The salt wind off the southern breakwater tasted of old iron and dead kelp. Lucid stood on the damp basalt shingles of the shoreline, watching Arthur wipe a streak of dark engine grease from his forehead with the back of a leather gauntlet.
Arthur closed the heavy brass access panel on the side of the locomotive carriage. The metal lid shut with a firm, satisfying click that echoed over the rush of the incoming tide.
"All good," Arthur said. He exhaled a sharp breath and wiped his palms against his trousers. "We are going to need a technician soon."
He turned toward Lucid with a deadpan expression that looked completely unnatural on a royal knight.
"I am a knight," Arthur reminded him. "Not a conductor. Certainly not a mechanical technician."
Ayame stood three paces back, her boots planted in the wet gravel. Her dark coat flapped in the harbor draft.
"He is a cheapskate," she said.
Lucid turned his head toward her. He wore the exact same deadpan expression, an expression he had apparently adopted from spending entirely too much time around her blunt commentary.
"And where the hell did you get that expression from?" Lucid asked.
Ayame looked away toward the timber docks. The corners of her mouth twitched upward, settling into a slight smile that looked completely uncharacteristic of her usually blank demeanor. She offered no explanation for her expanding vocabulary.
Fennwick stepped over a coil of rusted hemp rope, eyeing the dull gray chassis of the locomotive with genuine confusion.
"Wait, so this thing is actually yours?" Fennwick asked, gesturing at the heavy iron wheels. "I thought it was the property of Celeste, or maybe the recently arrived church."
Celeste was standing near the forward boiler, inspecting a valve gauge with her hands clasped behind her back. She turned toward Fennwick at the mention of the priesthood.
"The church does not believe in technology," Celeste said. "Or fate resonance tools provided by Astral. They see Mother Fate's blessing as absolute. To twist that blessing and use it for technological advancement is considered one of the greatest sins a mortal could commit."
Fennwick scratched the side of his neck, looking even more confused. "But they have steam engine trains. They use lamp lights in their upper plazas."
Celeste nodded once. "Those are powered by natural combustion sources, not manipulated fate essence. The distinction matters to their scholars."
Lucid stepped closer to the group, his orange vest catching the late afternoon glare off the harbor water. "What are you guys talking about?"
"About Ateris," Celeste said.
Lucid nodded slowly, running through the geography he had picked up from port maps. "You mean they do not use any technology at all?"
"No," Celeste said. "They do not believe in the act of twisting fate essence or manipulating the threads of fate through mechanical devices."
Lucid furrowed his brow, trying to picture an entire society rejecting the tools that made border travel possible. "But this Ateris, where exactly is it?"
Celeste looked at him with steady patience. "It is not on the continent of Osteria. It is south, across the water in Caducus Celestia. They hold full reign over that continent through multiple kingdoms and religious factions."
A piece of trivia clicked in Lucid's memory, something the old stall merchant had mentioned back in the market square.
"What about Everlight?" Lucid asked.
Celeste considered the question for a moment before answering. "Everlight is a northern kingdom under the jurisdiction of Ateris and the High Church of the Luminari."
Lucid understood the contradiction immediately. "But Everlight twists the scripts laid out to its own citizens. How is that not also playing with Mother Fate's creation?"
Celeste looked at him with something bordering on contempt, the look an instructor gives a student who has missed the entire point of a lecture.
"That is where you are wrong," she said. "The church is not against the children of Mother Fate twisting her making through script or prayer. They are against mortals using external technology to twist fate essence artificially. The method is what makes it heresy to them."
"Huh," Lucid said, rubbing his chin. "Interesting."
He blurted out his next question before she could turn back to the valve gauge. "And Vex?"
"We are not under their jurisdiction," Celeste clarified, her tone turning official. "So we may do whatever we want within our borders, and we do maintain great trade with Astral and neighboring factions. However, their religion happens to be one of the most prominent faiths among our citizenry, so we cannot entirely neglect them or ignore their wishes without consequence."
Silence enveloped them on the shore.
It was a bright afternoon. White seagulls circled overhead, calling out above the timber masts of the cargo vessels. Fifty yards away, harbor dock workers were hauling in the day's catch of sea bass and mackerel, their voices carrying across the water in steady, rhythmic shouts.
They stood together by the iron tracks after everything they had been through during the past week. A strange sense of quiet pride settled over the group. They had survived a collapsed district, they had dealt with a territorial crisis, and they had managed to keep their limbs attached in the process.
Then a cold thought surfaced in Lucid's mind.
He remembered the white-robed acolytes he had seen marching through the lower market lanes that morning, checking work permits and searching warehouses with brass-tipped staves. He looked toward Celeste, but her expression had already shifted. She had registered his unspoken question before he even opened his mouth.
"The queen gave them permission," Celeste said quietly. "And I cannot go against that order."
'Elara let them conduct searches,' Lucid thought, his jaw tightening. 'That is so unlike her, though I could never fully predict that heinous creature's motivations.'
He let out a long, weary sigh that made his ribs ache.
'Probably because I went against her will,' he considered internally, keeping his face blank. 'I completed what I originally came here to do, but I interfered in matters beyond her authority. That interference produced unexpected consequences, and apparently one of them was the church's sudden interest in our harbor.'
Celeste took a step away from the locomotive, her boots crunching loudly on the salt gravel.
"Lucid, they are here because they have registered the presence of a Monolith," she said.
Lucid froze. He looked at her, uncertain whether he wanted her response to be confirmation or denial. "Is that true?"
Fennwick looked immediately uncomfortable, his shoulders dropping.
Ayame shifted her weight, her pale eyes narrowing as she watched the road leading back toward the docks.
Arthur's deadpan expression vanished, replaced by the rigid posture of a soldier expecting an ambush.
Celeste nodded.
Lucid felt his eyes widen. "Wait," he started.
Alice's voice cut through his thoughts immediately, sharp and urgent within his skull. 'Lucid, this changes things considerably.'
Lucid ignored the internal voice for a second and focused on Celeste. "How much do they know?" he asked, his voice carrying far more tension now.
"I am not entirely certain," Celeste admitted, crossing her arms over her chest. "The queen only informed me that acolytes requested permission to search for divine anomalies within Port Vexis. She did not specify the exact nature of what they were searching for, only that their request carried enough weight from the High Church that refusal would have created diplomatic complications."
"Diplomatic complications," Lucid repeated, disbelief evident in his tone. "You mean they threatened her."
"I mean they made their request in a manner that left little room for refusal," Celeste corrected carefully. "The High Church does not typically make demands directly. They simply present situations where saying no becomes considerably more costly than saying yes."
Arthur crossed his arms, his jaw set in a hard line. "So they know about Mercyros."
"They know something happened here," Celeste said. "Whether they know the specific details, or whether they know Mercyros no longer exists in his previous capacity, that remains unclear to me."
Lucid felt his pulse quickening against his collarbone. "And if they find out I am the one responsible?"
Celeste looked down at the wet gravel between her boots. Her silence carried its own answer.
"Great," Lucid muttered, looking up at the circling seagulls. "Just fantastic."
Alice spoke again within his mind, her tone unusually serious and stripped of her usual mocking warmth. 'We need to consider our next steps carefully. If the church discovers your involvement, the consequences could extend far beyond simple diplomatic complications. An audit from the Luminari is not a local police matter.'
'No kidding,' Lucid thought back.
Ayame stepped closer to Lucid, her expression sharpening with focused attention. She ignored the others and looked directly at Celeste. "What exactly happens if they find evidence connecting him to the Monolith's disappearance?"
"I genuinely do not know," Celeste admitted. "This situation exceeds anything documented in official royal protocols. Monoliths simply do not appear or disappear. They do not get replaced by mortal successors. Whatever precedent existed for handling this kind of event predates current administrative knowledge by several centuries."