Day Two.
The sky above Drenmire had turned a pale shade of steel, as if the clouds themselves held their breath in anticipation of something vile and irreversible.
Inside a shuttered tenement overlooking the silent trade canal, Fornos leaned against the windowpane, fingers drumming his belt in restless rhythm. Below, the streets wore the stillness of a city pretending not to panic. Guard patrols moved like clockwork, and whispers moved faster than birds.
Park stood opposite him, arms crossed, frame stiff with the kind of restraint that only comes before violence.
"You know what needs to happen," Fornos said coldly. "Bren Darrik is the only link we have left. No one else is talking. But a body—his body—will stir movement. It'll force whoever's hiding to adjust their plans. Stir the rats."
Park's gaze did not move.
Fornos continued. "His death will cause a scene. And when people panic, they reveal more than when they lie. The reactions will show me who's hiding what."
Brassheart stirred behind him with a faint creak, tilting his head in silent observation.
Then Park moved.
One step forward. Then another. The steel collar around his neck sparked faintly, as if warning him of the coming line. A slave's caller—designed to enforce obedience with pain.
"You have something to say?" Fornos asked, tone clipped.
Park didn't speak. He never did. But the look in his eyes was louder than any scream.
He reached up and gripped the edge of the caller, pulling it until the skin beneath his jaw strained. Then he tore it off.
Sparks burst out. His entire body jerked as the fail-safe surged—burning nerves, shocking his spine. Smoke curled from the metal. But Park stood his ground.
His lips moved for the first time in years.
Just two words. Raspy. Broken.
"He's a brother."
Fornos didn't speak. Couldn't. For a second, he was completely still. Not from guilt—but from something rarer. Shock.
Brassheart adjusted slightly, as if unsure whether to intervene.
Park, teeth gritted, slowly signed through the pain:
You kill him… and you become what your enemies think you are.
And worse—you lose me.
Not out of loyalty.
But because I won't stand beside a man who makes corpses out of grief.
Fornos exhaled, a long sound like wind in a burned-out church.
He reached out slowly, picked up a small paper, and scribbled something.
"Fine," he said. "Make yourself useful. We need a list of everyone in Drenmire who's worked with couriers, messengers, or mana-script runners in the past five years. Every family-run shop, every networked relay house, every former postal guild."
Park nodded. His fingers trembled slightly from the residual shocks—but he bowed once and vanished through the window like a ghost in daylight.
Fornos didn't rest.
By nightfall, he stood in front of a rusted stairwell leading to one of Drenmire's deep archive vaults. The kind no one visited anymore—not because it was secret, but because the knowledge inside had long since gone unwanted.
Brassheart held a lantern, its glow barely reaching the soaked stone beneath their feet. The scent of ink, dust, and dried blood permeated the air.
Inside, a man hunched over a codex that looked too old to still exist.
Varn Tessel.
Once a theorist. Then an exile. Now just another relic among the vaults.
"You're younger than I expected," Varn said, voice dry as old paper. "But then again, everyone in this city is pretending to be something they're not."
Fornos stepped into the lantern's edge. "You opposed the crystal resonance theory."
"I opposed how it was being developed." Varn flipped a page. "The thought of compressing thought into energy was never the problem. The idea of skipping the people was."
Fornos raised a brow. "Explain."
Varn finally looked up. His eyes—tired, peeled, carved out by years of staring too long into theories no one else believed in—met Fornos's. "Thousands of people, talking through unregulated lines. Broadcasting without filters. Without recognition. Without consent. The world built societies around messengers for a reason. Structure. Control. Context."
"But that's not how this device works."
"No," Varn said. "The blueprint doesn't just send thought through mana. It hijacks ambient mana currents in the environment. It chains them—uses natural ley threads like wires. It doesn't just speak. It listens. To everything."
Fornos stiffened. "So it's not just a long-range comms system."
"It's a surveillance device." Varn leaned forward. "An ear against the world's skin. Once it's in place, it's impossible to stop. Because it doesn't rely on owned channels. It uses the very air people breathe."
Fornos was silent. That… changed everything.
"And yes," Varn added. "I helped Hal draft the codex layers. The earliest ones. I saw where it was going. When he refused to shut it down, I disappeared. I thought if I refused to work, it would die off."
"You were wrong," Fornos muttered.
"Yes," Varn said bitterly. "And now a city bleeds for it."
Fornos turned away, breathing steady but sharp. He had come to Drenmire expecting a patent war. A new market to monopolize. A myth to claim. But now…
He was standing on a powder keg.
"Give me a list," Fornos said.
"Of what?"
"Everyone who funds courier networks, mana script relays, postal guild remnants, anything in Drenmire even loosely tied to messaging infrastructure."
"You think one of them took it?"
"I think more than one of them might have," Fornos said. "This isn't a theft anymore. It's an ideological war disguised as a robbery. Someone didn't want to sell the blueprint. They wanted to erase it."
Varn narrowed his eyes. "You suspect the couriers?"
"I suspect worse," Fornos murmured. "I suspect someone wanted to stop a future from being born."
A silence stretched between them, broken only by Brassheart's low hum.
Then Varn asked the one question that mattered.
"…Who started the rumors in the first place?"
Fornos looked over his shoulder, eyes unreadable.
"I did," he said flatly. "Every whisper in the underground, every lecture note leaked in academia, every hopeful theory scribbled into guild pubs. That was me."
Varn stared at him, truly stunned.
"Why?"
"To bait people like you," Fornos replied. "To pull out hidden minds. Funded minds. Dangerous minds. I never expected the theory to become a weapon."
"Well," Varn said coldly, "you succeeded."
Fornos's smile returned—but this time it lacked teeth.
"Let's see if we can do it again. But on my terms."