Senior Grand Inquisitor Pak Yoonji surveyed the row of bobbing officials with disdain. The governor of Riceflower Province, a thin-faced young man puffed up on his own importance, was practically babbling as he spoke.

"Your radiance, er, eminence, whatever you require, we shall of course provide. The emperor left no specific instructions. Several of the sects in question have moved on, as has the Dowager Pearl and the Court of Gems, but whatever else —"

Yoonji glared coldly at him until he stopped babbling. "It did not occur to anyone here that after an incident of this magnitude, involving the murder of a prism and the treason of another, more than a cursory interview with all involved parties might be necessary?"

She had, of course, expected exactly this. In the weeks it had taken for the news to reach her and then for her to make her way to Vardin City, the sects, which had assembled for the bridal tournament, had all departed for their next tower, or to return to their headquarters and regroup, or whatever else it was such minor sects got up to on their own.

Three of them still remained, and Yoonji intended to interview Crimson Orchid, Dream Blossom and Morning Mist in turn, but there were foundations to be established. "I require a report from the Office of Cultivation on where each of the departed sects was going next," she said. "And who was detailed to track the movements of Prism Eri's sect?"

A cultivating official spoke up, keeping his eyes cast down. "Your eminence, the Dowager Pearl took that report. She has also departed."

Yoonji wasn't surprised. The near environs of Vardin City were unpleasant for anyone far enough along in cultivation to care about the quality of lux. It ebbed and flowed now, changing hourly. And there was an unpleasant aftertaste she had always been able to detect following a tower breach. It made cycling into a chore rather than a pleasure.

"Meanwhile, I will inspect the tower myself," Yoonji announced. "Have all of the documents I requested ready when I emerge. Have them sent to my quarters, wherever those are."

The governor bowed again. "Forgive us, your eminence. Most of the government facilities are still being used as wards for the injured. We have made arrangements for you to be housed in an estate on the 73rd petal, which was untouched by the recent unpleasantness. It is entirely at your disposal."

"That will do," Yoonji announced. She dropped a weave around herself, blue and indigo shaded together. From the gasps of the onlookers, it had worked to disguise her from their eyes. Yoonji couldn't quite match a Prism's ability to instantly move from one place to another. Little tricks like that helped her to maintain the proper respect of her inferiors.

She leapt and covered the distance from the steps of the Governor's Palace to the top floor entrance into the tower in a single bound, alighting easily and passing through the portal.

There she let the weave around her drop as she considered. This whole floor felt wrong. A mist obscured her senses. Lux swirled unpleasantly, its notes all sounding off in her ears.

There was far too much violet lux here. She was surprised the Emperor had not removed it himself. This was the result of a prism being murdered. She couldn't help but feel a bit smug as she moved through the floor, searching out the tower guardian. Nai Hong had always been a relic of a previous generation. Eri had made quite a statement by murdering him.

Yoonji felt out the guardian and approached, then realized, with shock as he began to appear, her mistake.

"Prism Nai Hong," she said, raising her hands in a greeting.

The prism materialized fully in front of her. He peered into her face. "Grand Inquisitor Yoonji, isn't it? I've forgotten a few things. You must bear with me."

"Yes," Yoonji agreed. "I'm here to—"

"To investigate my murder?" the prism suggested. "Good, good. I'm glad to hear that I am to be properly avenged. Eri did it, of course. She distracted me and brought me in here to take advantage of my death to destabilize this tower. I am pleased those young cultivators were able to summon the emperor and rebalance the tower. Now that I've had time to consider, I'm glad to have continued reason for existence."

"You never did want to move on to the next plane, did you?" Yoonji commented.

Nai Hong shook his head. "No, indeed. One thing I have in common with our beloved emperor. Why risk ascending when you don't know what waits for you? When you can instead remain and rule?"

It was a position that appealed to Yoonji, one of the reasons she had not considered ascending herself yet. Not when the rank of prism was so close to her. She could practically taste it.

"Do be careful if they're starting a war, though," Nai Hong said casually. "Eri was far, far stronger than I expected. She's clearly been playing with forbidden techniques, which suggests she's got some way of hiding herself from the emperor or of distracting him when she needs to. It's entirely possible she could win this war." He sighed. "But of course, that's what makes a prism war so dangerous. They could go either way. Cultivators choose sides, and one of these times, the rebels are going to win."

"That's treasonous talk," Yoonji commented.

"I'm already dead, and I don't think the emperor is going to come after my shade and undo me. Not when I'm trapped in here. Anyway, I find I really don't care anymore. I would advise my daughter to try to keep her head down and avoid taking sides, but she hasn't come to speak to me yet."

So far, Yoonji had just confirmed what she already knew. Eri had killed Nai Hong in this place to create a tower breach. Still, she needed more. "Can you show me exactly what happened?"

The prism wove a strand of violet lux, and Yoonji seized onto it. Their minds met and were thrust backward, the prism showing his vision of what happened. He'd been tutoring a student, interesting, and then been distracted by Eri, who attacked him, forced him into the tower, and, as Yoonji watched the vision unfold, violently murdered him. Then, as the shade rose from Nai Hong's corpse, she had cast a weave, complicated, and not one that Yoonji recognized. The vision faded

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"Wait, what was that?"

Nai Hong shrugged. "I'm not certain. It hit my shade as I was forming and disrupted my initial awareness as a shade. When I fully came to, she was gone, and I found myself the guardian of this tower. I suppose that means she killed the prior guardian." He looked a bit sad. "I would have liked to have the chance to do that myself. Now I shall be stuck here, bored, except for the few times every decade cultivators come through to perform a cull. Oh, and planning for the next floor, when it opens. I'm working on coming up with adequate rewards. Would you like to see some of my concepts?"

The prism droned on as Yoonji pondered what Eri was up to. Eri was notorious for her deviousness, her plans within plans. Yoonji had assumed she had murdered Nai Hong here in order to set off a tower breach. Breaching the tower in the capital city of one of the empire's most prosperous provinces during the middle of a bridal tournament would have been a huge embarrassment for the emperor.

Had it gone as far as Eri seemed to have hoped, Vardin City's utter destruction would have had a ripple effect, causing famine across the empire as well as the changed weather patterns from the destroyed tower and its lux. Bad enough what had actually happened, which no doubt Eri was using to serve her plans anyway.

Now, Yoonji wondered if there was another layer to Eri's plans. She thought of the disc she had hidden safe in her soul space. She still didn't know exactly what it was or what Eri was trying to do with it.

Yoonji decided she'd take a risk. She wove violet lux of her own. When she made a report on her investigation and the findings, she would have to justify her use of a forbidden technique. But after all, what was the point of being an inquisitor if she couldn't occasionally make that call? She just had to hope that whatever she found was worth it.

Now she opened a window back to the moment after Prism Nai Hong's death and watched as Eri strode across the tower. It had been a green and pleasant landscape, though doubtless filled with threats of its own. Now it was breaking up, the groundings melting into their constituent lux and forming this pea-soup fog in which Yoonji now found herself.

Eri approached a small building that looked like an ancestral shrine. Common in some of the more superstitious parts of the Empire, it was not uncommon for tower levels to have various buildings, depending on how advanced their guardians were. Eri entered, and a female shape, not human, with vast wings, but undoubtedly female, appeared, standing between the door and an altar.

Eri struck out with a dagger covered in Prism Nai Hong's blood before the tower guardian could finish forming. The guardian shrieked and seemed to collapse, shrinking in on herself, folding impossibly small until her very being was sucked into the dagger. Her scream didn't cut off until Eri sheathed the dagger.

With a smile, Eri approached the altar in the center of the small shrine. She brought her fist down on it, smashing it. The pieces flew away and began to disintegrate into lux. Eri reached out a hand and took the small, shining golden object hovering in the air where the altar had been.

She held it up. Yoonji tried to focus on it, but its details were blurry, like the lux pattern couldn't show them to her. Eri put the creation into her soul space and turned. Yoonji gasped. Eri was staring straight at her and smiling.

"Hello, Eamon," she said. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist seeing what I'd done. You've never been able to outthink me, have you? Consider this my declaration of war. Oh, and here's a gift for you."

She hurled a technique straight at Yoonji. Yoonji snapped her weave closed, shutting the mirror down, but something emerged from the place where it had been.

Yoonji threw herself to the side as a great dark net drifted past her. Its tendrils seized the edge of her very self. At once, it began ripping away at her will. Yoonji had rarely had to think about her will in the past few hundred years since achieving her current tier, but this was a prism's all-out assault, and not just any prism, but the most powerful and devious of them all.

Yoonji focused her Intent, trying to reinforce her will as it was being eaten down. The force with which it clung to her was shocking. Pain wracked her. She would never have expected this sort of attack, left as a trap, not even directed by the prism herself, to be so hard to fight off.

Yoonji's Intent was buckling. She reinforced with her Resonance and gained an instant of breathing space. Then the attack redoubled. It burned into her, inflicting pain that was more than merely physical.

Her soul was under attack. It was burning into her lux channels, seeking out her core. It would devour her from the inside out, should it reach her core. Yoonji refocused all of her will inward, protecting her core. Her Intent, she shaped anew. I am master of myself. I will not allow another to master me.

It worked. Her Intent burned against the pattern, and the pattern broke. Yoonji cycled two different techniques through her overlaid sets of lux channels, burning out the dregs of Eri's trap.

When at last it was gone, she forced herself to catch her breath. What had that been? Eri had acted as though she'd seen her. No, Yoonji realized. She'd been addressing someone else, a name that Yoonji didn't recognize. It wasn't any of the prisms.

A chill and a certainty ran up her spine. Eri had been speaking to the emperor himself, as familiarly as a sister to her brother, and she'd left a trap designed for him. Yet the emperor was far stronger than Yoonji. He wouldn't have been bothered by that for more than a second. Would he? Had this been another distraction? Was there something else she was missing?

Yoonji looked around, saw nothing else amiss. She returned her attention to Prism Nai Hong's shade, who was still droning on, interrupting him. "What happened after Eri left?"

The prism frowned. "Oh, there were a bunch of low-ranked cultivators around, fighting each other. One sect made it past my challenge and summoned the emperor himself here. He put an end to Eri's schemes. I was glad to see those Morning Mist cultivators survive," he said casually. "One of them was the lad I was tutoring at the moment of my death. I forgot I had left him stranded in mid-air. He must be fairly resourceful to have survived."

Yoonji ran back through the vision that the prism had shown her. The prism's attention at the critical moment had been distracted by the young morning mist cultivator's presence. When Eri had summoned him, he hadn't been prepared. Had it been a trap with the young cultivator as bait?

And then that same cultivator had been the one to summon the emperor? Was that part of Eri's plan, or not?

Had the tower been destroyed, the emperor would have come seeking answers. If he had looked back in time, not weeks later as she had, but there on the spot in the ruins of the tower after it had been destroyed, trying to find out what had happened… What if Eri's trap had been meant to gather the spilled energy from the destroyed tower and increase it ten, twenty, a hundredfold?

A chill ran down Yoonji's spine. She wasn't certain that was what Eri had meant, but she wasn't going to underestimate the woman again. There were several loose ends she needed to investigate now.

"What had Eri been after?" She posed the question to the prism, who shook his head.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. There was nothing left of the previous guardian, so I can't ask them."

"And the cultivator who got past you? What sect was he from?"

The prism frowned. "Morning Mist, I think, an upstart group. Though the name sounded familiar. I take it they were a rebirth of an older sect that had collapsed."

"Were they working with Eri?"

"What? No." The prism dismissed that out of hand. "No, they had to kill Eri's own disciple in order to win my favor and leave the tower. Definitely not."

Yoonji's suspicions were growing. She left the tower to mull things over.

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