The sound of Elara's retreating footsteps on the cobblestones faded, leaving Kevin alone in the quiet hum of 'The Grumbling Bean'. He stared at the two empty teacups on the table, his own and the one she had left behind. The faint, floral scent of her tea lingered in the air, a ghost of her presence.
Well, he thought, the single word echoing in the sudden stillness of his mind. That escalated with the precise, unstoppable force of a steam-press.
His initial feeling of triumph at successfully manipulating her into the conversation had evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp focus. An invitation to the Church of Steam and Machinery was not a small thing. It was a summons into the lion's den, a place where the very air was likely threaded with detection rituals and the watchful eyes of high-sequence clerics.
Calm, he commanded himself, taking a slow, deliberate sip of his now-lukewarm tea. The bitterness was grounding. Panic is a frayed thread. It snags and breaks. Analyze.
He replayed the entire interaction in his mind's eye, frame by frame. Her probing comment about coincidence. His deflection about the tannery. The moment he'd allowed a sliver of the Parasitic Link's chaos to leak through his Woven Concealment. That had been the crucial move. She hadn't sensed him; she'd sensed the Werewolf's fate clinging to him like spiritual static. She was mistaking the shield for the sword.
She doesn't think I'm the Werewolf, he reasoned. The aura doesn't match. But she believes I was there, that I witnessed it, that I'm contaminated by the event. She thinks I'm a who got lucky—or unlucky. A source of information. A lead.
He finished his tea and, with a pragmatist's thrift, reached over and drained her cup as well. Samuel raised a weary eyebrow from behind the counter. Kevin ignored him, placing the correct number of coins on the table.
Stepping back onto the street, the evening air felt different. Sharper. Every shadow seemed to hold a potential observer from the Church. He pulled his collar up, not against the cold, but as a physical barrier against the world.
The meeting is tomorrow after work. That gives me time. I need to prepare. I need to understand the battlefield.
He began the walk home, his mind a whirlwind of plans and contingencies.
First, the Parasitic Link. He focused inward, feeling the cold, thin wire of connection that led to the Werewolf. The beast's thread was a throbbing cord of pain, fury, and… movement. It was no longer in the East Borough. It was fleeing, heading towards the industrial docks. The Hunters were still on its trail; he could feel the pricking sensation of their focused intent, like needles following the blood-scent. Good. The chaos was ongoing. The smokescreen was holding.
I need to keep it alive, but contained, he thought. A cornered animal is a chaotic one. A dead one is useless.
He paused by a lamppost, pretending to check his pocket watch. Instead, he subtly performed another Fate Drip. This time, he didn't steal from a random merchant. He targeted a different thread—a pickpocket operating a few streets over, a man whose fate was already a tangled mess of petty crime and narrow escapes. Kevin siphoned a tiny portion of the man's "luck," the inherent probability of his next successful theft, and funneled it through the Parasitic Link to the Werewolf.
The effect was immediate. On his spiritual senses, the Werewolf's thread twitched. The beast would find a momentarily unguarded warehouse door, a forgotten sewer grate—a small, fortuitous break that would allow it to evade its pursuers for a few more hours. The pickpocket, meanwhile, would likely fumble his next attempt and get caught. A minor, cruel adjustment in the grand tapestry.
Regrettable, but necessary, Kevin mused, resuming his walk. The stability of my own thread depends on the controlled instability of his.
Second, the Church. He knew the public façade of the Church of Steam and Machinery—a place that celebrated innovation, industry, and the logical order of the world. But he was walking into its Backlund headquarters, the heart of its Beyonder operations. What would he face?
He ran through his strengthened abilities, assessing his tools for the coming trial.
False Presence would be his emergency escape. If things went catastrophically wrong, he could, for a single, crucial moment, rewrite the perception of everyone in the room, making them see him as a different person, or perhaps not see him at all. But it was a one-shot weapon. Using it would reveal his true capabilities and mark him as a high-priority enemy.
Illusory Destiny was his primary instrument. He wouldn't be lying. He would be weaving a narrative of probability around the truth. He would make the story of "Kevin Adams, the accidental witness" feel inevitable and complete. He had to craft the perfect lie: one made entirely of facts, just arranged in the most misleading way possible.
He arrived home, performing his now-instinctive anti-divination rituals with extra care. Inside, he didn't rest. He went to his hidden floorboard and retrieved his notes on the orthodox churches, specifically the Machinery Hivemind.
"The Hivemind values order, information, and the elimination of variables," he read from his own cramped handwriting. "Their Beyonders, particularly of the Paragon Pathway, are logical, meticulous, and distrustful of chaos. They see fate or the un contained/ controlled not as a web of possibilities, but as a system of cause and effect to be documented and controlled."
He spent the night in a state of focused meditation, calming his spirit, reinforcing his mental defenses, and planning every possible response for the following day's interrogation.
The next workday was an exercise in surreal tension. The air in the Harding & Sons office was thick with the mundane, yet every scratch of a pen, every turn of a ledger page, felt amplified. Kevin performed his duties with robotic precision, his mind a fortress.
Elara was there, the picture of professional composure. But he could feel her attention like a low-grade current in the air. Her gaze would occasionally drift over him, not lingering, but analyzing. He made sure to drop a pen, to sigh wearily over a column of numbers, to be the very essence of harmless banality.
During lunch, he avoided the park bench. Instead, he bought a stale meat pie from a street vendor and ate it while walking through a crowded market, letting the cacophony of human fate—the desires, the disappointments, the trivial dramas—wash over him. It was practice. He needed to be able to read the threads of a room instantly at the Church.
The clock's hand seemed to crawl towards five o'clock. When it finally arrived, the ritual of packing up felt funereal.
Elara was at the door waiting for him. "Ready, Mr. Adams?" she asked, her tone neutral.
"As I'll ever be, Miss Vance," he replied, injecting a note of nervous reluctance into his voice.
They walked in silence through the bustling streets of the financial district, then into the more austere, cleaner avenues of South Borough. The architecture shifted from ornate commercial buildings to sturdy, imposing structures of iron and granite. And then he saw it.
The Church of Steam and Machinery was not a cathedral of spires and stained glass. It was a monumental edifice that resembled a cross between a factory and a library. Two massive, interlocking gear-shaped windows were set high on its façade, and a great clock tower, its mechanisms visible through protective glass, dominated the skyline, ticking with a sound that was less a chime and more a deep, resonant K-CHUNK that vibrated through the pavement.
A statement of absolute order, Kevin thought, feeling a thrill of apprehension. Time itself, measured and controlled.
Elara led him not through the main public entrance, but through a smaller, reinforced door to the side. The change was immediate. The hum of machinery was louder here, a constant, pervasive background drone. The air smelled of oil, ozone, and old paper. The corridors were lit by clean, white electric bulbs, a testament to the Church's mastery of technology.
They passed robed clerics who moved with purposeful strides, their eyes sharp and assessing. Kevin kept his gaze downcast, his spiritual perception wide open. He could see the threads here—neat, organized, and strong, woven into the very structure of the place. It was a web of sanctioned destiny, and he was an uninvited spider.
Elara stopped before a plain, unmarked metal door. She produced a intricate key, not to unlock it, but to place it in a slot beside the frame. There was a series of clicks and a hiss of pneumatics before the door swung open.
The room within was a spartan office. A metal desk. Two rigid chairs. Shelves filled with meticulously labeled boxes and files. But Kevin's attention was immediately drawn to the man sitting behind the desk.
He was older, with a bald head and a face that looked like it had been forged from iron and then polished smooth by years of relentless logic. He wore the robes of a high-ranking cleric, but on his lapel was a small, intricate pin of interlocking gears—the same symbol Kevin had seen in his vision. His eyes were the colour of cooled slag, and they held no warmth, only a profound, analytical depth.
"Archdeacon Richter," Elara said, her voice respectful. "This is Kevin Adams, the clerk from Harding and Sons I mentioned."
Archdeacon Richter's gaze settled on Kevin. It felt like being scanned by a mechanical device. Kevin didn't look away, but he allowed a slight, nervous tremor to run through his hands.
"Sit, Mr. Adams," Richter's voice was a low, steady rumble, like the turning of a great engine.
Kevin sat, folding his hands in his lap. Elara took the seat beside him, a silent observer.
"Miss Vance believes you may have witnessed something of interest two nights ago in East Borough," Richter began, without preamble. "A… disturbance."
Kevin blinked. "A disturbance, Your Grace? I'm not sure I…"
"The smell of wet dog and ozone," Elara interjected softly. "You mentioned it was from the tannery. There is no tannery in that part of East Borough."
Kevin feigned a moment of dawning, uncomfortable realization. He let the silence hang for a beat, then sighed, slumping his shoulders slightly.
"I… I see. I had hoped I was mistaken." He looked at Richter, then at Elara, letting genuine-seeming fear enter his eyes. "I was taking a… a different route home. A shortcut. I heard… screams. And then a growl. Something not human."
"Describe it," Richter commanded.
"I didn't see it clearly," Kevin said, which was the truth. "It was a massive shadow. Muscular. Fast. Its eyes… they glowed red. I heard a man cry for help, and then the sound of… of tearing." He shuddered, the memory of the laborer's terror easily recalled. "I froze. I'm not a brave man, Your Grace. I hid behind a stack of crates. The thing, it moved past me, and I smelled it. Wet fur. And something else, like the air after a lightning strike. Ozone. Then it was gone, and I ran."
It was a perfect, curated truth. He focused his will, activating Illusory Destiny on himself momentarily . He wasn't creating a false memory; he was reinforcing the narrative of his story, making it feel like the only logical, complete account of events. He wove the threads of his fear, his passivity, and his luck at escaping unseen into a coherent, unassailable whole.
Richter's metallic eyes narrowed slightly. He picked up a small, complex device from his desk—a series of crystalline lenses set in a brass housing. He pointed it at Kevin.
A spiritual resonance detector, Kevin realized. He held his breath, keeping his Woven Concealment perfectly tuned. He was a Sequence 7 Veil Weaver, but he was projecting the faint, chaotic residue of a Sequence 7 Mutant and the weak, unformed aura of a potential Sequence 9 or 8.
The device hummed, its lenses flickering with a faint light. It didn't flare. It simply registered the chaotic "noise."
"Your spiritual aura is… contaminated," Richter stated, setting the device down. "It matches the residual signature of the creature we are hunting. A Mutant Pathway Beyonder, Sequence Seven: Werewolf."
Kevin allowed himself to look appropriately horrified and confused. "Contaminated? What does that mean? Am I… am I in danger? "he said his voice infused with fear and panic
"From the creature? Unlikely. It has moved on," Elara said. "But you are fortunate. Werewolves are not known for leaving witnesses."
"It didn't see me," Kevin insisted, layering his Illusory Destiny again. "I was lucky."
"Indeed," Richter said, his tone giving nothing away. He steepled his fingers. "Miss Vance also informs me you have a talent for noticing… irregularities. In numbers."
The change in topic was jarring, a classic interrogation technique. Kevin was ready.
"It's my job, Your Grace," he said, shrugging modestly. "Numbers tell a story. When the story doesn't make sense, it usually means someone is lying. I simply look for the parts that don't fit the narrative."
Richter almost, almost smiled. It was a fleeting crack in his iron façade. "A useful philosophy. And have you noticed any other… irregularities? At the firm? Perhaps related to the client 'Precision Gears of Backlund'?"
This was the real test. They were probing to see if his "talent" was mundane or supernatural.
Kevin furrowed his brow, adopting the expression of a man searching his memory. "Precision Gears… their inventory logs are a mess. The waste ratios are inconsistent. It could be poor management, but…" He paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him. "It almost looks as if high-value components are being logged as 'scrap' or 'waste' and then disappearing from the records entirely, they may be purposely not auditing properly."
He looked directly at Elara. "It's the kind of thing you noticed with the inkwell, Miss Vance. A small discrepancy that seems like an accident, but when you look at the whole picture… it starts to look intentional."
The room was silent save for the hum of the machinery. He had perfectly mirrored her own suspicion back at her, using her metaphor. He had presented himself as a man with a sharp, but purely mundane, mind.
Richter leaned back in his chair. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Adams. You have been most… illuminating." He gestured to the door. "Miss Vance will see you out."
The dismissal was clear. Kevin stood, bowing his head slightly. "Your Grace. Miss Vance."
Elara led him back through the sterile corridors and out into the evening air. The transition from the controlled environment of the Church to the chaotic reality of Backlund was jarring.
Outside the great gear-shaped doors, she turned to him. "You should be safe now, Mr. Adams. The… contamination will fade. Thank you for your assistance."
"Of course," Kevin said, adjusting his spectacles. "I… I hope you catch that thing."
"We will," she said, her grey eyes holding his for a moment longer than necessary. There was still a flicker of something there—a lingering doubt, an unsolved variable. "The gears of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine."
"A comforting thought," Kevin replied, offering a weak smile.
He turned and walked away, not looking back. He could feel her gaze on his back until he turned the corner.
Only then, shrouded by the shadows of a bustling Backlund street, did he slowly allow the mask to fully drop. His posture straightened ever so slightly. The nervous energy vanished from his eyes, replaced by cold, hard calculation.
He had done it. He had walked into the heart of the Hivemind and walked out again. He had confirmed their interest in Precision Gears and the stolen components. He had reinforced his persona as a harmless, if perceptive, mortal.
But as he melted into the crowd, a final, chilling thought echoed in his mind.
She's good. Too good. She's not convinced. from her body posture which had little change and her way of speech which had none it is safe to say that she may be keeping an eye on me .thinking this Kevin went home to prepare for a divination as he entered his house a sudden thought ran through his mind, why had she so openly stated he distrust yesterday only to fain trust today.
why would such a high level member of the church come to personally visit him these coincidences where not apparent but at the same time where surveillance of action this was the simplest action, but how would one man do such a thing what pathway could allow for this surveillance of action to a high degree when surveying a target that is not a beyonder.
thinking kevins mind shook as his heart raced why did i not look at his astral or sprit body?, simple because he did not allow me to as this thought entered my mind i existed my home and immediately returned to the street and got onto a carriage this would allow me to exist to the south of backlaund he signaled for the carriage to stop but to no avail looking at the driver the world shook then fractured into darkness the driver was Archdeacon Richter this was all a dream.
as my mind went blank i found myself sitting once more a faint smile on Archdeacon Richter's face" i can now clear you of suspension young one'' he stated
he stood and stretched looking at me the same expression plastered on his face "you seem to be conferrable with the world of the supernatural to a certain existent, would you like to become a beyonder under the machinery hivemind"
hearing this my uncalm mind began to settle as i innocently asked activating ''Illusory Destiny'' on myself once more ''what is a beyonder?''
[END OF CHAPTER]