Dren Oshe knocked on Sera Voss's door at the third bell of morning, which Raiden had anticipated — men who wished to appear trustworthy preferred daylight hours, and the third bell was early enough to suggest urgency without the rudeness of dawn.
Raiden opened the door.
Dren Oshe was older than he'd expected — sixties, perhaps, with the neat grey beard and careful posture of a Guild Councillor who had spent decades learning how to make himself appear precisely as threatening as he chose to be. He wore travelling clothes, not Council robes, which was its own kind of message. His eyes moved to Raiden's face and stayed there, and the slight pause before his expression settled told Raiden everything: Dren had been prepared to meet Sera Voss alone, and he was recalculating.
The intent-reading overlay in Raiden's Super System pulsed once. Controlled surprise. Rapid reassessment. The recalibration of a plan, not the abandonment of one.
"I was looking for Miss Voss," Dren said pleasantly.
"She asked me to answer the door," Raiden replied. "Raiden Kael. Dome Vantris."
Something crossed Dren's face — too fast for a normal person to catch, not fast enough to escape the God Style's passive perception.
"Vantris," Dren repeated. "The young man who cracked the assessment crystal."
"The crystal cracked itself," Raiden said. "Please come in."
The flat was small. Sera sat at her table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea, and she had, true to her word, practised overnight: the window behind her was clear, her knuckles showed no frost, and the only sign of the Ice-element at work was a subtle, almost invisible shimmer in the air around her fingers that she was suppressing so hard it had become a physical stillness, a contained storm.
She looked at Dren with the polite neutrality of someone who had never met him before in her life.
Dren sat. He accepted tea. He spoke for several minutes about enchanting research, Super System documentation, the Guild's academic interest in anomalous activations. He was very good at it — the cadence of someone who had done this before, probably many times, with people who had no reason to be suspicious.
Raiden let him speak. He was reading the gaps between sentences.
At last Dren set down his cup and said, with the casual precision of a man who had been waiting to say it:
"You both know what you are. And you both know there are three others. What you don't know — what the Guild records won't tell you, because I ensured they were removed — is what happens to Super System holders in the year before convergence."
Silence.
Then Sera, perfectly calm:
"Tell us."
"They are hunted," Dren said. "Not by Demetrons. By one another. The convergence protocol is not cooperative by design — it is competitive. The five must prove their worth by eliminating rivals. Only the last three standing complete the convergence."
Raiden watched him say it. Watched the way Dren held his tea, the microscopic tension in his jaw, the way his eyes moved between them measuring impact.
The intent-reading overlay gave him one word, clean and certain: Lie.
"That's not true," Raiden said.
Dren looked at him. Not surprised. Interested.
"What makes you certain?"
"Because the Emperor-breed that bonded with me said the five are a convergence protocol activated to make the domes unnecessary. That's a collective purpose. You don't need all five if two are supposed to eliminate each other." Raiden set down his own cup. "You were trying to frighten us apart. Make us see each other as threats before we had the chance to meet."
The room was very quiet.
Dren looked at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he smiled — and it was the first genuine expression he had produced since walking through the door.
"Extraordinary," Dren said softly. "A Sovereign bond. I wasn't certain that was still possible." He stood, smoothed his jacket. "You're more prepared than the last cycle's holders were at this stage. That's genuinely good news."
"The last cycle," Sera said sharply. "You were alive for the last cycle?"
"I've been alive for several cycles," Dren said. "That is a longer conversation than we have time for today." He moved toward the door, unhurried. "The Cores I took were not for summoning, Kael. They were for a ward — a location marker I've been building for thirty years to find the five when they wake. You were the bait, not the goal. I needed you to follow the trail." He paused at the door. "The Dark Nightmare-breed is moving toward Dome Vantris. It will reach the eastern glass in four days. Your Hunt Captain knows. She is currently the only person in the Guild who does."
"Why are you telling us?" Raiden asked.
"Because I need to know if you're fast enough." He opened the door. "There are three more of you to find. The Dark Nightmare is the clock. Find them before it reaches the glass, and I'll tell you everything I know about what's coming." He looked once at Sera. "Your ambient cryokinesis will stabilise at level eight. Don't fight it — direct it." Then he was gone.
The door clicked shut.
Jester emerged from the back room, where he had been standing very quietly behind the wall for the entire conversation.
"Was that," Jester said carefully, "the villain or an ally?"
"I don't know yet," said Raiden.
"But the Dark Nightmare is real?"
"The intent-reading didn't flag that as a lie."
Sera stood, set down her cup, and looked at them both with the clear eyes of someone who had been alone and uncertain for three days and had just run out of patience for either.
"Then we should go," she said simply. "Where are the other three?"
Super System · Objective Updated
Threat: Dark Nightmare-breed · ETA to Dome Vantris: 4 days
Mission: Locate remaining 3 Super System holders before deadline.
Resonance signals: Northeast (strong) · Far west (faint) · South (intermittent)
Party current status:
Raiden Lv.7
Jester Lv.4
Sera Lv.2