A group of young Luminaires sat in a small coffee shop, cups of tea steaming gently in front of them as each picked at a simple pastry, the atmosphere relaxed despite the tension hanging over the city.
"Did you hear?" one of the men said casually. "Apparently there's an Eireindaile agent inside the city, or something like that."
The woman beside him turned her head toward him, lowering her voice instinctively. "I know… it feels like you don't even know who you can trust anymore these days." She hesitated, then added quickly, "Well—except you guys, obviously."
The words lingered just long enough for doubt to creep in, and she rubbed the back of her neck, suddenly self-conscious.
'Did that sound awkward?'
One of the men chuckled and shook his head. "You're right. Who knows what'll happen, but at least we'll have each other."
She laughed along and nodded.
'I've known them for so long. Why would that even sound strange?'
She was about to say something else when she felt it. Not a bump, but a deliberate pressure against her shoulder.
"Remember who you are."
The voice was soft, female, and far too close.
She spun around in her chair. "Who's there?"
The others stared at her, confused, one of them even laughing as he followed her gaze. "There's no one there."
She swallowed, rubbing her shoulder slowly as if the sensation might still be lingering.
'I swear someone touched me just now.'
Before she could dwell on it, the conversation resumed around her, voices rising and overlapping as friendly arguments broke out once more, until one of the men finally leaned toward her, brow creasing slightly.
"Hey," he said, quieter this time, leaning in. "You alright?"
The woman turned toward him, her eyes unfocused and strangely dull, as if something behind them had gone out.
"For Eireindaile."
He blinked, confusion twisting into a laugh. "What are you on about?"
She answered by lunging forward.
The butter knife flashed once, then sank into his throat, his laughter cutting off into a choking gasp as blood spilled across the table. Shock rippled through the café, cups tipping and chairs scraping back, but she didn't stop. She tore the knife free and moved on immediately, stabbing again, and again, whispering Eireindaile under her breath like a prayer or a curse.
A Luminaire from the neighboring table reacted on instinct, leaping forward as golden light flared into the shape of a blade, and in a single clean motion she severed the rampaging woman's head, the body collapsing in a boneless heap as blood sprayed across the tiles.
"Damn these Eireindaile," someone spat through clenched teeth.
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" one of the men screamed, staring at the corpse in disbelief as voices erupted around him.
Syleena didn't wait to hear more.
She stepped out of the café calmly, leaving the screaming, the blood, and the broken bodies behind as the door swung shut, her footsteps carrying her down the street without pause.
'They're not even hesitating anymore,' she thought, moving on. 'Not even to kill their own.'
Syleena stopped at the dead end and glanced over her shoulder, her eyes cold, then raised two fingers and snapped them together as ripples spread across the wall like water disturbed by a thrown stone. She waited a single heartbeat before stepping forward, passing through as the surface yielded without resistance.
An empty space opened around her, containing nothing but a simple desk lit by a lone candle, with a few books scattered across it, and as soon as she was inside the wall behind her solidified once more.
She moved to the desk and scribbled into a notebook as her thoughts aligned.
'One hundred and fifty Thoughts per day, just to keep the barrier active.'
Just as mathematics flowed naturally into physics, the mind pathway flowed into illusion, and as long as she could remember she had favored that path, almost more than mind itself. It was never something she could admit back home, which had forced her to cultivate it in secret, and in the current climate illusion had proven far more practical than mind ever could.
Her gaze swept across the hidden room.
The barrier's core was a rank four mote, one her family had reluctantly agreed to lend her when she traveled to Velthoria in case of emergency, a decision that had seemed reasonable at the time and had since become one of the primary reasons she had managed to stay out of their reach for so long.
She leaned back into the chair and let her consciousness slip inward.
Her inner realm unfolded into a crystal-white void, with a colossal river of Will dominating its center, coiling in on itself as its current surged unchecked, powerful enough to feel oppressive even at a distance.
With a thought, a stone coffin no larger than a lapdog formed at her side.
She reached inside and drew out three scales.
'Aphoria scales…'
Each was worth three hundred mindstones, enough to buy safety, loyalty, or blood, depending on who held them. She dismissed the coffin and scoffed softly.
Every time she summoned it, she thought of Kael.
She had only given him the recipe for the rank-one version, and yet she regretted it every single day. At the time, offering him a soul-pathway recipe had seemed clever, a way to slow him down, to burden him with something abstract and inefficient. Only later had she understood how monstrously useful a storage mote truly was.
She had believed she was guiding him.
But control had slipped through her fingers almost immediately.
While she planned and waited, Kael moved. He slaughtered Valthorne Luminaires without hesitation, tearing holes through careful arrangements and long-laid expectations, and with every body that fell her grip on the situation weakened further, not just over him, but over the entire board.
She had thought him reckless.
Now she knew better.
Kael wasn't out of control.
He simply wasn't hers.
She raised her hand and a mote took shape, a small sphere of water hovering above her palm. She dropped the scales into it and watched as they dissolved without residue.
'That should last a few weeks more.'
The mote vanished with a thought.
What were motes, really? Essence of heaven made tangible, rules and laws given form, objects that defied common sense?
Yes. All of that.
And none of it.
People liked to pretend they understood motes, liked to speak with confidence and authority, but the truth remained stubbornly out of reach. Beyond the paragons, no one possessed even the faintest grasp of what motes truly were. They were described, categorized, theorized over endlessly, yet anyone who claimed true understanding was regarded as little more than a fool.
Still, some truths could be treated as absolute.
Motes were born from Thoughts and Will. That much was undeniable. Wild motes absorbed the Will of heaven itself, naturally generating Thoughts in the process. Inner-realm motes, on the other hand, consumed their user's Will and Thoughts, refining them into something controlled, something usable.
Higher-ranked motes contained more laws, and more laws demanded more Will and Thoughts. The relationship was simple, almost intuitive. It was also why most Luminaires avoided using motes above their rank. They lacked the reserves to sustain them without crippling their minds, and prolonged use only worsened the problem as natural Thought production declined under the growing thirst of the mote.
But that didn't mean higher-ranked motes were unusable.
It only meant they were dangerous.
Syleena stepped closer to her river of Will and studied it.
'How strong will it be when I reach rank four?'
Her eyes dulled as the thought lingered.
Luminaires had existed for millions of years, yet when it came to motes, no one had ever surpassed Zenith Axiom Paragon. They alone had carved that understanding into the world, and by passing their knowledge down through generations, a crucial truth had been uncovered.
Motes needed sustenance.
Through understanding, one could gather "food," refinement materials that could temporarily replace the Thoughts and Will a mote would otherwise consume inside an inner realm. Feed a mote properly, and it would sit dormant, contained, without draining its owner.
'I'm running out of scales…'
She lowered herself into the void and sat.
In theory, even a rank-one Luminaire could house an endless amount of motes, and of any rank, so long as they possessed enough food to prevent it from consuming their own Thoughts and Will. In practice, it was absurd. The cost alone made it impossible.
Syleena had spent refinement materials worth nine hundred mindstones just to keep the mote from draining her for three weeks. That level of expense was unthinkable for most and only possible because her family had supplied her with scales. Even then, containment was only half the problem.
Activating the mote even once still demanded a staggering price.
And that price was hers alone to pay.