Arcade did not come back into the Gwennan for a while.
No one chased him.
That was either mercy or exhaustion.
Possibly both.
He sat on a fallen log a few yards from the van, half-hidden beneath dripping branches, with a broken relay box balanced across his knees and three stolen Church components spread out beside him on a handkerchief like surgical instruments.
His hands were shaking.
So he gave them something to do.
Tiny screws.
Crossed wires.
A crystal receiver with a crack down one side.
A copper plate from Maven’s lightning trap that he had absolutely not stolen out of spite, because theft implied planning and he had mostly grabbed it while dissociating.
C.H.I.P. hovered beside him in compact mode.
“You have not blinked in forty-three seconds.”
“I’m busy.”
“You can be busy with wet eyeballs.”
“Shut up.”
“Concern logged.”
Arcade twisted two wires together, sparked them with a claw, and flinched when the receiver spat static.
For half a second, the static sounded like singing.
His shoulders locked.
C.H.I.P. dimmed at once.
“Arcade?”
“I’m fine.”
“That was unconvincing.”
“Then file a complaint with my face.”
“I have many.”
Arcade swallowed, forced his breathing steady, and adjusted the copper plate against the receiver’s cracked casing.
The static changed.
Not cleared.
Changed.
A thin line of blue light crawled across his bracer.
Arcade froze.
Then leaned closer.
“Oh.”
C.H.I.P.’s lights brightened.
“Oh?”
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
“Good interesting or ‘the cathedral has found us again’ interesting?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Rephrased: interesting-interesting or panic-interesting?”
Arcade tapped his bracer twice.
The signal flickered, guttered, then steadied into a distorted visual feed.
A street.
No sound.
Grainy image.
Smoke over rooftops.
White-gold figures moving in formation.
Arcade’s breath caught.
“I’ve got a camera.”
C.H.I.P. zipped closer.
“A functioning Extranet relay?”
“No. Security node. Old Council traffic camera. It’s not using the public Extranet. Different line, mostly dead, but not jammed the same way.”
He tapped again.
The feed shifted.
Another camera.
Another street.
A line of Church paladins blocking a bridge with shield barriers.
Arcade’s face went pale.
“Oh, that’s bad.”
C.H.I.P. projected the feed larger.
Ray appeared in the van doorway behind them, one hand still pressed against the side of her head.
“What’s bad?”
Arcade did not turn.
“Depends how much you enjoy armed religious obstruction.”
Ray stepped down carefully.
Pitch appeared behind her, because apparently he was now her shadow with opinions.
“You are supposed to be sitting,” he said.
“I’m standing medicinally.”
“That is not a thing.”
“It is if I do it.”
Arcade flicked through more feeds.
The images jumped across Clawdiff in broken pieces.
Council streets.
Barricades.
Fleeing civilians.
Church banners hung across intersections.
Paladins dragging carts into place.
The Council quarter, seen from a high rooftop camera, half-obscured by smoke and rain.
Ray’s expression hardened.
“They’re surrounding it.”
More people climbed out of the van.
Hughes first, older around the eyes than he had been that morning. Diana followed with Crystal tucked close beneath one arm. Plum came next, already recording the feed with a second slate. Mezzo hovered near the door, glancing back at Celeste every few seconds until Topsy shoved him lightly and told him to breathe.
Silver stepped down last.
He had one hand clenched around his silent arcbracer.
His face had gone terrifyingly blank.
Arcade dragged the feed wider.
The projection above his bracer shuddered, broke into static, then sharpened again.
The Council quarter appeared in blue-white distortion.
The outer gate was sealed.
Church barricades had formed a crescent across the main approach, ward pylons sunk into the street like golden nails. Paladins stood shoulder to shoulder behind them, shields lifted, rifles angled down but ready.
Not attacking.
Holding.
Waiting.
A speaker drone hovered above the barricade, its voice booming down the avenue in a perfect, merciless loop.
“By authority of the Luminarch confession courts and the Office of Supreme Paladin Command, the Council will surrender Knight-Commander Celeste Astallan and all fugitive Knights currently under unlawful protection.”
Diana went very still.
Crystal looked up at her.
“Mam?”
On the feed, a figure stepped into view beneath the speaker drone.
White-and-gold armour.
Long cloak.
New command crest blazing at the shoulder.
Diana’s old crest.
Not hers anymore.
The newly appointed Supreme Paladin lifted one hand, and the speaker carried his voice across the quarter.
“Comply, and the siege will end. Refuse, and the Council will be judged complicit in obstruction of sacred law. The accused fall under Luminarch jurisdiction. Hand them over.”
Topsy’s ears flattened.
“Oh, I hate him.”
“You have never met him,” Pitch said.
“I’m efficient.”
Diana’s expression had gone hard enough to cut stone.
Ray watched her carefully.
“Diana.”
“I’m fine.”
No one believed her.
The feed shifted as Arcade tapped the receiver.
Another camera.
Another angle.
Council defenders held the steps and side streets, but something about the formation was wrong. Ray noticed the gaps before she understood them. No artillery wagons. No heavy Council infantry. No full army line in blue and steel.
Instead, figures in Crefft robes and Mythic battle-mantles stood between the Church barricade and the Council doors.
Prism cores glowing.
Staffs lowered.
Rites woven into shields of coloured light.
Mezzo leaned closer to the projection.
“Hold on.”
Ray looked at him.
“What?”
Mezzo pointed.
“That’s not the Council army.”
Hughes’s eyes narrowed.
Mezzo’s voice lowered.
“That’s the Mythics.”
The van went quiet.
On the feed, Crefft wardens braced another shield line as Church paladins advanced half a pace, then stopped again. Light rippled between them, bright and strained, like glass holding back a tide.
Ray’s brow furrowed.
“What are they doing?”
Silver stared at the projection.
His face had changed.
Not fear now.
Calculation.
And beneath it, something worse.
“If the army is not there,” he said slowly, “and the Mythics are defending the Council quarter…”
He swallowed once.
“Then something has gone very, very wrong.”
No one argued.
Celeste stood near the van door, wrapped in her blanket, one hand pressed lightly over her core. Her face was pale beneath the glow of the projection.
The speaker drone boomed again.
“Hand over Knight-Commander Astallan. Hand over the Knights. The Church seeks obedience, not bloodshed.”
Celeste looked at the feed.
Then at the others.
“If I gave them what they wanted,” she said softly, “would it stop this?”
Silver spun toward her so fast his coat snapped around him.
“No, absolutely—”
Diana moved before he could finish.
One hand shot out and caught him firmly by the front of his coat.
“Careful,” she said.
Silver’s jaw snapped shut.
Barely.
His eyes burned.
Diana did not release him until she was sure the next words out of his mouth would not be something he could never take back.
Then she turned to Celeste.
“Celeste,” Diana said, voice lower now, gentler but no less firm, “what they want from you must be valuable enough that they are willing to risk war, disgrace the Council, and fracture Clawdiff in the middle of an apocalypse.”
Celeste’s ears lowered.
Diana held her gaze.
“Anything that valuable is not something I would surrender.”
Hughes nodded once.
“Aye.”
Silver looked away, breathing hard.
But he did not disagree.
Ray kept her eyes on the feed.
The speaker drone repeated the demand.
The new Supreme Paladin stood beneath it like a statue someone had taught to threaten people.
Skye, pale and quiet beside Lumina, looked from the Church line to the Council gate.
“If they want Celeste,” he asked, “why are they surrounding the Council?”
Diana’s face darkened.
“To starve them out.”
Plum’s fingers tightened around her slate.
“Block supplies. Block messengers. Keep people scared.”
“And make the Council choose,” Ray said.
Silver’s voice came cold.
“Us or them.”
On the projection, Mythic shields flared again as Church ward pylons pulsed brighter.
The siege line held.
Inside it, somewhere beyond the gates and glowing Crefft wards, Umbranox was trapped.
Outside it, in a stolen van hidden among wet trees, the Knights watched the city decide how much it was willing to bleed before it broke.
Arcade’s fingers moved quickly over the receiver.
“I can’t get bracer comms. Whatever the Church is throwing out there is still choking personal channels, but the old camera network is limping because nobody cared enough to kill all of it.”
“Can we speak through it?” Ray asked.
“Not yet. Maybe not at all.” Arcade’s mouth twisted. “Seeing is easier than shouting.”
C.H.I.P. bobbed.
“That is unexpectedly poetic.”
“I’m upset.”
“Understandable.”
Then Plum held up one hand.
Everyone went still.
“What?” Ray asked.
Plum’s ears had angled toward the trees.
“Engine.”
For a moment, there was only rainwater dripping from leaves and the distant ghost of cathedral bells.
Then they heard it.
Low.
Muffled.
Close.
A van engine idling somewhere beyond the hollow.
Not the Gwennan.
Silver’s blade slid half an inch from its cane.
Ray lowered her voice.
“Distance?”
Plum looked toward the darker part of the forest.
“Near enough to ruin our day.”
“Could be Church,” Mezzo whispered.
“Could be Council,” Topsy whispered back.
Arcade grimaced.
“Could be the forest growing wheels. Today has range.”
Ray looked at Plum.
“Eyes on it. Quietly.”
Plum tapped Dotty against her wrist.
Light bent around her.
One second she was standing beside the Gwennan.
The next, only a faint shimmer moved between the trees.
“Still hate when she does that,” Mezzo muttered.
Pitch watched the shimmer vanish.
“I respect the commitment to being unsettling.”
Plum moved low through the bracken, Dotty humming soft against her palm.
The forest opened ahead into a small clearing.
A black van sat crooked in the mud.
Armoured.
Official.
Too clean for raiders, too ugly for Council work.
Its rear lights glowed dull red through the rain. Two figures stood beside it in dark coats and hard masks, speaking to someone inside. Another figure checked the road behind them, weapon held low.
Plum crouched behind a fallen tree and lifted her slate.
The image flickered back to Arcade’s bracer.
Everyone gathered closer around the projection.
Ray’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s not Church.”
Diana leaned in.
“No.”
Arcade zoomed the image.
A small symbol showed on the van’s side, half-obscured by mud and rain.
Silver’s mouth tightened.
“What is that?”
Hughes’s face darkened.
“Godiad.”
The word changed the air.
Crystal’s hand went to her collar.
Celeste looked from the feed to Diana, then back again.
Before anyone could speak, headlights swept across the clearing.
A second van roared in from the trees.
Unmarked.
Armoured badly enough to suggest someone had made it dangerous on a budget.
Its side door slid open before it stopped.
Masked raiders poured out.
The first shot cracked through the forest.
Plum flinched but stayed hidden.
On the projection, one of the Godiad guards dropped before he even reached for his weapon. The second turned, raised a rifle, and vanished under a burst of mana-fire from the raiders’ van.
The third tried to run.
A raider tackled him into the mud.
Mezzo’s ears flattened.
“Feck.”
Ray’s expression went hard.
“They’re killing them.”
Silver did not look away.
“Not elegantly.”
“Not the point.”
The fight was over in seconds.
Brutal seconds.
The raiders moved with the efficiency of people who had done this before. Two covered the tree line. Two dragged bodies away from the rear doors. Another climbed into the Godiad van and began shoving out long black cases.
A raider outside caught one.
Another case followed.
Then another.
One lid cracked open as it hit the mud.
Inside, in neat rows, were black metal collars.
Receiver pins.
Control nodes.
Diana inhaled sharply.
Crystal made a small, frightened sound.
Ray’s voice went flat.
“Collars.”
Arcade’s face had gone pale.
“Those are like Crystal’s.”
“Not like,” Diana said. “Those are the same family of device.”
Plum’s voice came softly through the comm.
“They’re loading them into the unmarked van.”
Hughes looked at Ray.
“Do we move?”
Ray stared at the feed.
The raiders were nearly done.
The Godiad bodies lay in the mud around the clearing.
The cases were disappearing into the second van one by one.
“Yes,” Ray said.
No hesitation.
“Now.”
They moved.
Hughes first through the trees.
Pitch vanished into shadow.
Silver followed like a blade drawn from a sheath, fast and silent and all aristocratic murder held on a leash.
Mezzo came after him, then Arcade with C.H.I.P. snapping into big mode beside him. Diana stayed close to Crystal, sword drawn, while Topsy kept Party Crasher low and ready with unusual discipline.
Celeste started after them.
Ray caught her eye.
“Stay behind me.”
Celeste nodded.
Then immediately followed close enough that Ray had to accept that as victory.
They hit the clearing hard.
Pitch appeared at the flank and fired Lady Luck into the mud before the raiders’ feet, card-shot exploding up in a warning fan.
Ray stepped out beside him with Heartbreaker raised.
“Drop the cases!”
The raiders froze.
For half a breath.
Then one shouted, “Knights!”
The unmarked van’s engine screamed.
“Go!” another raider yelled.
Two raiders hurled smoke charges into the mud.
The clearing vanished beneath grey-black clouds.
Topsy lifted Party Crasher.
Ray snapped, “No rockets near the collars!”
Topsy made a wounded noise.
“Fine!”
Silver moved through the smoke, caught one raider by the shoulder, and slammed him into the side of the Godiad van. The raider hit hard, dropped, and rolled under Silver’s reach before he could grab him properly.
Mezzo lunged for another, but the raider threw a flash bead at his feet.
Light burst white.
Mezzo swore and stumbled back.
Arcade sent C.H.I.P. forward.
C.H.I.P. caught the rear door of the unmarked van with both hard-light hands.
For one glorious second, it looked like he might hold it.
Then the van’s rear plating sparked with a dirty countercharge.
C.H.I.P. jerked.
“Rude!”
The van tore free, tyres spitting mud, and shot backward through the trees.
Pitch fired after it.
Too late.
The unmarked van vanished into the forest with most of the cases, leaving churned mud, smoke, bodies, and the ruined Godiad transport behind.
