(Riser Phenex – POV)

  The report arrived on a Tuesday.

  Riser Phenex had spent three hours reviewing documents that did not deserve his time—minor territorial expansions, second-tier family pacts, the endless diplomatic back-and-forth of the Underworld that existed primarily to remind people who held power and who merely pretended to.

  Boring. All of it boring.

  Until the blue envelope.

  There was no visible sender. Only a small seal in the corner—the mark of the independent observers who monitored Kuoh territory ever since the three factions had agreed to their fragile truce. Riser opened it without straightening in his chair.

  He read the first line.

  The second.

  The third.

  He sat up.

  The report wasn’t long. Four pages. Technical phrasing. The kind of document written carefully to avoid sounding alarmist while quietly screaming between the lines.

  Riser read it twice—the second time slower, with the attention he reserved for things that initially seemed irrelevant.

  Anomalous energy fluctuation.

  Emotional origin.

  Simultaneous interference across three factions.

  That could be anything. Kuoh was unstable by nature—too many powers concentrated in one district, too many young devils without control, too much energy without proper channels.

  Then the line that made him stop turning pages:

  Direct interference with a Longinus-class Sacred Gear.

  Longinus.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Not just any Sacred Gear—the specific category the Underworld monitored with the care given to a bomb whose trigger wasn’t fully understood.

  Interference wasn’t an accident.

  It was a variable that should not exist.

  He turned to the final page.

  A name was underlined.

  Kaelan Arverth.

  Below it, in smaller print:

  Revived human.

  Power of unknown classification.

  Unintentional interference in the awakening of the Boosted Gear.

  Tentative classification: emotional catalyst.

  Riser set the report down.

  He watched the blue flame of the chandelier for several seconds—that fire which burned without consuming, eternal by design, perfect by inheritance.

  Catalyst.

  A technical word. A report word. A word chosen because whoever wrote it hadn’t found a better one.

  What it really meant was simpler—and more irritating.

  Someone who changes outcomes without being part of the plan.

  Riser knew those kinds of pieces.

  He despised them.

  Not out of fear—fear was for those who still had something to lose.

  He despised them the way he despised noise in a room meant to be silent—not because it was dangerous, but because it was unnecessary. Because it ruined clarity.

  He stood and walked to the window.

  Below, the Phenex Gardens burned in their usual colors—orange, gold, the vivid red his family had used as a signature for generations.

  Perfect.

  Ordered.

  Exactly as they should be.

  Unintentional interference, the report had said.

  That was what didn’t sit right.

  Unintentional meant uncontrolled.

  Uncontrolled meant unpredictable.

  And unpredictable—in a territory Riser would soon enter to formalize an engagement already decided, already agreed upon, already inevitable as the fire in his garden—

  Unpredictable was the only word that stirred something resembling discomfort.

  He snapped his fingers.

  A small flame consumed the report—four pages reduced to ash without smoke, without trace, without proof they had ever existed.

  “When I go to Kuoh,” he murmured as the last corner of paper vanished, “I want to see that boy.”

  It wasn’t curiosity.

  It was what he always did with variables he didn’t recognize: observe them closely enough to determine whether they were a real problem—or just noise.

  Most turned out to be noise.

  A revived human with unstable emotional power, no lineage, no rank, nothing placing him on the board by right—

  Almost certainly noise.

  But the final line of the report remained in his memory even after the paper was gone.

  Direct interference with the Boosted Gear.

  Riser turned away from the window.

  His cape burned softly, the Phenex emblem glowing in the fabric as always.

  Noise or not, a note out of tune was still a note out of tune.

  And Riser Phenex had an ear too finely trained to ignore it.