The Sub-Level 4 Boiler Room was a cavernous, forgotten space beneath the palace. It was filled with massive, groaning steam pipes and ancient mechanical gears that predated the Global Flow Net. The air was thick with the smell of grease and coal—a place so un-aesthetic it felt like a physical weight on any Flow-user's chest.
Felix and Rhea, still clad in their Flow-Neutralizing Dust Armor, moved like shadows through the hissing steam.
[SYSTEM ALERT: EXTERNAL FLOW DENSITY: 0.01%. ENVIRONMENT: HOSTILE TO FOCUS.]
As they reached the central furnace, a massive, armored figure stepped out from behind a pressure valve. It was General Theron. His high-ranking armor was scarred and dulled, and he held a heavy, non-Flow broadsword with the trembling intensity of a man who had lost everything.
"Halt, Lunio rats!" Theron roared, the sound echoing off the iron walls. "I know the Chief sent you to finish what she started in Aethelgard. You won't find the Lord Reginald so easily!"
He lunged, the heavy blade whistling through the air. Rhea parried with her dagger, the sparks illuminating the dark room.
"General, wait!" Rhea hissed. "It's the Knight-Captain! Look at the strike pattern!"
Theron froze, his sword inches from Rhea's throat. He looked at the dusty, drab figures before him. "Rhea? You were declared a traitor. And who is this... this beggar you've brought into the heart of the Imperium?"
Felix stepped forward into the dim light. He reached up and pulled back the hood of his mourning veil, then slowly unstrapped the chest plate of his Dust Armor.
"It's me, Theron," Felix said, his voice raspy but carrying the unmistakable cadence of the King.
Theron's eyes widened, then narrowed in disgust. "No. The King is a being of light and perfect Focus. You... you look like a peasant. You have no Flow. You have no aura. You are a 'Cringe' pretender!"
"I have no Flow because the Flow is the weapon she uses to track us," Felix stated firmly. He reached into his tunic and pulled out the Original Confession scroll and the Nomad's records.
"Theron, listen to me. The war is a distraction. The Aethelgard failure wasn't an accident. It was a planned strike by Chief Evelyn."
"Blasphemy!" Theron growled, though his sword lowered slightly. "She is the mind of the state!"
"She is the victim of my ancestor," Felix countered, his voice dripping with the gravity of the secret. "She is over 200 years old. She was broken by the Original Felix I to be a tool of pure logic, and she has spent two centuries waiting to burn this kingdom to the ground. The 'Shadow' isn't an outside force, Theron. The Shadow is the Chief Strategist."
Felix handed the General the scroll. Theron read the Original King's confession—the words of a monster admitting to the creation of a vengeful ghost. He saw the sketches of the young Evelyn being drained of her soul.
The General's knees buckled. The "Secret" that had been hinted at since the kidnapping was finally out: The person they trusted to save the Imperium was the one dismantling it, piece by piece, as a holy act of revenge.
"She... she destroyed Aethelgard because the citizens there were descendants of the First King's guard," Theron whispered, the pieces of the strategic puzzle finally clicking into place. "Every 'loss' we've suffered was a targeted execution."
"She won't stop until the Flow is extinguished and we are all reduced to the 'Purity' of the grave," Felix said.
At that moment, the heavy iron door at the far end of the boiler room groaned open. Lord Reginald (GCVTD) stumbled in, his face pale but his eyes burning with a new, frantic light.
"She knows," Reginald gasped. "She detected the 'Glizzy-Wrap' anomaly. The Sentinels are descending. We have ten minutes before this sub-level is 'Purified'."
The secret is out. The King, the General, the Knight, and the Accountant are trapped.