Chapter 82: The Connection
"What are they doing?"
Alina took a cautious step forward, her eyes scanning the sea of pale, motionless faces filling the central plaza.
Despite the hundreds of citizens crowded together, the entire eastern district was dead silent. Not a floorboard creaked. Not a child cried. They just stood there like wooden statues, their chins tilted up toward the pitch-black ring floating in the sky.
"I wish I had an answer for you," Nuri muttered, stepping up beside her.
They had lost Rowen and Dally in the smoke screen. But what stood in front of them now was a far bigger nightmare than two runaway operatives.
Something about the heavy, suffocating pressure bleeding down from the sky felt eerily familiar...
The eye. The pulse of raw, corrupted energy vibrating through the cobblestones.
Nuri had felt this exact same oppressive weight once before.
Where? Think, damn it...
Nuri bit his lip hard, his mind racing through every patrol, every record, every anomaly he had ever logged.
Tap.
A heavy, calloused hand touched Nuri's shoulder, snapping him out of his spiral.
He looked down. Wan was standing right beside him, his dark eyes looking down at Nuri with quiet, steady concern. The twin was trying to ground him.
Nuri let out a long, shuddering breath, reaching up to squeeze Wan's forearm. For someone who had spent almost his entire life locked away from other people, Wan had a terrifyingly sharp sense for when someone was breaking down.
Nuri looked up at Wan's face.
Most of the grey twin's features were obscured by his high collar and dark hair, but the jagged silhouette of his skull was exposed under the pale violet light of the sky.
Nuri froze.
The shape of the skull... The density of the mana outline pulsing beneath his skin...
Nuri's eyes went wide.
That's it.
The shape. The texture. The sickening, bottomless weight of the magic.
It was all connected.
It was the exact same signature as the colossal Hand he had witnessed during the catastrophe back then.
That was why the eye felt so familiar. The scale was different, the output was diluted, but the core essence was identical.
And if that was true... he couldn't keep carrying this alone anymore.
Nuri closed his eyes for two seconds, forcing his chest to rise and fall. He had already shared pieces of the event with Alina, but he had deliberately left the Hand out of every report he'd submitted to the Order.
"Guys..." Nuri said, his voice dropping into a hard, serious register that made the back of his throat ache. "I need to tell you something. Right now."
The three of them turned toward him immediately. Something in his tone cut right through the eerie silence of the plaza.
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Nuri took a deep breath through his mask and laid it out.
He told them about the night the Hand manifested. The sky tearing open. The suffocating, skin-crawling aura that had nearly crushed his core before he could even draw a breath. And the fact that he had buried the detail from Captain Caelan and the official logs ever since.
By the time he finished, Alina's face had drained of all color, her jaw clenched tight.
"You kept something like that to yourself?!" she barked, stepping right into his space, her hand twitching like she was about to grab his collar.
Before her fingers could touch his tunic, Wan stepped up from behind, his massive grey arms locking around Alina's shoulders and holding her back with casual, effortless strength.
"Let go of me, Wan!" Alina hissed, thrashing against his grip for a few seconds before she realized she was trying to fight a brick wall. She let out a frustrated huff and went limp.
Wan slowly released her, stepping back into the shadows.
Alina kept her dark eyes locked on Nuri, glaring daggers through his mask.
"She's right, Nuri," Turman said softly, his brow pulled tight into a deep scowl. His rapier hung low at his hip. "Hiding something that massive... you shouldn't keep secrets like that from the people standing at your back."
Turman looked at him with the exasperated, protective glare of an overbearing parent.
Seriously? Nuri thought, a faint sting of guilt hitting his chest. Not him too.
Nuri lowered his head, staring down at his boots. "I didn't know what it was back then. I was terrified." He paused. "I'm sorry."
Alina's glare softened slightly, her shoulders dropping as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Whatever. At least you finally opened your mouth." She tilted her head toward the sky. "So why do you think they're linked?"
"I..." Nuri hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's hard to put into words. But the magic leaking off that purple eye... it's the exact same frequency as the Hand. It feels like two fingers on the same fist."
He shook his head in frustration. "I can't explain the mechanism, but it's the same source."
"That's still a lead," Turman said, his tone turning analytical as he turned his back to the wall. "Instead of blindly swinging at shadows, we know what kind of entity we're dealing with."
Turman's gaze drifted over the hundreds of frozen citizens standing across the plaza. "We just need to figure out how they're pulling the strings."
His lips pressed into a tight, thin line. "And we need to do it fast. Human bodies aren't built to stand rigid in the cold without food or water. If they stay locked up like this for another six hours, people are going to start collapsing."
Nuri nodded, glancing toward the crumbling, overgrown ruin of the old district temple towering over the eastern side of the square. "I know. But the temple has been a hollow shell for decades. What are we even supposed to search for in there?"
Turman turned his head, a faint, confident smile breaking across his face. "Who said anything about searching the temple?"
He took two deliberate steps backward into the shadows of an alley mouth.
"We just need to grab the people pulling the leash."
Nuri blinked under his mask. "...What?"
Before Nuri could process the sentence, Wan moved.
The grey twin exploded out of his crouch like a heavy iron ball shot from a siege engine, tearing straight across the open plaza.
He wasn't targeting the temple. He wasn't targeting the frozen crowd.
He was charging straight toward two figures huddled near a broken water fountain, two men wearing grey hooded cloaks, blending seamlessly into the frozen crowd.
Nuri's eyes went wide.
Rowen and Dally.
The two Liberators hadn't run down the back alleys at all. They had used the smoke screen to duck right into the middle of the spellbound citizens, hiding in plain sight while relying on the crowd's immobility to mask their presence.
Rowen looked up, his eyes widening in pure horror as he saw a seven-foot grey mountain barreling down on him.
"Damn it!" Rowen shrieked, throwing his hands up to weave an incantation.
He didn't get a single syllable out.
BAM!
Wan's heavy grey fist slammed straight into Rowen's sternum, driving the breath out of his lungs and launching him backward five yards to crash flat on his back against the stone steps.
Dally spun around, his face pale as chalk, and tried to bolt down the narrow lane behind the fountain.
CLINK.
Dally froze mid-stride.
Turman was already standing at the end of the narrow lane, his rapier drawn, the needle-sharp point resting half an inch from Dally's throat.
"Don't move," Turman said smoothly, his eyes cold and steady.
Dally raised both hands into the air, his knees shaking so violently his boots rattled against the stone.
Just like that... the pursuit was over.
Alina and Nuri stood at the edge of the plaza, staring at the two captured Liberators in utter disbelief.
For three long seconds, neither of them said a word.
Then, Alina let out a short, breathy laugh, and Nuri couldn't help but crack a wide smile behind his mask.
"Well," Alina said, lowering her spear as they walked over to join their friends. "Look who decided to stick around."