"Whose mana" Valeria whispered in a trembling, quiet voice, "is inside you?"

"Valeria..." Zen started.

Her eyes widened. "Vitality," she hissed. "It is Vitality mana."

She stepped back, the pieces clicking together in her mind with terrifying speed. "A healer. The little F-Rank girl from the extraction zone. The one who was looking at you."

Before Zen could even blink, Valeria’s hand shot out. The air warped around her palm, and the massive, blood-red hilt of her broadsword materialized into her grip.

"I am going to rip her spine out through her throat," Valeria stated. It wasn’t a threat. It was a scheduling update.

She turned toward the door.

Zen moved faster. He didn’t have his old strength, but he had the layout of the room and the element of surprise. He threw himself between her and the heavy oak door.

"Move, Zen," she growled, her aura flaring hot enough to singe the carpet.

"No."

She stepped into his space, the blade humming violently. "She put her dirty blood in your veins. She marked you. Move."

He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to explain the complex mechanics of an involuntary blood pact to a raging war goddess. He needed to give her a reason to stop right now, and there was exactly one thing that worked.

He reached out and grabbed both of her wrists, ignoring the burning heat of her mana. He looked down at her and brought out the Emperor’s voice at full intensity.

It was the exact tone he used on the battlefields when the frontline was breaking, and everyone was ten seconds away from dying.

"Valeria. Stand down."

She froze mid-step. The command hit her deeply ingrained instincts. The broadsword wavered, then vanished back into its spatial scabbard.

Zen kept his heavy grip on her wrists. He looked directly into her glowing red eyes.

"The blood pact was a medical emergency," Zen said smoothly. "She did it to keep me alive when there was little options available at the time."

"I could have..."

"We were both trying to stay under the radar," Zen cut her off sharply. "She is not a rival, Valeria. She is a liability that I am managing."

Valeria bared her fangs. "I can manage her permanently. It will take me three seconds."

"If you touch her," Zen said, dropping his voice lower, "every second of proximity you have earned in the last weeks disappears. I will immediately leave for Nyx... or Aurelia. Understood? Gone."

Valeria’s breath hitched.

"Are we clear?" Zen asked.

A heavy silence filled the bedroom. This was their most honest moment since he had woken up. Zen knew he could never defeat her in a direct fight. Even at his peak, it would have been close to a stalemate as she had always been his most powerful Pillar.

But he held the one thing she valued more than violence: his presence.

"...Yes, Zen," she finally whispered.

She hated it. She hated it so much that her suppressed Aegis pressure caused the plaster on the walls behind her to crack in jagged spiderweb patterns. But she submitted.

She pulled her wrists out of his grip, walked backwards, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She pulled her knees to her chest, watching him with the dark, calculating expression of someone who had just been made aware of a problem she would eventually handle on her own timeline.

Zen let out a quiet breath.

Just then, the familiar blue screen flickered in his peripheral vision.

[SYSTEM ALERT: Blood Pact Secrecy — COMPROMISED. Goddess of War: AWARE.]

[Probability of Maya Reed’s survival given direct access: Reduced to 71%. Recommend continued monitoring.]

Zen filed it away. He would deal with 71% later. Right now, 71% was manageable.

"So," Zen said, adjusting his shirt. "Now that we have established the rules regarding my friends..."

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The knock was enormous. It sounded less like a fist hitting wood and more like a heavy metal staff striking stone.

The sound echoed through the entire townhouse, vibrating up through the floorboards.

BOOM.

Three times. A formal, deliberate pattern.

Zen frowned. "Is that the Inquisitor?"

"No," Valeria said as she instantly stood up. All her jealousy vanished, replaced by cold hostility. "The Vanguard doesn"t knock like that," she said.

She looked at the ceiling. The S-Rank Aegis wards she had placed over the townhouse were starting to sizzle. They were not being violently smashed; instead, they were dissolving at the contact points.

Someone was peeling her S-Rank magic off the building from the outside;

"Stay here," Valeria ordered, already moving toward the door.

"Not a chance," Zen replied, following right behind her.

They moved quickly down the stairs. The front hallway was dark, and the only light was the one coming from the streetlamps outside spilling through the frosted glass of the front door.

Valeria didn’t bother opening it normally. She gripped the handle, poured her mana into the hinges, and yanked the heavy door entirely open.

Standing on the front porch was not a Vanguard soldier, nor was it the Inquisitor.

It was a courier.

He was wearing heavy, platinum-trimmed ceremonial armor that gleamed under the streetlights.

On his chest plate was a crest neither Zen nor Valeria had seen in person for five hundred years. It was the Crown Domain’s imperial seal... a massive sun with seven rays, each representing one of the ancient domains that existed before the Five Goddesses consolidated the world.

The courier ignored the Goddess of War completely. He didn’t even look at the terrifying red glow in her eyes.

He shifted his gaze immediately over her shoulder, finding Zen standing at the bottom of the stairs.

He had the calm certainty of someone who was given a specific face to look for and was perfectly confident he had found it.

"Zen Arclight," the courier said.

"Who is asking?" Zen replied carefully.

The courier stepped forward, holding out a heavy, black biometric lockbox. It was stamped with the same seven-ray sun seal in pure gold.

"From Her Imperial Majesty," the courier announced. "For your debts."

Valeria tensed as her hand dropped to her side as if she was reaching for a blade. "Do not touch that box, Zen."

Zen ignored her.

If Aurelia wanted him dead, she wouldn’t have paid off his debts. She would have just bought the academy and had Kaelan expelled into a warzone.

So he walked past Valeria and took the heavy black box from the courier’s hands.

The moment his fingers touched the metal, a red laser swept over his palm.

"Biometric scan complete," a mechanical voice chimed from the box.

But it didn’t open. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Instead, a secondary, deep purple light flashed from the lock mechanism, sweeping directly into Zen’s chest.

Zen went completely still.

"System," Zen thought, his pulse spiking. "What exactly is that light looking for?"

[Probability that the device is searching for your pre-Singularity Imperial resonance: 98.7%.]

Zen’s breath caught. No living person should have the technology to detect that frequency, he thought.

The box clicked loudly. The purple light faded to green.

[Resonance confirmed. Welcome.]

The lid popped open.

Zen looked inside.

The courier bowed perfectly at the waist, turned on his heel, and walked away into the dark street without saying another word.

"What is it?" Valeria demanded, stepping closer to look over his arm. "Is it a trap? A tracking relic?"

"No," Zen said quietly.

He reached into the velvet-lined box. Inside was a suit.

It wasn’t just expensive; it was very expensiv... like it was crafted and refined specifically. The dark material seemed to catch the ambient light, shifting subtly as he moved it. Folded neatly on top of the jacket was a single gold pin for the lapel.

And resting right beneath the pin was a solid gold data-card.

"A suit?" Valeria scoffed, her eyes narrowing. "Aurelia sent a broke academy student a bespoke suit? Why?"

Zen didn’t answer. He picked up the gold data-card.

The moment the data card left the box, it activated. A projection shot upward, forming a high-definition hologram right in the middle of the hallway.

Warm, golden light filled the space as the hologram resolved into a woman who seemed carved from pure patience. She wore a simple white dress and a gold crown so understated it could almost be mistaken for casual ornamentation.

Aurelia. The Empress.

Her eyes found Zen’s immediately in the projection, and they did not move.

Her voice poured out of the card’s speakers. It was the warmest, most soothing voice Zen had heard since he woke up.

"I paid your little debts, Zen," Aurelia said softly. "Consider it a down payment."

She paused. A faint, knowing smile touched the corners of her lips.

"The Zenith Gala is in fourteen days, located in the heart of the Crown Domain. You will attend. You will wear what I sent."

Her smile widened just a fraction, revealing a hint of the obsessive hunger hiding beneath her regal composure.

"And when the third song plays," Aurelia continued, "you owe me a dance. Do not make me come down there and collect you myself."

The hologram flickered and closed, throwing the hallway back into dim shadows.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Then, the walls of the townhouse began to crack again. Fresh fissures shot up the drywall, splitting the expensive paint as raw, unfiltered Aegis mana leaked into the air.

Valeria turned very slowly to face Zen, and the expression on her face was a terrifying mix of extreme jealousy, homicidal fury, obsessive possessiveness, and the humiliation of someone who just realized they were not the only player on a board they thought they completely owned.

"How many of them know?" Valeria asked. Her voice was very quiet. Very dangerous.

Zen looked down at the ridiculously expensive suit in his hands, thinking about the twenty-four-hour death timer currently ticking down from Nyx.

"At least two," Zen said honestly. "Possibly more."