# Chapter 623: The Seer's Warning
The Weaver's words hung in the air of the command center, a chilling pronouncement that seemed to suck the warmth from the room. Nyra felt the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. The abstract, metaphysical horror of the Withering King's plan had just been given a sharp, terrifying point. A piece of Soren was not just a lost echo in a spiritual wasteland; it was a thing. An object. Found. Held.
By a man who thought it was a gift from the gods.
"Explain," Nyra said, her voice a low, steady command that belied the frantic thrumming in her chest. She leaned forward, her hands flat on the cold steel table, the blank Vale contract beneath them feeling suddenly heavier, more significant. "What do you mean, 'found'? How can a soul fragment be 'found'?"
The Weaver's milky-white eyes, which had been fixed on some distant, terrifying horizon, slowly refocused on Nyra. The seer's shop, a place Nyra had only ever visited through holo-calls, materialized around them in her mind's eye—a cluttered sanctuary of dust motes dancing in shafts of dim light, the air thick with the competing scents of dried herbs, ozone, and old paper. But the urgency in the Weaver's voice was real, cutting through the psychic connection like a shard of glass.
"You think of them as echoes, as memories, as feelings," the Weaver's voice rasped, a sound like dry leaves skittering across stone. "That is what they are, but that is not all they are. The Bloom did not just break the world, child. It broke reality. It tore the seams between what is and what could be, between the spiritual and the material. A soul fragment, especially one as potent as his, is not just a wisp of regret. It is a confluence of power. It is a knot of reality, tied to a specific moment of profound trauma."
Nyra's mind raced, connecting the seer's words to what Elara had deciphered from the journal. The burden, the identity, the failure. Each was a nexus point in Soren's life, a moment so defining it had carved a piece from his soul.
"When the King's shadow reached out and plucked these threads from him," the Weaver continued, her voice strained, "it did not simply absorb them. It… anchored them. It gave them form, a temporary physicality, to make them easier to transport back to its non-space. Think of it as a spider wrapping its prey in silk. The silk is the shadow's magic. The prey is the shard of Soren's soul."
A cold dread, sharp and acidic, rose in Nyra's throat. "So one of these… wrapped fragments… was intercepted."
"Not intercepted," the Weaver corrected, a tremor of fear in her tone. "Claimed. The shadow's hunt was careless. It was so focused on the other two, on the brighter lights of his burden and his identity, that it let the smallest one fall. The one born of failure. It landed in the ash, a tiny, fallen star, still glowing with the residue of his power."
The scene in Nyra's mind shifted. She was no longer in the command center. She was standing with the Weaver in the seer's shop, the gnarled woman gripping her arm with surprising strength, her bony fingers digging into Nyra's sleeve. The loom in the corner of the shop, usually a chaotic tangle of threads, was now eerily organized. Most of the threads were a dull, lifeless grey, but three shone with internal light. Two were brilliant, fiery gold, darting and weaving like panicked fish. The third was smaller, a flickering, sullen blue, and it was being pursued.
"Look," the Weaver whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the loom.
As Nyra watched, the tapestry began to weave itself. The threads moved with impossible speed, a story unfolding in fabric and light. She saw the vast, formless shadow, a hole in the world, lunging through a grey, ash-choked landscape. It snared the two golden lights, which writhed in its grasp. But the small blue light, the one representing his failure, slipped through its ethereal fingers. It tumbled from the sky, falling toward a desolate range of jagged mountains.
The vision shifted again. The blue light lay half-buried in the grey dust, pulsing weakly. A figure approached, clad in heavy robes, his face obscured by a deep cowl. He knelt, his hands reaching out not with greed, but with reverence. As his fingers brushed the glowing shard, it flared, and for a fleeting moment, Nyra saw a ghostly image superimposed over the scene: a younger Soren, his face a mask of anguish, standing over the broken body of his mentor, Rook Marr. The shard was the crystallized moment of that ultimate betrayal, that personal failure.
The robed man cradled the light as if it were the holiest of relics. He raised it to the sky, and Nyra could feel his overwhelming emotion—not malice, not a desire for power, but pure, unadulterated awe. He believed he had been blessed.
The vision shattered, and Nyra was back in the command center, gasping for breath. The psychic link snapped, leaving her feeling drained and cold. Isolde was at her side in an instant, a steadying hand on her shoulder.
"What did you see?" Isolde asked, her voice sharp with concern.
Nyra shook her head, trying to clear the lingering images. "The Weaver… she showed me. The King has two of the fragments. But the third… the one from his failure… it was dropped. Someone found it."
Elara, who had been listening with pale-faced intensity, stepped forward. "Who? Who would find such a thing and not be destroyed by it?"
"Someone who wouldn't see it for what it is," Nyra said, the pieces clicking into place with horrifying clarity. "Someone whose faith is so strong, so absolute, that they would interpret a fragment of pure, agonizing soul-energy as a divine sign. The Weaver said… 'a man who thinks it is a gift from the gods.'"
The room fell silent. The implications were staggering. They weren't just racing against a metaphysical monster anymore. They were in a race with a true believer, a man who would guard his "gift" with the fervor of a zealot. To him, they would be heretics. Blasphemers trying to steal a miracle.
"The Radiant Synod," Isolde breathed, the name a curse. "It has to be. They are the only ones who would frame it in those terms."
"Not necessarily the Synod itself," Nyra countered, her strategic mind kicking in, overriding the shock. "The Synod is an institution. It's made of people. But a lone, devout follower? A hermit? A monk in a remote monastery? That fits the profile. The vision showed mountains. Jagged ones. Isolated."
She turned to the command console, her fingers flying across the interface, pulling up regional maps. "We need to cross-reference known religious communities, particularly those with a history of venerating 'lights from the sky' or 'fallen stars,' with the mountain ranges near the Bloom-Wastes."
Finn, who had been standing silently by the door, his face etched with grief and confusion, finally spoke up. "There's… there's one place," he said hesitantly. "A legend, mostly. Master Quill's sanctuary."
Every head in the room turned to him. Master Quill. The name was spoken in hushed tones in Ladder circles. A retired champion from a bygone era, a man who had climbed higher than almost anyone in history and then simply… walked away. He hadn't been seen in public in decades.
"What about it?" Isolde pressed, her tone skeptical.
"He was a hero of the early Synod days," Finn explained, gaining a little confidence. "Before they became what they are now. They say he grew disillusioned with the politics, the corruption. He took his winnings and built a retreat in the Dragon's Tooth range. A place for quiet contemplation. He's a recluse. No one goes in. No one comes out. But the stories… the old-timers used to say he was searching for a sign. A pure, untainted manifestation of the Gift to prove the Synod had lost its way."
Nyra's blood ran cold. The Dragon's Tooth range. It matched the jagged mountains from the vision. A disillusioned hero, searching for a pure sign. A man who would see a fallen piece of Soren's soul not as a fragment of a man, but as the answer to his prayers.
"It's him," she said, her voice certain. "It has to be."
"The Sable League has files on him," Elara added, already accessing a secure data stream. "Or rather, on the location of his sanctuary. It's considered a neutral, no-go zone. Too politically volatile to risk an incident with a living legend."
"Politics don't matter anymore," Nyra stated, her tone leaving no room for argument. "If Quill has that fragment, he's protecting it. He won't give it up. He'll see us as agents of the very corruption he despises. We can't negotiate. We can't reason with him."
"Then we take it," Isolde said flatly, her hand resting on the grip of her sidearm. "We go in, secure the asset, and extract."
"It's not that simple," Nyra countered, shaking her head. "He's Master Quill. Even in his old age, he's one of the most Gifted fighters to ever live. A frontal assault would be a massacre. And even if we succeeded, we'd be creating a martyr. The Synod would spin it as an attack on a holy man, a desecration. It would give them the propaganda victory they've been dreaming of."
She stood up straight, the weight of command settling back onto her shoulders. The despair from moments before was gone, replaced by a grim, diamond-hard resolve. They had a target. A concrete, physical objective. It was a terrifying development, but it was also a breakthrough. It was a thread they could pull.
"We need a plan," she said, her gaze sweeping over her team. "Isolde, I need you to prep a tactical team. Not for assault, for infiltration and containment. Non-lethal measures only. We cannot be the ones to harm Master Quill."
"Understood," Isolde replied with a crisp nod.
"Elara, I need everything the League has on Quill. His fighting style, his known Gift, his psychological profile, the layout of his sanctuary. Anything and everything. We need to know him better than he knows himself."
"On it," Elara confirmed, her fingers already a blur.
"Finn," Nyra said, her voice softening slightly. "You knew the stories. You knew the man's legend. That's valuable. You're with me. You're my insight into who we're dealing with."
The young man straightened, a flicker of purpose in his eyes. "Yes, Chancellor."
Nyra looked at the blank Vale contract on the table. The legal ownership of a man's life. Now, a piece of that man's soul was being treated as a holy relic. The irony was suffocating. They had to get it back. Not just to stop the King, but to give Soren's soul a chance at being whole again. To reclaim his failure from the hands of those who would worship it.
"The King thinks it has won," Nyra murmured, more to herself than to the others. "It's sitting in its void, weaving its new body, assuming all its pieces are secure. It doesn't know one has fallen into the hands of a fan. It's a vulnerability. A loose thread."
She looked up, her eyes burning with a fierce, determined light. "And we are going to pull it."