[Southern Road — Day 5]
The return journey was faster.
---
[Imperial City — South Gate — Day 8 — 3:00 PM]
The wall of Imperial City ca into view.
The gate guard looked at the team.
Looked at Grim.
Grim holding Maya’s stone. Eighty centiters. Completely harmless in appearance.
Raven approached him and whispered sothing.
The guard made a note. Let them pass.
Emily ca up to Raven curiously.
"What did you say to him?"
Raven smiled at Emily.
"A Circle code. He’s a mber, and now that Cael isn’t lurking around, we can use our contacts."
Kira to the team once they were inside: "Four Temple guards at the gate. Fewer than the first ti."
"Is that good?" asked the boy.
"It ans Cael withdrew his squad." Kira. "It doesn’t an no one is watching us."
"So?"
"It ans whoever is watching us now is better at not being seen."
The boy processed that.
He kept walking.
---
[Old Market District — The Column — 4:00 PM]
Viktor was already there.
As always.
He stood up when they entered. Evaluated them one by one with focused attention.
Alex — the physical changes more pronounced. The crimson veins more extensive. The white streak at his temples.
Grim in Form 2/7 — three ters, translucent armor, permanent crimson flas. First ti Viktor had seen him in this form. His expression didn’t change, but his eyes paused for an extra second.
And at the end — the boy. Blue clothes. No mask. No violet in his eyes.
Viktor processed them all.
He sat down.
He pointed to the chairs.
The teapot was already poured.
---
"Fragnt 5 is in the Celestial Academy," said Alex.
Viktor picked up his cup.
He held it without drinking.
Eight seconds of silence.
"Confird?"
**"Original Harvester’s mories."** Grim. **"Confird."**
Viktor looked at Grim.
Then at the map on the table — updated, with markings from months of intelligence work. The mark on the Eastern Island visible.
He looked at it.
"That changes everything."
He folded his hands.
"The Temple has a permanent presence in the Academy. Father Agustín has direct influence over Director Magnus." A pause. "Magnus doesn’t fully know it. He believes it’s institutional cooperation between the Temple and the Academy."
"Isn’t it?"
"It’s more than that." Viktor. "Agustín uses the Academy as an operating base. He’s had the oldest building under restricted access for two years — he told Magnus it was structural restoration."
Alex looked at him.
"Does Agustín know about Fragnt 5?"
"He knows there’s anomalous energy in that building. He doesn’t know exactly what it is." Viktor. "Not yet."
---
"Tell about Agustín," said Alex.
Viktor considered.
"Thirty years building the Temple’s doctrine on the Fragnts."
"He’s not a fanatic — fanatics are predictable. Agustín is a strategist."
"The difference?"
"A fanatic acts on faith. Agustín acts on logic." Viktor. "He genuinely believes that the Fragnts are the greatest threat to the world’s order. That any cost to eliminate them is justifiable."
"What does he base that on?"
"On sothing he saw thirty years ago. The Temple’s archives have it sealed." Viktor. "I don’t know exactly what it was. But after that event, Agustín dedicated his life to this."
"Is he completely wrong?"
"No." Viktor. "The Fragnts are dangerous. The corruption is real. What’s wrong is the conclusion — that the solution is to eliminate the Fragnts instead of understanding why they exist."
"A strategist with an incomplete premise."
"Exactly." Viktor. "That makes him more dangerous than a fanatic. His logic is internally consistent if you accept his premise. And there’s no way to refute it without information he doesn’t have and that the Temple doesn’t want him to have."
---
The plan.
Viktor built it while the team listened.
Maya with her notebook. Kira with specific questions about access and terrain. Raven evaluating weak points in silence.
"Alex can’t enter as Alex Carter. The bounty is still active — 500,000 crowns, updated description." Viktor looked at Alex. "The physical changes are identifiable. The eyes. The hair. The companion."
**"Thank you,"** said Grim.
"It’s just information." Viktor. "You need full covers. Docunts, stories, reasons to be at the Academy that will withstand scrutiny from Temple personnel."
"Can the Circle get that?" asked Raven.
"The Circle can get things the Temple wouldn’t want to know about." Viktor returned to the map. "But I need ti. Two weeks for covers that can withstand soone at Agustín’s level."
"Two weeks," said Maya. "And in the anti?"
"Prepare." Viktor looked at them. "And rest. Because what cos after isn’t going to have much rest available."
He activated the Circle that afternoon — not all of them. The right ones. Those with experience, with infiltration, with the Academy in particular.
---
Before the team left the room, Viktor pointed at the boy.
"Who is he?"
"The previous bearer of Fragnt 4," said Alex.
Viktor processed that. He looked at the boy with his usual direct evaluation.
The boy looked back. Unintimidated.
"Does he have a na?"
"Not yet," said Alex.
Viktor looked directly at the boy.
"Do you want one?"
The boy didn’t answer imdiately.
Five seconds.
"Yes."
"Then choose." Viktor said it without elaboration. "A na is yours when you choose it. Not when soone gives it to you."
The boy looked at him.
"Just like that?"
Alex answered that last part.
"Just like that. I also chose mine when I was old enough to decide for myself at the orphanage."
The boy looked at the team — at Alex, at Grim, at the group he had learned to recognize as a reference for how to exist.
He thought.
Not long. Like soone who already knew and only needed permission to say it.
He said the na.
"Max."
Emily smiled.
Kira nodded with the seriousness of soone cataloging important information.
Raven: "Good."
**"Good,"** repeated Grim.
Viktor wrote it in his notebook without further comnt.
Max looked at the paper where Viktor had written it.
The first ti his na existed in any docunt that wasn’t a Herald’s registry.
---
[Imperial City — Two weeks]
The Circle working.
The team with ti that had no imdiate urgency and that none of them fully knew how to handle.
Raven in the artisan district finding the blood magic practitioner from the first visit — completing a pending exchange of techniques that had been interrupted in Veltharr.
Emily with a local herbalist, different from the one in Veltharr but with access to southern region plants that complented what she had learned before.
Kira building a contact network in Imperial City with the sa efficiency she had shown in Veltharr — four people in two days, information about the Academy that the Circle’s maps didn’t have.
Maya in the Circle’s library — archives on the Celestial Academy, its history, its structure, the access points that official records didn’t docunt.
Alex and Grim with Viktor twice a week — coordinating, adjusting the plan, incorporating the information that Kira and Maya brought.
Corruption stable at 76% with Emily’s sessions.
Fragnt 4 unintegrated but without additional pressure.
Ti working as it should — preparing instead of reacting.
---
[Imperial City — Night of Day 13]
Alex’s device vibrated.
A ssage from Seraph.
No text.
Just coordinates — a city to the west, two days’ travel.
And below Seraph’s coordinates, with a different signature — one none of them recognized — a single line.
*"It’s ti to talk. Bring the Core."*
Alex looked at the ssage.
He called Grim.
Grim read the coordinates. Read the unknown signature.
His crimson flas stilled in that specific way they did when he processed sothing he recognized without knowing exactly where from.
**"The signature,"** said Grim.
"Do you recognize it?"
**"No."** His eyes on the device. **"But Fragnt 2 does, and that’s worrying."**
Alex looked at him.
**"It’s Fragnt energy."**
"Which one?"
**"The 6th."**
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