Chapter 405: 405. The Ice Princess Is Try To Snitch On Me For What I Did (I’ll Break Her)

"There’s additional information. The relay contacts, the interior layout of Solmordia, and names I haven’t provided yet."

"Fuck that shit," Rex said. "I’ll get those from other sources!"

"There aren’t other sources," Kregg said. "I’m one of four senior members of the Legion who’ve been inside Solmordia...!"

"The other three don’t defect. They don’t break under conventional interrogation; I know because I’ve seen them withstand it...!"

"The Balance Keeper conditions them in a way that differs from the lower ranks."

Rex assessed this honestly. It was probably true, but it was also not sufficient.

"Then I’ll go to Solmordia myself," Rex said.

Kregg’s primordial output pushed Rex back another step, and Rex felt its specific weight differently than before; it was heavier at the edges, indicating that Kregg was drawing on a reserve beyond standard output, which is accessed when the emotional state behind the power is no longer regulated.

"She’ll see you coming," Kregg said. "She has detection infrastructure along the sea approach that identifies reincarnator signatures from a distance."

"Every reincarnator who has attempted to enter Solmordia covertly has failed—every single one. She can anticipate the moves of individuals like you because she has spent thirty years studying people like you."

"Good," Rex said. "Then she’ll know I’m coming."

He created the original frequencies in both hands again, using a combination that was stronger than what he needed before, and he directed them precisely at the spot where Kregg’s basic energy was causing interference.

The working hit the base of Kregg’s original structure and activated the cancellation sequence at full power, and when the energy base’s foundational resonance was canceled at the source, it didn’t just weaken slowly but collapsed completely, similar to how a load-bearing wall doesn’t gradually give in but suddenly fails.

Kregg’s primordial output got cut.

In the half-second it took him to understand what had happened and begin the process of reconstructing his access to it, Rex used the telekinesis at full output on the geological substrate immediately beneath Kregg’s position.

The earthen authority read the stone’s fault lines and compression points with passive geological foresight and identified the specific vector that would produce the required outcome with minimum input. Rex applied force at that vector with the precision of someone who understood geological architecture at its own level of logic.

"I’ll see you in hell." Rex smirked and snapped his fingers.

The stone under Kregg’s feet moved upward at the left and downward at the right, a shear force operating along the natural fault geometry, and what it encountered on its way was Kregg.

BAMMMM!

The sound was brief and definitive, but it was followed by Kregg’s life ending as his body was cut in half. And the canyon was quiet again after that.

Rex stood in silence and looked at what was on the canyon floor, and then he looked at the upper canyon walls, where the afternoon light was still coming down in long columns through the moss. Then he looked at the document still in his other hand, and he folded it and put it in his jacket pocket alongside the ring.

Behind him, from the direction of the canyon wall, Mireya said something that wasn’t a word.

Rex turned around.

She was on her feet, which she had clearly managed while his attention was elsewhere, and she was looking at the canyon floor with the specific expression of someone taking an inventory they would rather not be taking.

Her eyes shifted from Virella to Kregg, then to Rex, and back to Virella. Her sword hand gripped the handle, though the blade remained sheathed—a reflex of someone whose body was primed for combat, even as their mind hesitated.

"You said... you were letting them go," she said.

"I said I had what I needed," Rex said. "I didn’t say I was letting them go."

Mireya looked at him, her expression revealing a complex mix of emotions. She was processing the precise way his words were constructed while simultaneously realizing that she had interpreted his message based on her own expectations rather than the reality of what he had actually said.

"You knew when you said it," she said.

"Yep," Rex said. "But eh, no one cares anyway..."

"You deliberately let them think—" She stopped to think of a better word.

She started again. "They were cooperating!"

"Kregg gave you everything you asked for, and he gave you the name, the location, the document, and the ring. He gave you all of it, and you still—"

"Yes," Rex said. "So what? I’ll just let them live?"

"In this world... you don’t have to trust anyone, you know."

Mireya gritted her teeth. "That is not—" The words stopped again.

She was working through something with the visible effort of someone who has a clear moral position and is trying to find the language that accurately represents it in the face of a situation that keeps producing complications.

"That is not what you do," she said. "You don’t kill people who have already surrendered."

"That’s not what that was, that’s not what any of this was supposed to be."

"What was it supposed to be then?" Rex said.

"We came here to find Aurelia and the others while also trying to retrieve the key," Mireya said. "We didn’t come here to execute people on a canyon floor."

"The Key is retrieved," Rex said. "Aurelia and the others are alive."

"Those objectives are complete."

"Don’t say that!" Mireya said, and her voice had gone harder. "Don’t reduce this to an objectives list!"

"These were people, and Kregg was a person who told you everything and handed you his compact and stood there and let you take his ring, and you killed him anyway, and you killed her, and she wasn’t even—" She stopped. "She was just standing there."

"She was a senior member of an organization that has eliminated forty-three reincarnators from this world," Rex said. "She participated in Apollo’s capture today, and she put stone spurs through Iris’s back."

"That doesn’t mean you get to execute her," Mireya said. "That’s not how it works."

"Then tell me how it works," Rex said.

"You hand them to the Apostle network," Mireya said. "You take them back to Aethelgard, you put them in front of Elizabeth and Valentina, and they go through the network’s process!"

"That’s how it’s supposed to work, and that’s what the system is for."

"The system," Rex said, "would hold them for three weeks while the process ran, during which time the Balance Keeper’s relay network would identify the breach and adapt, relocate, and restructure, and the information I have right now would be worth a fraction of what it’s worth today."

"That’s what the system would produce."

"Maybe," Mireya said. "But... That doesn’t give you the right to decide who lives and who doesn’t!"

"Well, someone decided," Rex said. "And you’re standing on the decision right now."

"The only question is whether you find the decision acceptable."

"No," Mireya said. "That’s worng...!"

"I don’t find it acceptable; in fact, I find it completely unacceptable. I’m going to tell Elizabeth exactly what happened here—almost all of it!"

"The seven unnamed members, along with Kael, Varek, and Seris, as well as what you just did to Kregg and Virella after they cooperated, will be included in my report." Her voice was controlled and flat and had the specific quality of someone who has moved past the emotional stage and into the determined one. "I’m going to tell her everything."

Rex looked at her. "You dare oppose me?"

’This fucking bitch is naive... it’s probably because of Apollo’s influence...’

"Miss Elizabeth is going to want to know what really happened in this canyon," Mireya continued. "Alexander is going to want to know, and Lady Valentina is going to want to know!"

"When they learn about this, everything you have built here... every piece of trust you have spent the last several months establishing with the Starlights, the Academy, and the Apostle network will be weighed against what I witnessed today and what I am going to share with them!"

She held his gaze. "You need people to believe you’re something you’re not, and I’m going to make that very difficult for you."

Rex was quiet for a moment. "I get all of this bullshit after saving your life, huh?"

"Even though I told you to stay with the others..."

Then he walked toward her.

He crossed the distance at a pace that was neither hurried nor conventionally threatening; it was simply consistent. As he closed the final meter, Mireya’s hand moved away from the sword handle—not to reach for it, but to brace herself. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

This was the appropriate reaction to someone who did not appear to be a physical threat, whose actual threat profile she had not fully assessed.

He stopped close enough that she would have to raise her voice for the following exchange to carry any distance at all.

The telekinesis he extended was precise and minimal, a thin compression around the base of her throat, not enough to restrict breathing but enough to feel unmistakably as a presence that could do something it wasn’t doing yet.

Mireya went still.

"You’re going to tell Elizabeth that the Legion’s extraction team was in the canyon," Rex said, his voice low and even, lacking any particular emphasis. "You’re going to inform her that Apollo and Veylor were recovered."

"You’re going to convey that the situation has been resolved."

"Rex—"

"You don’t have anything else to support what bullshit you just said before," Rex said. "You don’t have witnesses."

"The expedition members were not around here throughout the incident..."

"Veylor was also unconscious. Apollo was unconscious as well. Kael has confirmed about the Underlayer arrangement with the Legion, which I will present to Elizabeth as intelligence gathered under field conditions."

"She will accept it because it is accurate and because she trusts my judgment in the field, and I have not given her a reason to doubt me."

"You said all of that thinking your plan would work, huh...?"