The decision to return to the Azure Dragon stronghold was the most insane gambit they had yet conceived.
They were traitors, wanted for sedition, walking back into the heart of the very fortress that had condemned them.
But it was the only move left on the board.
"We are not going back to save Valerius," Kiera clarified, her voice as sharp and cold as a shard of glass.
"We are going back to stop Charon. And we are going to use the devil himself to do it." Their plan was audacious in its simplicity.
They would contact Elder Valerius directly. They would offer him the one thing he now craved more than power: survival.
They would trade him proof of Charon's presence, proof of the imminent assassination attempt, in exchange for a full, public confession of his own crimes and his allegiance to the Vanguard.
It was a deal with the devil, an offer of a quick, relatively clean death by his own clan's justice in exchange for helping them stop a greater evil.
To do this, they needed Jin.
They sent him a single, desperate message: "The serpent is in the house. We need a direct line to the dragon's ear." Jin, his own life now forfeit if the internal witch hunt discovered his actions, took the final risk.
He bypassed layers of security, risking immediate discovery, and patched them into a 'dead-air' channel in Valerius's own private council chambers.
They caught him in the middle of directing his fleet, his face a mask of furious, desperate authority.
When Kiera's voice suddenly echoed in his private chambers, the powerful Elder looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"Valerius," Kiera's voice was cold and steady.
"You have a traitor in your house. And it is not me. A Vanguard assassin is in the stronghold. His code name is Charon. He is here to 'clean house.' He is here for you." Valerius's face, a canvas of arrogance and power, contorted with a flash of pure, animal fear.
He knew the name. He knew what it meant.
"Lies!" he spat, but the denial was weak, his bravado shattered.
"Why would you, a traitor, warn me?" "Because my enemy's enemy is a temporary, distasteful convenience," Kiera retorted.
"And I would rather see you face the justice of our clan than be erased by a rival spymaster. I am sending you a file. It contains the energy signature of the assassin. Your own internal sensors can verify his presence, if you dare to look." On the other end, Ryu, guided by Jin, focused his will.
He isolated the cold, methodical energy of Charon from the roaring noise of the stronghold and converted it into a readable data packet, a 'fingerprint' of a ghost.
He sent it through the channel.
On Valerius's console, a new signature appeared, a foreign entity moving silently through the upper levels of the spire, towards the council chambers.
The proof was undeniable. The betrayal was absolute.
"What do you want?" Valerius whispered, his voice that of a condemned man.
"A full confession," Kiera stated, her terms absolute.
"You will go before an emergency session of the remaining council. You will confess your allegiance to the Vanguard. You will name every traitor you know. You will expose the entire conspiracy. You will give my brother the justice you denied him. You will do this, and in return, I will give you the one thing your new friends will not: a warrior's death at the hands of your own people, instead of an assassin's blade in the dark." The choice was laid bare.
A path to a final, desperate act of redemption, or an ignoble end at the hands of the very shadows he had served.
For the first time, the cornered dragon and the fugitive ghosts had a single, common enemy.