Chapter 403: 403. A Twist That I Can’t Even Predict (This Family Is Full Of Surprises)

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Rex applied the third compression, followed quickly by the fourth, fifth, and sixth. The sequence was rapid enough that Virella had no time to recover between each one. By the end, the sounds she made were involuntary, reflecting significant pain, and despite her efforts, she could not contain her reactions entirely.

"STOP!" Virella shouted, her voice lacking any trace of calm this time.

Kregg was on his feet, both hands raised, looking at Rex with an expression that had fully abandoned the calculated patience he’d maintained through the chamber engagement and most of the canyon sequence. What was underneath the patience looked like the kind of feeling that develops when someone watches another person suffer and can’t stop it.

"Enough," Kregg said, his voice hoarse. "I yield."

"Then talk," Rex said.

"She’s operating from a location outside Aethelgard’s sphere of influence," Kregg said. It came out fast, driven by something apart from calculation. "A kingdom that doesn’t appear on any publicly distributed map of Erosyne’s territories."

"It maintains formal existence through arrangements with several regional powers, but its location is treated as controlled information, making it a closely guarded secret among those in power."

"No reincarnator who arrives in that kingdom survives long enough to leave."

"How does it maintain existence without appearing on maps?" Rex said.

"Because the regional powers that know about it benefit from not publicizing it," Kregg said. "They receive operational support from her in exchange for silence."

"It’s not a secret... rather, it’s information that has become costly to share," Kregg said.

"Who are these regional powers?" Rex said.

"I only know two of them," Kregg said. "A trade consortium in the Valdric Sovereignty and a senior figure in the Aurelian Compact’s institutional administration."

"I don’t know their names, but... I do know their roles and the shape of the arrangement."

Rex noted this and moved forward.

"Name," Rex said.

"Solmordia," Kregg said. "The kingdom is called Solmordia."

"I can give you a general direction... northwest from Aethelgard’s floating island, several days of travel by sea to the mainland shore and then inland from the coastal terminus."

"But I can’t give you a specific coordinate because I was never given one. Operationally, communication with Solmordia’s central command runs through relay contacts."

"I’m just one relay point; I don’t have visibility into the entire network."

"How many relay points are there between you and her?" Rex asked.

"Three," Kregg said. "At minimum... Possibly more."

"The structure is designed so that each point only knows the one adjacent to it."

"I report to a contact... That contact reports to another, and I have never communicated with her directly."

"But you’ve met her," Rex said.

"Once," Kregg said. "When I joined, she met every member of the Legion once, personally, at the beginning."

"Thereafter, communication runs through the relay structure."

"Describe her more," Rex said.

Kregg was quiet for a moment, and this quiet was different from the earlier hesitations. It was the quiet of someone pulling something up carefully.

"Older than she looks," he said. "The way powerful mages often are in this world." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"She presented as a woman in her late seventies, but the way she held herself, the way she spoke, was the manner of someone considerably younger."

"She was very calm. Not the performed calm of someone managing their reactions, but the genuine calm of someone who has been in situations that should have disturbed them for long enough that disturbance has stopped being a meaningful category for her."

"What did she say to you?" Rex said. "When you met her."

"She told me she had read my file," Kregg said. "She told me she understood what I had lost and that the Legion existed to make sure fewer people lost the same thing."

"Then she told me that the work was sometimes ugly and asked whether I could do ugly work in service of a clean principle." He paused. "I said yes."

"And now," Rex said.

Kregg glanced at Virella, focusing on her hand and the six broken fingers.

"Now I’m standing in a canyon having this conversation," he said, "which is not what I anticipated when I joined."

"No," Rex said. "I expect it isn’t."

Rex thought about the floating island structure of Aethelgard, the Convergence Waters around it, and what northwest of a floating island meant in practical navigation terms.

Several days of travel by sea, followed by a journey inland. A kingdom that exists formally through carefully managed arrangements, all while ensuring its location remains absent from public maps.

This represents a complex operational infrastructure, maintained for thirty years.

"The gathering," Rex said. "The one you were bringing Apollo and the others to..."

"Where is it taking place?"

"I was delivering them to a transfer point," Kregg said. "Three hours northwest of the canyon entrance is a waypoint located in the ridge system..."

"From there they move through a relay network, and to be honest... I don’t have the final destination."

Rex noted the consistency with the information he’d extracted in the canyon’s earlier phase, the coastal fortress seven days south of Aethelgard, which didn’t align geographically with what Kregg was describing.

This meant that either the location was a different facility from the gathering site, which was possible and likely given the scale of operation Kregg was describing, or Kael had provided him with partially accurate information based on his limited knowledge.

Both were useful data points.

He looked at Mireya, who had managed to get herself into a sitting position on the canyon floor. She was watching the exchange with the expression of someone doing their best to process a situation that kept requiring them to expand their framework for what a person could be, as she struggled to reconcile her previous understanding of identity with the complexities unfolding before her.

"One more thing," Rex said to Kregg. "What is the Balance Keeper’s given name? The one you mentioned hearing once."

Kregg pressed his lips together. "That is... I shouldn’t..."

"Kregg," Virella said. "Don’t do it... please..."

"Just let him take my life and you take her life so it’s going to be a fair exchange...!"

"The name," Rex said.

He didn’t move his hand, but he let the potential for movement sit in the space between them, which functioned as its own form of communication.

Kregg closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, he was looking at Virella rather than Rex.

"I’m sorry," he said.

Virella said, "Don’t be sorry... our calculation has failed for the first time due to this reincarnator, which is considered an anomaly."

Rex could not tell, in that exchange, who was apologizing for what. He noted the ambiguity and filed it.

"She’s going to burn everything," Virella stated. "Giving him her name won’t change that. It won’t prevent any of it."

"I know," Kregg said. "But this is... the only way to save you..."

He looked at Rex. "Her name is Celestina."

He paused to take deep breaths. The next word came out slower, as if he were checking each syllable before committing to it.

"Celestina Von Starlight."

Rex stood completely still.

’What...?’ Rex’s body shivers all of a sudden. ’Starlight...?’

He processed the name as he did with genuinely unexpected information: without an external reaction but through a thorough internal reorganization of relevant structures. He pulled together everything he knew about the name’s second component, along with its connected network, and ran it against this new vector.

’Von Starlight.’

Helena Von Starlight. Elizabeth Von Starlight. Valentina Von Starlight, the grand academy headmaster, who is also known as Helena’s and Elizabeth’s mother. She is also the great-grandmother of Elliot, Diana, and Lily.

This entire Starlight family structure is what he had been mapping and developing since the first weeks in Aethelgard.

And somewhere in that family structure, seventy years old or older, was a woman named Celestina who had founded an organization specifically designed to eliminate reincarnators from Erosyne.

He thought about Valentina, who was the most powerful mage in Aethelgard according to the ranking he’d been given, who appeared to be in her late sixties or early seventies through some combination of magic and genetics, and who had granted him Honor Student status personally.

He thought about Kregg saying the family name like he’d been checking each syllable.

"Tell me about the family connection," Rex said.

Kregg shook his head. "I don’t know enough to tell you..."

"I heard the name once, in a conversation I wasn’t meant to hear, but I don’t know the structure of her family relationships or what it means for the people connected to that name."

Rex regarded Kregg for a moment, believing his words not because Kregg had provided every accurate detail but due to the distinct pattern of his knowledge—a profound understanding of operational intricacies paired with a superficial grasp of the Balance Keeper’s personal context. This was typical of a loyal operational commander who maintained a deliberate informational distance from her own team.

Kregg reached toward the inside of his outfit again, slowly, the same two-finger precision as before.

Rex stopped him with a telekinetic lock on the wrist. "What is that?"

"A document," Kregg said. "Something she gave me when I accepted my current role..."

"I want you to take it... she gave this intentionally in case one of her Starlight family members could read it."

Rex looked at him.

"I’m not being cooperative," Kregg said, which was a strange thing to say given the last several minutes. "I want you to take it because of what’s written in it."

"Because you should see what her actual terms are." He kept the wrist still against the lock.

"May I?"