The silence of the library, which had been a comfort, suddenly became oppressive.
Every book on the shelves seemed to have a thousand eyes, every shadow in the corners seemed to harbor a presence. Catherine was curled in on herself, her heart pounding, struggling to regain control of her breathing.
The sensation of that mental probe, that clinical black thread, had been a violation of a kind she had never known.
Her sanctuary had been breached, not by forcing a door, but by passing through the walls of her mind. F
or the first time since her awakening, she felt like prey again. Prey that didn't even know where the hunter was.
Who?
How?
Was it The Rook, whose influence was so vast it included adepts with unknown abilities? Was it the Church?
Or worse, was it an entirely new faction, a player whose existence she was not even aware of?
Paranoia was a poison, and she felt its first drops spreading through her veins, threatening to paralyze her strategic thought.
She spent an hour motionless, fighting her own fear. She forced herself to analyze the sensation. It had not been aggressive.
It had not been hostile. It had been… curious. Analytical. Cold. It was the gaze of a naturalist, not an executioner.
That, perhaps, was even more terrifying. She was not an enemy to be struck down, but a specimen to be studied.
With infinite caution, she tried once more to extend her senses. Not a broad, powerful projection as before, but a single, tenuous thread of consciousness, just to listen to the psychic silence. Nothing. The contact was gone.
The observer had retreated. Was the resulting silence safety, or simply the hunter, having spotted its quarry, deciding on the best moment to strike?
This new uncertainty changed everything. Her fortress had been breached. Her omniscience was an illusion. She had to know more.
That evening, when Valerius joined her in the library, he found her even more distant than the night before. The performance of the troubled Oracle had become much easier to play, for it was now rooted in a very real anxiety.
She let him talk about his day, his small victories, all while reading him, searching his threads for any trace of duplicity, any connection to this unknown force.
But there was nothing. Valerius was transparent in his vanity and desire.
"The spirits are restless tonight," she finally said, interrupting his monologue.
Her voice was weaker than usual. "The artifact I studied… it acted as a beacon. I felt… something else. A cold gaze in the shadows."
Valerius frowned. "What do you mean? The Rook's men?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "It was different. Quieter. More… disembodied. Magistrate, from the rumors you hear, are there spies who use… unusual methods?"
He gave a dismissive laugh, reassured at being able to show off his knowledge of the world.
"The world is full of charlatans who claim to read the future in chicken guts, my dear. As for the real ones… what my spies report is a muddle.
The 'sorcerers' the nobles employ are low-rent illusionists, good for amusing a party or making wine taste better. The Rook's brutes are just that, brutes. It's said some of them are abnormally tough, that they keep fighting with wounds that would kill an ox. But they are not subtle."
He leaned toward her, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial tone.
"No, the kind of surveillance you describe, cold and silent… it sounds like only one story that gets whispered around. A fable to frighten traitors. They say The Rook has a man in his innermost circle.
A figure no one ever sees, but whom everyone fears. They call him 'The Confessor.' Some say his name is Soren.
Catherine's heart skipped a beat.
"The stories say he has some power over the dead, that he can send the ghosts of your own victims to spy on you in your sleep.
He's The Rook's loyalty tester. If you felt a cold, disembodied gaze, it's likely you've gotten close enough to the fire to attract the attention of his personal specter."
The revelation was a dagger's thrust.
It wasn't a cosmic entity or an unknown rival. It was worse. It was a direct counter-attack. Her investigation into the past had tripped an alarm in her sworn enemy's network.
The Rook knew someone was digging, and he had sent his ghost to identify the threat.
Later that night, after Valerius, satisfied to have enlightened her with his back-channel knowledge, had fallen asleep, Catherine rose again. She was not reassured.
She was on high alert. The hunt had become a two-way street.
She needed to know if her own agent was still safe.
Risking a brief exposure, she cast out a thin probe of consciousness toward the Scriptorium.
She searched for Mathieu. She found him, not at his desk, but in the municipal archives.
She focused on his threads. The golden thread of devotion to her was as bright as ever.
But the black thread of fear was now tightly wound around a new concept, a new intention.
A name.
Jun-Ho Park.
The message had been received. Her soldier was on the hunt.
She cut the contact, a cold relief mixing with her new anxiety.
Her plan was moving forward, but the enemy was now aware of a threat.
The chessboard had just lit up, and she realized that an enemy piece, invisible to all but her, had just set its sights directly on her Queen.