Malediction of the Depth – Silence in Judgement

The next morning, Dawn prepared the summoning circle again in her workshop. Three slices of chocolate cake sat arranged on a silver platter, payment for divine assistance with bureaucratic nightmares.

Dawn spoke the Honorific Title, and reality cracked. Lady Keter stepped through, immediately spotting the cake.

"Good morning... Oh, chocolate. Excellent choice."

She picked up a slice before even sitting down, humming contentedly as Dawn gestured to the massive pile of documents on her workbench, "I need help with the church's financial integration. The Cult faction and MSSH faction have completely different accounting systems—"

"Tedious and unnecessarily complicated because both sides refuse to compromise on formatting standards?", Lady Keter finished, already moving to examine the papers. "Yes, I can see that. This will take... hmm, two hours if you help. Three if you don't."

"I'll help," Dawn said immediately.

They settled into work, Lady Keter eating cake while simultaneously reorganizing centuries of religious bureaucracy with casual efficiency. Lea watched for a while, then decided to practice with her new gun.

She moved to a clear corner of the workshop, feeling the weapon's weight in her hand. The three seastones hummed in harmony.

She aimed at a practice target Dawn had set up and pulled the trigger.

Pew!!

A bolt of pure energy shot out, the three Paths intertwining into a coherent blast that punched through the target and left a smoking hole in the wall behind it.

"Oops."

"Don't break my workshop.", Dawn called without looking up from her paperwork.

"I'll fix it later...", Lea muttered, examining the gun more carefully. The energy output was impressive. Maybe she should test it outside next time.

She glanced at Lady Keter, who was now explaining something about depreciation schedules to Dawn with the enthusiasm of someone discussing a particularly interesting puzzle.

The entity's surface thoughts were completely blank, as always. Lea had tried reading her mind before and gotten nothing, just that strange absence, as if Lady Keter's consciousness existed somewhere else entirely.

But she was bored and curious. And Fourth Step now, stronger than she'd been before.

What would happen if I really pushed? Lea wondered.

Lady Keter looked up suddenly, meeting Lea's eyes. Those azure irises with their eight-pointed stars gleamed with something that might have been amusement.

"Oh? You want to try reading my mind?", she smiled, "Go ahead. I'll even lower my defenses for you."

Dawn looked up from her documents, "Is that... safe?"

"Perfectly safe~", Lady Keter assured her, though mischief was clear in her tone, "Dantes won't be able to understand anything anyway, but it should be fun."

Lea hesitated. This felt like a trap. But Lady Keter was offering, and her curiosity won out.

She activated Silence, pushing her Fourth Step power to its limit, and dove toward Lady Keter's consciousness.

Oh no.

'—chocolate cake really good wonder about vanilla also reorganize filing system color-coded no symbols better symbols are universal except when they're not—'

'—Arthur going to be weird about this told them not to worship me always worship me just wanted to observe not have followers—'

'—Lea's gun turned out nicely efficient energy conversion triangles are stable unlike squares—'

'—Dawn's filing system DISASTER how did she get this far need proper categorization but she's resistant resistant people frustrating but interesting—'

'—strawberry with chocolate would that work probably not maybe worth trying unpredictability is fun—'

It was like reading seventeen books simultaneously. Every thought connected to five others, which connected to twelve more. No grand scheme. No evil plan. Just a mind that worked in forty directions at once.

What Lea couldn't know was that Lady Keter's mind simply worked differently.

Where most people's thoughts flowed in orderly streams, hers branched and interconnected like a vast web. Where others focused on one task at a time, she processed dozens simultaneously. Where typical minds filtered out "irrelevant" details, hers noticed and catalogued everything with equal intensity.

She had what some worlds might call ADHD and autism, though no one here had those words. Here, people just saw someone whose attention seemed to dart everywhere and nowhere, who became intensely focused on seemingly random details, who found social conventions baffling but organizational systems fascinating.

Someone who struggled to explain why she did things because the reasoning was too interconnected to linearize into words. Someone who was simultaneously brilliant, overwhelmed by her own mind's refusal to work the way others' did.

But none of that was visible to Lea. She just saw chaos. Random thoughts jump around in an incoherent manner, as if trying to brawl other thoughts to take center stage.

Lea pulled back, gasping, "Your mind is... how do you get anything done?"

"Multitasking and excellent organizational systems.", Lady Keter flashed a smug, "Everything connects to everything else. I see patterns linear thinkers miss."

"But it's just... everywhere...", Lea said weakly.

"All connected~ a nice meal is as important as fighting the living will of a derranged psychopathic planet.", Lady Keter insisted, already turning back to paperwork, "Now, Dawn, you need a three-tier verification system..."

Lea sat down heavily. She'd just read Lady Keter's mind and discovered thoughts that worked in ways her enhanced cognition couldn't follow. Not too complex, just... too different.

The world is being influenced by an entity whose thoughts I literally cannot comprehend... Lea thought numbly, staring at the back of the Lady of the Library.

Fuck... I need a drink... Lea thought, getting out of the workshop.

=0=0=

That evening, Lea went on patrol alone. Dawn was busy with church matters, and Lady Keter had returned to the Monochrome Library after finishing the paperwork reorganization.

Lea wore her bird mask and moved through Renar's streets as a shadow, hunting for the Tome of Light sigils.

Lady Keter had provided locations. Lea had been systematically destroying them, but new ones kept appearing. Sinclair was persistent.

She found the first one in an abandoned warehouse near the docks, a middle-aged woman painting sigils with blood and seastone dust. Lea observed from the shadows, reading surface thoughts through Silence.

'Draw the symbols. Complete the pattern. Serve the purpose.'

Shallow. Repetitive. No depth beyond the immediate task. It was unsettling...

Lea emerged from shadow, Hastur manifesting in her hand.

The woman looked up, expression blank, "Shadow Guard."

"Stop what you're doing", Lea commanded.

The woman tilted her head, then lunged with surprising speed. Lea's Cursed Constructs caught her mid-leap, wrapping around her limbs. A single Hex, and the woman collapsed unconscious.

Lea knelt beside her, activating Dream Eater. She dove into the unconscious mind, searching for information.

Memories stretched back only three months. Before that... nothing. Just constructed identity, surface personality, singular purpose: draw sigils...

A chill ran down Lea's spine... these were fake humans created with the power of Veil. Indistinguishable from normal people, but once you take a closer look... Lea found it disturbing.

Absorbing the memories, she can see that outside of night activities... this Veil Construct act like a typical human. But deeper, embedded in the hollow consciousness, Lea found something... A fragment.

A message.

"Enjoying the hunt, little Avenger?"

Sinclair's voice was clear as if she were standing beside Lea.

Lea pulled back, jaw clenched. She destroyed the sigils, left the fake human unconscious for the authorities, and moved to the next location.

A young man in the warehouse district. Same shallow thoughts, same constructed memories. When Lea dove into his unconscious, she found another fragment.

"You're very thorough. I appreciate that."

Third location. An elderly man in the entertainment district. The pattern repeated, fake memories, singular purpose at night, and another message fragment.

"But you're still fighting shadows."

Fourth location. A woman barely twenty. Another fragment.

"How am I predicting the order you find these fakes? It's a perfectly reasonable development~"

Fifth location, a child.

Lea froze. A child, maybe ten years old, painting sigils with small hands.

Not real... she reminded herself.

Just a construct Veil made solid. No actual child was being harmed.

But it still made her sick. She put the fake child to sleep and dove into its consciousness. The message fragment waited.

"Tell me, Avenger, what god is Akasha Monodrama trying to revive?"

Lea pulled back, breathing hard. She moved through the night, hunting down fake humans after fake humans. Each one yielded another fragment of Sinclair's message, pieces of a puzzle she was being forced to assemble:

"The Primordial God of this world."

"The True Master forgotten after their Slumber."

"Before Charlotte the Heretic brought mysticism."

"Before the current gods claimed their domains."

"When it awakens..."

Lea stood on a rooftop as dawn approached, having cleared several locations. Ten fake humans were destroyed or rendered unconscious. Dozens of sigils erased.

And ten fragments of a message that painted a terrifying picture.

Sinclair wasn't trying to summon the Tome of Light. That was just a distraction, just chaos to hide the real plan.

Akasha Monodroma was trying to revive something older than the gods themselves. Something that existed before the world's current mystical framework. The final fragment she'd found echoed in her mind:

"The world will change, little Avenger. Whether you're ready or not."

Lea looked out over Renar as sunrise painted the sky gold and pink. Somewhere in this city, Sinclair was orchestrating a plan that dwarfed anything Lea had imagined.

And she had no idea how to stop it.

She thought as she ran desperately... I need to stop her before whatever Sinclair is planning comes to fruition.

Before the Primordial God awakens. Before it's too late.

She shadow-stepped toward the palace, exhausted but knowing she couldn't rest. Not now. Not when the stakes were this high.

Behind her, the sun rose over a city that had no idea how close it was to fundamental change.

And in the shadows, Sinclair Apocrypha watched and smiled. Taking a step back, turn around a corner— and vanished.