[Time]: Summer Break, Day 36 — 11:50 AM
[Location]: The Crown of Ovelia · Spirit Sea Venue · Eastern Courtyard
Tabitha's courtship was achieving critical mass.
She had murmured something precise and scholarly regarding the specific resonance frequencies of the Anser bone archway—an observation with three citations, possibly four—and Blanche laughed.
"Beautiful" was a mortal metric, entirely insufficient for the physics of what was happening. It was a sound that bypassed auditory processing the way a lightning bolt bypasses "bright," hitting the brainstem directly before the conscious mind could even build a defense.
Low, perfectly pitched, carrying the unhurried satisfaction of someone genuinely amused.
Three nearby Witches forgot, completely and simultaneously, how to operate their own legs. One stepped squarely and heavily onto the heel of the Arch-Witch in front of her; another walked smoothly, without a single moment of hesitation, directly into a solid marble pillar.
A waiter carrying a full tray stopped mid-step, pivoted exactly ninety degrees, and began staring intensely at a blank wall as though it were the most fascinating thing in the multiverse.
Marlena's expression—previously locked into the focused stillness of a woman calculating precise artillery trajectories—sank into something deeper and more final. She looked like a woman who had mentally detached her soul from her body and was observing the proceedings from low-earth orbit: numb, weightless, and entirely beyond hope.
Hathaway's cognitive processors rebooted. They had been doing this a lot today.
Find a neutral party, she ordered herself, driving her fingernails into her palm until the pain finished the job. Find an adult. Find anyone capable of throwing a wrench into this catastrophic, legally complicated courtship before the Sixth Seat commits a felony in full view of twelve district representatives.
She swept the courtyard. And she found one.
Caramel-brown hair. Deep, still blue eyes. Average height, moving with the unhurried precision of someone whose schedule belonged entirely to herself.
She wore a warm, immaculately calibrated smile that had apparently decided, some decades ago, to make a permanent home on her face.
The Fourth Seat of the High Council. Marianne Horton. [The Playwright].
She moved through the courtyard at a measured pace, pausing to exchange pleasantries with delegates from half a dozen districts, dispensing warmth and diplomatic goodwill with the frictionless ease of a professional.
Hathaway exhaled. Perfect. A high-ranking neutral.
Then Alucard shuddered.
It was a full-body motion. The permanently exhausted Archon of the White City—a woman who could watch a minor apocalypse unfold and merely ask if it was going to impact the Q3 fiscal projections, treating most of reality as a simple scheduling conflict—went a pale, unhealthy grey.
She stared at Marianne Horton's approaching figure. It was the look of a person who had walked into a public bathhouse wearing nothing but a towel and found their primary creditor stationed at the entrance, clipboard in hand, smiling warmly.
"Alucard?" Hathaway asked. "What's wrong?"
Alucard didn't look at her. Her white-gloved fingers were rotating her champagne glass in slow, automatic circles.
When she spoke, it was barely a whisper.
"Six hundred and fifty-four thousand people..."
"What?"
"...The Inter-District Infrastructure Coordination Committee applied for initiation of a preliminary scope assessment." Alucard's voice was completely flat. Recitative. The tone of someone reading charges at their own trial. "Sixteen departments. Concurrent deliberation. Preliminary assessment subcommittee submits findings to the joint review board. Joint review board identifies seventeen zones of jurisdictional ambiguity. Each ambiguous zone mandates an independent clarification task force..."
A pause. Her breathing fractured.
"...Concurrent cross-departmental impact analysis. Public consultation period. Environmental impact assessment..."
The glass stopped turning.
"...Thirty-seven months."
An absolute silence.
"...One streetlamp."
Hathaway went completely still.
Her past-life corporate soul clawed its way back to the surface, instantly recognizing the unmistakable scent of premeditated administrative violence.
Thirty-seven months. Sixteen departments. For one streetlamp.
This was not inefficiency. This was a targeted strike.
Hathaway remembered the White Star Chronicle newspaper—the elegant, aristocratic condescension praising Marianne for bravely overcoming the "innate deficiency" of her Lectanian birth.
She looked at the Fourth Seat's permanently warm, flawless smile.
Ah. You call her bloodline a birth defect; she buries your infrastructure in a three-year committee purgatory.
Hathaway turned her head slowly, rigidly away.
That is not a savior. Her threat-assessment module flatlined. That is the Final Raid Boss of Weaponized Bureaucracy. She executes people with public consultation periods. Do not make eye contact.
Marianne had already reached Marlena's group.
Hathaway watched her slip into the conversation with seamless, surgical precision—a drop of water merging into a still pond. Because she was the Fourth Seat, and because she held the Water Dragon Axiom alongside Tabitha, the red-haired professor immediately paused her academic offensive to offer a respectful collegial acknowledgment.
Marianne smiled warmly. She mentioned, with flawless sincerity, that she had recently had the pleasure of reading Tabitha's latest paper.
Hathaway listened closely.
"Your piece in The Quarterly Review of Applied Diplomatic Empathy and Utopian Studies was truly inspired," Marianne murmured.
Hathaway nearly choked on her own saliva.
Not the arcane-science paper, she realized, staring at the Fourth Seat in sheer disbelief. The political one.
'Diplomatic Empathy'? In an empire that uses orbital gravity cannons for dispute resolution? That publication's impact factor isn't just criminally low; it has to be mathematically negative.
For a Witch holding the Water Dragon Axiom to submit there... that is the rough equivalent of a nuclear physicist contributing a research paper to a primary school mud-pie newsletter.
But as Hathaway watched, Tabitha didn't care about the impact factor.
The professor's hand froze mid-air. Her lips parted slightly, and that unhurried, tenured-professor posture simply dissolved—leaving behind the unguarded expression of a woman who had spent a long, lonely academic career being mocked for her delusions, and had just been handed the validation of a true intellectual soulmate.
Having seamlessly neutralized the academic threat, Marianne turned her warm attention back to the hooded woman.
"Marianne," Blanche said softly.
The sheer acoustic quality of the voice hit the courtyard like a localized psychic attack. It was the vocal equivalent of staring directly into the sun.
Hathaway gripped her champagne glass, her mental defenses groaning under the sudden, massive cognitive load. Fortunately, Witch adaptability was terrifyingly robust. Hathaway forcefully rerouted her auditory processing, clamped down on her sanity, and narrowly avoided dropping her drink.
"...Since you are here," Blanche continued, the attentive warmth of a devoted mother bleeding into that impossible, reality-warping voice, "I must ask for your professional insight."
Hathaway blinked, her brain fighting through the acoustic dazzle.
Professional insight? What kind of professional advice could this woman—the absolute, undisputed apex of narcissistic beauty vases—possibly need from the Final Raid Boss of Weaponized Bureaucracy? Tax evasion for the excessively beautiful? How to properly file environmental impact assessments for causing mass-casualty heart attacks?
"Our Marlena is the Sixth Seat," Blanche said, the unshakeable pride in her tone making it clear she believed her daughter was the absolute pinnacle of existence. "She deserves a flawless partner. Yet, the search has been inexplicably difficult."
Right. Of course. Marianne Horton's secondary reputation: [The Web Weaver]. Over a hundred successful high-profile unions engineered across the Inner Sea, from arch-rivals who became co-conspirators to academic nemeses who became domestic partners. If you wanted matchmaking at the apex of imperial power, you asked the Fourth Seat.
Marianne’s smile softened into something deeply understanding, yet heavily fortified with diplomatic armor.
"The difficulty with the Sixth Seat's prospects, Lady Blanche, is rarely Marlena herself," Marianne replied, her voice utterly without seam. "The true challenge is finding a candidate who will not completely lose their composure... after they are introduced to her mother."
Hathaway paused.
Translation: Hathaway thought, staring at the hooded incarnation of absolute beauty in sheer awe. The primary obstacle to Marlena's marriage is YOU. No suitor in the known universe will believe that a woman who goes home to you every night could ever be truly interested in what they have to offer. Every candidate you've ever had breaks the moment they meet the mother-in-law.
What Marianne said next, however, was delivered with the gentle thoughtfulness of a physician recommending a treatment plan.
"Evangeline Wellington," Marianne suggested. "She might be a suitable choice."
The name dropped into the courtyard like a depth charge.
Hathaway's internal monologue went completely, absolutely quiet.
Evangeline. She stared at Marianne's pleasant face. You think Evangeline Wellington is a suitable match for the Sixth Seat.
Either you have finally, clinically lost your mind. A beat. Or you are actively practicing hazardous waste management, and the Sixth Seat just happened to look like a sturdy enough containment vessel.
"Ah," Blanche said softly. Her hood tilted, considering. "The [Tarnished Crow]?"
Marlena's dead-eyed, monk-like serenity didn't just evaporate. It shattered.
And what emerged from beneath the ice wasn't anger.
It was the [Beast].
Hathaway felt the air pressure in the courtyard fundamentally change. The atmosphere grew suffocatingly thick, heavy with the primal, anti-civilization gravity of the deep, untamed wilderness. The scent of crushed flowers and dark earth seemed to bleed through the marble.
The Sixth Seat tilted her head. A slow, wicked smile curved her lips—a dark, intoxicatingly dangerous expression that belonged to the villainous Black Prince of a fairytale just before the cage doors locked.
Hathaway stared, her threat-assessment module abruptly reclassifying the target.
She isn't an Ice Queen at all. The asceticism was a lie. A leash she wore strictly for Blanche's sake. The [Beast] principle governed gluttony, instinct, and reproduction. She was a deeply experienced, obscenely arrogant apex predator who had just been offered a spectacularly insulting meal.
"Evangeline Wellington."
Marlena repeated the name, letting the syllables roll over her tongue with a slow, velvet cruelty. She let out a low laugh—a soft, husky sound that had absolutely nothing to do with civilization.
She looked at Marianne, her crimson eyes gleaming with predatory, playful mockery.
"Marianne," Marlena murmured, her voice dripping with a dark, undeniable heat. "I require my companions to actually have a heartbeat when I drag them out of this world and lock them in my den."
Beside Hathaway, Rhode clicked her tongue. The sound was sharp, loaded—caught somewhere between schadenfreude and genuine revulsion.
"That sanctimonious old woman," Rhode muttered, running a hand through her hair with the flat disgust of someone who had found something unpleasant underfoot. "She's actually setting her sights on Evangeline." A beat. "The Sixth Seat really is in a sorry state. Even getting that name mentioned in the same sentence is enough to make a person sick."
Bella was quiet.
Not the theatrical kind—the eerie stillness of an oracle who had just looked into the abyss and found it staring back. Her visible eye had gone cold.
"The Tarnished Crow," she whispered. "Draped in the magnificent plumage of a dead era.
"Rust is not a curse. It is the silent twilight of all things. The Crow is a gilded corpse. There is no malice beneath that splendor—only a hollow abyss that silently devours anyone foolish enough to draw near."
Bella's gaze fixed on Marianne's back.
"The Web Weaver either cannot see the rot eating at those strings of destiny." The coldness didn't waver. "Or she sees it perfectly, and has simply decided that the Sixth Seat's corrosion will serve as a beautiful climax for her next script."
She turned back, her eye settling on no one in particular.
"For the record," Bella added, her voice dropping into the solemn, weighty cadence of a historical warning, "willingly accepting a role from the Playwright is the opening act in a tragedy titled: The Demise of the Greatest Fool."
Marianne absorbed the shift in atmosphere without a tremor. Her smile remained exactly what it had been.
"You are, of course, entirely free to form your own judgment," she said pleasantly.
Blanche was still considering. Her head tilted slightly beneath the hood, genuinely thoughtful.
Marianne had already moved on.
"...Though," she said, her gaze drifting between Tabitha and Blanche with warm, seemingly spontaneous attention, "I did notice you seem to hold a certain fondness for Tabitha. Personally, I believe she would make an excellent choice."
Marlena's dangerous, anti-civilization aura evaporated.
The suffocating gravity, the predatory heat, the wicked Black Prince amusement—all of it vanished in a single second. What replaced it was something raw, panicked, and entirely human.
Hathaway watched Marlena's crimson eyes dart from Marianne to Tabitha. Watched the Sixth Seat—the terrifying apex predator who governed gluttony and the flesh, the woman who had just dismissed the entire academic siege with absolute, carnivorous arrogance—take a small, involuntary step backward.
Because Tabitha's spring-grass eyes had just ignited with the wattage of a supernova.
Hathaway raised her champagne glass and took a long, slow, deeply considered sip.
Bella was right.
Then the atmosphere changed.
At first, Hathaway didn't register it. She was still watching Tabitha's expression with hollow sympathy for the Sixth Seat.
Then she noticed the crowd moving.
The Witches—the most arrogant, self-possessed apex predators in the known universe—were condensing. Quietly, without announcement or apparent coordination, retreating from the far end of the courtyard near the Anser bone archway.
Not fleeing. Not running. Simply discovering, with great collective subtlety, that the edge of the room was considerably more appealing than the center.
At the Royal Rosas table, Rhode stood up. Her hand shot out and closed around Hathaway's wrist.
Hathaway looked. The entire delegation was on its feet. Tasia, Alucard, Nino—already moving backward with slow, unhurried steps, the studied ease of people with no particular reason to be anywhere in specific.
Hathaway's eyes found Lin Zhaojun. The Millennium Sovereign, who had traded precise insults with a Grand Witch without blinking, was stepping backward into the crowd with the thoroughly unconvincing body language of someone who had simply decided to examine the marble floor from a different angle.
On Hathaway's other side, Bella moved with terrifying speed.
She whipped off her massive, absurdly dramatic velvet cloak—the one she usually used exclusively for theatrical entrances—and aggressively threw it over Hathaway's head, burying her in darkness.
"Conceal your aura," Bella hissed into Hathaway's ear, her voice entirely stripped of performance, vibrating with genuine, mortal panic. "Do not perceive the Abyss, lest it perceive you. Shrink!"
The crowd density around Hathaway spiked sharply.
Bodies pressing in from all sides. All moving the same direction. Something deep and wordless detonated in her hindbrain—the specific, suffocating instinct of her past life: evacuating a thirty-story office building down a narrow emergency stairwell while the alarm screamed and the lights went red. The bodies, the pressure, the collective silent understanding of move, with no one explaining why.
Then the crowd parted.
Automatic, inevitable—water around stone. A wide, unobstructed avenue opened down the center of the courtyard, and because everyone had stepped back, and Rhode had only managed to drag Hathaway halfway behind her while Bella's cloak slipped down to her shoulders, Hathaway's line of sight cleared completely.
She looked straight down the marble avenue.
Directly at the two figures who had just stepped through the Anser bone archway.
The one on the left had a striking red-and-black color scheme. Short, messy hair. Magnificent feathered dragon wings folded loosely behind her back. She wore a grin—broad, confident, blazingly sunny—that made her look exactly like a textbook shonen protagonist. The type who would take a bullet for you, or cheerfully take on the whole world, whichever was called for.
Hathaway had deployed that card. She knew what that smile meant.
That was the smile of a co-op partner who had just intentionally pulled the entire dungeon's aggro, and was now sprinting cheerfully toward your hiding spot.
Then, from somewhere in the group that followed them through the archway, a sound reached her.
Faint. Rhythmic. The quiet, patient shift of chain links against each other.
Hathaway did not look for the source.
Because in the same moment, the woman on the right had turned her head, and the gaze that swept the parted crowd was emerald green, warm, and impossibly gentle.
Pale gold scorpion-tail braid resting against the curve of her neck. Luminous white skin carrying a soft, almost ethereal quality. Features so exquisitely precise they edged past beautiful into something that made the back of the neck feel cold.
An expression of complete gentleness. Lips that rested naturally in a soft, inviting curve—the kind of face that made you instinctively want to step closer, to speak quietly, to be careful with your words.
She looked, specifically, like someone who spent quiet afternoons arranging flowers with unhurried precision, and had never once in her life done anything that required a formal investigation.
Hathaway moved. She tucked herself behind Rhode's shoulder with the urgency of infantry going to ground at the sound of incoming artillery.
But in the half-second before she disappeared, her eyes crossed the emerald gaze.
The woman's lips curved, just slightly. The most natural smile in the room.
I am a wall fixture, Hathaway prayed to the marble floor. I am ambient texture. I have no strategic value. I am not worth perceiving. I am a decorative element of this Anser ruin. Do not look at me. Please. I am begging the entire concept of visibility.
The Spirit Sea light shifted overhead, casting long shadows across the ancient marble.