The gold coin Sagar left spun for hours after his departure, its impossible motion a silent challenge to the High Table's authority. When it finally toppled, the chamber was tense with unspoken alarm. The Elder, whose word was law even above the Table itself, pressed his ringed fingers together and broke the silence.
"We have been breached," he intoned, his voice echoing off marble and shadow. "Our rules are our power. If they are questioned, we are nothing."
The twelve council members—heads of the world's most powerful criminal syndicates—convened in private, their gilded masks hiding faces that betrayed only the slightest flicker of unease. For centuries, the High Table had ruled the underworld through fear, discipline, and the promise that their edicts were absolute136
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. No outsider had ever walked into their sanctum unbidden and left untouched.
"This stranger," said an adjudicator, voice clipped, "defied our laws, mocked our order. If word spreads, our authority will be questioned everywhere—from the Continental's halls to the streets of New York, Rome, and Shanghai."
The Elder nodded. "He must be found. The Table's power is not in violence alone, but in the certainty that no one—no matter how clever or bold—can stand above our law."
A harbinger was dispatched, bearing the Table's seal. Orders rippled through the underworld: every affiliated organization, every assassin, every informant was to watch for the man with no name, the one who walked through walls and left chaos in his wake256
. The Table's vast network of enforcers, adjudicators, and harbingers mobilized, their reach extending into every shadowed corner of the globe
But as days passed, reports returned empty. No one could recall his face. No one could follow his trail. The only evidence was a growing sense of unease—mirrors fogged without cause, clocks that ran backward, whispers of a storm that could not be contained.
The Elder, alone in his sanctum, considered the coin Sagar had left. He recognized the message: order is an illusion, and even the greatest empires can be undone by a single unpredictable force.
"Let him play his game," the Elder murmured to the darkness. "But the Table endures. We will watch. We will wait. And if he can be found, he will be judged."
For the first time in generations, the High Table felt the chill of uncertainty. Their rules were unbreakable—until, suddenly, they weren't.
And somewhere in the world, Sagar smiled, knowing that chaos had already taken root in the heart of order.