The laughter died.
The screens went black.
A vacuum sound died from the command center. Himari's hand, a white-knuckled fist on the console, felt the deep, indifferent cold of the metal. A high-pitched whine started in her left ear. A phantom.
He knows.
The thought wasn't a thought. A shard of ice shoved into her gut.
"Trace it," Akane's voice was a blade. "Now. Signal source, origin—anything."
A young technician—Sato, his name was Sato—fumbled at his console. His fingers, usually so nimble, were clumsy, shaking. "I… I can't. It wasn't a broadcast. It didn't come from anywhere. Sir, it was just… here. In the system. Like it was born in the wires."
"Impossible," Akane snapped, but the word was brittle. Her reflection was a pale ghost in the dead main screen.
Kaito made a sound. A choked, wet gasp. "It's a trap. Oh, gods, it's a trap." He stumbled back a step, away from the tactical table as if it were radioactive. One hand was a claw on the strap of his carbine; the other was tangled in his own hair, pulling. "He was waiting. He was listening the whole time. We're dead. We're all dead."
Himari's own mind was a frantic spiral. The Duke's voice. So calm. Horribly amused. Not the voice of a cornered tyrant. The voice of a man watching a child stumble into a snare. His words left a sticky residue in her memory. A violent shiver racked her body. When had it gotten so cold? The air smelled of burnt dust from the overloaded speakers and the faint tang of her own fear.
The comm crackled. Static. Then a calm word that cut through the rising panic.
"Report."
Haruto.
His voice was an anchor. Akane seemed to pull herself together, her shoulders straightening, the soldier reasserting control. She keyed her comm, her movements crisp.
"The Duke just broadcast directly into the command center. He knows we're here. He knows we're coming," she stated, her voice tight but level. "Mission is compromised. I'm recommending immediate abort. All teams, stand down. We pull back, reassess—"
"No." The word from Haruto was flat. Final. Not a suggestion. A verdict.
A vein throbbed in Akane's temple. "What do you mean, 'no'? He's waiting for us, Haruto! The schematics are probably a lie. He'll have every guard on the continent converging on the communications tower. It's not a decapitation strike, it's a firing squad. And we're volunteering."
"He's not waiting for us at the tower," Haruto said. The certainty in his voice was chilling. "He's waiting for us at the western gate."
Quiet. Just the low hum of the fortress's life support. Sato stopped his frantic typing. Kaito froze mid-pace, mouth hanging open. Himari stared at the speaker grille, her mind racing, trying to follow the impossible leap in logic. The gate was the diversion. Why—
"Explain," Akane demanded.
"He's not a soldier," Haruto's voice came back, patient, almost condescending. Like an instructor explaining physics. "He's a monarch. A performer. He heard me give you the diversionary objective. 'Loud.' 'Messy.' He thinks he's three moves ahead. He wants a public victory. To crush a rebellion in front of an audience. So he's pulled his elite guard, his Weavers, everything that matters, to the perimeter. He's going to make a spectacle of you."
He paused, letting the silence stretch.
"He thinks the 'real' threat, my team, is still walking into his secondary trap at the tower. A place he's left just enough guards to make it look convincing. He's playing chess. And he just laid a very obvious, arrogant checkmate."
"So we abort," Akane insisted, her voice strained. "Trap or not, he's still waiting. He holds all the cards."
"No," Haruto said again. "We stop playing his game." A new, dangerous hum entered his voice. "He expects a feint at the gate and a strike at the tower. We give him neither. Akane, your objective changes. You are no longer a diversion. You are the main event."
Himari could feel the shift in the room. Confusion giving way to a dawning, terrifying understanding.
"There's a primary power conduit junction three blocks south of the western gate," Haruto continued, his voice picking up speed. "Akari is pushing schematics to your slate now. It feeds the entire western quadrant's defensive grid. Your EMP grenades will knock it offline. You won't create a diversion. You'll create a real breach. A catastrophic threat. He'll be forced to pull his interior guards back out to contain you. He'll be convinced that was our primary objective all along."
"And your team?" Akane's voice was a tight wire.
"My team?" A dry chuckle came over the comm. Like grinding metal. "My team is going dark. We're not going anywhere near the communications tower. He can keep it."
Kaito finally found his voice, a raw whisper. "Then where… where are we going?"
The quiet that followed was charged. Himari held her breath, knuckles aching from their pressure on the console. She could hear the faint sounds of the city through the thick fortress walls—whispers and candles, a city waiting for a promise to be kept.
"The Duke is a Weaver," Haruto said, his voice dropping to a murmur that was somehow more intense than a shout. "His power, his control, his 'magic'… it's a technology. All technology has a source. A place he would never leave unguarded. A place he would assume we are too ignorant, too primitive, to even know exists."
The main tactical screen flickered back to life. Not the estate. A geological survey, a cross-section of the rock deep beneath Silverwood. A single point began to glow with a pulsing, ominous red light, deep beneath the Duke's private, central tower.
Himari gasped. "The Locus." The word was a ghost on her lips. A half-forgotten piece of childhood lore. A bedtime story about the heart of the city, a place forbidden, sacred. A place her father had spoken of only once, his face pale with something like fear.
"That's our target," Haruto confirmed. "He thinks we're playing soldiers. We're going to play monsters instead. We're not here to cut off his arm. We're going to cut out his heart."
The audacity of it was a blasphemy. It sucked the air from the room. This wasn't a military operation. A violation. A sacrilege. It was also, Himari realized with a sudden, dizzying wave of nausea and clarity, the only way they could win.
"Plan is updated," Haruto's voice was sharp, pulling her back from the abyss. "Akane, you move out in five minutes. Kaito, Riku, with me. We go in through the old aqueduct systems two klicks south. Akari has the route. Himari." He paused. "You're still our eyes. But your priority is Akane's team. Keep them alive. Whatever it takes."
"Understood," Himari said. The word felt strange in her mouth. Solid. The fear was still there, a coiling thing in her stomach, but the paralysis was gone, burned away by the new plan.
The comm went silent.
For a moment, nobody moved. The new reality settled over them. They were no longer reacting. They were escalating.
Akane turned to her two squad members, her face a mask of grim purpose. "You heard him. Gear up. EMPs first. We're making a mess." She looked at Himari, a quick, sharp nod. An entire conversation in a single, silent gesture. Then she was gone, her team following her out of the command center with a heavy, determined tread.
Himari was left with the pale-faced tech and Kaito, who hadn't moved. He just stood there, staring at the map, at the glowing red icon deep beneath the earth.
"The Locus," he whispered, the name a curse. "He's… he's insane. Nobody goes there. Nobody."
"He is," Himari said. She walked over to the tactical display, her own movements feeling strangely fluid, strangely calm. Her fingers flew over the controls, bringing up schematics for the power junction, highlighting ambush points, mapping escape routes. The shaking had stopped. "And right now, that's the only reason we're still alive."
She found the thermal imaging feed for the western district, her mind racing to keep up, to anticipate, to be the eyes Haruto needed. The game had changed. The Duke thought he was the master player, but he had miscalculated. He had assumed his opponent was a soldier, bound by familiar rules of war. He hadn't counted on a ghost from another world, a man who saw his sacred, untouchable power source as just another target on a map.
A distant thump vibrated through the fortress, a low thrum she felt more in her bones than in her ears.
Akane had begun.
Himari leaned closer to the screen, her world narrowing to the glowing heat signatures of the guards, the cool blue of the city streets, and the desperate gamble they were all taking. Let the real games begin, the Duke had said. He had no idea.