of them were going to take orders from someone, it would be from him."
"But that doesn't mean Brennan gave the order himself," Kaelen said. "He could be the middleman. The one executing someone else's plan without asking too many questions."
"So how do we figure out who's behind it?" Jay asked.
Kaelen thought for a moment, running through possibilities.
"We start with the guards. We identify which one had access to the dome before Penelope took ownership. We find out who they've been in contact with. And we trace it back to the source."
"That's going to be difficult," Mel said. "The old guards are loyal. They won't talk easily."
"Then we don't ask them," Kaelen said. "We watch them. We see who they report to. Who they meet with. We follow the thread until it leads us somewhere."
Lira looked at Kaelen, studying his face. "You really think it's Sorin or Isolde?"
"I think it's someone who stands to lose something if Penelope succeeds," Kaelen said carefully. "And in families like this, that's usually siblings. The ones close enough to the top to feel threatened but far enough down that they need to fight for position."
Penelope's voice came out barely above a whisper. "I never thought they'd go this far."
"They probably don't see it as going far," Kaelen said, his tone gentler now. "They see it as protecting what's theirs. You're an anomaly to them. A disruption in the natural order. And they're trying to remove that disruption before it becomes a real problem."
Silence settled over the room like dust.
Then Mel spoke. "So what's the plan?"
Kaelen looked at Penelope, his expression serious but not unkind.
"We identify the guard. We trace the connection. And we expose whoever's behind this before that thing in the dome starts acting wild and destroys everything you've built."
Penelope nodded slowly, her jaw set. "And if it's Sorin? Or Isolde? Or both?"
"Then we deal with it," Kaelen said. "But first, we prove it."it."