***
"Kimaris, Sifo Ren. What's your progress so far?" Clara's voice crackled in my ear, distorted by static as I sprinted through the stone corridor alongside the machine, our four hired guns struggling to keep up behind us.
Sifo Ren raised a hand to his headpiece and answered in his deep, metallic voice. "We're making good headway. Security's tougher than projected, but the infiltration is holding."
"Alright. Retrieve the research data Sathuna requested. The Mercry's stealth drive doesn't have an endless supply of energy like Strife's hearts—"
Her voice cut out. Silence. Just me and the robotic knight once again.
I groaned aloud, brushing sweat from my brow. "She gets pushy every time she ends up being the getaway pilot."
"Focus, Kimaris," Sifo Ren muttered as he stomped forward, slamming a plated fist into the wall. The reinforced stone cracked and caved in, revealing a laboratory beyond—sterile, white, and full of startled scientists now frozen in place.
"Clara is passionate about stealing other people's hard work."
[Skill: Rocket Barrage — Bombardment!]
The compartments on his shoulders opened. A swarm of miniature rockets erupted outward, streaking across the room and striking the researchers in their backs. A thick foam burst from each hit, quickly expanding and hardening into stone-like shells. Within seconds, the scientists were nothing more than screaming statues.
I pressed a palm against my chest, trying to project calm authority. "I'm just saying—she could ease up a little. We always get the job done. I don't need a three-century-old brat bossing me around like I'm one of her drones."
Sifo Ren nodded excessively, already moving to the nearest terminal. Without pause, he extended a thin finger and jacked into the console. Data began to flow across the screens in waves of electric code.
I turned sharply, facing our mercenaries. "You lot—gather anything linked to the Empyrean. Documents, files, even coffee stains if they mention it. Move."
The four filed through the wrecked wall one by one. Vex and Dante both shot me irritated glances as they passed. Falice waddled obediently like a trained duck. Only Quinella lingered.
She sidled up beside me, voice low. "Tell me something. What exactly do the Empyrean Crusaders want with all this?"
Instead of answering, I conjured a sliver of shadow from the corner of the room and shoved her along with it. "You're not paid to ask questions, mercenary. Do your job."
Her glare stayed on me a beat too long before she turned away.
But her question lingered.
Sathuna's words whispered in my mind again.
"It's best our new hands know as little about the Empyrean as possible. Especially that young witch of theirs. I'm fond of her, like Strife and Thorn are—keep her far from this if you can."
"Then why not send them to the arena with Wukong?" I had asked her in the memory.
"Because Wukong's going to draw out Idaten's sacred beast once he finishes toying with the gods. He'll reduce a tenth of the city to ash. No ordinary mortals can survive that, not even with luck. But at the research institute..."
"The swordsman might prove useful."
I pushed the memory aside and stepped into a deeper chamber. The air was cooler here, filled with the hum of still-active computers. Sifo Ren's malware had already begun spreading. Code poured across the monitors like glowing, alien ink.
"Sathuna never makes anything easy to understand," I grumbled, snatching a stained paper from a cluttered desk. The coffee ring didn't obscure much, but the contents were useless—unrelated formulas and unrelated data dumps. I tossed it at the feet of a foam-stiffened scientist.
From desk to desk I moved, rifling through drawers, shifting scattered papers, occasionally amused by the smell of old ink and unwashed labs. Nothing. Only irrelevant notes—failed hadronic collider tests, planetary radiation anomalies, and one ridiculous report about a lunar machine broadcasting ultrasonic lullabies across half a moon.
At the final desk, I sliced open a lock with a blade of water and yanked the drawer open. The aged paper inside gave a satisfying crinkle as I flipped through.
"Urgh! This is so pointless!" I slumped into the rolling chair, arms flailing. "When is something fun going to happen?"
Behind me, the swordsman of Fire Cloud—Vex—stooped to pick up one of the sheets I'd discarded.
"'Cadenza Firing Sequence'...?" he murmured.
"Not important," I waved him off. "Just rogue scientists playing with outlawed tech. CGA banned stuff. It's not what we're after. I hope Renny's finding more than this pile of wasted pulp."
Vex didn't respond immediately. His brows drew together as he read, entranced.
"You find anything, wet hair?" I asked, smirking at him from the chair.
Vex looked down, brow twitching. "Wet hair?"
I gestured lazily. "Something Traveler's annoying bird called you before he vanished. That crow gives nicknames like candy. For me it's 'fancy hats.' Your captain was 'Fart Fist,' the witch's 'Dull Nerd,' the oni's 'Horny Shot,' and the sprite? 'Feather Head.'"
"Those are… weird."
"They're not supposed to make sense. It's a hobby." I tilted my head at him with a grin.
He crouched and picked up another file, flipping it open. "Still weird. I don't get why the Traveler would have a pet like that. It's more like a parasite than a companion."
I studied him over the rim of my chair, noting how serious his face had become. He was good-looking—annoyingly so—but still too green for me to bother with.
"You don't know their story. If you did, you wouldn't say that."
Vex snorted. "Who doesn't know the Traveler's story? Every system I've been to has children's books, novels, even gossip shows about him. Shame the guy we met isn't the real one. Just another follower of the Severed Path."
I raised a brow. There it was—just a flicker—something uncertain in his expression.
"And what did you think of him?"
That caught him off guard. He paused mid-turn, file still in hand. His voice was slow, cautious.
"…After meeting him? Only one word comes to mind."
I waited.
"Different. I've never met a Traveler who fits the legend so well and yet completely contradicts it at the same time."
I grinned, folding my arms behind my head. "Tell me more. I knew him before the stories started—before the myths twisted around his shadow like ivy."
Resting his hand atop his katana's pommel, Vex spared it a glance, something bitter curling across his lips. "The stories call him a monster—says he destroys everything he touches. But when I met the Traveler... he just looked lost. Like someone wondering how they ended up so far from home."
I shifted in my chair, mild interest sharpening into something keener. "And that made you question the legend? The Kralscell of Sentience?"
"Call it instinct." Vex's voice stayed level, but his gaze drifted, recalling something distant. "The way he moved. First time I saw him in the warehouse, I thought he was some fool rushing toward death. But last night, when he stared up at the moon like it held answers… I realized he wasn't chasing anything. He was searching. Trying to remember who he used to be."
I snorted, the heels of my shoes scraping the floor as I kicked off and rolled across the room with a theatrical flourish. "He used to be exactly like that. Until thirty-thousand years ago." I stopped and spun my chair lazily to face him again. "He abandoned the woman he called home. It was the only way to protect what she cherished. Since that day, they haven't spoken."
Falice's delicate voice piped in as she fluttered closer, her curiosity unmistakable. "The Traveler had a girlfriend?"
"No," I replied, clasping my hands together. "He had a wife. One of the most obsessive and devoted you'll ever hear of. But you want to know what broke them apart?" I leaned forward, voice low and warm with grim nostalgia. "Jealousy. Two women had been chasing his love for over a century. When they finally acted, he had a choice—fight and burn her life to cinders... or vanish."
Falice's expression wilted. "He left so she could keep her life?"
"He sacrificed his own presence in it so she wouldn't lose everything she'd built." I leaned back, a bittersweet smile tightening my face. "And she lives each day knowing she forced him to save her that way. She was loved by a man who, by his very nature, can never love anything without breaking it."
Vex's voice came low, hesitant. "Who was she?"
"A former . One of us. She's still family, in a way. But life pulled her elsewhere—she had to become the Zorain of White. Columbina of ." I rose to my feet and brushed a hand across my nose, my voice steadying. "No use mourning old wounds. Have you found anything?"
They both shook their heads immediately.
Falice sighed, wings drooping. "Just reports on a faulty robot and a failed collider experiment. Timestamps put them both within the last ten years. No sign of the Empyrean. Maybe they used a codename, but that's not what Mister Heru said we'd be looking for."
I cursed under my breath and kicked one of the foam statues, knocking it flat. "There has to be something. A receipt, a transmission—hell, a sticky note! These idiots tried to hide an Empyrean in plain sight. Keep looking. We're not leaving without it."
As the two of them resumed digging through the mess, the familiar heavy clank of metal boots approached from behind.
Sifo Ren stepped into the room, his mechanical form casting sharp, segmented shadows across the walls. "Kimaris," he said, voice smooth and precise. "I've secured the data Sathuna requested. Is the hidden investor still unaccounted for?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Yes. I checked the head office myself. It's all junk. I was hoping maybe some lab coat scribbled a name somewhere, but so far? Dead end."
Sifo Ren's eye shifted with a faint whirr. "Nothing of value in the systems either. The funding trail is dispersed—hundreds of anonymous donations, routed through dummy networks. Platinum-grade firewalls. If I force it, I risk reverse intrusion. Our base will be exposed... and I'll be fried."
I muttered a curse. "There's no way a band of back-alley gods had the cash for this kind of tech. Someone's playing the long game—and we're blindfolded."
Then Vex's voice rang out, sharp with urgency. "Uh… guys? I think I found something!"
He tossed a battered journal toward Sifo Ren. The machine caught it effortlessly, turning the worn pages.
"This is Professor Game Bungie's research log. If you're reading this, it means I am dead—most likely murdered by the shadow investors who call themselves Sinners. They funded our work on the Empyrean. Or, as they named it: the Cadenza Note Empyrean."
My fingertips grazed the page, the inked phrase chilling against my skin.
"Only a few people know the Empyreans have names," I said slowly. "Sifo… you ever hear of a group calling themselves the Sinners?"
His eye flickered, pausing mid-scroll. "The journal mentions they used spatial distortions to mask their identities. But with so little data… I can't confirm their affiliation with any known faction. We'd need direct evidence."
My thoughts reeled. The Sinners. A secret group hiding in blind spots even we couldn't see. If they existed, they'd been moving in silence for longer than we realized.
"But how the hell did they fund this?" I growled, pacing. "That kind of money doesn't just appear."
And then—a voice echoed through the chamber. Low. Synthetic. Saturated with malice.
"You could be told," it said. "But then you would suffer a far more exquisite death for trespassing against my justice."
The room froze.
We spun toward the sound.
A figure emerged in the doorway—mechanical, like Sifo Ren, but warped. Dark plating curved into a vicious silhouette. A tail of coiled steel writhed behind it, and two molten orange eyes glared from its helm.
Clutched in its arms were Quinella and Dante, suspended in the air like dolls.
"You should have never come here," the machine hissed, each word laced with a promise of violence.
My demonic bow manifested in my hand swiftly as Sifo Ren readied his guns. There would be no retreat.