In the dark place where four high tables stood, six higher-ups sat in silence. Their faces were obscured by shadow, but their presence was undeniable—the weight of absolute power, of decisions made in darkness that shaped nations. Each table was positioned to overlook the center of the chamber, creating a space where all could observe and judge equally. Above them, the ceiling disappeared into darkness so complete it seemed to swallow light itself. Only the faint glow of scattered candles—placed far enough away to cast more shadow than illumination—broke the oppressive black. The walls were ancient stone, scarred by centuries, witness to countless councils where the fate of humanity hung on single words.
Before them lay a document. The material was simple enough to understand, but therein lay the problem. Each superior read the same words and saw different meanings. Discord had begun to spark between them like flint striking steel—quiet at first, then building into something dangerous. Arguments had erupted. Theories had collided. No consensus had been reached.
They summoned Captain Alistair Valerius to explain what was written about the abyssals. The demons. The creatures that lurked beyond the veil, patient and hungry and growing.
He stepped into the dark room slowly, each footstep deliberate, measured, echoing through the chamber like a heartbeat. The darkness seemed to part for him as he moved toward the center, equidistant from all six superiors. When he reached the center point, he looked upward at their shadowed faces and stood formally, his posture straight and unbending. A faint smile crossed his face—not warmth, but something sharper. Confidence. The kind that came from having already thought ten moves ahead of everyone else in the room.
"Dear Captain Alistair," came a voice from the left table—commanding, high, the tone of someone accustomed to absolute authority but now stripped of certainty, "we have read the document of concern you provided regarding the abyssals. In your document, you focus on a treaty. One where abyssal lords gave their powers to certain mortals so that these mortals could secretly kidnap people and convert them into abyssal slaves."
The words hung in the air. Around the chamber, shadows seemed to deepen in response.
"Yes, magistor," Captain Alistair reassured, his voice steady and unwavering. "That is completely accurate."
"And you have mentioned," another superior continued—a woman whose voice carried less dominance but more calculation, more suspicion, more fear carefully concealed—"that one of your shadowborn was also a victim of this conspiracy. That this shadowborn became enslaved to the abyssal lords."
A pause. Not a comfortable pause. A pause that felt like standing at the edge of an abyss and waiting for something to push you in.
"Yes, magistor. I did mention that."
The first superior leaned forward slightly, and his movement created a ripple of tension through the chamber. Others shifted in their seats. The sound of fabric moving seemed impossibly loud. "And you have written here that Iris Sinclair discovered this entire conspiracy with the aid of a commoner named Luke Anderson. That Iris went to investigate Luke when the larger conspiracy began to unravel."
Alistair met his gaze, unblinking. His silence stretched for just long enough to be unsettling. "Yes, magistor. And we possessed evidence to prove this. You will receive documents regarding kidnappings conducted by other organizations across the city. The pattern is unmistakable. The connections are undeniable."
One of the superiors stood abruptly, his chair scraping against stone with a sound that seemed to echo for too long. He began pacing along his table, his movements sharp and agitated. The action caused visible tension among the other five. Such displays of emotion were uncommon. Dangerous. It meant something was wrong.
Silence formulated inside the hall. It was a heavy silence, the kind that existed in tombs and vaults where things had been buried to prevent their resurrection. All the superiors read the documents related to kidnappings. Case after case. Victim after victim. Their fingers traced the words, their eyes widening imperceptibly at each new entry. The numbers had increased significantly in recent years—a steady climb that had gone unnoticed until it was too late to deny. Weeks of missing people. Months of disappearances. Years of what now appeared to be coordinated abduction.
A crisp rustle emerged from the papers as one superior shifted the documents with trembling hands. The sound died instantly, swallowed by the darkness.
Then a different superior asked, his voice carrying the weight of genuine dread: "So what happened to that boy and the shadowborn you have lost?"
Lost. The word choice was deliberate. Accusatory.
Alistair's expression did not change, though something flickered behind his eyes—a calculation, perhaps, or the careful selection of which truths to emphasize. "The boy who assisted us in uncovering this conspiracy is extraordinary, magistor. He fought against an experienced shadowborn without knowing what umbras were, without understanding the nature of shadowborns or essences. Despite his complete ignorance of our world, despite having no training whatsoever, he survived."
He let that sink in. Survival against an experienced shadowborn was not normal. It was not possible. It was something that should not occur in nature.
"He faced an experienced shadowborn, and he lived. Through pure strategy and instinct, he endured an encounter that should have left him dead."
The pacing superior stopped. Completely stopped. His hand gripped the edge of his table so tightly his knuckles turned white. His breathing became audible in the silence.
"He was saved by Iris Sinclair when she arrived at the location where the battle was taking place," Alistair continued. "The corrupted shadowborn, seeing his physical form was corrupted and uncontrollable, jumped from a very high distance rather than be captured. He escaped into the darkness below."
"You lost track of him," one of the superiors stated flatly. Not a question. A statement of fact that carried accusation.
"Yes, magistor. We lost track of him."
Another shift in the chamber. The air felt different now. Charged with something dangerous.
"We instructed the boy to join the University of Shadow for proper training," Alistair pressed forward, his voice carrying absolute certainty that did not match the situation. "He initially refused. He wanted a simple life, removed from our world and our conflicts. However, I am confident that he will eventually understand the necessity of his role. For the sake of the people he now knows are in danger, he will choose to join us."
The chamber seemed to grow colder as he spoke. The shadows deepened around the tables until they seemed less like absence of light and more like presence of something else entirely.
"What makes this boy exceptional, magistor, is something we cannot ignore," Alistair pressed. His voice carried no fear, but the superiors could feel it beneath the words. "Every single person who was kidnapped alongside him was forced to consume the essence—the potion created by the corrupted shadowborn. All of them were transformed into partial abyssals. They became corrupted, changed, damned. Their humanity stripped away piece by piece."
Alistair's voice carried no emotion, but his words painted a picture of horror that hung in the air like a stain that would not wash away.
"But Luke was different. When he consumed that potion, nothing happened to him in the traditional sense. His body did not transform. His mind did not fracture. His soul did not blacken. Instead, his reflexes were enhanced significantly—far beyond what any normal human could achieve. Through these enhanced reflexes alone, he survived an encounter that should have killed him. He faced an experienced shadowborn, and he lived."
The superiors exchanged glances across the darkness. Not words. Just looks. But those looks carried volumes of unspoken suspicion.
"Due to this anomaly," Alistair continued, and now his voice did carry something—not fear, but awareness of how dangerous what he was about to say truly was, "we have made a speculation that Luke may have informed his other allies about what occurred. We believe the enemy organizations are now changing their locations and conducting their work in new territories. They are adapting. They are learning from what happened. They are becoming more dangerous."
Alistair's gaze moved across the faces of the superiors, reading their expressions even in the shadows. In every face, he saw the same thing: fear.
"Now, magistor, we are not simply fighting external forces—demons from beyond the veil. We are fighting internal forces as well. Organizations within our own world that have made treaties with the abyssal lords. And what troubles me most is this: the number of intelligent abyssals and abyssal lords has increased significantly. The creatures are becoming smarter. More organized. More dangerous with each passing season."
His voice took on an edge of warning that made the youngest superior flinch.
"Earlier, when abyssals were born or summoned, they attacked immediately. Their nature was pure violence, pure hunger. But now it does not seem that way. Now they demonstrate strategy. Now they negotiate. Now they plan. We must be alert because anything can happen at any moment. The world we understood is changing beneath our feet, and we may not recognize it until it is too late."
The chamber fell into a silence so profound it seemed to have weight and presence. Every word he had spoken hung in that darkness like an accusation no one could refute.
One of the younger superiors could not contain himself. His voice shook slightly as emotion broke through his carefully constructed mask. "Your analysis is noteworthy, Captain. The clarity of your evidence is undeniable."
The other five superiors turned to look at him with expressions of absolute disapproval. Among the six, there was an unspoken law: emotions were forbidden. Admiration was forbidden. Even agreement should be expressed with neutral tones and controlled voices. Emotion decreased the impact of command. Emotion showed weakness.
The younger magistor fell silent, realizing his transgression. Color rose in his face as the weight of their judgment pressed down on him.
"I believe," said one of the other superiors, his voice cutting through the tension like a blade, "that some kind of nemesis organization is responsible for this treaty. An organization that has discovered how to work with the abyssals toward mutual benefit. Or it could be that the abyssals have created their own organization. They could be building their own army, preparing for something we cannot yet comprehend."
"This whole topic is foolish and pointless!" yelled the most aggressive superior, his voice echoing through the chamber like thunder. "How could you people even discuss such things? If there are mortals making deals with abyssal lords, they would know the risk. They would know that if the abyssals capture the world, the mortals will die too. No rational person would enter such a treaty!"
His fist struck the table, and the sound reverberated through the chamber, silencing all other voices.
But another superior—the oldest, the wisest, the one who had survived more wars and witnessed more horrors than the others combined—shook his head slowly. When he spoke, his voice was quieter than the aggressive superior's, but somehow more powerful, more absolute.
"That's not true," he said, his voice carrying the weight of knowledge earned through decades of study and blood. "You have not reviewed the recent findings from Genesis. They discovered something crucial: abyssals can now make Divine Oaths. They can swear binding vows that prevent them from harming their treaty partners. And in recent experiments, we have also found that abyssals possess their own brains, developing and evolving year by year. They are becoming more than mindless hunger. They are becoming intelligent. They are becoming civilized."
The words fell like stones into still water, creating ripples that spread outward, touching everyone in the chamber.
The atmosphere darkened further, as if the very air was responding to this revelation with dread that no longer could be hidden.
"So we do have a problem before us," the wisest superior continued. "But a more immediate question arises: How would these organizations know how to create Divine Oaths with the abyssals? And more importantly—how would the abyssals themselves know this ancient magic?"
Another magistor stood abruptly, his movement sharp and sudden. When he spoke, his voice carried fear barely masked as authority. "That's true. From where did the enemy organizations and the abyssals come to know the way of making Divine Oaths? And it is accepted universally that without such a vow, no rational organization would ever make a deal with abyssals."
The revelation hung in the darkness like a blade suspended above their heads, waiting to fall.
Every superior fell into a train of deep thought. This was no longer a simple matter of external threats and strategic responses. This was something far more dangerous. This topic was sensitive, sacred even—something that could determine the future of all Terrans. The fate of their entire world balanced on the edge of this unknown.
The oldest and wisest superior finally spoke, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying absolute certainty that made the chamber feel like a tomb:
"This means... this means... this means that the enemy is within our own organization."
The words fell like a death knell.
"We alone know how to make Divine Oaths. Only we possess this knowledge. Only we have been trusted with these secrets. And yet somehow, our enemies know. Which means..."
He did not need to finish. They all understood.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of suspicion, fear, and the terrible realization that the betrayal was not distant. It was not foreign. It was here, in this very chamber, or walking the halls of their organization beyond these walls. One of them. One of their own. A traitor who had passed the most forbidden knowledge to those who would use it against everything they stood for.
The darkness seemed to close in around them, suffocating, absolute. And none of them could be certain who among them was the poisoned thread in the tapestry.
Each superior looked at the others across the shadows. In every direction, suspicion bloomed. In every face, a potential enemy.