The room they were in was not a room at all, it was just a pocket of darkness carved between two abandoned warehouses on Velvenport's industrial fringe. No lights, no windows, only the distant hum of cargo ships groaning against their moorings. The air smelled of rust and salt, thick enough to coat the tongue.
Kael Arden leaned against a steel beam, arms crossed, the crimson trim of his Paladin's uniform barely visible in the gloom. His reddish-brown eyes flickered like dying embers as he watched Remo Calvane adjust the brim of his absurd hat, a relic from some defunct fallen society, black as a void and just as unsettling.
"You're reckless," Kael said, voice low. "Dario was there. Watching. And you still sent that thing after them."
Remo's smirk was a blade in the dark. "A little test, nothing more. The Star of Ostara may be bright, but even he can't see every shadow." His fingers drummed against his thigh, the sound deliberate, like a clock counting down.
Kael exhaled sharply. "Juggling the Bureau, the Pillars, and even more. This is just sloppy. We shouldn't waste time on distractions."
"Distractions?" Remo chuckled, stepping closer. The toe of his boot crushed the torso of a rat that had been scurrying around in the night. "This is the work. Dario's been a monument for decades. You don't topple monuments with just brute force. You study and even create the cracks."
A pause. The distant wail of a foghorn rolled over them.
Kael's jaw tightened. "So the plan's in motion? The Pillar of Law's finally ready?"
"Mm. He's been ready. They all have." Remo's gloved hand lifted, tracing an invisible shape in the air. "But patience is a virtue, Kael. One you have yet to cultivate."
"Spare me the lecture," Kael snapped. "How long do we wait? Another year? A decade?"
Remo's grin widened. "Oh, you sweet, impatient thing. This game started long before you picked up a sword." He tilted his head, moonlight catching the sharp angle of his cheekbone. "Tell me, how many abilities can an Ego user possess?"
Kael blinked. "What?"
"Answer the question."
"I don't know…"
"You should," Remo purred. "Isolde Marrene's work on cognitive fracturing in Ego users is elementary reading. Or are you too busy swinging that blade I lended you to crack a book open? Knowledge does wonders."
Kael's knuckles whitened. "Get to the point."
"Three." Remo held up three fingers, then slowly folded one down. "Three abilities, maximum. The prefrontal cortex can't handle more. View it as a metaphorical black box, stuff too much inside and the hinges burst." Another finger curled. "Dario's been flaunting one for fifty years. One." The last finger snapped shut. "But I'm almost certain he has another one."
Kael's pulse jumped. "You think he's got another."
"Mhmm." Remo's voice was playful. "I want to see it. Up close. I want to figure it out before we sink into him."
Kael scoffed. "So you threw a Phantasm at two kids to what? Lure him out?"
"To see how he reacts. He just got off the phone with the president." Remo had his ways of getting that information. The channel was off but he was happy that he at least wasn't found out right away. "People perform for an audience, Kael. They'll play the right tune to your face, but the real musics always hidden."
A beat. The wind howled through the skeletal remains of a broken crane.
Kael exhaled. "When do we move?"
Remo laughed, a sound like dry leaves skittering over concrete. "Oh, my dear. We already have."
Remo appeared in front of Kael in a moment of his desperation and provided him with an offer he couldn't refuse. And in the time he has known the stranger, he has never seen the extent of his capabilities, and doesn't know the full scope of his plans either. He just knows he is a very sharp man with power in most places on the planet.
Another foghorn.
"Dario Kosta is about to enter his final phase."
***
The rhythmic sound of the waves crashing was comforting. Moonlight spilled through the half-open balcony doors, painting silver streaks across the wooden floor. Ruben lay on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, staring at the seashell-studded ceiling.
Corbin was sprawled on the bed beside his, tossing a pebble he'd pocketed from the beach earlier- up,down, up, down- his brow furrowed in thought.
"You ever believe in a God?" Corbin asked suddenly, the pebble freezing midair in his palm.
Ruben blinked. "Random."
"Just thinking." The pebble resumed its arc. "Back home, people argued about that shit all the time. My Mom was a believer but I'm pretty sure my dad thought it was all crap." A pause. "She never spoke about that stuff much, and with the way she acted you certainly wouldn't think she was emulating her faith."
Ruben exhaled through his nose. His mother had said some prayers sometimes, but considering their situation it was all more in desperation, like bargaining with a thief that had already stolen from her.
"I don't know. Never stuck to anything. But… yeah, maybe. In a way."
Corbin caught the pebble, rolling it between his fingers. "This worlds got a bunch more. And of course one of the main ones is Alhena."
Ruben frowned. The name tugged at something, it was a name that came from a lecture that he was half asleep to. "Some spirit?" he asked.
"More than that." Corbin sat up, his mattress creaking. "They say it's the living world. Not like a God you really pray to. Just something that is."
Ruben propped himself up on his elbows. "I remember. She's supposed to be like a God of balance right?"
"Yeah. I think it goes like, the stronger humanity gets there has to be a balance. And it's supposed to be all indifferent too." Corbin added.
Ruben considered that. It made a certain kind of sense. The world had rules… Phantasms rose from fear, Egos are born from death, and so power came at a price. If Alhena was the force behind all of that, then it really didn't seem like something to pray to.
"Balance." Ruben said.
Corbin nodded. "So we're just a part of a big everchanging machine. That's what it sounds like. A second life."
Ruben glanced at him. "It's still hard to fully grasp how lucky we are, you know. Us more so than others, we came from a completely different world and came into this one. You ever thought of that?"
Corbin's fingers stilled around the pebble. For a moment, he didn't answer. Then he shrugged. "Nah, well… maybe a little bit. I'm happy with it."
Ruben let the silence stretch. He understood. There was no point in imagining what actual death would be like, or what truly came after that.
He was about to say something else, so he could continue talking with Corbin about more. He liked it.
BOOM.
The explosion shook the building, rattling the seashells on the ceiling. A wave of heat rolled through the room, thick and sudden, carrying the sharp scent of burning ozone.
Both of them were on their feet before the sound faded.
Corbin was already at the balcony doors, shoving them open. The horizon pulsed orange in the distance, flames licking at the sky.
"That's Dario." Ruben said, it wasn't a question. The feeling of his Ego at play was strong.
"Let's go see what's going on." Corbin said.
They didn't hesitate. The treeline swallowed them as they ran, the ground trembling underfoot, the air thick with the promise of more flames.
***
"Where did you get such powerful Phantasm?" Kael asked with suspicion, but there was also a sliver of awe that seeped through.
Remo Calvane stood in the half-shadow of the old industrial complex, his silhouette framed by the rusting ribs of an abandoned crane now instead of the other space they were inhabiting. The soft wind tugged at the hem of his long black coat, and from beneath the obsidian brim of his ceremonial hat, his eyes gleamed with sly delight.
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he dusted an invisible speck of dust from his glove, as if Kael's question had been too crude to acknowledge without first wiping away its residue.
"They weren't easy to acquire," he said at last, his voice a velvet drawl that seemed to ripple through the silence like oil over water. "Especially not the Thresher saint."
Kael tilted his head slightly. The name alone made his instincts coil. "That's the bigger one going after Dario right now is it?"
Remo nodded once, the motion slow and deliberate. "It won't be able to kill him. Nothing I own as of yet could. That… is just meant to slow him down."
The Thresher Saint did not arrive with a roar or cries of the damned. It arrived with silence and a spiked halo of sunlight… fractured holy light, filtered through a lattice of celestial law.
Its body was vast and wide, like a walking cathedral carved from cracked marble and lit from within by golden veins of burning scripture. Limbs encased in radiant, fluted armour moved with deliberate reverence, like a bishop officiating a cosmic execution.
Robes of stone and molten gold unfurled with each step, dragging behind it like the weight of judgement itself. Its face was featureless, a smooth plate broken only by a singular vertical sigil that pulsed with Mandates. In its four arms it bore two immense, chain-linked flails, censer-like in design, the heads of each sculpted like closed eyes, leaking shimmering incense with every motion.
"It enforces its own divine law," Remo muttered. "Not justice. That would imply fairness. This isn't about morality, Kael. This is about rules. Ironclad. Absolute."
The Thresher Saint took a step forward and reality buckled. Invisible lines etched themselves across the sky and pavement alike, zones of compliance, zones of consequence. Where it walked, the world rewrote itself into a courtroom of impossible statues.
"Move too quickly within its domain and gravity triples. Raise a weapon, and your limbs turn to stone. Cross whatever threshold it sets then it will eventually open up secrets of your past and judge you for them."
Kael watches it march with dread settling in his throat.
Remo then turned to Kael with a grin that twitched wider. "But it's not the only thing I brought. Watch."
The wind changed… the smell of copper and static replacing the briny stink of the sewers they were high above. The air grew still, unnaturally so, like even the atmosphere was afraid to vibrate.
And then it arrived.
The Pale Operator didn't walk or fly. It seemed like it glided into existence of particles. Or like it was something always there but the world only remembered it was filling a space.
Its body was the colour of old bone, smooth and jointless, tall and impossibly thin. No eyes, no mouth, no face… just a blank oval where a visage might belong, subtly shifting like something was trying to break free from beneath. Its arms hung too low, fingers dragging through the air like pendulums on invisible strings. Those fingers were wrong, twelve digits per hand, jointed at irregular intervals, flexing in patterns too fluid for any natural creature. Its spine arched with a slow, deliberate elegance, as if it bowed to every God in every direction at once. Every part of it moved as if remembering a puppet's dance, not lifeless, but corrupted, intentional, controlled by hands no longer present.
Kael instinctively took a step back. "What is it doing?"
"Hijacking," Remo said softly. "It exerts control through ambient vibration. Air, sound, electromagnetic noise… subtle manipulations that reach into your nervous system and tear out the wires. Within ten meters, you're not your own. Your reaction time lags. Your memory glitches. You swing your sword, and your arm starts twitching."
Kael's breath hitched. "That's… that doesn't sound effective enough. Or even real."
"No," Remo replied, "it's just unpleasant. Even high-tier ego users can't out-think a system that hijacks before the thought finishes forming. It doesn't fight. It edits."
It was the harder Ego to gain, he needed the help of a special someone to aid him in that a couple years ago and she was not someone Remo liked to interact with.
The Pale Operator extended one hand, and the space around it began to blur, light bending slightly, dust spiraling unnaturally, the scent of ozone blooming in the air like invisible flowers of decay.
Then a voice split the sky.
It wasn't a word. It was a laugh.
A thunderous, golden peal of laughter that scattered birds and ruptured stillness like an explosion of joy.
Kael turned his gaze upward.
There, hovering midair in defiance of gravity and reason, legs crossed in an invisible throne of willpower alone, sat Dario Kosta. His white hair shimmered with refracted light, like molten silver under divine fire. His bare arms glowed faintly, and his silver eyes shined, not with rage, but instead amusement, bright and terrible.
He looked at the Pale Operator and laughed again.
"You think that could ever work on me?"
He wasn't speaking in the direction of Remo or Kael, he hadn't even noticed their presences and Remo would like to keep it that way.
The Pale Operator froze. Its faceless head tilted. Fingers splayed wider. The field of distortion shimmered like water struck by stone.
Dario raised his hand.
No gesture, no technique, seemingly no flash of his Ego.
The Pale Operator shook.
Then, it broke.
From within, it detonated into nothing, a bloom of fractured nerves, ghost-code static, and null space that unravelled like glass under a violin's scream. Its body collapsed inward, shredded by its own mechanisms, unable to parse the impossibility of overriding a being who had no space left for error.
It didn't even seem like it was destroyed by the Paladin's explosion.
It was invalidated.
Remo chuckled. Loud and genuine. "That was a lot of persuasion. Took me so long to get something like that. Something so useful and specific. Promised a favour that could bankrupt a minor God. And it's gone. Just like that."
Kael exhaled, stunned. "He didn't even blink."
Remo stepped forward, his tone shifting once more. Lower now, darker. "That was too much of a risk but it's fine. There is only one of the three phantasm that actually matter."
Kael turned toward him, his skin prickling.
Remo raised his hand and made a circle between his thumb and forefinger.
"Now," he said softly. "Let's watch closely and see what he's really hiding."
Kael did.
Across the skyline of Velven port, nestled between the glimmering office windows of a high-rise, something was watching back. Hidden within the reflective skin of the building, barely visible unless you knew where to look… a porcelain-white figure leaned, impossible tall, limbs too long, arms hanging by its side like ropes.
Its surface was cracked with fine fissures, like an ancient ceramic left in a storm. It didn't move. It didn't blink. Its eyes were a perfect black voids, swallowing the light of the city's glittering towers. It stood only in the reflection… nowhere to be seen in the real world, like a ghost printed on silver glass.
Kael felt its stare in his bones.
"The Witness," Remo whispered. "It doesn't speak. It doesn't move. But it learns. Everything."
Kael's hands curled into fists. "What does it do?"
Remo's eyes sparkled. "It means, even now, it's cataloguing Dario Kosta. Every flicker of movement, every fragment of memory it sees reflected in his posture. It will learn his Ego. Whatever lies beneath what he shows the world."
Kael turned again, The Witness had vanished. It had moved to another reflection. It was hard to see, it was a Phantasm that acted within reflections.
"It spotted Ruben Rayo earlier. Nothing special so far." Remo told him.
Above them. The Thresher Saint moved again.
Its censer-flails whirled faster now, tracing lines in the air that cut deeper than metal. Sigils burst from its chest, unfurling over the city like banners of judgement.
Kael felt the world tighten.
And from the sky, Dario fell.
Not like a man. Like an impact given form. He hit the earth, and the ground didn't crack, it bowed. His feet touched the stone, and the bindings of the Thresher's Law shuddered under his weight.
His body was still.
Then he moved.
He walked. Step by step, toward the Saint. A man who understood exactly how long he had to act before the commandments finished settling.
Remo whispered, smiling without mirth, "And so we begin the final movement."