"How the hell did this even happen?"
Fornos sat still in the dim candlelight of his rented room in Drenmire, his gloved fingers steepled as he stared down at the untouched tea cooling on the side table. The scent of charred crystal still lingered faintly in the air, though hours had passed since the auction chamber had been reduced to a slaughterhouse.
Across from him, Park leaned silently against the door, his twin daggers sheathed again at his sides. Brassheart stood by the curtained window, motionless like an ornamental statue—but ready to kill at a moment's notice.
Fornos's mind reeled back through the chain of events, trying to assemble clarity from the shards.
The bidding had begun like an orchestrated duel between whispers and glances. Each participant—from noble houses, rogue guilds, rogue engineers, and whisper barons—communicated in a coded ballet of gloved signals and warded fans.
Scrivener Hal had stood proud at the podium, his owl eyes glowing with contained anticipation. He gestured toward the rune-sealed lockbox like a priest unveiling relics. Inside was the future: the crystal resonance blueprint, pulsing faintly even beneath the shielding wards.
Fornos had waited in his seat on the third ring. Watching. Calculating. Letting the rest throw their weight around.
Lord Anvar nodded sparingly from his position, his assistant handling numbers with a calm smile.
Fornos had just motioned toward Brassheart—one coded gesture, barely perceptible—when every light in the auction house shattered.
Not dimmed. Not flickered. Shattered.
The room plunged into pitch-black nothing.
And then—screams.
Not of surprise.
Of butchery.
Fornos remembered hearing the specific cadence of wet slashes, not the clean bursts of blade duels. Something had struck arteries. Tendons. Nerves.
By the time Park had positioned himself in front of Fornos with those daggerlike arms drawn, the screams had peaked, then broken apart like glass under pressure. The panic turned into a stampede, and the stampede into silence.
It had all happened in less than 40 seconds.
The lights came back one by one, flickering as the emergency circuits struggled to hold.
The lockbox was gone.
So was Scrivener Hal.
And three corpses lay sprawled in a pool of mixed blood and mana residue, their bodies warped by what Fornos could only guess was an alchemical distortion field.
Back in the present, the room was quiet.
The entire city of Drenmire had gone into lockdown protocol. No one could leave. No unauthorized message birds. No trade convoys. No teleport anchors.
"Eight days," Fornos muttered aloud. "That's the line. After that, this stops being a local auction crime and becomes a cross-faction incident. And the moment Drenmire's neutrality is in question…" he exhaled, "...every deal I've brokered here turns to ash."
Park silently made a motion—his hands moving fast. Why did he care about Drenmire's safety at all? Let it crumble. Take the tech once the dust settles.
Fornos stared at him, then gave a thin smile. "Because whoever did this didn't want to own the blueprint."
He stood up, adjusting his coat and walking to the writing desk, pulling a parchment free. "They wanted no one else to have it. Which makes them either a monopolist with no way to mass-produce, or worse—a zealot."
Park's fingers moved again. "How do you know it's still in the city?"
Fornos scribbled on the parchment as he explained, "In neutral auction cities like this, blackouts trigger automatic lockdowns. The guard barracks get woken up with alarm bells so loud you can hear them in the sewers. Within minutes, they put a 12-kilometer perimeter in place. If they think the blueprint left the area, they'll start bombing escape routes."
He tapped the quill against the table. "Nobody, not even the killer, is getting out."
Park narrowed his eyes and asked another question through rapid sign. "And the messengers?"
"Exactly." Fornos nodded, folding the parchment into a crisp triangle. "Only the couriers, runners, and 'bird-messengers' stand to gain now. Everyone else was too high-profile to risk chaos. Only the quiet ones... the invisible gears that carry secrets between hands... only they would know where to hide something under this level of scrutiny."
Park crossed his arms and stared at Fornos in expectation.
Fornos smiled. "You're catching on."
The merchant-commander reached for a crimson-sealed envelope, slid the folded message into it, and carefully sealed it with a drop of wax. He handed it to Park.
"Deliver this to Rhimbo Gras's door," he said calmly. "Don't be seen."
Park didn't hesitate. He took the envelope, gave a short nod, and vanished through the window without so much as a footfall.
Brassheart, still unmoving, let a low whirr escape from his chest as he processed the situation in silence.
Fornos returned to his chair and looked into the candle flame. His expression didn't reflect panic, or even urgency. It reflected focus.
Whoever had done this had crossed multiple red lines: assaulting a neutral ground, killing licensed personnel, and attempting to erase a world-altering artifact from history.
But even more dangerously—they'd underestimated Fornos Dag.
And that meant he didn't need just vengeance.
He needed to set the stage for the return of the blueprint—and ensure that when the smoke cleared, Ash Company would own the future of long-distance communication.
Somewhere in Drenmire, the killer was hiding.
Somewhere in Drenmire, the blueprint still pulsed.
And now, the hunt had begun.