Elara chose her observation post with the care of a geometrician. It was the abandoned clock tower in the old university district, a relic of a prior architectural epoch. From the high, fractured window of the tower's clock face, she had an unobstructed, precise view of Seraphina Kaelen's sprawling, glass-walled private art studio.
The second strike demanded a deeper understanding of the soul. Cassian was a ledger; Seraphina was a living nerve.
Elara used a high-powered, stabilized optical array, its feed piped back to her base for continuous monitoring. She watched Seraphina for days, learning the rhythm of the artist's self-inflicted torment.
Seraphina Kaelen was thin, highly strung, and consumed by the chase for perfect form. Her preferred medium was vast, immersive abstract expressionism- canvases larger than most rooms, coated in vibrant, agonizing detail. Elara quickly identified Seraphina's flaw: an obsessive, crippling pursuit of an internal standard of purity that could never be met. Every finished piece was merely a record of her failure to achieve the ideal.
Seraphina would work for twenty hours straight, fueled by desperation and stimulants, before erupting in a sudden, silent fit of self-loathing, destroying a section of the canvas she had just completed. She was her own harshest jailer.
"She doesn't seek expression, Professor," Elara reported into her secure microphone link with Thorne. "She seeks cleansing. Each brushstroke is an attempt to scrub away her own inadequacy."
Thorne's voice crackled back, sounding uneasy. "It makes the deployment of the ADO- the Aesthetic Despondency Oil- simpler. It targets the neuro-chemistry responsible for the reward pathway in artistic creation. It will ensure that every single time she paints, the result registers internally as corrupted, toxic, and aesthetically repulsive."
Elara watched Seraphina violently tear a sketch from the wall. "She is already halfway there. We are merely providing the final push into self-annihilation. Her silence will be one of psychological retreat, a permanent inability to create."
To steel herself, Elara intentionally stripped Seraphina of all humanity. She was not a daughter, not an artist, but The Aesthetic Flaw- a design problem that needed correction to protect the structural integrity of the Vane vengeance.
Elara spent the next hour cross-referencing Seraphina's movements with known Kaelen security schedules, specifically looking for any shift patterns of Commander Joric Tahl. She found that Tahl, newly assigned to the 'ghost' investigation, had increased his unpredictable patrols across all Kaelen properties.
"The Shield is moving," Elara noted, her voice flat. "But he is predictable in his dedication."
She packed up the optical array. Her job was complete for the day. Seraphina was mapped. The psychological target was acquired. Elara just needed one small point of contact—a moment of unexpected proximity to deploy Thorne's chemical weapon. She knew exactly how to gain access to the manor under the guise of her public identity, but running into the methodical Commander Tahl in a non-professional context remained the highest risk. The thought, however, brought a strange, sharp spark of anticipation that Elara immediately categorized and dismissed as professional challenge.