"It's go-time," Yern—the Seer of Echoes—growled, voice rippling like feedback in an empty arena.
"He's right," chimed in Myer, the femme Setrum with the razor-sharp bangs. "They're tossing the Scepter of the End around like it's a freaking glow-stick at a rave. Thoughts, Dias?"
Dias—temporarily running the council while Jessen lay sick in the next wing—folded his arms. "The pact still ties our hands. Direct action? Off the table." He drummed his fingers on the obsidian table "I did speak with Fien, though. Girl still has no clue what that stick really does."
Myer snorted. "Liked her even less back when she hung with us. She's chaos wrapped in hot leather."
"Which is exactly why Jim trusted her," Dias said. "He figured ignorance was safer than ambition."
Flashback time: When Jim Slevann felt death breathing down his neck, he made one last chess move. He didn't trust anyone who actually understood the Scepter's true power—especially not the Setrums (Jessen had already sicced Max Donman on him once) and definitely not Hennekas. So Jim stashed the Scepter with Fien, banking on her ignorance. To her, it was just a supercharged war toy. Reality check: the Scepter isn't built to kill. Use it wrong and you kick-start every creepy-crawly force in Senedro, Shams, shadows, all the nightmare DLC drops in for a cameo.. Fien? Completely in the dark.
Yern cracked his knuckles, emerald sigils skating over his skin. "So we yank it."
Dias arched an eyebrow. "Game plan?"
"Possession. I ride shotgun in somebody close. Slide the Scepter off her hip before she notices."
"Who's the volunteer corpse?" Myer asked, half teasing, half savage.
"Shæz," Yern answered without missing a beat. "She's the brain of Fien's circus and the only one who can wander near that relic without getting vaporized."
Dias leaned back. "Shæz is smart, disciplined… but this isn't a twenty-yard sprint. We're talking a two-day haul to Gulia's neutral zone so we can seal the thing. Can her body handle forty-eight hours of you in the driver's seat?"
Yern tapped his temple. "She's tougher than she looks. But you're right. I have a perfect candidate."
Myer perked up. "Do tell."
Yern's grin went shark-wide. "Someone Fien would never suspect: He's basically spare parts with trust issues."
Dias exhaled. "Risky. But the clock's melting. Every wrongful blast from that Scepter warps the ley lines another inch, and we're already feeling earthquakes in realities that shouldn't have tectonic plates."
"So we green-light this?" Myer asked.
Dias nodded, steepling his fingers. "Yern, prep the possession ritual. Keep it clean—no trauma scars. Myer, you and I will craft a shadow corridor to Gulia the second he's got the stick. We escort it, slam it into containment, and hope that Jessen recovers before the next apocalypse patch drops."
Myer cracked her knuckles. "Let's steal a doomsday toy from a half-naked queen. Tuesday just got interesting."
Plans shifted. Maps got redrawn. And just like that, they had their perfect vessel for a midnight Scepter heist—one that wouldn't see it coming until the shadows moved inside his own skin.
But let's be real: this whole "let's-possess-somebody-and-yoink-the-scepter" plan was pure panic—something Jessen would normally pull solo, never in a group chat with the other shiny-robed Setrums. With their MVP stuck in bed hacking up star-dust, the rest of them were basically cosmic interns trying to run the company. Worse, everyone down in Senedro had officially stopped buying what the Setrums were selling. No awe, no fear, just a collective eye-roll that said, "Congrats, you glow in the dark—now please kindly get out of our politics." So here they were, plotting a messy, last-minute intervention like divorced parents crash-landing Thanksgiving, convinced they could still pick the next ruler even though literally nobody on the ground was sending them invites to the party.
On the other side: Max had been riding since "screw-this-o'clock," and the horse—bless its overworked soul—finally noped out, dropped to its knees, and face-planted in the sand. Max tumbled off, arms flailing like one of those wacky car-lot tube dudes.
"How," he wheezed at the sunrise, "am I still breathing?"
Last night an eight-armed Sham practically tasted his shampoo, and now here he was; horse-less, food-less, and 100 percent done with survival side-quests.
A mosquito-sized itch nagged his shoulder. He yanked the collar down, twisted like a yoga fail, and spotted a glowing blue ring burned right into his skin—perfect circle, pulsing like a rave wristband.
"Cool, I'm branded," he muttered. "Do I get club access or just cosmic stalking?"
No map, no plan.. just sand for miles and a blurry mirage of rooftops way out yonder. Ten hours on foot? Marathon nightmare. But the other option was sit here and turn into human jerky. So Max started walking, leading his half-dead horse like a broken shopping cart.
He repeated the pep mantra Ella drilled into him: "Every city is safer than the capital. Except the capital. Avoid the Ozelean capital." Simple enough—until the sun showed up with flamethrower energy.
By high noon his lips were borderline Dorito, his pupils weirdly gold, and the pavement-hot sand cooked through his boots. He swore the sun had a personal vendetta against Earth tourists.
Heatstroke hit like a drunk linebacker. Max's vision tunneled; the desert started glitching. He saw legs—long, familiar, walking toward him through heat ripples. Jenna Kossel. Gorgeous, sarcastic, very dead Jenna Kossel.
"Of course," he rasped, half-laughing as he dropped to his knees. "The universe sends my crush ghost as an Uber." He toppled face-first, sand filling every orifice.
The last thing he heard before unconsciousness? A distant voice that sounded suspiciously like his own:
"Get up, dumbass. Story's not over."