The air in the safe house was thick enough to choke on. It wasn't just the lack of ventilation; it was the concentrated essence of six Transcendents, all radiating varying degrees of fury and calculation. At the center of it all sat Valerius, looking remarkably unbothered for a man currently being burned alive by the silent glares of his peers.
"You realize," Kaelen began, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates, "that we had a timeline. We had years of planning before we even considered touching the Spark. Now? The kingdom is going to crumble! The Bishop is blind, and we are sitting in a cellar with a girl who looks like she's about to combust."
"Timeline is such a rigid word, Kaelen," Valerius demurred, though he finally stopped his playful drumming on the table. "I prefer to think of it as... a sudden surge in productivity."
"Productivity?" Myra, the woman with silver-braided hair, hissed. Her jade eyes flashed with a cold, internal light. "Halesia isn't just angry, Valerius. She's simply resigned to her fate." She waved her arms around to emphasize the problem, "She's sitting in one of her gardens, watching the kindom dim as if it's a theater performance. She's giving up."
The other three at the table shifted in their seats, their auras rippling. Asteria, still trying to catch her breath, took the opportunity to study them.
To the left of Kaelen sat Lord Draxis, a man who looked less like a human and more like a collection of sharp angles. He was draped in robes of heavy, void-black velvet, and his skin had a faint, metallic sheen. He was the Master of the Foundries, a man of few words and a surgical mind.
Beside him was Sora, a woman who appeared surprisingly young, though her eyes were milky-white and filled with swirling nebulas. She was a Seer; her head constantly tilted as if listening to a conversation miles away.
Finally, there was Lord Silas, a rotund man with a jovial face that didn't match the cold, calculating way he handled a pair of golden spectacles. He was the kingdom's chief financier – the man who knew exactly how much every soul in Aethelgard was worth.
"Halesia's whims are erratic," Draxis noted, his voice sounding like metal scraping metal. "The city will physically shatter before we can move the Spark."
"Then we don't wait," Sora whispered, her voice a chorus of overlapping tones.
"Okay hold on, hold on." Asteria interrupted, rubbing her eyes. "What the hell is the Spark? Why is it so important? I just picked it up like it was nothing, is it that special?"
The figures around the table stopped their conversations and turned their heads to face her in sync.
"That fool didn't tell you anything did he?" Kaelen muttered, finally fed up with Valerius' antics.
"Guilty." The man in question didn't have a lot to say, "Fine, fine I'll tell you. It's power! A lot of power! It's a marvel of technology and engineering. Without it our home may as well never exist, you see."
"And you're telling me that – very important – spark, is sitting inside of me?"
"Correct! I knew you were quick to catch on."
'...He's kidding, right?'
Asteria felt the weight of expectations and heavy gazes carving into her skin. She knew they were looking for a miracle, and she knew she was the one holding the cards – to their dismay.
"I have something, if that helps?" She began, changing the conversation entirely.
She reached into the soul sea, pulling not for a weapon, but for the item she had carried since her first brush with the Nightmare.
With a shimmer of translucent light, she manifested the [Mask of Glass].
It was a haunting thing – a face-shaped veil made of liquid crystal that seemed to weep frozen tears. It didn't reflect the light of the room; it absorbed it, casting a strange, distorted shadow on the table. It hummed with a frequency that felt like a secret whispered in a graveyard.
"The Mask of Glass, or so it's called." Asteria said, keeping her voice vague as she remembering the harrowing experience to claim it. "I found it... that's all."
Valerius leaned in, his eyebrows shooting up. "Asteria, you didn't mention you were carrying a cursed artifact of the Void."
"You didn't ask," she countered. She slid the mask across the table. "This isn't just a piece of glass. It's practically poison. If Halesia puts this on, it won't just hide her face – it'll make those 'whims' even more devastating, making everything she feels now, like child play. It's a trap disguised as a mercy. She's giving up, right? She wants to fade? This mask will let her. It will pull her consciousness into those feelings, leaving her body – and her divinity – wide open."
"A Trojan horse for a Goddess," Draxis mused, his metallic fingers reaching out to touch the rim of the mask before he thought better of it.
"She wouldn't be able to refuse it," Sora added, her milky eyes fixed on the mask's weeping tears. "It's everything she's ever wanted."
"If she wears the mask," Kaelen said, his scarred face twisting into a grim smile, "The citizens will wake up all at once. There will be chaos, yes, but the Spark in that girl will be the only light left in the kingdom. They will follow her as surely as they followed the bell."
"We move at daybreak – wherever that is," Myra commanded, her silver hair shimmering as her power surged. "Valerius, you will guide the girl through the gardens. The rest of us will take our positions at the five dampeners across the kingdom. The moment she dons the mask, we cut the feed."
"And the girl?" Silas asked, looking at Asteria with a cold, mercantile appraisal.
"I'll be fine," Asteria lied, her hand subconsciously touching the spot over her heart where the golden heat lived. "I've survived Valerius's jokes. I can survive a little light."
Valerius stood up, his playful demeanor finally replaced by something sharp and lethal. He looked at his fellow Lords, his gaze lingering on the Mask of Glass.
"The plan is set, then," he said. "We go through with the rebellion not as conquerors, but as heirs to a dying dream. Asteria, go to the back room. Myra has prepared a... more appropriate attire for a future Sovereign. We leave in two hours."
Asteria stood, her legs still trembling, but her mind was clearer than it had ever been. She looked at the six Transcendents – the builders, the seers, the bankers, and the traitors – and realized that none of them truly understood what they were unleashing.
Then, she turned to face Valerius – really face him. Her expression was a fracture of anger, hope, and a deep, underlying sorrow. She took several confident strides toward him, her movements a stark, defiant contrast to the turmoil in her eyes.
"You," she snarled, pressing a finger hard into the center of his chest. "Sovereign? Me? Seriously. I'm all for your games, Valerius, but that is a joke you don't get to tell."
"What do you mean?" His smile remained, appearing dangerously honest, as if he truly couldn't see the flaw in his logic. "You are the only one left who could possibly rule."
"No. Is that what you told yourself when you decided to bring this kingdom to ruin?" she asked, stepping back to widen the gap between them. "Is that the same lie you used when you suggested Halesia seek salvation from that?"
His smile faltered, a flicker of something cold crossing his features. "I'm not sure what you're implying, Asteria. But you should be very careful with your next words."
"Why? You couldn't kill me even if you wanted to!" A twisted, gleeful agony pulled at the corners of her mouth. "You need me alive, or this rebellion fails before the sun even sets."
She lunged toward the table where the Starlight Jian was propped. She drew it in one fluid motion, the blade singing as it leveled at his throat. The crimson vein in the glass pulsed with a violent, indignant light.
"I knew you were crazy, Valerius," she laughed – a bitter, self-deprecating sound. "But I refuse to dance to your tune. I will never put myself in a position where I have to lead."
She tensed her arm, the tip of the star-forged blade trembling centimeters from his jugular. "Do it yourself, you ignorant basta-"
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." He didn't flinch. He looked at the blade with the detached interest of an art critic. "You couldn't graze my skin if you tried."
He shook his head with a soft chuckle, his eyes locking onto hers. "Though I do love a gamble. If you can draw even a single drop of blood from me, I will take the throne myself. Deal?"
"Deal."
She swung. It was a hard, forceful strike, channeling every ounce of her frustration and the Spark's heat into the blow. To her shock, the blade was caught – stopped dead between two of his fingers. The air around them rippled with the force of the impact, and even for a Transcendent, the strain showed on Valerius's face.
'Is the sword that powerful? Or is he that afraid of it?' Thinking with a speed born of a dozen near-death encounters, Asteria didn't wait for him to counter. She reached into her soul sea and summoned the [Obsidian Glass] into her free hand.
She dashed low, swinging at his side – a desperate attempt to bite into his disgustingly handsome flesh, to draw just one drop of blood and save herself from a crown.
It worked.
Valerius's attention was so heavily anchored to the Jian that he had dismissed her other hand as a threat. The [Refractive Blade] enchantment did the rest; the dark glass flashed like a blur in the light, its silhouette impossible to track.
The obsidian edge bit. A thin, dark line appeared on his ribs, coating the glass blade in a smear of crimson.
"I win, Valerius. Do it yourself."
Asteria smiled, letting the longsword dissolve into a shower of black sparks. She released the Jian, letting it vanish back into the cracking depths of [Oasis' Greed] before sending the memory back to her soul sea.
Without looking back – without daring to see the expression on the smartest man in the kingdom's face – she turned and walked out of the room. It was the only victory she had left.