# Chapter 4: Warden's Shadow
The hover-car's engine died with a final, shuddering sigh, leaving them in the sudden, oppressive silence of a derelict Undercity mag-lev station. The air here was thick with the smell of damp metal, ozone from failing conduits, and something vaguely like rotting fruit. Liraya stepped out, her expensive boots crunching on broken ceramic tile. "This is your contact?" she asked, her voice tight with disbelief. "It's a sewer." Konto ignored her, his eyes scanning the shadows. "He likes his privacy," he murmured. A figure detached itself from the darkness behind a rusted support pillar. It was a man, or what was left of one, his face a roadmap of scars, one eye a milky, blind white. He was missing his left arm from the elbow down, replaced with a crude, multi-jointed prosthetic of scavenged chrome and wire. The prosthetic whirred softly as he moved. "Konto," the man's voice was like grinding stones. "You bring a Sider to my doorstep. You got a death wish?" His single, good eye flicked to Liraya, assessing her with a cold, predatory hunger. "She smells of money and trouble. I don't like either."
"She's with me, Silas," Konto said, his voice low and even. "And she's paying. Trouble is what we're here for." He gestured to the cavernous space around them. "This is neutral ground. You know the rules."
Silas's prosthetic fingers twitched, the metal joints clicking. "Rules are for people who can't afford to break them. You look like you've been running. Wardens?" It wasn't a question.
"The usual," Konto replied. "We need a place to lie low. A place with a hardline data-scribe and no questions asked."
Silas let out a dry, rattling cough that sounded like rocks in a tin can. He finally looked away from Liraya, his gaze sweeping the empty tracks. "The Wardens are getting bold. Poking their noses into the Undercity more and more. Bad for business." He turned and started walking deeper into the station's guts, his uneven gait echoing in the gloom. "Follow. And keep your pet Sider on a short leash. Her kind attracts attention."
Liraya bristled but said nothing, falling into step beside Konto as they followed the scarred man. They moved through a maze of abandoned service tunnels and maintenance shafts, the air growing colder and damper with every step. The only light came from the faint, pulsing glow of Liraya's Aspect tattoos on her hands, which she had dimmed to a soft, internal luminescence, and the occasional flicker of faulty wiring overhead. Silas led them to a heavy, reinforced door set into the concrete wall, seemingly at random. He tapped a complex sequence on a rusted number pad, and with a groan of protesting metal, the door swung inward.
The room beyond was a stark contrast to the decay outside. It was a cramped but meticulously organized workspace. Banks of humming servers lined one wall, their status lights blinking in hypnotic patterns. A workbench was covered in disassembled tech, data-slates, and tools of both mundane and arcane origin. The air was cool and dry, smelling of ozone and sterilized metal. It was a fortress of information in the heart of chaos.
"Best I can do on short notice," Silas grunted, pointing to a cot in the corner. "One bed. One terminal. The food is nutrient paste. The company is me." He glared at Liraya. "No outgoing signals. No tracing. If you bring the Wardens to my door, I'll feed you both to the scrap-eaters. Understood?"
"Understood," Konto said, dropping his worn leather satchel onto the floor. He looked at Liraya. "We need to work. You take the terminal. See what you can dig up on the official channels. Your credentials should still be good for a while, especially if you route them through a few proxies. I'll hit the streets. See what the whispers are saying."
Liraya nodded, her expression all business. She moved to the terminal, her fingers already flying across the holographic interface. The screen cast a blue-white glow on her face, highlighting the intensity in her eyes. "My father's case file. The Wardens' preliminary report. It should be in the Council archives. I want to see their version of events."
Konto watched her for a moment, a flicker of something unfamiliar—respect, perhaps—crossing his mind. She was adapting, shedding her Upper Spires skin like a snake. He turned to Silas. "I need a word. In private."
Silas grunted and led him to a small alcove separated by a beaded curtain of polished bone fragments. "What is it, Konto? And make it fast. My time is valuable."
"I need information," Konto said, keeping his voice low. "A new dream-drug. Something strong, something that leaves a… psychic residue. It's being used in the high-end circles. Exclusive circles."
Silas's good eye narrowed. "Dream-drugs are a dime a dozen down here. You want to forget, you want to remember, you want to dream you're a dragon. It's all available."
"This is different," Konto insisted. "This isn't for recreation. This is for weaponizing nightmares. It's called Oneiros-B."
The name hung in the air. For the first time, Silas's casual, predatory demeanor cracked, replaced by a flicker of genuine unease. He was silent for a long moment, the whirring of his prosthetic the only sound. "That's not a street name," he finally said, his voice barely a whisper. "That's a prototype. A ghost story. They say it can build a dreamscape so real it can overwrite your own. They say it can trap you."
"Someone is selling it," Konto pressed. "And someone is using it to kill. I need to know who. I need to know where it's coming from."
Silas shook his head slowly. "You're not just chasing Wardens anymore, Konto. You're chasing smoke. The kind of smoke that burns. I'll ask around. But the people who deal in this… they don't talk to people like me. They talk to ghosts. And ghosts don't leave witnesses." He paused, his gaze drifting toward the alcove where Liraya was working. "Be careful with that one. Her light is too bright for this darkness. It attracts things that live in the shadows."
"I will," Konto promised, though he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.
Back in the main room, Liraya was engrossed in her work. The holographic screen was a cascade of data streams, official Magisterium seals, and case numbers. "I'm in," she said without looking up. "The Wardens' report is… sterile. Clean. Too clean." She pulled up the primary document. It was a masterpiece of bureaucratic obfuscation. Councilman Theron Valerius, cause of death: acute cardiac arrest. Time of death: estimated 03:17 AM. Scene: secure, no signs of forced entry. Conclusion: natural causes, exacerbated by stress.
"It's a lie," Liraya hissed, her fingers jabbing at the screen. "They completely ignored the physical evidence. The warped reality in his study, the psychic scarring I felt… none of it is in here. It's like it never happened." She scrolled through the attached files—forensic reports, witness statements, energy readings. They were all either redacted or filled with nonsensical jargon that amounted to nothing. "They're not just covering it up. They're erasing it."
"Keep digging," Konto urged, leaning over her shoulder. "There's always a loose thread. A lazy clerk, a corrupted file, something."
Liraya nodded, her jaw set with determination. She initiated a cross-reference search, using her high-level clearance to query the city's central morgue database. She input the parameters from her father's report: unexplained death, elite citizen, no obvious physical trauma, energy signatures flagged as 'anomalous but inert.' The search whirred for several minutes, the silence in the room thick with anticipation.
Then, a hit. Two of them.
"Got something," she murmured. The first file appeared on the screen. Master Dorian Kael, a shipping magnate. Found dead in his penthouse apartment three weeks ago. Cause of death: massive cerebral hemorrhage. The Wardens' report was nearly identical to her father's. Secure scene, no foul play, a tragic but natural end. But buried in the medical examiner's private notes, which Liraya's access was just high enough to decrypt, was a single, chilling phrase: *"Brain tissue exhibits cellular degradation consistent with extreme, sustained psychic trauma. Unprecedented."*
The second file was even more recent. Lady Anja Stoyanovich, a renowned art collector and philanthropist. Dead two days ago. Official cause: aneurysm. Again, the scene was pristine. Again, the official report was a model of dismissive efficiency. But the morgue's bio-scanner logs, which Liraya managed to pull from a backup server, showed a massive, unexplained energy spike at the exact time of death, followed by a rapid decay in the victim's bio-signature. It was the same pattern. The same invisible killer.
"They're cleaning house," Konto said, his voice grim. He pointed at the screen. "Kael, Stoyanovich, your father. They were all on the Magisterium Council. They were all powerful. And they're all being erased."
"It's a purge," Liraya whispered, the blood draining from her face. "But why? What did they know? What did they do?" She leaned back, running a hand through her hair. "There has to be a connection. A protocol, a project… something that links them."
She went back to her father's file, her movements more frantic now. She wasn't just looking anymore; she was dissecting. She bypassed the summaries and dove into the raw data packets, the hexadecimal code that underpinned the report. It was a digital needle in a haystack, but she was a master weaver of information. Hours bled into one another. The only sounds were the hum of the servers, the click of Liraya's keyboard, and the occasional drip of water from a leaky pipe in the ceiling.
Konto paced the small room, his mind racing. Silas's words echoed in his head. *Ghosts don't leave witnesses.* This wasn't just a conspiracy; it was an extermination. And Elara was caught in the crossfire. Every second they wasted was a second she spent trapped in that psychic nightmare, her mind being torn apart. He had to do something. He had to find the source.
He was about to tell Liraya they were leaving, that her digital search was a dead end, when she suddenly froze. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, her eyes wide, fixed on a single line of corrupted code on the screen.
"What is it?" Konto asked, moving to her side.
"It's… nothing," she breathed. "And everything." She pointed to a string of garbled characters, a data fragment that had been flagged as irretrievable, a casualty of a supposed system error during the file's creation. "The Wardens' system would just skip over this. It's junk data. But my father… he was paranoid. He taught me about data-sharding. Hiding information in plain sight, broken into pieces that look like corruption."
Her fingers flew across the keyboard again, typing in a complex decryption key. The garbled characters on the screen began to rearrange themselves, coalescing into a coherent phrase. It was short. It was simple. And it was terrifying.
**[PROTOCOL: PHASE ONE – INITIATION COMPLETE]**
"Phase One," Konto read aloud, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "What does that mean? Phase One of what?"
Liraya stared at the screen, her face pale in the monitor's glow. "I don't know," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "But it's not the end. It's the beginning." She pulled up a secure, encrypted channel, one that only a handful of people in the entire city knew existed. It was a direct line to her family's private intelligence network. "My father had enemies. But he also had contingencies. If he was involved in something called 'Phase One,' he would have left a trail. A dead man's switch."
She typed a frantic message, a series of codes and queries that would activate the switch if it existed. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a new file appeared in her inbox. It was small, no more than a few kilobytes. It was a single audio file. Liraya hesitated, her finger hovering over the play icon. She knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that this was her father's last message. His ghost in the machine.
She pressed play.
A voice, strained and filled with an urgency that transcended time, filled the small room. It was her father's voice. "Liraya," he said, his voice a ragged whisper. "If you are hearing this, then I have failed. And the nightmare has begun. They call it the Ascension Project. A way to merge the dreamscape with reality. They believe it will create a perfect world. They are wrong. It will create a prison. A prison for the mind. Find the Somnambulist. She is the key. And beware the Arch-Mage. He is the architect of it all. He is the Warden's Shadow. Trust no one. Not even the Wardens. Especially not the Wardens. Burn it all down, my daughter. For me."
The message ended. The silence that followed was heavier than a tomb. Liraya sat perfectly still, her face a mask of shock and grief. The Arch-Mage. Moros. The benevolent ruler of Aethelburg, the most powerful man in the city. He was the mastermind. The Warden's Shadow.
Konto placed a hand on her shoulder, a rare gesture of comfort. "We have a name," he said, his voice hard as steel. "We have a target. And we know what they're planning." He looked from the screen to Liraya, his resolve hardening into a cold, clear purpose. "Phase One is complete. That means Phase Two is coming. And we are the only thing standing in their way."