5.56 grams. 10.18 grams. 7.49 grams…
Ethan made them weigh everything.
In the glaring mage-light of the underground cell, he picked through bottles and packets with fussy, merciless precision, ordering Perry and Morningstar to measure each ingredient down to the tenth of a gram.
Behind them, Orton and Ruben watched in silence—memorizing.
“Are we… finally ready?” Perry asked, voice raw.
Ethan had dragged the process out on purpose. The more miserable it felt, the more “real” it seemed.
Now he nodded. “Yes.”
He poured the ground powders into a pattern on the floor—an intricate sigil with the framed painting placed dead center. Then he lit the lines with a candle.
Flame ran along the powder. Pale smoke rose and curled, and under Ethan’s guiding hand it wrapped the painting like bandages.
The smoke thickened until the canvas vanished from sight.
Thud.
Thud-thud.
The smoke burst outward as if something inside it had kicked free.
Ten awakened guards spilled out of the painting and hit the stone floor hard.
For a beat, no one breathed.
The cell erupted.
“It worked!”
“Rhine really knew a method like this!”
“Seven Gods, thank you!”
“And thank Klaus—if he hadn’t met Rhine, we’d still be staring at that cursed frame!”
Ethan—currently “Klaus”—let it roll over him, complicated and faintly bitter. He wasn’t being praised for what he’d done. He was being praised for who he supposedly knew.
Even Ruben, who’d been cold as iron all evening, stepped closer and asked after Rhine in a tone that was almost friendly.
The ten guards weren’t badly injured—shaken, yes, but alive. They were rushed off for treatment. Word reached the governor’s estate, and officials arrived to demand answers. The precinct, the estate, Morningstar, and Perry all waited for the guards’ testimony—anything that might point to the mysterious attackers… and to Silvermoon.
Ethan already knew one part of that answer.
His tracker told him Silvermoon was no longer in the Endless Sea.
In the brief chaos, he checked the tracker again—this time for the remaining Nova Players.
Lines unfolded into a map. One white point lit up.
“Only one left,” Ethan murmured.
Radiance Island, inland.
And when he tried the tracker on the Snakebone Idol, the result was even cleaner.
Gone.
Not in the Endless Sea at all.
He let out a slow breath, arranging the pieces.
A group of Nova Players had attempted to assassinate Governor Lloyd—specifically to steal the Snakebone Idol from his office. A Tier-3 among them had sealed the governor’s awakened guards into a painting, clearing the way. The idol was taken. Most of the Nova Players had already “smuggled out” with it.
Only one remained behind, for reasons Ethan couldn’t read yet.
There was Silvermoon—an unknown variable.
Perry’s mind bore the marks of manipulation. If that was Silvermoon’s work, then she was likely Tier-3 as well. And she’d vanished from the Endless Sea, which meant she had the same ability to slip between worlds.
But did that make her Nova?
Ethan wasn’t convinced.
He’d asked Morningstar when Silvermoon’s “make-anyone-fall” charm had started. Morningstar, frantic to find her sister, answered without thinking.
“One hundred and twenty years,” she’d said. “She’s had it since she was little. Everyone likes her. Our elders said her allure was a gift from the Seven Gods.”
Wood elves lived long. Silvermoon was one hundred and twenty—and the gift had been there since childhood.
That didn’t sound like a Nova Player wearing a skin. It sounded like something older. Something seeded.
Either way, Silvermoon was not “simple.”
Night deepened as Ethan walked the quiet streets of Sun City, the sea finally audible again as he reached the docks.
He’d just arrived and already stepped into a mess.
But he had his own agenda.
The body he’d taken over here had belonged to a cultist. Which meant there was a contact waiting—a Fireworship Church handler embedded in Sun City to assist the “original” Ethan with his mission.
Ethan followed the memories down a narrow lane, counting storefronts on his left.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The fifth was a leather shop with a faded sign: Water Serpent.
A warm yellow glow spilled through the glass in the door.
Ethan paused in it for a heartbeat, then pushed inside.
“We’re closed,” a rasping voice called from behind the counter. “Come back tomorrow.”
The owner sounded like he was crouched down, rummaging for something. He didn’t even look up.
Ethan shut the door behind him and said quietly, “Within the Gate of the Raven’s Eye, may our Lord Night Crow bless us both.”
Silence.
The owner rose—staring as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Ethan?!”