Chapter 8: The Thorne Protocol
The void was an empty canvas. For most. But for Vaelira Thorne, it was data.
She sat within the command deck of the Argent Veil, her orbital ship — fortress and library both. Around her, streams of myth-layer data danced across holo-screens in shifting cascades.
Her eyes tracked a pattern others would miss: absence.
A void staff, an artifact woven from centuries of mastery, had ceased to exist. No energy residue. No fracture. Not destruction, but erasure. In its place, a fabricated myth threaded itself seamlessly into the world's belief.
Her aide's voice trembled. "Ma'am… the Academy calls it a ghost."
"Wrong." Her fingers danced over the console, movements as precise as scalpel cuts. Her voice was cold metal.
"A ghost is a story with no form. A lie told to fill gaps. But this—" She paused, eyes narrowing at a single black pulse on her screens. "This is no ghost. This is deliberate erasure. Someone replaced truth with fiction. A myth, perfectly spliced."
A faint dread stirred within her mind. This was not the fumbling of a student. This was an architect.
And somewhere below, Kairo felt her mind brush his. A blade in the dark, cutting through threads with terrifying precision. She was not chasing panic. She was following design. His design.
He had never feared strength. He feared clarity. And she was clarity incarnate.
Meanwhile, the campus seethed. Students whispered. Instructors schemed. And Joric, the fool, saw glory. He slipped beyond Academy gates, certain that the Ghost was only a man to be cornered. His blundering would ripple consequences he could not imagine.
Back aboard the Argent Veil, Vaelira closed her eyes. A plan crystallized. She would not deploy soldiers or fleets. Force was waste. Fear spread rumors; logic ended them.
She would send a hunter.
"Summon Solas," she said.
Her aide stiffened. "Solas? But… she is a last resort."
Vaelira's gaze cut him silent.
"She is not a resort. She is precision."
Far below, in a chamber buried deep within the Argent Veil, a woman with golden eyes polished a harpoon that was no metal, no alloy — but myth-forged. A weapon designed to pin stories to reality, stripping them of their fluidity.
The message reached her. A single word.
Hunt.
Solas Thorne rose. Her golden eyes glowed faintly, already tugged by a distant tremor. A ghost's thread. A parasite's whisper.
Her lips curled into a predator's smile.
The hunt had begun.