Secret Bunker Beneath the Swiss Alps -
The echo of Lord Ashworth's confession about the true "Eye" and the reckless summoning of Cthulhu still hung like a toxic miasma in the war room of the Thirteen Families. The terror of the consequences of their own actions had temporarily superseded their bitter internal disputes. Now, the attention of The Director, and therefore of the entire Council, had focused on the "arcane assets" they held prisoner in the depths of their impregnable fortress.
Sofía and Diego had already been led to another room for a more "specialized" and undoubtedly less diplomatic interrogation. The elite guards then returned to the cell where Isabel and Ricardo, the two mages from the White Brotherhood of Querétaro, awaited with tense and somber resignation.
They were taken to the same cold, sterilized interrogation room, though the atmosphere now was different, more charged. There was no longer a single human interrogator present; through an enormous holographic screen that occupied an entire wall, the severe and expectant faces of several key members of the Thirteen Families observed them like hawks from their thrones of power scattered across the globe. Ashworth, Von Hess, Tanaka, Herrera… even the invisible but oppressive presence of The Director was felt through the cold perfection of the video connection.
"Mages of the so-called White Brotherhood," began the metallic, inflectionless voice of The Director, cutting through the silence without preamble. "Your cellmates, the healers from Catemaco, have been... informative, in their own particular way. But you, according to our records and the nature of your capture, belong to a more... doctrinaire lineage, more versed in ancient prophecies and the hidden history of this planet. So I ask you, I demand of you, be direct."
Lord Ashworth took the floor, his tone now devoid of the sarcasm he had used with his peers, replaced by a cold, cutting urgency. "We want concrete answers. What really happened out there? Don't give us your mystical interpretations or your poetic laments. Tell us the facts. What actually occurred for the world we knew to now be on this precipice of madness?"
Isabel looked at Ricardo, who nodded slightly, yielding the floor to her. "What has happened, honorable (if such a word still holds any meaning for you) sirs," Isabel began, her voice surprisingly firm despite the magic-suppressing chains she felt on her aura, "is the inevitable fulfillment of cosmic cycles that your own blindness, your own insatiable ambition, have catastrophically accelerated."
Baron Von Hess slammed his fist on the table at his end of the video call, his face flushed. "Spare us the sermons and the blame! Our archives, recovered from your desecrated sanctuaries before you could burn them all, clearly indicate that your faction of mages, your much-vaunted 'White Brotherhood,' had those prophecies about an awakening, about a cosmic cataclysm that, according to your own sacred texts, you had the solemn duty to stop!" His voice rose, laden with furious accusation. "Why did you fail? Why couldn't you change this reality that now threatens us all?"
Ricardo let out a bitter laugh, a dry sound that echoed in the interrogation room. "Change reality, you say. As if we were omnipotent gods. Our prophecies spoke of a time of great imbalance, yes, a cosmic Pachakutik, when the veil between worlds would tear and the Ancient Horrors of the Void would attempt to reclaim creation. Our ancestral duty was to watch those veils, to strengthen Gaia's energetic seals, to mitigate the influence of the dark stars, and to guide humanity so that its own inner light, its K'uh, could resist the tide of eternal night."
"But the most ancient prophecies also spoke of 'catalysts'," Isabel added, her violet eyes fixed on the figures on the screen, with a defiant gaze that did not flinch. "Of those who, in their hubris and their thirst for control, would play with forces they do not comprehend, who would open dimensional doors that should have remained sealed for all eternity. Are you not, sirs of the Thirteen Families, describing yourselves?"
"We are not interested in your cheap theology or your culpable evasions," Tanaka interjected with his usual analytical coldness from the hologram. "What concerns us directly is how that reality you could not, or would not, stop, could have affected us, the Thirteen Families, for a long time, and how it affects us so critically now. Did your prophecies mention our specific role in this great and terrible drama? Did they speak of our end... or of our necessary continuation as guides for this planet?" The selfish pragmatism of his question was as transparent as crystal.
A grim, almost imperceptible smile touched Ricardo's lips. "The most ancient prophecies of the Brotherhood, those whispered in the secret tongue of the Nahuals before your lineages even learned to count the gold and lands you now possess, speak of all those who play with the power of the universe without understanding its true sacred source, without respecting the fundamental balance and the karmic consequences of their actions, ending up being devoured by the very machinery they tried to control with such arrogance." He looked at each of the faces projected on the screen. "Does that description not paint you to a T (paint you in full), honorable sirs of the world?"
Isabel nodded, taking up the word again. "Our texts spoke of a 'Shadow Behind the World's Throne,' a corrupting influence that fed on the ambition of Earth's rulers, making them believe they were masters when in reality they were only pawns in a much vaster and more ancient game. And they clearly warned that when that Shadow was challenged by its own instruments, or when it attempted to be replaced by an even greater horror from the Void..."
Fear, raw and naked, flickered for a fleeting instant in the eyes of several Council members on the screen. The idea that their own actions, their own secret history of manipulation, had been foretold, that their destiny might be sealed by ancient prophecies from a magical order they themselves had tried to destroy and now desperately needed, was an unbearably bitter pill.
"What else do you know?" demanded The Director's metallic voice, cutting through the tense silence that had settled. "What do you know of the entity Cthulhu? Of the Netlin beings? Of the war being waged in the heavens above us and in the depths beneath our feet?"
Isabel and Ricardo exchanged a quick, meaningful glance. They were in the hands of their enemies, yes, but they possessed knowledge, fragments of an ancestral truth, that these tyrants now needed with an urgency bordering on panic. The irony was almost savory, despite the danger. The mental chess game, the negotiation for information that could save them or condemn them further, was just beginning.