The stun batons of the Conclave guards hummed, the sound a low, hungry vibration in the sudden, ringing silence. Kaelen stood back-to-back with Seraphina, the heat of her body a solid point of reality against the chaos of the last few minutes. Four guards, their faces as blank as fresh slate, formed a closing semi-circle. Thirty feet away, Kellan Shaw’s expression was no longer smug; it was the cold, focused fury of a system that had encountered a fatal error. His plan was exposed. His price for that failure would be collected from Kaelen’s hide.
The silence stretched, thin and brittle. It was not the guards who broke it. It was a single voice from the upper tiers of the Parliament, a Seer elder with a face like cracked parchment.
— Deceiver!
The word was a stone thrown into the still, black water of the Scrying Basin. A ripple of sound followed it. Another voice, younger, angrier, shouted, “Thief!” Then a third, and a fourth, until the entire Seer delegation was on its feet, a wave of indigo and gold rising in unified fury. The rage was not directed at Kaelen or Seraphina. It was aimed squarely at the charcoal-grey uniforms of the Conclave.
The four guards hesitated. Their training was for logical threats, for crowd control based on predictable panic vectors. This was different. This was the focused, righteous anger of a hundred powerful individuals who had just witnessed the desecration of their rite and the attempted theft of a district. The mob Kaelen had used for cover had become an army.
From her seat on the high dais, Matrona Helia, the elder who held Seraphina’s debt, did not move. Her face remained a mask of serene calm, but her eyes, sharp and ancient, found the commander of the Canal Guard standing near the main entrance. She gave a single, sharp nod. It was a gesture so small it was almost lost in the tumult, but it carried the weight of a planetary decree. The commander’s hand went to his comms unit, his lips moving silently. The order was given.
A deep, groaning hum vibrated up through the stone floor, a sound so low it was felt more than heard. It was the sound of a massive temporal engine disengaging. Outside, beyond the walls of the Parliament, a wave of shimmering, colorless energy washed over the Veridia District. The parasitic temporal tether, the legal and technical mechanism of Shaw’s annexation, had been severed. Kaelen felt it as a sudden lightness in the air, a pressure released. Veridia was free. They had won the war for his home.
The victory was ash in his mouth. They were still cornered.
Kellan Shaw saw the shift. He saw the unified rage of the Seers and the hesitation of his own guards. He was an engineer, not a soldier. His face went from fury to cold calculation. The asset was lost; the new priority was data preservation and escape. He gave a clipped, silent hand signal to his guards. Two of them kept their batons trained on Kaelen and Seraphina, while the other two began to form a wedge, clearing a path toward a secondary exit at the side of the chamber. Shaw clutched his data-slate to his chest and began to move.
Kaelen saw it. He saw the escape vector, the cold logic of retreat. He couldn’t let him leave. Not with whatever was on that slate. He and Seraphina could not fight their way out, but he could still act. His eyes scanned the area, his old TAC training kicking in, assessing tactical assets. There were none. Only debris, panicked Seers, and the remnants of the rite. His gaze fell on a heavy, ceramic urn near the edge of the dais, filled with sand for dousing incense. It was ornate, impractical, and heavy.
It was perfect.
The price was simple: giving up their position and any chance of a clean escape. He met Seraphina’s eyes for a fraction of a second. She nodded, understanding instantly. He broke from their back-to-back stance, lunging for the urn. He felt a sharp, protesting twinge in his side, his body unused to such sudden, explosive movement. He wrapped his arms around the urn, its glazed surface cool against his cheek. It was heavier than he expected. He grunted with the effort, hoisting it up.
He had one shot. He pivoted, his feet finding purchase on the slick stone. He put his entire body into the throw, all his rage and desperation and the ghost of a memory of throwing rocks as a boy in Veridia’s decaying parks. The urn flew, an awkward, wobbling projectile of fired clay and sand, arcing across the chamber.
It didn’t hit Shaw. It slammed into the stone wall just behind him, exploding in a cloud of fine, grey dust and ceramic shrapnel. Shaw flinched, turning toward the impact. A fist-sized piece of the urn spun through the air and caught the corner of his data-slate. There was a sharp crack. The screen flickered, lines of corrupted code scrolling across its surface before it went dark. Shaw stared at the dead slate in his hands, his face a mask of disbelief. His guards didn't wait. They grabbed him by the arms and dragged him through the exit, disappearing into the chaos of the outer corridors.
He was gone. The data was lost. A partial victory.
A new voice, amplified and devoid of emotion, cut through the chamber.
— This assembly is in violation of inter-factional accords.
Kaelen turned. A man in the severe, unadorned robes of a Temporal Audit Commission ambassador now stood on the Speaker’s dais. He had appeared as if from nowhere, his face impassive, his T-Minus a flat, regulated blue. He represented the order Kaelen had once served.
— The unsanctioned use of a Scrying Basin to broadcast classified temporal data is an act of systemic destabilization, — the ambassador’s voice was the sound of a tribunal verdict. His eyes found Kaelen in the crowd. There was no recognition, no mercy. Only procedure.
— By the authority of the Commission, the individual known as Kaelen Rook, formerly of this body, is hereby declared a rogue agent. His status is revoked, his actions disavowed. He is marked for immediate temporal repossession upon capture.
The words hammered down, each one a nail in the coffin of his old life. He had made his choice on the canal dock, but this made it real. This made it public. The system he had tried so desperately to rejoin had just excommunicated him in front of the entire world. He had burned his only bridge to save a town that would never know his name. He was no longer a disgraced auditor. He was a criminal. A fugitive.
The Seers were now rounding up the remaining Conclave members, their fury turning into organized arrests. The war-bells were still tolling. In the chaos, no one was looking at them. They were ghosts, forgotten in the victory they had engineered. Seraphina’s hand found his. It was steady.
He reached down to the Scrying Basin and pulled the obsidian charm from the port. It was warm, and a thin, hairline crack now ran across its polished surface, a perfect mirror of the fracture that had once marred his TAC data-slate. The charm felt heavier now, no longer a tool or a lie, but a record. A promise kept. He closed his hand around it.
The distant tolling of the war-bells began to subside. The scent of ozone and incense mingled in the cooling air.
They had to get out of the city.
