[House Veyrath — Azram’s Office — Midnight]
"Are you certain this is everything you found?"
Vaerun’s voice was quiet, almost lost beneath the faint crackle of the brazier.
He sat on a low diwan beside the open lattice windows, where the moonlight spilled across the sandstone floor in pale silver bands. A bronze pipe rested between his fingers, its smoke curling slowly into the midnight air.
Beyond the palace walls, the city of Eshkaran slept beneath the watchful statues of its ancient kings, unaware of the filth festering beneath its golden streets.
Ravian stood before him with a stack of documents bound in dark leather. He had been awake for nearly two nights, and the exhaustion showed in the shadows beneath his eyes. Yet he made no complaint because some matters were worth losing sleep over.
"Yes, Azram, our investigation confirms that the children taken from the orphanage were not being sold for ordinary slavery. They were being purchased for experimentation."
Vaerun drew on his pipe.
He did not flinch; he did not curse. He merely exhaled a thin stream of smoke and glanced at the document.
"Experimentation," he repeated, as though testing the word for its meaning. "And the buyers?"
"Several wealthy patrons of what the nobles call the Illegal World."
A faint smile touched Vaerun’s lips.
There was nothing pleasant about it.
The world had always bowed before power and opened its doors for money. The temples preached divine justice, the imperial court spoke of order, and the great noble houses displayed their generosity at public festivals. Yet behind their gilded gates, another world flourished, one that answered to neither the Malik nor the gods.
The Illegal World.
Its existence was an open secret among the wealthiest families of Eshkaran. They visited its hidden auctions through masked intermediaries, purchased forbidden creatures, and paid fortunes to indulge desires they would never dare confess before the imperial throne.
Monsters captured during their breeding seasons were sold to nobles who wanted rare beasts for private arenas or simply wished to witness the creatures tear one another apart.
Men and women were trafficked for slavery and prostitution. Stolen relics, forbidden poisons, and prohibited Aether Core techniques changed hands beneath the protection of influential patrons.
And now, children had become its newest commodity.
Vaerun lowered the pipe.
"The children were selected because their Aether Cores were unusually weak. Most came from commoner families, and some had no verifiable family records. The researchers believed that children with weak cores would be easier to manipulate."
"How?"
"They attempted to force the Aether Cores beyond their natural limits. The procedure involved repeatedly disturbing the core, flooding it with concentrated elemental energy, and attempting to force it into a higher level."
Vaerun’s silver eyes remained fixed on him.
"And what happened to the children who failed?"
Ravian hesitated, and that hesitation was answer enough.
"Some suffered severe damage to their cores," he said at last. "Others lost control of their elemental spirits. Several records indicate that the subjects died during the procedures."
The brazier popped. Vaerun set his pipe on the bronze stand beside him.
"How many?"
"We have not established the total number of children who passed through the facility, Azram. The surviving records are incomplete."
"Then establish it."
"Yes, Azram."
"Every child, every name, and every person who handled the records carried a body, supplied the materials, or received payment. I want the entire chain of responsibility."
Ravian bowed his head. "Understood."
Vaerun’s gaze returned to the document.
There were many ways to kill a child in this empire; a blade through the heart was merely the most honest. To seize a helpless child, force open the source of their magic, and treat their suffering as a subject of scholarly curiosity required a different kind of depravity.
And depravity, in Vaerun’s experience, was rarely committed by one person alone.
Someone had designed the procedure, funded it, secured the children, and convinced them that a purse of gold could purchase the right to experiment upon another human being.
"What were they hoping to achieve?" he asked.
Ravian turned to a page marked with a red seal.
"Their stated objective was to determine whether an Aether Core could be forcibly evolved beyond its natural capacity, but their private correspondence suggests a second purpose."
Vaerun looked up.
"They wanted to know what would happen if the core was pushed beyond the limits recognized by the temples. Whether the resulting instability might summon a creature that could not ordinarily be contracted."
Vaerun’s expression changed.
"An uncontracted beast?"
"Something more dangerous, according to the correspondence."
Ravian placed the final document before him; at the top, someone had written a question in bold ink.
’Can a Devil Beast be summoned by disturbing the Aether Core?’
The office fell silent.
Outside, a night bird cried from the cypress trees. Somewhere in the distant city, a temple bell rang once, marking the passing of another hour beneath the heavens.
"Devil Beasts," he murmured. "They have grown bored with ordinary monsters, so now they wish to invite something from the abyss into their homes?"
"They appear to believe that a sufficiently powerful disturbance could create a breach or attract a creature beyond the known elemental hierarchy."
"And they chose children to test their theory."
"Yes."
Vaerun leaned back against the cushions, his fingers resting loosely on the arm of the diwan.
The ancient scholars of Eshkaran had warned against tampering with the Aether Core beyond its natural limits. The core was not a vessel to be broken open at a whim. It was the foundation through which a human being formed a bond with the elemental world.
To force it into an unnatural state was to risk destroying not only the wielder but everything around them.
The previous Malik had understood the danger.
Years ago, when rumors of similar experiments had begun spreading among the noble houses, the imperial throne had crushed the practice before it could take root. The matter had become one of the empire’s darkest suppressed scandals.
Someone, it seemed, had mistaken the passage of time for permission.
He reached for his pipe again but did not light it.
"Have you identified the buyers?"
"We have traced several payments to intermediaries, but the names behind them remain concealed. The auction records were deliberately divided among different handlers. Each person knew only a portion of the arrangement."
"Convenient."
"Yes, Azram."
Ravian straightened.
"After your intervention at the orphanage, the operation appears to have been suspended. The auction has stopped, and the person believed to be overseeing the experiments has fled. We have secured the orphanage records and are following the money, but the principal suspects have disappeared."
Vaerun’s silver eyes narrowed.
"Fled where?"
"We do not know yet."
"Then why are you telling me they have escaped as though the matter is settled?"
Ravian went still.
Vaerun rose from the diwan.
He was not a man who needed to raise his voice to make others understand the danger they were in. His anger arrived like a change in the weather: a sudden stillness, a pressure in the air, a sense that something terrible had already begun.
"Seal the roads leading out of the affected provinces quietly."
"Yes, Azram."
House Veyrath had guarded the empire’s eastern borders for generations. Its knights had buried armies beneath desert sands, and its enemies had learned that the Azram’s patience was not mercy. When Vaerun decided that a person had become a threat, rank, wealth, and bloodline offered little protection.
Ravian gathered the documents, leaving the page concerning the Devil Beast on the table.
"There is another matter, Azram."
Vaerun’s attention returned to him.
"The disturbance in the Azrath Desert. We initially believed the monster attacks were a natural migration brought on by the breeding season. That explanation was false. Our scouts have located the remains of a facility near the desert’s outer reaches. The equipment and traces of concentrated elemental energy are consistent with the procedures described in these documents."
Vaerun’s expression hardened.
"How far from the site of the attacks?"
"Close enough that an unstable core, or whatever they were attempting to summon, could have drawn the creatures toward the surrounding territory."
"And the attacks began when?"
"Shortly before the orphanage investigation reached the imperial court."
For several seconds, Vaerun did not move.
"So the monsters were not the objective; they were a distraction."
"That is our strongest suspicion. The disturbance drew military attention toward the desert. It also gave the people behind the experiments an opportunity to move their equipment and destroy their records while our forces were occupied."
Vaerun stared through the lattice window; beyond it, the moon hung over the rooftops like a silver coin laid upon the dark earth.
The pieces had been arranged with care. The auction, the stolen children, the hidden facility, and the monsters driven into the desert. Someone had understood how House Veyrath would respond to a threat on its territory and had used that response to conceal a greater crime.
They had underestimated one thing: the orphanage had not been merely a matter of jurisdiction to Vaerun. It had become a matter of his daughter.
"Did you find any noble house directly connected to the facility?" he asked.
Ravian opened a smaller ledger.
"We have not established conclusive proof against any house. However, House Qaran has appeared in the investigation. One of its maids was listed among the guests at an auction connected to the operation."
"House Qaran."
Vaerun said the name without inflection.
The Qaran family had long possessed an irritating talent for standing close to disgrace while keeping its hands clean. Its members were too cautious to leave obvious evidence and too proud to imagine that anyone would dare investigate them thoroughly.
"Do we know what the maid purchased?"
"Not yet. We are investigating whether she attended on behalf of the house or acted independently. Her presence alone is not sufficient to establish the family’s involvement."
"Good. Keep it that way until we have proof."
Ravian nodded. "I will."
For a while, Vaerun remained silent, his silver eyes fixed on the dying embers in the brazier. Then his thoughts returned to Seyra, to the little girl whose unexpected arrival had turned his household upside down, and whose actions had exposed a darkness buried beneath the empire’s gilded surface.
His jaw tightened.
"She ran away, in time," he muttered.