"How is it...?" Ashen asked, but he sounded as if he'd already given up.
Alice, who was reading the report from the search party, slowly shook her head. "No sign of him or Magnus. Some kind of group in black robes kept delaying and diverting the search party's attention."
Alice showed him a symbol drawn on top of the report: a full moon covered by seven small stars arranged like an eye across its surface.
'The Veiled Moon...? The cult was born already?' Ashen grimaced.
"Seems like you know what this means?" She asked curiously upon noticing his expression.
"Yes," he nodded. "It's the symbol of his cult from two hundred years in the future, The Veiled Moon."
"Seems like he's not without a plan B, after all." She remarked.
"Yeah. While the Narkals have a good chance of wiping out the human race, it's not a hundred percent. History has already proven it." Ashen agreed.
"...Even after sending all my scouting constructs, they haven't caught a single sign of either of them," Alice informed next in her usual stoic tone.
Ashen shook his head and gave her a reassuring smile. "It is what it is. Don't sweat it."
She nodded and decided to reassess the situation. "Since we are in the light and he's in the dark now, he'd be able to strike anytime, anywhere, and in any unexpected way."
"...Guess we got to prepare counter-measures then," he answered.
Alice nodded in agreement. "The Astrologer's most significant threat right now is not his ability, nor his cult, but his capacity to bait the army of Narkals using his unknown means."
When she put it that way, Ashen got a clearer picture of what needed to be done. "Then we should send scouts in every direction from where Narkals might come from, so we don't get blindsided while preparing for the inevitable."
"Good. We can't trust the date three months later after this." Alice easily agreed, but then she cast him a frustrated look. "But sending scouts to the human side territories would be much harder, since they are farther away and risk exposure to hostile scouts."
Ashen fell into thought, then replied, "Leave that to me. I'm the Pride Army's spy, remember? If I word my report right, I'm sure I'll be able to steer their attention to the Narkals' side."
Alice smirked. "What a treacherous subordinate, daring to declare his spy status so confidently before his queen. It seems I still haven't punished you enough."
The mood suddenly lightened at her casual remark, and Ashen mirrored her smirk as he reached for her tail. "...If your punishment is anything like the last one, then I'm willing to stay eternally treacherous, my queen. Heh."
Alice noticed his touch and casually remarked, "You seem to be really fond of my tails." She playfully swatted his hand with one of the fluffy tails while teasing his cheek with another.
"Can you blame me?" Ashen admitted with a sheepish grin. "They just make you look so cute, I can barely take it, especially when they sometimes mirror your emotions when I touch you… This should be considered illegal, damn it."
As if summoned by his remark, the tails started moving playfully on their own, betraying their owner's pleased mood. "Well, you can enjoy them to your heart's content now. You won't see them anymore after we leave this place, after all."
"True..." Ashen nodded in regret and grabbed the tail that kept teasing him, and started rubbing it on his cheek like it was the most precious thing.
Alice looked at his ridiculous actions and couldn't hold back a light laugh.
He shot her a mock glare. "...What about you? I thought you were the weeaboo between us. Don't you feel any shame that they'd be gone?"
"Hey! I'm not a weeb, how many times do I have to say it? I don't just watch anime or read that stuff—I dive into stories from everywhere." She flicked his forehead with another tail.
"Yeah, yeah..." Ashen just noncommittally nodded, while also catching the flicking tail to rub his other cheek with.
Alice had been weirdly passionate every time he called her that, even though she was cool in most situations… and even though he knew for a fact that she was obsessed with webnovel and anime culture, from the countless times she dragged him over to watch her shows together in her teens.
…At least she wasn't buying figurines yet.
But the real reason he teased her was just to see the rare display of vexation on her face. Somehow, he found it adorable.
Alice's indignant tone sounded out again while she helplessly watched the comical display of his face buried in her tails. "Hey, at least call me an otaku!"
"Okay, miss otaku. Now let me appreciate the fluffiness in peace. As you know, my time with these holy objects is limited."
"Damn you, those are my tails, you know!"
...Despite saying that, she didn't pull away and let him continue his antics.
⛧
⛧
⛧
The cult's hideout. Deep inside, past the torch-lit corridors and the murmur of robed followers, lay the Astrologer's chamber.
It wasn't large, but it felt suffocating anyway. Every spot of the circular wall was drowned in pinned papers—crammed with scribbles, crossed-out predictions, personality diagrams, fragmented notes, and branching strings of possibilities that wrapped the room like a web.
Faces clipped from sketches and reports stared from the boards, each surrounded by paragraphs of neat handwriting describing motives, fears, triggers, and the kind of future decisions they were most likely to make. Some pages were fresh. Others looked handled so much their corners had curled.
And at the very center of the largest board, occupying the place of highest priority, hung a new sheet.
Ash Harth.
The Astrologer stood in front of it with his hands clasped behind his back, body motionless except for the faint narrowing of his eyes.
It wasn't only curiosity that made him place Ashen's file dead in the middle of the constellation of plots, names, and behavioral forecasts, but also because nothing else in the room unsettled him the way this man did.
The page was swollen with notes already.
Entire margins were filled with rapid handwriting tracing every personality insight he'd caught during the banquet and the war meeting.
Under normal circumstances, he took days to profile someone this thoroughly. With Ashen, he had scrawled half a wall's worth of data in a single night... But with every word he wrote, more questions haunted him than answers.
He stared at Ashen's sketched likeness, then at the dense analysis circling it.
"...Infinite willpower," he murmured.
Even with the anomaly clearly standing on the opposite side, and sooner or later they'd have to kill each other, the most prominent emotion Cassius was feeling right now was wonder.
…Wonder at something that shouldn't exist.
He leaned closer. His finger hovered over a line he had underlined twice: Believes he is the world's final salvation.
A soft exhale, one between disbelief and amusement, left him.
"That is either the mind of a deluded zealot," he whispered, "or a man staring at a truth he should not know."
A faint rustle sounded behind him.
Magnus entered without speaking, his expression the grim, untouched-by-sunlight thing it always was.
He stopped beside his commander—or cult leader now? Either way, he did not look at the board, nor at the man. His gaze rested solely on the strange multicolored rock on the desk.
It had him so transfixed that he sometimes felt chills deep inside. But he dared not utter any of his thoughts, since he knew that rock was his leader's last and most powerful trump card.
The nuclear option, so to speak.
The Astrologer didn't turn. "He shouldn't be capable of this," he said, still studying Ashen's profile. "But the pattern refuses to collapse. No matter how many angles I examine him from, the foundation remains the same."
His eyes narrowed, voice hardening. "He does not break."
Magnus finally looked at the portrait. "So," he said quietly, almost flatly, "is he a threat?"
Cassius's lips curled slightly.
"That's the problem," he replied. "He is either the greatest threat I have ever witnessed... or the only man alive I cannot predict."
He stepped back from the board, gaze lingering on the center page.
"Either way, he is a variable."