The transition from the damp, oil-slicked silence of the sewers to the rain-drenched streets of the capital was a shock of neon and noise. The "Modern" world was screaming.
Oakhaven at night was a tapestry of blue mana-fire and black iron. High above the cobblestones, the Royal Palace sat atop a natural limestone cliff, its spires glowing with a protective aegis that pulsed like a heartbeat.
"The signal is set," Marek rasped, his brass internal gears whirring as he adjusted a heavy harpoon-launcher. "Once you breach the main conduit, my brothers will flood the lower barracks. The 'New Order' won't know whether to fire their cannons or find their boots."
Leona stood at the mouth of a service grate, her heavy cloak snapping in the wind. She looked at her Mithril Arm. It was glowing with a fierce, steady violet light, sensing the massive accumulation of power in the Palace above.
"Kaelen, take the left flank," Leona commanded. "Don't engage the knights. Your job is to disable the automated spotlights. If they can't see us, they can't lock their mana-signatures."
"And you?" Kaelen asked, his obsidian daggers shimmering in the dark.
"I have an appointment with the King's Shield," Leona said.
She stepped out into the open square.
Instantly, the silence was shattered by a mechanical siren. From the Palace gates, twelve figures emerged. These were not the Alchemical Enforcers she had fought before. These were the Soul-Bound Knights. Each wore armor of white gold and ivory, etched with agonizingly beautiful runes. But unlike standard plate, the joints of this armor bled a faint, ghostly green light.
Leona felt a wave of nausea. She knew that light. It was the color of a fractured mana-core—the literal lifeforce of captured mages, processed and refined into a fuel source for the nobility's protectors.
"By order of King Aethelred," the lead knight boomed, his voice distorted by his helmet's amplification. "The Weaver is to be dismantled. The Mithril is to be reclaimed for the Crown."
The knights didn't draw swords. They raised their hands, and the air around them ignited. Each knight was a walking battery of stolen magic. A barrage of concentrated fire, lightning, and kinetic force screamed toward Leona.
Leona didn't flinch. She slammed her mithril hand into the ground.
"Glacial Dome: Zero-Point!"
A sphere of absolute-zero frost erupted around her. The knights' elemental attacks didn't just hit the ice; they were sucked into it. The "Modern" logic of their armor relied on high-energy output. Leona's magic was the absence of energy.
The fire flickered and died. The lightning grounded itself into the frozen earth.
"Your armor is a masterpiece of cruelty," Leona said, stepping out from the mist. Her threads began to spiral around her, spinning so fast they became a shimmering blur. "But even a masterpiece has a spine."
She lunged.
She moved with the "Breath of the Void" speed her father had taught her, but enhanced by her mithril-conducted frost. She was a silver ghost in the rain.
The first knight swung a massive ivory mace, but Leona slid beneath the blow. She didn't strike his chest—she struck the small, glowing green canister at the base of his spine.
Clink.
A single Mithril Thread pierced the glass. Instead of draining the mana, Leona injected a pulse of her own chaotic frost.
The reaction was instantaneous. The green soul-fire turned a brittle white. The knight's armor seized, the joints freezing solid. He fell forward, a thousand-pound statue of ivory and trapped screaming.
"Re-target! Re-target!" the lead knight shouted, his armor glowing a furious crimson as he drew more power from his core.
But Leona was already among them. She wasn't fighting like an assassin anymore; she was fighting like a storm. She wove her threads between the knights, creating a "Mithril Web" that linked their armor together.
"Do you know what happens when you link twelve independent mana-reactors to a single cold-sink?" Leona asked.
She clenched her mithril fist.
The threads tightened. The "Soul-Bound" armor began to hiss as the frost traveled from one knight to the next, creating a chain reaction of thermal collapse. The beautiful ivory plates began to crack. The green light faded, replaced by the silence of the void.
One by one, the King's Shield collapsed into the mud. They weren't dead—Leona had been careful to only freeze the machinery—but they were powerless.
"Marek! Now!" Leona shouted into the night.
From every manhole and service grate in the square, the Broken Gears erupted. Hundreds of Rust-Walkers swarmed over the fallen knights, using their jagged shears to strip the white-gold plating for parts.
Leona didn't watch the scavengers. She looked up at the Palace's main balcony.
There, standing in the cold light of the moon, was a man in a simple black robe. He wasn't a machine, and he wasn't a knight. He was King Aethelred, and in his hand, he held the other half of the Gray Book.
"You've come a long way for a librarian, Leona Argen," the King's voice carried over the square, calm and terrifyingly sane. "But you've forgotten the most important rule of the Archive."
Leona narrowed her eyes. "And what's that?"
"The records always belong to the one who survives the fire," the King said. He held the book over a small, glowing pedestal. "And I've just set the timer for the Palace's self-destruct. If you want the names of those who truly killed your father, you have five minutes to reach me."
The Palace's aegis turned from blue to a violent, unstable red.
Leona looked at Marek, then at Kaelen, who had just finished disabling the spotlights.
"Go!" Kaelen yelled. "We'll hold the gates! Get the book, Leona!"
Leona didn't hesitate. She used her threads to grapple the Palace's balcony, soaring upward through the rain. She had five minutes to find the truth, or the story of the Argen family would end in a heap of burning ivory and ash.