The paper was folded in four.The Man from the Church of Aurelion did not open it; he held it on his knees like an object that communicated something in itself. Valeria stood behind Thorne, looking at the scars between the fingers of the Kastiel`s cleric.
They were old. Five, maybe ten years at least. The skin in those places was smoothed out, as if someone had glued parchment to bone.
Alchemical burns, she thought. Or Ether that slipped out of control.
The woman in the black chair cleared her throat.
"We have six confirmed rifts," she said. Her voice was as dry as an old document. "Three weeks. One district".
"Seven," the man from Aurelion said without looking up. "The seventh was opened last night. Sector F, near the brewery on Kalska Street. We found it at four in the morning when neighbors reported sounds".
"What kind of sounds?" the Kastiel cleric asked.
"Irrelevant".
"To the investigation—"
"For the investigation, I have metric data. The sounds are the accounts of three frightened people who saw nothing in the dark".
Silence. Short, but thick.
Thorne sat motionless, his hands folded in his lap. Valeria knew this posture. It meant he was listening on multiple levels simultaneously—not just to the words, but to what lay between them. Once, two years ago, he had told her: In rooms like this, half the information is in what no one says. At the time, she thought it was a figure of speech. She stopped thinking that after their first joint interrogation.
"Seven rifts," the woman in the black chair repeated. "None were authorized. None were registered. None showed traces of filtered Ether".
The last sentence hung in the air.
Valeria understood what it meant. Every licensed Church mage opened rifts—they had to, otherwise they would have no source to draw Ether from. The difference lay in how they opened them. A priest did it slowly, precisely, in the presence of dampening artifacts, through a narrow path that was subsequently closed and logged. It was a long, expensive process, but it yielded Ether that could be controlled, measured, and accounted for. A wild mage tore reality apart without safeguards—and risked that something uninvited might come through the tear.
"Wild openings," Thorne said, speaking for the first time since the meeting began. "That means we are looking for someone outside the Church structures".
"It means we are looking for someone who wants us to think that," the woman from Erynis replied.
Thorne turned his head toward her. Valeria couldn't see his face, but she saw the tension in the muscle at his nape.
"Hierarch," he said calmly, "if you are suggesting that Erynis is opening illegal rifts in its own district, I suggest that this suggestion appears in the meeting minutes under your signature".
The Hierarch—Valeria did not know her name; no one had introduced her—narrowed her eyes by a millimeter.
"I suggest," she said, "that none of us should assume the innocence of the others".
"That is wise," the Kastiel cleric spoke up. He spoke calmly, with a slight smile that was neither warm nor cold—it was simply a tool. "The investigation must be joint. Otherwise, each of us will be burying our own tracks instead of looking for someone else's".
The man from Aurelion finally unfolded the paper on his knees. Valeria could see it from above: columns of numbers, dates, locations. A protocol.
"I have a summary here," he said. "The demographics of the casualties. Seven incidents, fourteen victims. Nine dead on the scene. Three in a state of mutation, handed over for annihilation. Two..." he paused for a second, "two escaped before the crew arrived".
"Escaped," Thorne repeated.
"Escaped".
Another silence. Longer this time.
Valeria knew what that meant. A mutated human in the early stages was disoriented, terrified, often unconscious. Things that ran knew they were being chased—things that had enough instinct, or little enough humanity left, to act effectively.
"Where are they now?" the woman from Erynis asked.
"We don't know".
"In my district, there are two mutated entities showing traces of wild Ether, and—"
"In your district," the man from Aurelion interrupted without a change in tone, "there are two individuals who are officially citizens of Aurelion, and whose location is temporarily unknown. Please note that".
Citizens of Aurelion. Valeria noted it. The man was defending his jurisdiction even here, even when discussing people who were turning into things that needed to be decapitated with a vacuum grenade.
Thorne turned infinitesimally to the left. Not enough for Valeria to see his face—just enough for her to know he wanted her to remember this moment of exchange.
She remembered.
"I propose a division," the Kastiel cleric said. "A joint task force, one representative from each Church. Access to all incident sites, regardless of administrative jurisdiction. Findings reported back to this room every four days".
"Two," Thorne said.
The cleric looked at him. "Two what?"
"Findings every two days. With seven rifts in three weeks, four days is too long".
The Hierarch of Erynis shifted her gaze from Thorne and fixed it on Valeria. A long moment passed. Valeria met the stare with an expressionless face.
"Who is this woman?" the Hierarch asked.
"My executioner," Thorne replied.
"There is no place in this room for—"
"For an executioner who has completed twenty-three annihilations without incident, who knows every street of the district, and who will be standing at the site of incident number seven in an hour while we are still debating what we mean by the word 'access'." Thorne spoke calmly, almost politely. "We can discuss her presence, or we can discuss the rift by the brewery. I propose the latter".
Silence.
The Hierarch moved her gaze back to the Kastiel cleric.
The cleric nodded.
"Two days," he said. "Agreed".
They left through a different exit than they had entered—a narrow corridor with a low ceiling, where the stone was cold and damp, and the only light came from two small ethereal lanterns mounted high up. Old devices. Cheaper than fire, more durable than oil, odorless—though these particular ones emitted a faint smell of old metal and something chemical that Valeria associated with the archives in the cathedral basement.
She walked two paces behind Thorne.
"They only opened their mouths once," she said.
"Kastiel," Thorne said without turning his head.
"Once. During the entire meeting".
"They proposed the division of the group. The rest were just repeating their positions".
Valeria processed this for a moment.
"They had a solution ready".
"They had a solution ready," Thorne confirmed.
They said nothing more until the corridor ended at a heavy door. Thorne opened it and stepped out into the gray air of the district. Valeria followed him. The door closed with a metallic clack that sounded too loud for such a small door.
"The brewery on Kalska Street," Thorne said. "Ride ahead".