King Felix II, Knight-Captain Rhea, and the small, elite Flow-Guard team abandoned the luxury of their airship and began the ascent through the Serpent's Coil Pass. The path was narrow, winding, and unforgiving. Here, the Flow was silent, the silence amplified by the defensive properties of Felix's Flow-Dampening Scarf.
Felix's internal system registered the oppressive environment:
[SYSTEM STATUS: EXTERNAL FLOW RATE: 0 FPM. GLOBAL FLOW NET: OFFLINE. LOCAL MAGIC SIGNATURE: PURE CONCENTRATED PURITY (LUNIO).]
"This air feels sterile, Your Majesty," Rhea commented, gripping her Flow-charged spear. "Lunio's influence is thick here. It feels like they've scrubbed the very air of any aesthetic impurity."
"They want us demoralized, Rhea," Felix replied, relying on his training. "Focus on the path. Use your senses, not the network."
After hours of grueling climbing, the team reached a small, flat overlook. Felix paused to examine the environment, his suspicion lingering from the unforeseen transmission glitch and the perfectly timed landslide.
He noticed a subtle, almost imperceptible detail on the stone beneath his boot.
"Look at this," Felix instructed, kneeling down. He ran his armored finger across the gray, dusty surface.
The dust was unlike the rough, natural rock debris. It was fine, almost like powdered chalk, and possessed a bizarre, dull quality.
"What is it, Sire? Regular stone dust?" asked one of the Flow Guards.
"No," Felix said slowly. "Notice its behavior. It should be disturbed by our movement, but it adheres to my boot perfectly. It's clinging to the metal, not scattering."
Rhea, ever the keen analyst, examined the dust closely. "It's entirely Flow-Neutral. It has zero aesthetic charge. It doesn't attract or repel the Flow, which makes it invisible to our sensors. We've been walking in it for hours."
Felix's eyes narrowed as the horrifying realization hit him.
"This isn't a natural occurrence or Lunio's magic," he stated. "Lunio's magic is about purging energy. This dust is about tracking. It adheres perfectly to the Flow-Weave material of our gear. We've left a clear, shimmering trail of Aesthetic Imperium footprints across the entire pass."
The Shadow had orchestrated this. Someone knew their exact route, their gear's specific molecular composition, and how to create a substance that bypasses all Flow-based security. This was surgical, technical espionage—a far cry from Selene's brute psychic hatred.
The team was shaken. They were trapped on a treacherous path, leaving an impossible-to-hide trail for their enemies.
Felix immediately commed back to the Command Center. "Evelyn, we have a breach. We are being tracked by a Flow-Neutral substance. It has to be a sleeper agent from the Ego-Cultivators."
Evelyn's voice was calm, perfectly masking her success. "A Flow-Neutral tracker? Diabolical. Your Majesty, there is no way to scrub that trail. You must increase your speed. The Lunio forces will be slow and methodical; they won't use a tracking method this sophisticated."
Evelyn was subtly lying. She knew the trackers were not Lunio's but her own, and she knew Lunio would move quickly once they had the coordinates. Her advice to speed up was meant to push Felix right into the waiting kidnapping zone.
"Rhea, we move faster," Felix ordered, trusting Evelyn's assessment of Lunio's capabilities. "We need to get off this pass before Lunio's slow forces reach the landslide and find our trail."
They sped up, unknowingly running straight toward the ambush point pre-selected by the person waiting patiently in the Command Center.