Liesel

The inside of the Belle estate was a whirlwind of activity. One of Vigil's bombs had detonated by one of the bridges connecting the Noble's Quarter and the island that made up of the Belle's domain. Thanks to the timely awareness of a guard on duty who noticed errant mana dwelling inside of a rat, the bomb was triggered early before it could be fully delivered to its destination.

The ensuing damage was nonetheless unpleasant. An entire portion of the Belle estate was swallowed by the blast and scorched in azure flames. The bridge was destroyed. And the heroic guard, along with several staff and maids, had perished in the attack.

Ever since Otto took his rightful place as the head of the house, the Belle had never received a direct assault from an enemy. There were many times where they faced external threats over the years, but Otto had always managed them with a display of might or clever politicking. He was a man not moved by pride but by purpose, and he had an unparalleled instinct to know when to make concessions and when to go for his enemy's throat. Under his rule, House Belle's rise into prominence became an inevitability.

And so, when Vigil revealed itself in Isarelle, Liesel was confounded when her father ordered everyone to remain on standby. Like the rest of the nobles within the Noble's Quarter, the associates of Belle would only watch as their city suffered under the hands of terrorists.

She grinded her teeth as she glared outside the window, following the traces of azure expunged into the skies from the windfall of another bomb. Although she was far from the action, she could imagine the terror on the civilian's faces. How many Ordinaries were in the city to celebrate the Aurous Festival? How many arrived for a spectacle, only to be trapped in a nightmare? How many expected the Belle's protection, only to left stranded on their own?

What the hell are you thinking, father?

It was disgraceful. It was humiliating. It angered her to know that the House Belle was deliberately doing nothing in the face of this unprecedented disaster.

For the first time in her life, Liesel felt ashamed to be a Belle.

Emil

Emil closed his eyes and listened to the protests of his body. His muscles were screaming with fatigue. Pain suppressors continued to circulate through his system, keeping the agony to no more than a faint buzz. His mind was shockingly alert despite the heaviness of his eyes. His thoughts were clear. No delusions. No incomprehensible voices whispered in his ears. The symptoms of Overclock were still manageable. His Azurite pendant had been depleted to half of its regular capacity, but it was quickly being replenished thanks to all the ambient mana unleashed by Borealis.

I can still fight.

He was aware at this point that his tolerance towards mana was abnormally high. Emil had been running around Isarelle non-stop over the past twelve hours. From exterminating monsters in the Canticle to protecting the civilians from the aftermath of Vigil's bombs, Emil should have been incapacitated by now. Steiger's drugs might have forcefully kept him in working condition, but those substances were useless if his body couldn't hold up against the poisonous effects of extended mana use.

I don't think this is caused by training.

If he had to make a guess, his abnormal tolerance was probably a side-effect after his body had been warped by the Bestowed Project. Emil hadn't given it much thought before, but his physiology was still mostly Ordinary when he was implanted with Blaze. An Exalted's constitution permanently changed during Awakening to give them a vessel more resilience towards mana. And while he was physically weaker than most Exalted until he awakened Bulwark, he had no problems invoking Blaze. Back then, it was his body's lack of heat resistance that held him back—not his inability to accept mana.

Just what the hell did they do to me? Emil thought as he stared at his grotesque hands. He imagined the patchwork of skin and flesh across his torso and legs hidden beneath his clothes.

The wail of nearby child snapped him out of it.

Vigil was still on the loose. Isarelle was still in danger. If his warped body gave him these benefits, then he'll gladly use them. He needed all the advantages that he could get. As he pulled himself to his feet, the air buzzed again with a metallic dissonance.

The broadcast returned.

"Well, this is an unpleasant surprise. Was my hint a little too obvious? Maybe I underestimated you all. To think that you all managed to restore the floodgates in record time! And here I thought I had architected a masterpiece of a calamity! Boooo! You guys are no fun!" Melody spoke with an air of annoyance like a teenager throwing a tantrum.

Without warning, her voice turned malicious. Sadism dripped with every syllable. It was an instant flick of a switch and jarring change made Emil unsettled. It was almost as if a different person had began talking.

"Now then, there's an interesting rumor going around the city about how we only prepared ten bombs for this special occasion. What a fascinating thing to claim. Just where did you get the idea? Because come on, who would leave Isarelle like this without a historic ending?!"

The light came first. The grim skies flashed with a dark azure hue. Then the thunder arrived. Emil covered his ears and took a step back at the ensuing tremors. Was it another bomb? He traced the lights to identify the source. When he realized what had just happened, his jaws dropped.

No way.

Kleine

Bitter ferric scent permeated the cell. Scalpels, knives, and pliers rested on the wooden tray next to his seat, soaked in blood. Kleine was strapped into a metallic chair. The icy surface should have gnawed into his back, but the sensation was no more than a dull discomfort for his mind. His body had long grown indifferent to the feeling of pain. Whether his nerves had been irrevocably scarred by the Bestowed Project or if his mind had been simply broken from excessive stress, the fact remained that he was unfazed before the Lionheart interrogators.

Nasty welts and scratches were drawn across his body. His fingers, toes, and nails had been chewed by tools. Faint smell of acid intermingled with the tang of blood as the Lionhearts poured alcohol onto his open wounds to intensify his suffering. On the surface, he pretended to look distressed, but on the inside, Kleine felt nothing.

Their cute toys were nothing compared to horrible instruments used by the Council.

Still, while he didn't feel pain, he at least knew that the damages inflicted onto his body would be detrimental to his performance. He didn't want to lose too much blood. Nor did he want his movements affected when it was time to enact the next stage of their plans. So Kleine faked his reactions while he studied the sadistic expressions of his interrogators. After feigning a bit of resistance, he fed them a few answers to their trivial questions.

Just enough to give them the illusion that their torture was working.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

How nostalgic, he thought, trying to entertain himself while he waited for the rest of Vigil to perform their roles. Being bound in a metal chair brought a wave of unpleasant memories from his childhood.

The constraint of having his limbs tied down. The suffocating humiliation of a gag stuffed down his mouth. The panic in his chest when he could only stare as the researchers of the Council imposed their will onto his body. For a moment, he was a helpless child again.

No matter how much he protested.

No matter how much he cried.

No matter how much he begged, pleaded, and prayed.

He could do nothing as his body was defiled.

His calls fell on deaf ears. Kleine couldn't understand it at the time. How could these people live with themselves after committing all these atrocities? It was incomprehensible. Did they have no conscious? No sense of right or wrong? Were they all monsters wearing human skins? It confounded him even more one day when he spotted one of his tormentors with his family. The researcher had a wife. Two kids. Kleine found inexplicable joy and pride in the researcher's eyes as he looked at his children with affection. The expression of love was so unlike the cold and mechanical gaze that Kleine had always faced.

These monsters were capable of love.

What messed him up the most was that he couldn't find any semblance of deceit. The man's affection was real. It was genuine. It wasn't someone pretending to love. How was that possible? How can a person capable of love also inflict these horrors?

When he finally understood the incongruity, he couldn't help but laugh.

It's because they don't think of us as people.

To these researchers, they were specimens. Samples. Animals. A vessel of flesh that could be used to generate data. To test hypotheses. To obtain knowledge. To discern the secrets of mana and unlock the potential of the Exalted. It was for a "grand" cause. Grand causes were important. They cannot be bound by morals and ethics.

Through that lens, they were able to rip and tear his body apart without hesitation. Through that perspective, they could turn a blind eye to the insanity dealt by their hands as they desecrated another fellow human being. Through that line of thought, they could justify anything.

And so, when Kleine finally had the man's throat in his hands, he couldn't resist the wave of euphoria as he plunged his arm into the man's chest. Just like how they thought of him as a specimen and not a child, he would think of them not as a person with a family of their own, but as a mere monster to be exterminated.

The memory ended.

Kleine caught himself smiling. The rush of excitement at the recollection made him inadvertently lose control of his expressions. He glanced up. The Lionheart interrogators were staring at him with a mixture of confusion and disgust. They had bloodied knives in their hands. They were apparently in the middle of carving more holes into his torso to get him to speak.

But rather than squeal in pain, he had smiled.

Oops.

Luckily for him, this farce was finally coming to an end.

Melody's voice rang like a distant chime as her broadcast spread across Isarelle. His life-long companion sounded like she was enjoying herself. She always had a knack for creating spectacles. She possessed an instinct for improv and performances. When given a platform, she always knew what to say and how to capture a crowd's attention. In another life, perhaps she could have been standing atop of one of the Isarelle's stages instead.

Or maybe not.

How would the Goddess perceive them, he wondered? He was trying to bring to light the monsters lurking behind the darkness of this kingdom. But in the process, he would be taking countless innocent lives as sacrifice. Such was the price of going against this formidable enemy.

Well, it doesn't really matter.

He had long grown disillusioned. How many times has he prayed to the Goddess during the Bestowed Project? Not once did she ever respond. So why the fuck would he care now about what she thought about them? If the Goddess wasn't going to smite the bastards that defiled him and countless other orphans, he'll be their reckoning instead.

He forced mana through his body. The roof of his mouth glowed a faint blue. Tiny fragments of Azurite had been sewed into his gums, hidden beneath the fleshy folds. Kleine scoured the interior of his guts with his Gift. A pellet of Archanum rested in space within his stomach. A coat of psychic energy kept it from dissolving and entering his bloodstream. The mineral was an Exalted's worst nightmare as it blocked the body from interacting with mana. But as long as it didn't enter his veins, it was nothing more than a harmless piece of rock.

This was always a personal affair.

Kleine spat out the Archanum. The restraints keeping him bound were snapped off in an instant with a tug of psychic energy. The Lionhearts interrogators were slow to react. Not that it mattered much anyways. Inside of Thanatos, everyone was Ordinary. Azurite was banned from being brought into the spire, out of fear that even traces of ambient mana could allow one of the many Exalted confined here to make a stand.

That applied to the guards as well.

"A-Arghhhh!"

Blood stained the walls of his cell. The Lionheart's last words echoed across the floor like a wailing banshee. Their bodies collapsed to the ground with a resounding thud—their corpses twisted and warped like a broken doll. Kleine casually wiped his face clean of their blood. He grabbed a partly used cloth on the table and lightly dabbed at his wounds. The aftermath of the Lionheart's torture had turned his pale skin into a spectacle.

"To the inmates of Thanatos, if you can hear my voice—" Melody suddenly addressed them directly from the broadcast, "Vigil will soon grant you freedom. If you wish to survive this ordeal, then do not resist the pull and tug on your body. Embrace it. Allow it. And revel in being a part of history."

Kleine strode out of his cell and into the hallway. The other inmates on this floor were staring at him with a stunned look of disbelief. Footsteps rushed up the spire's stairwell. Lionheart reinforcements. Their arrival would be too late, however, as the entirety of Thanatos was suddenly engulfed in blinding lights.

Graf

Borealis. What an apt name.

Graf stared at the haunting skies above Isarelle. His face remained stoic and listless as usual, betraying none of the inner turmoil raging inside of his chest. This beloved city that he had grew up in was on the precipice of an unthinkable disaster. And as one of its guardians, he was helpless to do anything to stop it.

For the first time in his life, Graf felt powerless before what was about to unfold. Despair clawed at his throat. Panic raced through his veins. His breaths were short and brisk, and his chest heavy from the oppressive weight of the unstoppable calamity. Fear was a rare emotion for him. Not because of his strength, but because he held a loose attachment to life. He had duty and purpose as a Steiger agent—one that was much bigger than himself, and he would willingly give up his life if it meant for the greater good.

But dying here was meaningless.

He would accomplish nothing but add an increment to the death toll. His final sight would be the destruction of his beloved city. And he would die without knowing whether or not the city could be salvaged from ruin.

These realizations raced through his mind as he stared at the kaleidoscope of colors flooding the skies. Streams of blue, purple, and verdant green splattered the cloudy air with a hazy hue. The ethereal sight stole his breath away, and Graf hated it.

Destruction shouldn't have been this beautiful.

His hearing was the first sense to be taken away. He hadn't even noticed it, except for the sudden pressure against his ears. Only from the high-pitch whine of his eardrums bursting did he realize that the bombs had finally exploded.

The visual confirmation arrived shortly after. Plumes of Azurite cloud rose from the cliffside beneath Thanatos. The earth shook beneath his feet even when he was in the Administrative District, several kilometers away from the blast zone.

He watched as the inverted cliff collapsed. A chunk of earth suddenly split off from its roots. A terrible sight. Thanatos, resting above that piece of land, also began its descent.

Shadows of the colossal spire loomed over the Administrative District. The massive structure started to separate, broken off into fragments from the shockwave of the explosion and its own indolent weight.

Now I understand why they didn't put any bombs in the Administrative District.

It was a trap. Emil was right. The Administrative District and parts of the Black Shoal were areas of the city closest to Thanatos. With the collapse of the spire, the entire district was now a death pit.

How many people did they transfer here to get away from the bombs?

I'm sorry, Hortensia.

The director had entrusted him with this city and he had nothing but ensure its ruin. It was a historic, unprecedented failure.

Even so, I'll do what I can.

If this was his failure, then it was his job to take responsibility. Graf extended his hands and poured every ounce of mana to weave his next phenomenon. The air trembled with violence. His soul screamed as he recklessly brought himself to the edge of Overclock.

Multiple barriers of mana materialized overhead.

The azure surface vibrated with an intense resonance, flickering as though it had a will of its own, ready to push back against the falling debris.

At the back of his mind, Graf knew this was a futile attempt. The momentum of the falling spire would be too much for his feeble Gift to repel.

Darkness engulfed him. He screamed. He wailed. He thrashed. He protested and fought against this cruel inevitability with every inch of him. Every shudder from every nerve, he used to empower his last stand. There were civilians around him. His subordinates were also nearby. If his desperate attempt could save just one person—

Then I'll be content to die.

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