The silence in Veer's private quarters was a physical presence, thick and suffocating, heavier than any war-room briefing or the pre-battle calm before a rift storm. This was the silence of a precipice. Moonlight, pale and unforgiving, streamed through the reinforced window, casting long, skeletal shadows across the room and glinting off the single object on his desk: the cold, white ceramic shard. The coiled shadow consuming the crescent moon seemed to writhe in the low light, a tiny omen of the abyss he was preparing to enter.
Across from him, Anika sat perfectly still, her arms crossed over her chest. Her usual calm demeanor was sharpened into a blade of pure skepticism. She had fought beside him in the orc prison, had felt the same chains bite into her wrists. She knew the righteous fire that burned in him, but she also knew the impulsive spark that could ignite a catastrophe. This plan, born from that fire, felt like pouring oil onto a blaze.
"This isn't just reckless, Veer. This is a special kind of madness," she said, her voice low and measured, each word chosen with care. "You're talking about building an identity out of the very evil we're sworn to dismantle. We'll have to look into the eyes of people who see others as livestock, negotiate with them, and make them believe we're the same. Every second in that mask is a risk of it fusing to our skin."
Veer didn't flinch. His gaze was fixed on the shard, but his mind was elsewhere—in the silent hut in Bihar, holding a clumsily carved bird; in the railway yard, hearing the word "product" used for a living, terrified human.
"We're not becoming them," he countered, his voice possessing a chilling, unfamiliar calm. It was the calm of a river frozen over, hiding a powerful, dark current beneath. "We're becoming a poison that we will feed into their heart. The Pale Syndicate are capillaries. They feed a larger organ, but they don't know the body. To find the brain, we have to flow through the veins."
He leaned forward, his eyes locking with hers, the intensity in them belying his calm tone. "My father is right. The mutant migration, the Orc King, the rift in the Emberweald—it's all connected. But the rift and the horde are just symptoms. This—" he tapped the shard with a definitive click, "—is the disease. Eternal Night is the source. Aditya tasked me with finding their connection to it all. This is the only way to pull that thread. We have to be so effective, so uniquely valuable, that the body has no choice but to draw us in to its heart."
He laid out the skeleton of his plan with a forensic precision that unnerved her. New identities, forged from whole cloth. He would be "Vikram," a man forged in the brutal chaos of post-Fall Kolkata, ambitious, cruel, and specializing in acquiring Awakened with rare or troublesome abilities. Anika would be "Anya," his lethal shadow, his enforcer, a woman of few words and swift, brutal action. They would need a web of lies: a backstory, financial trails, a safe house, and most importantly, a crew. A forger to create their legend, a scout to navigate the treacherous landscape of Kashi's underworld.
"The underworld in Kashi is a nest of vipers, Veer," Anika argued, leaning forward, her eyes intense. "They survive on paranoia and betrayal. One misplaced word, one flicker of hesitation when you're supposed to be cold, one moment of compassion you can't afford to show—that's it. It's not just our lives on the line. If we fail, if they see through us, Eternal Night vanishes deeper into the shadows. We become the reason they become ghosts, and every person they take after that is on us. The weight of that… it will crush you."
"The weight of doing nothing is already crushing me!" Veer's controlled facade shattered. He shot to his feet, his kinetic energy flaring unconsciously, causing the tools on his desk to rattle. The air in the room hummed with suppressed power. "We followed the trail of tears in Bihar and it gave us a name. Eternal Night. Now we have to follow the name, no matter how deep the darkness goes. I need your control. Your patience. Your precision. I have the storm, Anika. But I need the scalpel."
Anika held his gaze for a long, suspended moment. She saw the deep-seated grief for a mother lost, the frustration of a warrior forced to sheathe his sword, and the terrifying, unwavering resolve to stare into the heart of the corruption. She saw a prince ready to wallow in the mud to protect his kingdom.
Finally, she let out a long, slow breath, the sound of surrender to a terrible, necessary path. "Fine," she conceded, the word tasting like ash. "We do this. But my terms are non-negotiable. When we are in the field, we are Vikram and Anya. We are in it for the money, for the power, for the thrill. There is no Veer and Anika. There is no Tempest. There is only the mission and the mask. Our survival, and the lives of everyone those monsters would have taken, depends on us believing our own lie. You follow my lead on the subtle things. No heroics. No sudden attacks of conscience."
A grim, humorless smile touched Veer's lips. It was the smile of "Vikram" taking root. "Agreed."
A soft, almost timid knock at the door broke the tension. Veer composed himself, the storm in his eyes receding behind a calmer facade, and opened it. Commander Bhola stood there, his face more weathered and weary than ever, looking out of place in the clean, ordered hallway of Tempest's inner keep. He held a sealed, non-networked data-slate as if it were a live grenade.
"Prince Roy," Bhola grunted, his eyes darting past Veer to Anika before returning. He didn't wait for an invitation, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. "I… couldn't just go back to counting rations and patching walls. Not after what we saw." He gestured vaguely, encompassing the memory of the silent huts and the grim railway yard. "Did some digging. Called in favors from the old days. The man you captured, Rohan… he was the brains, but he had hands. A partner who specialized in documentation and electronics. Slippery little weasel name of Leo. He's a worm, but his work… it's flawless. If you're really going to walk this path, he's your forger. He operates out of Kashi's underlevels." He thrust the slate into Veer's hands. "His last known location. His usual haunts. And his price. It's… steep. Consider it my contribution to this… this madness."
Veer took the slate, the cool plastic feeling like a tangible link in the chain they were forging. A surge of grim gratitude washed over him. This was no longer just his idea; it was becoming a collective, desperate strike back at the darkness.
"And we'll need a guide," Veer said, his mind already racing ahead. "Someone who knows Kashi's underbelly and the wastes around it like the back of their hand."
Bhola let out a short, dry laugh that held no humor. "You want the best? The real best? You find Maya. She was Tempest. One of our finest pathfinders. Her squad was mapping a Tier 3 rift five years ago. It collapsed. She was the only one who walked out. Retired after that. No fanfare, no pension. Just disappeared. She runs a piss-hole bar in the grimmest part of Kashi now called 'The Last Stop.' Hates the guilds, hates the world, probably hates herself. But if you can convince her—and that's a bigger 'if' than facing down the Orc King—you'll have a ghost on your side. She can walk you through hell and have the devil himself buy you a drink."
With a final, grim nod, Bhola turned and left, melting back into the shadows of the corridor from which he came.
Veer looked down at the data-slate, the weight of it solid in his hand. He then looked at Anika, her expression now one of resigned determination. The plan was no longer a theory discussed in a quiet room. It was a mission with names, locations, and a terrifyingly high price for failure. The masks were no longer an abstraction; they were waiting in the chaotic, neon-drenched, and violence-riddled streets of Kashi.
The Merchant of Death was going to market.