The internal security report on Seraphina Kaelen's psychological state was flagged with the highest priority: Catastrophic, rapid onset aesthetic delusion. The doctors assigned to the Kaelen house were baffled, attributing it to hereditary mental fragility exacerbated by stress.
Joric Tahl was not baffled. He was calculating.
He sat in his office, reviewing the timeline:
Day 1: Financial Collapse of Cassian Kaelen. Day 2 (Night): Veridia, Chief Archivist, accesses the data core. Day 5 (Evening): A false courier accesses Seraphina's studio. Joric speaks to the courier (Elara, disguised). Day 6: Seraphina's total psychological collapse.
Two distinct, highly sophisticated attacks, each exploiting a different Kaelen flaw, separated by days, yet linked by the single thread of physical access.
Joric dismissed the official psychological report. The pattern was too clean, too elegant, for madness. It was a strategy.
He focused entirely on the "frame courier" alias. It was flimsy, pointing to a non-existent company: "Veridian Transport." The use of "Veridian" was too close to "Veridia," the Archivist, to be a coincidence.
Joric knew the difference between professional crime and personal mission. The architect of this chaos wasn't seeking profit; they were seeking absolute, systemic ruin, delivered with a cold, almost academic precision.
He utilized his deep connections within The Cut- the shadowy, informal network of informants, ex-intelligence agents, and black-market dealers who operated beneath the city's legal surface. These were the people who knew every false transport company, every burner alias, and every technical anomaly the city government preferred to ignore.
He met his most trusted contact, a dealer known as Sledge, in a dimly lit tavern near the docks.
"Sledge, I need everything you have on a ghost. Female, highly educated, uses the name Veridia or variations of it. Operates out of the Records Bureau but utilizes black market access points for logistics."
Sledge, a scarred man with eyes that saw too much, studied Joric. "You're hunting a silk worm, Commander, not a viper. They are far harder to find."
Joric slid a data-chip across the table, containing enough credits to fund Sledge's network for a year. "The Kaelen dynasty is exposed. Find the root, and the bounty doubles."
Sledge took the chip and nodded slowly. "The 'Veridia' alias. Meticulous. Doesn't leave a scent, just calculated digital footprints."
Joric pressed him. "The 'Veridian Transport' shell. Where did it register?"
Sledge checked a small, protected datapad. "A defunct warehouse in the old printing district. Used the papers of a disgraced academic who vanished five years ago- a Professor Thorne."
Joric's world narrowed. Professor Thorne- the brilliant physicist publicly ruined by Valen Kaelen in the patent scandal a decade ago. The link was no longer circumstantial. It was personal, meticulous, and aimed at the Kaelen bloodline.
Joric realized the investigation was leading him toward a single, complex network driven by vengeance. He also realized the core of that network was the cool, compelling woman he had met in the silent Archives.
He developed a psychological profile of the suspect: Highly educated, meticulous, and operating on a clear internal moral code. He saw the profile, and the image of the Archivist, "Veridia," snapped into place. She wasn't just similar to the ghost; she was the architect.
The revelation was a hammer blow: the woman he was professionally hunting, the woman whose mind and voice had deeply impressed him, was the enemy of the House he was sworn to protect. The thread had tightened into a rope, pulling him toward a catastrophic confrontation.