Mikhailis didn’t even jump.
He just sighed, shoulders sinking a little.
"Rodion, can we not do this right now?" he muttered under his breath, making sure his lips barely moved. To anyone watching, he would just look like a man talking to himself—a thing people already believed about him anyway.
"That’s called multi-front diplomacy," he said. "You should respect my versatility."
He rolled his eyes.
"Do you always have to phrase it like that?"
He huffed sothing like a laugh, though it ca out thin. The joking helped a little, made his chest feel less tight. It was one of the reasons he kept Rodion around, even when the AI annoyed him. Sarcasm was still better than silence.
He walked deeper until the last hints of campfire light were cut off by the trees, leaving him in a softer, more natural darkness. Above, the branches tangled against a pale strip of sky, and a small wind moved through, whispering over leaves and cloth.
When he finally stopped, it was beside a large old tree with a scarred trunk. Moss climbed halfway up its bark, and its roots twisted like sleeping limbs.
He leaned his shoulder against it and let his head rest back for a mont, closing his eyes.
The cold seeped slowly through his coat.
For a few heartbeats, he just stood there, breathing.
You could still go back in, a quiet voice inside him suggested. Lie down beside Elowen. Pretend you never noticed the letter. Let soone else play double agent. Let soone else enter the dungeon first.
The idea lasted exactly three seconds.
Then another voice inside him, dryer and more honest, answered it.
You know there is no "soone else" for this job.
He exhaled and reached into his inner coat pocket.
His fingers brushed sothing smooth and stiff.
The letter.
Even without looking, he could feel the faint hum of magic woven into it. A subtle thing, not flashy. Whoever sealed it understood how to avoid detection spells.
He pulled it out into the thin light that made it through the branches.
A small, precise sigil glowed faintly on the seal. Not the gaudy official crest the Technomancer League used for their public treaties and grand declarations. This one was smaller, etched with thin lines that curved and twisted in a pattern only soone trained in their inner symbols would recognize.
He recognized it.
He had seen it once in a confiscated manual from an earlier raid. It marked "internal circulation—strategic." High-tier, not ant for ordinary officers.
Placed in a warded chest without breaking a single rune, he thought, thumb rubbing the edge of the seal. That alone shows how serious they are. Or how arrogant.
The mory ca back clearly: just after midnight, before he had gone to Elowen’s tent.
He had gone to check a secure chest holding so arcane notes and maps. The chest was warded—not with cheap market charms, but with layered spells set by Serelith and cross-checked by Vyrelda, because both of them trusted neither the war nor Mikhailis’s habit of attracting trouble.
When he lifted the lid, the first thing he’d done was check the wards. All intact. No break, no distortion.
But there, resting neatly on top of his rolled maps, had been this letter.
No burn marks.
No teleport scorch.
No sll of ozone.
Just... placed.
Like a calling card from soone saying, We walked through your locked door without touching the handle.
He had closed the chest again then, pretending he hadn’t seen it, because he needed ti to think. Needed to see Elowen first. Needed, maybe, one more night of feeling her so he could walk into what ca next without breaking halfway.
Now, alone with the trees, he lifted the letter closer to his eyes.
His thumb brushed the seal.
So what is the aning of this...
He hesitated.
He could burn it. Call Serelith. Call Elowen. Pretend he had never read it alone. That would be the safer move, the more honest one.
But if he wanted to know how far the Technomancer League was willing to go... he needed to hear from them directly.
He broke the seal.
The wax didn’t crack like normal wax. It dissolved into ash and vanished, leaving no trace.
The paper unfolded smoothly under his fingers.
The content wasn’t written simply.
At first glance, it looked like ordinary neat handwriting in a clean, controlled script. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw it—ink that shifted slightly depending on the angle, lines of rune-script half-hidden between ordinary words, and punctuation marks placed in patterns that ford a secondary layer of aning.
If soone tried to scry it, they would see only a harmless, vague letter about academic collaboration and "future opportunities." It was the kind of letter you could wave around in a court and say, Look, just a polite invitation.
Mikhailis read past that surface.
He followed the hidden structure, the way so sentences lined up if you ignored every third word, the way so runes activated a thin after-image in his mind when he traced them with his eyes.
Rodion stayed quiet, only recording.
Bit by bit, the real ssage ca together.
They wanted him.
Not Silvarion.
Not Elowen.
Him.
They didn’t use the word "informant." Too ugly. Too sharp. Instead, they wrapped it in softer cloth—"context provider," "misunderstanding clarifier," "observer with unique insight."
Informant in a nice suit is still an informant, he thought.
They explained their "vision": He would help them understand Silvarion’s movents, intentions, internal debates. Not by spying, oh no, but by "correcting misinterpretations" and offering "nuanced fraworks."
He snorted under his breath.
Then the dungeon part.
They promised to escort him into the dungeon.
Not physically walk beside him—no, they weren’t that stupid—but to clear the way. They would control their forces, set aside their patrols, make sure no Technomancer squad would interfere with his entry.
He would go first.
As a neutral mind.
As a scientist.
They underlined that word more than once.
They promised... no interference.
Which ans they fully expect the dungeon to do that job for them, he thought.
If he survived, he would share what he learned: structure, traps, artifact locations. They would be "partners in exploration." Joint research, joint rights, joint profit.
They offered him wealth beyond asure. It was almost funny how formal the phrasing was about sothing so blunt: shares in future dungeon exploitation, access to rare materials, a personal vault protected under League laws.
Then, as if wealth and arcane resources weren’t enough, they moved to the part they clearly thought would sound irresistible to soone with his reputation.
Beautiful won from every kingdom aligned with the League.
Courtesans trained in arts and etiquette. Noblewon with "curious minds." Sorceresses who could "match his intellect in bed and in debate."
It was written carefully, almost politely, but the aning was obvious: We know you like won. We can feed that appetite forever.
Mikhailis’s mouth twitched.
"Subtle," he muttered.
He almost laughed.
You’re jealous you don’t get a harem offer, he thought.
He shook his head, a little smile slipping out despite the situation.
Still, none of that—gold, artifacts, beds filled with foreign perfu—was what actually made his pulse stall for a mont.
The line that hooked him was written almost modestly, almost like an afterthought.
A research permit.
Not just a simple pass.
A full-spectrum research charter.
The letter described it in careful, structured terms:
He would have access to laboratories across the entire Technomancer League. Central facilities. Regional research towers. Field sites in deserts, mountains, coastal fortresses. Dinsional testing chambers in Athellin. Rune-chanic forges in Lorimont. Botanical labs in Aradia’s oases.
Archives.
Restricted sections. Old manuscripts locked behind three approval seals. Spellbooks that the church labeled as "dangerous speculation" and buried deep.
Experintal fields.
Areas where he could grow things that normal kingdoms would never allow. Hybrid insect colonies. Necro-botanical test plots. Controlled plagues. Mana exposure zones.
Unrestricted.
Unsupervised.
Free.
No church oversight.
No priest breathing down his neck asking if insects with extra eyes counted as heresy.
No ethics council raising their hands and saying, "But what if this is morally questionable?"
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