ELIOS

  The Tower never truly slept.

  Elios lay awake inside White Nest—a small castle allotted to the guests only, lying just beside the Eastern gate of the outer ring. His hands folded over his chest, eyes fixed on the ceiling where pale stone caught and reflected the moonlight like still water. There were no shadows here deep enough to hide in.

  His wrists still ached beneath fresh bandages. The healers had worked professionally. No questions. No banter. Just procedures carried out with scary precision. They had fixed his injuries the way a mechanic fixed a damaged clock– enough to be functional.

  Elios flexed his fingers once, testing them. Pain answered, soft and controlled.

  Good.

  Across the chamber, Tarth slept in uneven bursts, breath rasping, body jerking now and then as if still fighting shadows. Elios glanced at him, and his heart felt heavy again. Pulling the man into this reckless path — was that another mistake he made tonight?

  One more thing he noticed was Tarth no longer acted wary. He didn’t know exactly what had happened, but those eyes had changed somehow. They spoke less about surviving and more about conviction.

  Normally, Elios should’ve felt happy for his friend’s growth, but it was the uneasiness gnawing at his mind instead. In a particular circumstance like this, devotion could stray into something extreme.

  Elios closed his eyes, trying to find his way to sleep. His thoughts drifted, unsurprisingly, to a silhouette that had remained in his mind like a stuck piece of bone refusing to go down.

  Noct.

  Or was it Neru?—Her real name, that must be.

  She had been given a separate room deeper within the structure. A courtesy—or a precaution, he couldn’t be sure. In the Tower, the two were often the same thing. But for a guest like Neru, both seemed pointless.

  Elios had encountered all types of opponents in his life, but this woman — she kept surprising him again and again. Except for the first time when they had just met, the whole journey never strayed away from her lead. She always had something to offer, something to keep them accepting her appearance despite knowing the risk. In the shadow he walked, that kind of company was dreadful.

  It had to change.

  What had happened today only enforced that.

  She had walked through the gates under his authority, and the responsibility now rested squarely on his shoulders. He needed to seize control back before it was too late. And if she revealed herself to be a threat, he would have to remove her himself without looking away.

  That unsettled him, like a nameless sign on a silent road.

  Outside, the wind shrieked through old planks, its voice threading itself. Elios turned his head slightly, eyes tracking the faintly glowing sigils etched near the windows—wards, conduits, runes. He did not know their exact functions. The technological wonders of the Tower, which once had fascinated him, now started planting seeds of doubt into his head. Were they watching him? What manufacturer were they planning to build at Mount Longfang? Even his echo rod, why had it worked so well on the abyss monster?

  Questions kept popping up, refusing to settle, shifting no matter how he turned them. Someone was moving the pieces on the board, on an unprecedented scale, and with a startling pace.

  Elios drew in a slow breath, forcing calm upon himself as he had done for years. Truth always demanded a price. He had long since grown accustomed to settling that debt—with blood, with reputation, with faith worn thin sometimes.

  But this time, the stake laid out before him was the entire system. Not just the system connecting the world, but also the one holding his beliefs.

  Knock! Knock!

  The sounds at the front door jerked him from his trance. Elios opened his eyes, the chill returned to his gaze, sharp and steady, like a blade freshly honed in the dark.

  “Who?”

  Elios pulled on his outer coat and sat up carefully. His gaze flicked toward the window as well, cautious of a feint—noise at the door to draw him away while something else slipped in from the dark.

  From the other side came Neru’s voice, clear and unstrained.

  “It’s me. Your lamp was still lit. I guessed you weren’t asleep yet.”

  Elios rose and went to the door, taking care to bring his broad falchion with him. He opened it just enough to see her.

  “Tarth just fell asleep. What is it?” His voice was flat, edged with frost.

  In the dim, wavering firelight of the corridor lamps, Neru stood there looking half-phantom, half angel—only her eyes remained fully alive, bright and intent as ever.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I thought I’d take advantage of the night to do a few things with you.”

  Elios stared at her without a word.

  She blinked once, then again, clenched her jaw, and added quickly,

  “I mean—about the investigation.”

  “Of course I know it’s about the investigation.” Realizing she might’ve misunderstood him, Elios came dangerously close to losing his temper. “But are you insane, sneaking around the Tower grounds at this hour?”

  Neru’s posture loosened at once, her calm returning as if it had never left.

  “Not at all. If Lord Viltar is right, we’re running out of time. The Imperial Summit is next week.” She tilted her head slightly. “Besides, there are things that should only be done at night. Once curfew is in effect, all the records will be gathered in one place. They won’t be able to scatter or disappear.”

  “Madness,” Elios snapped. “Do you have any idea how severe the punishment is for stealing those documents? And you have the nerve to ask me to be your accomplice.”

  Elios lifted a hand to shut the door, but Neru was faster. She slipped her foot forward to block it, the tip of her boot biting into the stone with a sharp click. Her voice remained unhurried as she spoke.

  “Listen. Plenty of people must have seen us coming through the gates in broad daylight. They might not know Tarth. They might not know me. But you — You are famous for a reason, aren’t you? If someone among the Elders is who we’re looking for, they’ll already be on guard.” Her eyes did not leave his. “If we wait until tomorrow, how likely do you think it is that we’ll still be able to gather evidence without obstruction?”

  Elios had been about to force the door closed, but her words stopped him. His grip slackened.

  She wasn’t wrong. Because of the Tower’s arcane archival system, destroying stored records was all but impossible. Disrupting them, however, was another matter entirely—especially for figures as deeply entrenched in power as the Elders. If they chose to complicate matters, it could take an entire day of formal procedures just to determine where a document had gone, and weeks of bureaucratic pursuit to reclaim it. Even with Archon Viltar’s backing, nothing could move faster; the Tower’s rigid intake and storage protocols were foundational law, not suggestions.

  Seeing his hesitation, Neru pressed on.

  “If you’re worried about being implicated,” she said evenly, “then just give me more information about the interior. I can go alone.”

  Elios cut the air with a sharp gesture.

  “Not a chance. I haven’t trusted you that much.” His voice hardened—then paused. “That being said…”

  He continued.

  “If we’re going to do this together, then we need a proper plan. Give me a moment—we’ll go outside”

  Neru cast a glance into the room.

  “You’re not waking Tarth?” she asked lightly. “Earlier this evening, he seemed rather eager.”

  Elios recalled his earlier thoughts and shook his head.

  “Dragging him into this is already dangerous enough. I won’t have him break the law again. For Tarth, that kind of transgression carries a different weight to us.”

  Neru clicked her tongue, though she did not argue.

  “A shame. I won’t speak of other things, but in matters like this, he’s clearly way more experienced than you.”

  Elios crossed the room and took a ring of keys from the corner, speaking as he moved.

  “Stop talking about him like some petty criminal,” he said coldly. “He’s a Seeker, a part of the team.”

  “Means little to me,” Noct nodded, unimpressed. “But I will remember that.”

  Elios left a brief note on the small table beside Tarth’s bed, closed the door with care, then set off down the corridor with Neru at his side. Beneath the moonlight, the ground outside looked dusted with silver. Their footsteps dissolved into the night, soft like rain falling onto the surface of the river.

  “This should probably be reported to Lord Viltar ahead of time,” Neru suggested.

  Once again, she wasn’t wrong.

  And once again, Elios found himself unable to agree immediately. Every proposal she made seemed to carry a second edge, hidden just beneath the surface.

  “In his position,” Elios replied, “he can’t openly endorse what we’re about to do. As for tacit approval—well, look.”

  He gestured forward.

  The watch post by the gate stood empty.

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  No guard. The key still hung in the lock. There was nothing else—just three neatly folded nightpatrol uniforms laid out within the booth, beside three extinguished lanterns.

  “…Did he anticipate this?” Neru whispered.

  “He's that brilliant,” Elios narrowed his eyes. “No surprise."

  His gaze drifted toward the garden complex across the river, where they had lingered earlier that evening. Contrary to his expectations, there wasn’t a single light burning there now.

  “Still,” Neru said while putting on the new outfit, “it is strange. From the documents he gave me, I imagined a completely different investigative strategy. Are you saying he never expected us to follow his instructions in the first place?”

  Elios ran a hand along the seam of the clothes and found a note with the passcode written on it.

  “He never forced his subordinates into a rigid mold,” he said, his hand lifting the lid of one lantern to inspect it closely. “As long as the objective stays the same, there’s room for improvisation.”

  The familiar scent of the wick hit his nose as he drew it closer. Finding nothing amiss, he passed one of the lanterns to Neru. As he did, his voice dropped into a warning.

  “No more tricks.”

  Neru took the lantern. Her black hair was swept up, twisted into a tight knot atop her head so it would fit beneath the wide-brimmed hat that shadowed the upper half of her face.

  “I won’t do it without a good reason,” she said calmly. “And promises wouldn’t make you trust me anyway, would they?”

  Elios looked her over from head to toe and silently shook his head. With those curves, the outfit wouldn’t deceive anyone.

  “I know the Tower far better than you do,” he said. “So it’s best if you follow my arrangements. First—put this cloak on.”

  “A cloak?” Neru frowned. “Then what’s the point of disguising myself at all?”

  “Just do it,” Elios replied. “We’ll stay in the shadows as much as possible and avoid contact. The disguise is our last resort.”

  Neru’s brows remained tightly drawn together, but she offered no protest.

  “Very well,” she nodded. “Then let’s talk about the plan. We have plenty of places to start. I propose we go straight for the root of the problem—the Drovar Dust itself. That large shipment must be hidden somewhere nearby.”

  That would end with me no longer having any leverage, Elios realized. A familiar instinct.

  “There’s no need to worry about that,” he said. “The Tower is a special domain. Once something enters it, even a bird flying overhead leaves a shadow behind. If we trace the records, it will come to light. Charging around blindly isn’t the way. More importantly, we need to lock the evidence in place—make sure no one can tamper with the trail.”

  “And how, exactly?” Neru asked.

  Elios was intimately familiar with the process. Locate the master logs of ingress and egress. Check the sealed ledger of stored specimens. Trace the chain of custody. These were tasks he himself had once performed whenever samples were transferred from outside into the Tower’s keeping. The real question was Neru—what part of this could he trust her with?

  “In the Frothena legend you mentioned,” he asked, “is Drovar Dust considered as a conduit, a catalyst, or the primary material of the ritual?”

  “It’s just a legend,” Neru frowned, thinking it through before answering, “never supposed to be that specific. All that’s clear is that an enormous quantity is required. If I had to guess, then it might be the material itself.”

  “No clear direction,” Elios said as he fastened the last pieces of his night-patrol attire. ”Then it may take the entire night.”

  “Entire night?” Neru exhaled sharply. “A shipment that large, brought in over no more than the last two weeks—and it takes that long to trace?”

  “You have no idea how much information the Tower devours in a single day,” Elios replied. “Let alone two weeks’ worth. Anything deemed important in the world ends up here. Financial records alone—ledgers, debt covenants, instruments filed by the Redstone Bank and the kingdoms—pile up faster than most people could read in a lifetime.”

  “That can’t be right.” Neru shook her head. “I’ve heard this place preserves every document since its founding. If the influx from just a few weeks is already that vast, how immense must the Tower’s vaults truly be?”

  “That,” Elios said quietly, “is what makes the Tower singular.”

  He adjusted his gloves, then quietly checked his equipment one last time.

  “Most of the knowledge here isn’t preserved as paper or parchment. We copy, engrave, and bind it into a vast Arcanic memory lattice. Explaining it properly would take longer than we have.” He paused, then added flatly, “For now, just think of it as… magic.”

  Magic.

  Elios sighed at the thought. If the Frothena had ever bothered to pursue science, to push civilization forward instead of clinging to feral, ossified customs, then with a mind like hers, this conversation would never have happened.

  “It’s still hard to grasp,” Neru said at last, exhaling as she nodded. “But fine. If there are no ledgers to sift through, how do we trace anything? I assume this so-called lattice is the most heavily guarded place in the entire Tower, isn’t it?”

  Elios nodded without hesitation.

  “Correct. Protecting the system is a shared obligation of the Seven Kingdoms. Even the Redstone Bank has poured men and resources into it. So don’t brew any foolish ideas.”

  Neru glanced at him, brows rising. Elios continued.

  “Fortunately… What we’re after isn’t some big stuff like the world’s flow of coins either. For internal records belonging to the Tower itself, we can reach them through a side entry.” His eyes hardened slightly. “With Lord Viltar’s authority, it’s entirely possible.”

  Then he rubbed his hands together and quietly unlocked the gate. The tiny click was drowned under the screams of howling winds outside.

  “Ready?”

  Neru nodded without a word.

  The two of them slipped through the gate and vanished into the shadows. After some thirty paces, they left the main road and followed a narrow path along the riverbank. The White Nest receded behind them, nearly swallowed by the sheer immensity of the Tower.

  Even at night, it radiated a sense of sacred enormity. Darkness blurred the boundary between the Tower’s summit and the sky, giving the unsettling impression that it had not been raised from the earth at all, but had descended from the heavens.

  Night patrols moved in disciplined clusters along the main artery, accompanied by hounds and oversized lanterns. The watch posts were arranged with almost no blind spots. Whenever a beam of light swept in one direction, unseen eyes were already fixed on the opposite angle.

  Neru whispered.

  “Looks like sneaking in isn’t a good option. There’s a reason Lord Viltar issued us these uniforms.”

  She reached up, about to tug her cloak aside.

  Elios caught her wrist and stopped her, his voice calm and low.

  “Just stay close to me.”

  Then he began to lengthen his stride, silently counting time in his head. The route shifted constantly—from the riverbank to beneath a bridge, up a rocky face, even through a stretch of underground culvert—threading past every line of sight without once pausing to stop and observe. When they finally stopped, the main gate leading into the inner Tower loomed just ahead.

  Neru exhaled. “I knew you could draw paths in your head, but this impeccable pacing...”

  In truth, he could’ve even gone faster, had he not sensed the suspicion sharpened in her eyes.

  Elios spoke before she could ask.

  “I helped Lord Viltar design those.”

  There was always nine pounds of truth and one pound of lies in everything they shared so far, so Elios didn’t see why this one should be an exception.

  It was unclear whether Neru believed that, but her lips curled into a mocking smile.

  “I was wrong earlier,” she said. “Tarth might be suited for petty theft, but you—No one will ever see you coming.”

  Elios ignored the irony in her words and gestured toward the gate ahead, where four guards stood watch instead of the lone sentries posted elsewhere.

  “This is where the uniforms matter,” he said quietly, eyes gazing at Neru. “You neither look nor sound like a man, let alone a nightpatrol. So let me handle the talking. Pretend to be sick. Here—lean on my shoulder.”

  Perhaps it was the lantern light, but for a fleeting instant—no longer than a blink—he thought he saw a faint flush rise beneath Neru’s eyes. If so, it left no trace. Her posture and movements remained perfectly composed.

  Without hesitation, she stepped in close and slipped her arm around Elios’s neck, her tone edged with mild self-reproach.

  “My lackings,” she said. “Should’ve known I’d need to pass as a man.”

  Her unexpected ease turned him, in a heartbeat, from the one giving instructions into the one caught off guard. The contact only made it worse.

  Such softness.

  And this clean, feminine scent.

  Though he stood half a head taller than her, he felt as if he were the one sinking beneath her arm. Her voice, warm and smooth beside his ear, caused his blood to rush in return—like the sudden awareness of a lion’s growl right behind his neck.

  Elios gathered every remaining scrap of willpower and forced his attention back to the task at hand. He guided Neru along the main road toward the gate, his pace urgent, his posture tight. She let her head sag against his shoulder, cloak drawn close, her steps uneven—convincingly so, though in truth she was matching his rhythm perfectly.

  “Nightgale,” one of the gate guards called out, stepping forward and raising his lantern.

  “Blackdot,” Elios replied without hesitation. The passphrase itself was no great challenge, but thanks to Viltar’s preparations, it spared him some time.

  “Open the gate, brother,” he went on, not slowing down a bit. “I need to get inside now. In need of healers.”

  “Night patrol?” another guard asked, a loaded crossbow already levelled in their direction. “And who’s that? What’s with the cloak?”

  Elios flicked a corner of Neru’s cloak aside—just enough to reveal the night-patrol uniform beneath—then let it fall back into place.

  “Same unit as mine,” he said curtly. “Assigned to patrol the riverbank. His first day. The fool didn’t know how to dress warm—and ended up catching a terrible chill near the junk field. He needs healers. Please, be quick. His skin’s getting pale and cold as stone. Never seen that before.”

  The guard stepped closer with a skeptical look on his face. Elios felt Neru’s fingers tighten by his collar. When the man’s hand was about to reach her cowl, a firm voice rose, causing it to halt.

  “Hold it.”

  The voice belonged to an old guard with silver threaded through his hair, rank evident in the way the others deferred. He cast Neru a glance, then fixed his stare on Elios.

  “Can you repeat exactly where your man got that?”

  He answered at once.

  “By the river. Near the main junk field of the third Outer Ring. One mile north of the Violet Bridge.”

  The man drew in a slow breath, then waved them through the gate, asking only that Elios leave a name and his papers behind. The iron bars groaned shut at their backs.

  Once inside, the space somehow felt even vaster than the grounds beyond the walls, like defying the concept of impossible. The corridors ahead stretched too far, the darkness between lantern pools too deep. Neru took a quick look back at the gate, then tugged her hood lower and murmured,

  “What was that just now? He let us pass just like that?”

  “He was afraid of what you might be carrying,” Elios replied with a thin smile. “That area got some thrilling stories of its own. Nothing groundbreaking. Nothing recorded. But whoever got involved wishes they hadn’t.”

  “Like what?” She pressed.

  “Some collectors went missing there in the past. Ever since, rumors began to fester. Guards swore that sometimes they heard the cries of missing people at night. Later, a scholar was sent to investigate. He came back with a simple chill—or so they thought. But the sickness worsened by the day.”

  He paused, then added, almost casually.

  “Then one day, he went totally feral and bit the face clean off his healer. Straight through the bones, can you believe it? By the time the exorcist arrived, both of them were dead. No one talked about it again. That had happened many, many years ago, so it made sense enough to the old guard.”

  Neru tilted her head just enough to look up at him from beneath the hood.

  “And you knew all this, how? You can’t be that old.”

  “Because Lord Viltar once asked me to look into this”, Elios answered. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything useful. Too much time had passed.”

  “If he asked you that,” Neru murmured, “then it was never just a thrilling story. More like he sensed something rotten and needed you to find it.”

  Their eyes scanned around—the towering walls, the murals painted centuries ago, the sacred runes etched into grand pillars.

  “Hard to believe vile things happened in a holy place like this.”

  “An old saying,” Elios replied. “The darkest shadows gather where the sun shines brightest.” His grip shifted slightly, adjusting her weight as they walked. “The Tower watches everything. It’s due time for someone to watch it back.”

  Only then did he glance sideways and realize Neru’s arm was still draped around his shoulders and his hand resting by her waist.

  Too comfortable.

  “You’re heavier than I expected,” he muttered as he let go, brushing it off awkwardly.

  “And I expected you to be stronger,” Neru replied with a nonchalant, faint smile, stretching her shoulder.

  Elios snorted softly, then stepped away from Neru and lengthened his stride.