Kaiser's fingers lingered on the glasses before he spoke, his tone measured. "Tell me, can you see without these?"

Bosch gave a short, almost apologetic chuckle. "Only in the most meagre sense. I can discern light from shadow, shapes from the void, but the finer details elude me. Through these lenses, however…" His faint smile deepened. "…through them, the Sol reveals itself in all its splendour. You have looked, I trust? You see now with clarity?"

Kaiser let out a small laugh. "I do. Which is why I must ask... What is that Sol I see behind the painting of the man? And who, exactly, is he?"

Before Bosch could answer, Aria's voice cut in, tight with disbelief. " Wait, wait, wait, hold up! We're not just walking past this, why is the sea green?"

Bosch turned his head slightly toward Kaiser, as though to pass through him rather than address her directly. "Do ask your companion to keep her composure."

Kaiser shook his head. "She has every right to ask. Because these glasses… change what one sees entirely. Through them, the seas are blue, and the cat in this painting—" he raised the earlier work slightly "—appears nothing more than a white, harmless pet."

His voice cooled. "When did Masamia begin her service here?"

Bosch did not hesitate. "A month past. She arrived just a day after that purple-haired gentleman." The old man shrugged. "My wife complains of her often—jealous, you know, that she's always at my side. But I have little choice. She must be here, to assure the deal is kept."

Kaiser's eyes narrowed faintly. "And how is it she knows so much about you?"

Bosch's smile was almost indulgent, the kind reserved for a well-loved but nosy neighbor. "We are in one another's company constantly. She delights in tending to my personal quarters, and she has an insatiable curiosity. Her questions are… endless. I cannot fault her for it, one should encourage a young mind to seek knowledge."

Kaiser's voice dropped a degree colder. "Describe her."

Bosch's smile returned without hesitation. "Ah… she's got a fine tan, and short black hair—"

The rest of the words never made it out.

The words were still in the air when something inside Masamia seemed to snap.

She let Bosch fall like a useless rag, his body slumping to the floor with a hollow thud.

A faint, brittle cracking filled the room—at first like porcelain cooling after the kiln, then growing sharper, faster, spreading up her neck and down her arms. Fine seams split open across her face and body, jagged hairline fractures crawling outward until her perfect, doll-like mask began to flake away.

The change was not clean. Beneath the breaking surface writhed a lattice of blood-red threads, pulsing in slow, deliberate rhythm, as if the veins themselves were alive. They pushed outward, breaking free in sudden, violent bursts. Long strands of living crimson whipped through the air, lashing at the walls and tearing into the floor, leaving behind burning, smoldering marks where they struck.

Her delicate features sloughed away in shards, revealing the face beneath, one that was not human, not even close. The new mask was smoother, more predatory, its smile too fixed, too perfect to be kind. Black hair spilled down her back like liquid shadow, moving with a will of its own, each strand alive with the same hunger as the tendrils.

The change spread downward, the soft curves of her frame tightening into something sharper, leaner—built for motion, for killing. Dark fissures ran along her limbs, glowing faintly at their seams as they bled light. Embedded deep within her flesh, small crimson cores pulsed like hearts torn from other bodies, each one flaring in time with the whipping of her tendrils.

By the time the last porcelain fragment hit the floor, she no longer resembled the graceful, pale figure from moments before. She was something wholly different—sleek, inhuman, her body wrapped in a living, tattered black carapace that clung to her like scorched silk. Every movement seemed to trail a red afterimage, as though the air itself recoiled from her presence.

And when she smiled, truly smiled, it was the expression of something that had just shed its disguise, and would never put it back on again.

Aria's evasion was less graceful, her bowstring catching on a darting strand as she twisted away. "What—"

Masamia's crimson tendrils ripped through the surrounding canvases, tearing painted seas apart. Beyond the great window, the real ocean began to shift, its breathing waves growing deep and restless.

The moment Masamia's porcelain flesh fractured, it was almost soundless, a faint, brittle crack, before threads of gleaming red burst outward like veins ripped from the body of a god. They whipped through the air, aimed for flesh and bone, but steel was already there to meet them.

Kaiser's blade moved in clean, efficient arcs, slicing the tendrils apart before they could close in. The air filled with the sharp tang of something not quite blood, not quite ink, but warm, metallic, and alien.

His boots scraped against the floor as he slid forward, placing himself squarely between Aria and the onslaught. The arc of his sword drew a thin silver crescent in the dim light, and the shredded tendrils writhed briefly on the ground before dissolving into nothing.

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Masamia did not flinch, even as her master, Bosch, lay sprawled at her feet, eyes wide in confused disbelief. "What is—" Bosch began, but the words died in his throat as one of Masamia's own tendrils coiled back over her shoulder. In a single, disturbingly fluid motion, it slid into the base of his skull. His body went slack instantly, his head lolling forward.

Kaiser didn't even blink. 'Pathetic', he thought. 'Once a Titan, and now brought low in a heartbeat.'

"I suspected as much," Kaiser said, voice cold. "Your appearance. The way you've hidden your Sol. You're one of the architects of this entire mess."

Aria's eyes darted between them, confusion breaking through her earlier tension. "What the hell are you talking about? Architects of what?"

Masamia's tone was level, almost courteous, as if they were discussing weather over tea. "Correct. But let's not pretend you could possibly understand the scale of this operation… or how long it has been in motion."

Kaiser took one step forward, blade still ready. "I don't need to understand. I've seen enough. By all reasoning, you're an Unborn."

The faint blue light in Aria's false eyes flared. "Unborn?" she repeated sharply. "You're sure?"

"I told you before," Kaiser replied, not taking his eyes off Masamia. "She's hiding her Sol. That along with her hiding her apperance from Bosch is proof enough."

Aria shook her head, her voice rising. "Then we need to warn Celestine, she has the Cape of Heroes. She can take her on."

"It's no use," Masamia said without a pause, as if the thought amused her. "By now, the painter's wife will have already killed her. She'll be making her way here as we speak."

The color drained from Aria's face. "His wife? You mean—Bosch's wife? She's… she's that monster?"

Masamia's expression, as always, did not change, yet a sound slipped into the air, a laugh low and mirthless, without a hint of movement in her lips. "She is rotting," Masamia said simply. "Truly, irrevocably rotting."

She took a step closer, folding her hands neatly behind her back. "She was once a Liberator, one older than she had any right to be. Over a thousand years old. At her height, she was a Titan who was unmatched in her control of water. Now?" Masamia tilted her head, almost sympathetically. "Now she is weaker than this pitiful wreck of an artist."

Masamia's eyes sharpened as she looked toward the portrait looming above the great window, he painted man ringed by dozens of beautiful, half-clad women, all with eyes that seemed to hunger for nothing but him. Her voice, when it came, was low and precise.

"It is… partly his fault," she said, inclining her chin toward the image. "But the choice was hers. She should have been left to die. Instead, he caged her in sentiment and let her fester in her own decay."

Her gaze lingered on the figure in the painting, and for the first time there was something like weight in her tone. "Do you know who that is, Liberator? That man was no mere mortal. He was one of the most terrible monsters to walk the earth during the Divine War. The Greatest Joke Never Told, they called him. A predator without equal, who drank Sol as easily as water and drowned entire worlds in death. There were armies that vanished in his shadow. Even the Angels hesitated to speak his name aloud, fearing he might hear them."

She tilted her head ever so slightly, porcelain mask catching the light. "And Bosch… captured him. Bound him in a frame, trapped every ounce of his hunger, his cruelty, his magnificence in that sea of oil and pigment. Do you understand? The kind of power that can cage a being like that should never have been allowed to fade."

Kaiser let the words settle, his face still as stone. Then, almost against his will, the corner of his mouth tugged downward.

Inside, however, he was alight.

'What a terrifying power he had.' Kaiser thought, the image of Bosch's work still burning behind his eyes. Not terrifying in the crude sense of destruction, as plenty of men could burn a city to ash. This was worse. Bosch had the means to seal away great beings, to preserve them, cage them in paint and color, strip them of motion until he willed it back. And he had squandered it.

No, squandered was too kind a word.

He had betrayed it.

That kind of potential was a covenant. A man was bound to use it to its fullest, to push beyond the limits of what anyone thought possible. Anything less was a crime. To hold such strength and let it wither for the sake of a quiet life was filth. A disgusting, cowardly rot of the soul.

Bosch had been a Titan once. A Liberator of almost the highest order. Which meant that somewhere, in the dark hours of the past century, people had cried out for the power he had abandoned. Cities had burned, battles had been lost, monsters had devoured children, and Bosch had done nothing, because Bosch had chosen to stay in his little gallery and paint his sea.

How many talents had that decision taken? How many hopes extinguished because one man decided that love was worth more than dominion? The very thought of it brought a sour, metallic taste to Kaiser's tongue. He almost spat, just to rid himself of it.

Love.

The word itself made his stomach knot. The kind of thing people clung to when they lacked the conviction to be great. Love was a leash you slipped over your own neck and handed to someone else. Love was the enemy of purpose. Love was weakness in its purest form.

If Bosch had been born with nothing, Kaiser might have pitied him. But to be given this and to waste it? Evil. That was the only word. Evil in the same way that letting a plague run unchecked, while having the cure was evil. A man who could have reshaped the world had chosen instead to rot quietly in it.

And yet, Kaiser thought, perhaps that rot is useful.

His plan, already well in motion, had just taken a turn for the better, far better than he could have anticipated. Every exchange, every fragment of information Masamia had let slip, reinforced it. This gallery, this villa, was not just a sanctuary for a broken Titan. It was a vault. The paintings were doors, and behind some of those doors lay treasures Bosch had no right to keep.

Kaiser was certain there was something hidden behind that portrait above the window. The way Bosch had looked at it... And if one such thing existed here, there would be more. Dozens more. All tucked away, gathering dust under Bosch's trembling hands.

As a guest, etiquette forbade him from demanding their location outright. That was fine. Courtesy was for men without imagination. He wouldn't ask Bosch for anything. He would take it all.

No, he was already taking it. That much had been decided the moment he stepped through the door. But this revelation… this changed the scope entirely. The man was a vault.

He would rob him blind. Not just of the trinkets and relics, but of everything. The treasures, the secrets, the last tatters of whatever dignity Bosch had managed to keep tucked away here. All of it would be stripped from him until he was left with nothing but his cowardice.

And there was only one thing left Kaiser needed, one final piece to take the measure of Bosch as a man.

He wanted to see it for himself. What could take a man of such frightening talent, a man who once stood among the great, and reduce him to this pitiful relic? What wound could rot so deep that it turned strength into sentiment, and brilliance into decay?

But for that plan to work… certain pieces still needed to fall into place. Kaiser just hoped Aria loved him enough for it to work.

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