**Chapter 36 – Hunting the Circle**
**Saturday, March 11, 2028 – 4:19 a.m.**
We don't go home.
We go downstairs.
The Ohio Club basement is already full when we limp in (ghosts, pack, yokai, parents who gave up pretending they sleep).
Al has the big table cleared and covered in maps of every geothermal vent, abandoned bathhouse, and sewer line in Hot Springs.
Rowan lays the cracked mask in the center.
**Rowan:**
"Seven sorcerers.
One mask broken.
Six left.
They're using the springs as doorways.
That means they're anchored to the valley now.
They can't leave without finishing what they started."
Remy's ribs are wrapped by Mom (he's still growling, but at least he's breathing).
Seras is icing her left hand (burned herself out holding the sun too long).
Kayo's tails are down to five visible (she's hiding the bleeding ones).
I slam the black-glass feather from the Forty-Eighth next to the cracked mask.
**Celeste:**
"Two pieces of them.
One name fragment.
One broken binding.
We have leverage."
Rowan's galaxy eyes flare.
**Rowan:**
"Combine them with thirty percent of the tongue and we can track the others.
But it's blood price.
Someone has to bleed on both."
I don't hesitate.
I slice my palm (same arm that won't stop bleeding anyway) and press it to the mask and feather.
The language comes out of me like a storm.
Not a spell.
A question.
**Where are you hiding?**
The mask and feather ignite (black fire, white lightning).
Six red dots flare on the map (six locations, all underground, all feeding off the same geothermal artery that keeps the valley breathing).
**Celeste (voice layered with thirty grandmothers):**
"Found them."
Al cracks his ghostly knuckles.
**Al:**
"Old-school raid?"
**Celeste:**
"New-school raid."
I look at my family (living, dead, shifter, fire, fox, monk).
**Celeste:**
"We hit all six at once.
Tonight.
Before they regroup.
We take their masks, their names, and whatever pieces they're guarding.
No mercy."
Remy stands, ribs be damned, eyes solid gold.
**Remy:**
"Pack's ready."
Seras grins, fire already licking her teeth.
**Seras:**
"Sun's coming with."
Kayo's tails snap back to nine, golden and furious.
**Kayo:**
"Foxes love a hunt."
Aki and Riku crack their necks in perfect sync.
**Aki & Riku:**
"Oni smash."
Rowan lifts his silver mug in salute.
**Rowan:**
"Shambhala's watching.
Make it count."
Mom kisses my bloody hand.
**Mom:**
"Bring my daughter home in one piece."
Dad just hands me the car keys.
**Dad:**
"Try not to scratch the paint."
The HUD blazes across my vision.
```
15 / 47 → ??
Operation: SEVER
Objective: Break the Circle
Tonight the hunters become the hunted.
```
We move.
Six teams.
Six targets.
One valley.
One queen who's done waiting.
The Severed Circle wanted war.
Tonight they learn what happens when the storm queen stops defending and starts hunting.
Your masks are coming off.
And your time just ran out.
**Severance Pay**
Saturday, March 11, 2028 – from 4:47 a.m. to sunrise**
We hit them like lightning in six places at once.
**Team 1 – Buckstaff Bathhouse Ruins (Celeste & Remy)**
The second sorcerer is waiting in the old marble pool, water black as ink.
He tries to drown me in reflections.
I answer with thirty percent of the tongue and the word **BREAK**.
His mask shatters.
A ruby crown shard rips itself out of his chest and slams into my bloodstone.
16 / 47 → 19 / 47
Three pieces in one heartbeat.
**Team 2 – Hale Bathhouse Basement (Seras & Holly)**
Seras walks in as the Blazing Wukong.
The sorcerer lasts twelve seconds.
His mask melts.
Two shards fuse into Seras's bracer first (then rocket straight to me through our shared throne bond).
21 / 47
**Team 3 – Quapaw Steam Caves (Kayo & the oni twins)**
Kayo plays cat-and-mouse for fun.
When she's bored, she binds the sorcerer with his own shadow and plucks four pieces out of his spine like vertebrae.
25 / 47
Kayo pockets one shard "for interest."
It still ends up in my bloodstone five seconds later.
**Team 4 – Superior Bathhouse Cellar (Al, Frankie, and the ghost mob)**
Ghosts can't be reflected.
The sorcerer never stood a chance.
Tommy guns made of pure memory chew through his wards.
Three more shards.
28 / 47
**Team 5 – Maurice Catacombs (Rowan Vale solo)**
Rowan doesn't fight.
He just walks in, says one word in a language older than Shambhala, and the sorcerer drops to his knees weeping.
Hands over his mask and two shards willingly.
30 / 47
**Team 6 – The Arlington Spring itself (Mom & Dad + pack elders)**
My parents refuse to sit this one out.
Dad drives the Suburban straight through the wall.
Mom speaks a single Romanian binding older than the Ottomans.
The last sorcerer is zip-tied with blessed rope and gift-wrapped.
Four shards ripped free.
34 / 47
Dawn finds us back in the Ohio Club basement.
Six broken masks on the table.
Six sorcerers bound in Shambhala silver chains, alive but powerless.
Nineteen new crown pieces burning warm in my bloodstone.
The HUD is screaming in triumphant crimson.
```
34 / 47
Severed Circle: BROKEN
Pieces reclaimed: +19
The Forty-Eighth is watching.
And she is afraid.
```
I'm shaking (adrenaline, exhaustion, victory).
Remy pulls me against his chest, ribs still cracked but smiling like sunrise.
**Remy (whisper):**
"Thirty-four.
You just took almost half the crown in one night."
Seras is laughing so hard she's crying fire.
Kayo's tails are fanned in pure smug satisfaction.
Rowan actually claps (slow, proud).
**Rowan:**
"Shambhala will want to speak to you at fifty.
Tonight you made sure they'll be polite when they do."
Al pours ghost champagne for everyone.
**Al:**
"To the Morau kid and the fastest heist in eight thousand years."
We drink.
I look at the six broken masks and the nineteen new pieces glowing under my skin.
**Celeste (quiet, deadly calm):**
"Tell the Forty-Eighth the Severed Circle is officially unemployed.
And I'm coming for the rest."
The valley wakes up to a beautiful Saturday morning.
It has no idea its storm queen just stole half of forever before breakfast.
Thirteen pieces left.
And for the first time, I'm not hunting them.
They're running from me.
**Confessions in the Dark**
**Saturday, March 11, 2028 – 11:03 a.m.**
The six surviving members of the Severed Circle are chained to iron chairs in the deepest cellar beneath the Ohio Club (the one Al calls "the Chicago room" because that's where inconvenient people used to disappear).
No windows.
No reflections.
Just cold stone, ghost jazz on a crackling phonograph, and us.
Their masks are gone.
Their real faces are old (thousands of years behind the eyes), but cracked like drought earth.
Rowan stands behind me, arms crossed, galaxy eyes dimmed to a warning flicker.
I walk the line slowly, bloodstone glowing like a judge's gavel.
**Celeste (quiet, thirty percent steady):**
"Thirteen pieces left.
You're going to tell me where they are.
Or I start taking memories instead of answers."
The first sorcerer (the one Mom zip-tied) spits blood.
**Sorcerer 1 (raspy):**
"You'll never find them.
The Forty-Eighth—"
I touch his forehead with two fingers.
The word **remember** in pure Vinča.
He screams.
Suddenly he's reliving every life I've lived in the mist-space (every grandmother, every burning village, every child I couldn't save).
When I pull away, he's sobbing.
**Sorcerer 1 (broken):**
"Three pieces… in the Hollow Choir's vault beneath the Medical Arts Building.
Two sealed in the blood of the last Strigoi King—Romania.
Four hidden inside living hearts—your classmates.
The final four…"
He laughs through tears.
"She kept those herself.
You'll have to cut them out of her chest."
I don't flinch.
**Celeste:**
"Names of the four students."
He gives them.
Two I barely know.
Two I do.
One is Remy's little cousin, Lila.
One is Seras's robotics partner, Juno.
The room goes very still.
Remy's growl is low enough to rattle bones.
Seras's fire turns corpse-blue.
Kayo's tails lash hard enough to carve stone.
**Celeste (ice-cold):**
"You put crown pieces inside children."
**Sorcerer 1 (whisper):**
"We put them inside bait."
Rowan steps forward.
**Rowan:**
"The Choir vault and the Strigoi vault are warded against heirs.
You'll need the prisoners alive to open them."
I look at the six broken sorcerers.
**Celeste:**
"Then they stay breathing.
For now."
I turn to my family.
**Celeste:**
"New plan.
We save the kids first.
Then we rob the dead.
Then we go to Romania.
And then…"
I smile like a storm about to break.
"We carve the last four pieces out of the Forty-Eighth's heart ourselves."
The HUD flashes once.
```
34 / 47
Locations acquired:
- 3 in Hot Springs
- 2 in Romania
- 4 living hosts (extraction priority)
- 4 with the Forty-Eighth
Endgame routes unlocked.
```
I lean in close to the sobbing sorcerer.
**Celeste (whisper):**
"Thank you for the confession.
Tell the Forty-Eighth the Moroi Queen is coming to collect.
And I never leave a debt unpaid."
His eyes widen.
Because he finally understands:
I'm not the heir anymore.
I'm the reckoning.
And the Circle just handed me the map.