Location: Fenwick District — Viktor Volkov's Private Residence — Evening
The residence was not a building. It was a statement.
Walls of pale stone rose from the earth like teeth, their surfaces unbroken by windows or doors. A single archway marked the entrance—tall, narrow, its keystone carved with an emblem that caught the dying light. Two serpents, intertwined, their bodies forming an infinity loop. Above them, a mirror. Below them, a spiral.
Mercury and mirror, Elijah thought. Those who illuminate the world.
The emblem of the Artemis family.
He pressed the doorbell.
A camera blinked. Red. Watching.
"State your name and purpose."
The voice was flat. Mechanical. Filtered through speakers that had been designed to strip away emotion.
"Diego de la Torre. Here to see Viktor Volkov."
Silence.
A long pause. The camera's lens seemed to focus, to study, to judge.
Then the door clicked open.
---
The interior was worse than the exterior.
Not luxurious—opulent. Marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Chandeliers that dripped crystal tears, their light scattering across the walls in fractured rainbows. Paintings that had probably been stolen from museums, or bought from people who had stolen them from museums. The walls were paneled in dark wood, carved with scenes of hunts and battles and gods who had long since stopped caring about mortals.
Elijah's footsteps echoed.
"Speechless?"
Wonko's voice was dry.
"Don't be. The old families have lived like this for centuries. They consider it modest."
"Modest?"
"Some of them have palaces. Multiple."
Elijah's eyes moved across the room. The furniture was dark leather, polished chrome, sharp angles that suggested someone had spent too much time thinking about how to make comfort look uncomfortable.
The Artemis family, he thought. The ones who don't meddle in mundane affairs. The ones who watch from a distance.
And yet Viktor Volkov is here. In Crestwood. In the Fenwick district. In a residence that probably cost more than the entire Ashwick corridors.
Why?
What does he want?
And why did he give me that drive?
---
Footsteps.
Not heavy. Not hurried. Precise. The kind of footsteps that came from someone who had never needed to rush because the world had always waited for them.
Elijah turned.
A figure emerged from the hallway.
Young. Slender. His hair was silver, like Viktor's, but longer—falling past his shoulders in waves that looked like they had been styled by someone who had never had to rush. His skin was pale, almost luminous, as if he had spent his entire life indoors. His clothes were not clothes. They were art. A high-collared coat of pale blue silk, embroidered with the same emblem that had been carved into the keystone. Black trousers. Black boots. Gloves that covered his hands but left his fingers bare.
He looks like he's going to a gala, Elijah thought. Or a funeral.
Or both.
The man's eyes found Elijah.
His lip curled. His nose wrinkled. His chin lifted—just slightly, just enough to suggest that he was looking down at something he had stepped in.
"What are you doing here, you filthy peasant?"
His voice was high. Sharp. The voice of someone who had been told they were special since birth and had never had reason to doubt it.
Elijah's eyebrow rose.
"Not cool, bro."
"Bro?" The man's nose wrinkled further. "What is... bro?"
"Short for brother. It's a greeting. It means—"
"I know what it means." The man's voice was ice. "I just don't understand why you would use it with me."
"Because we're about to have a conversation, and I figured—"
"You figured wrong."
The man stepped closer.
His boots made no sound on the marble. The silence of his approach was louder than any footfall.
"You don't appear to be of the bright type. But I'm not surprised. Your kind rarely are."
"Your kind?"
"Mortals. Peasants. The sort of people who crawl through the dirt while the rest of us walk on it."
Elijah's expression didn't change.
His eyes, however, did.
"That's rich. Coming from someone who dresses and talks like a sissy cosplayer."
The man's brow furrowed.
"What is... sissy?"
"Wait." Elijah's eyes widened. "Wait, wait, wait. You don't know what that means?"
"I don't speak gutter."
"Oh, this is too good."
Elijah's body shifted.
His shoulders hunched. His spine curved. His hands—previously relaxed at his sides—rose to his chest, fingers fluttering like wounded birds. He took a step forward, his hips swaying, his feet pointed inward, his steps short and mincing.
"Oh, you're so strong," he said, his voice rising into a breathy falsetto. "Oh, please don't hurt me. I'm just a delicate little flower."
He tilted his head. Pouted. Fluttered his eyelashes.
"Oh, won't someone carry me to my carriage? My feet are so very tired."
He took another step, his hand pressed against his forehead in a gesture of theatrical exhaustion.
"The stairs. They're so... steep."
The man's face went pale.
Then red.
Then something in between—a mottled flush that spread from his throat to his cheeks to the tips of his ears.
"You—"
"Me?" Elijah straightened. His voice returned to normal. "I'm just demonstrating. Since you didn't know what it meant."
"You insect."
The man's hands curled into fists. His knuckles went white.
"How dare you offend me?"
---
The air changed.
Not temperature—pressure. A cold that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with the man standing in front of him. The emblem on his coat began to glow—pale silver, the color of mercury, the color of mirrors. It pulsed. Once. Twice. Three times.
The aethernova suit, Elijah thought. It's not just clothing. It's part of him.
And it's waking up.
The man's skin began to shimmer.
Not his skin—the air around his skin. It rippled, like heat over summer asphalt, but colder. Thinner. It moved toward him—not from him, to him—as if the room itself was feeding him energy.
The chandeliers dimmed.
The shadows deepened.
The man's breathing slowed.
He's pulling from the environment, Elijah realized. From the walls. From the floor. From the air itself.
He's not just wearing a suit.
He's become a conduit.
The man raised his hand.
His palm faced Elijah. His fingers were spread. His thumb was pressed against his index finger in a gesture that looked almost like a mudra.
"Mirror Tap," he said.
His voice was calm.
"Light touch."
---
The attack was not visible.
Not at first.
A silver line appeared on the man's knuckle—thin, bright, pulsing. It spread across his hand, his wrist, his forearm, like mercury tracing the paths of his veins. The light was cold. Clinical. It didn't warm the air around it—it cooled it.
Then the sound came.
Tap.
Not loud. Not soft. Just... present.
Tap.
The echo was wrong. It came twice—once from the man's hand, once from somewhere behind Elijah. The sound bounced off the walls, the ceiling, the floor, disorienting, confusing, making it impossible to tell where the attack had come from or where it was going.
Confuse, Elijah thought. Disorient. Make the target lose track of what's real.
That's the point.
Not to kill. To debilitate.
To make space for the next attack.
He tried to step back.
His foot didn't move.
The silver line was on his chest now—not cutting, pressing. It was as if the man's attack had crossed the distance between them without traveling, without being seen, without being stopped. The cold spread through Elijah's shirt, his skin, his ribs.
Just power.
Raw. Cold. Taken from the world around him.
And I can't take it back.
---
He tried to redirect.
Shinsei activated.
The sacred breath.
He inhaled—not air, frequency. The silver line on his chest flickered. The cold that had been pressing against his skin began to shift, to move, to flow around him instead of through him.
For a moment, it worked.
The pressure eased.
The cold retreated.
Then the silver line exploded.
Not outward—inward. The energy that had been pressing against his chest reversed direction, slamming into him with the force of a battering ram. His feet left the ground. His back arched. His arms pinwheeled.
He flew.
Not far—ten feet, maybe twelve. His shoulder hit the marble floor. His body skidded. His head snapped back. The chandeliers spun above him, their crystals scattering light like shards of broken glass.
Blood sprayed from his lips.
Cough, he thought. Cough, cough—
He pushed himself up.
His hands were shaking.
His chest was burning.
---
Wonko's voice was a scream.
"Madman! Fool! Idiot!"
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine! That's a fully realized aethernova user! A rank one fully formed synaptic awakener! Someone with nearly three hundred and eighty units of aetherflux conflux!"
"I noticed."
"A normal person would be dead!"
"I'm not normal."
Elijah wiped the blood from his lips.
His hand was steady.
His eyes were not.
---
The man stared.
His hand was still raised. His palm was still facing Elijah. The silver line on his knuckle had faded, but the glow around his body had not. His chest rose and fell. His breathing was slow. Controlled.
"You survived," he said.
His voice was different now.
Not mocking. Not angry.
Curious.
"You are clearly human. That's what I sense from you. But why—"
He tilted his head.
The silver hair shifted, catching the light.
"—did I feel something else? Something... strange? Something that tried to move what I was taking from the world?"
He lowered his hand.
The glow around his body dimmed.
"Who are you, boy?"
Elijah stood.
His chest ached. His lungs burned. His ribs protested with every breath.
But his face was calm.
"Nobody," he said.
"Nobody."
"Just a dishwasher."
The man's eyes narrowed.
"Dishwashers don't survive Mirror Tap. Not even at one percent."
"This one did."
They stared at each other.
The room was silent.
The chandeliers glittered.
And somewhere in the distance, a clock struck the hour.
---