**Chapter 85 — The Pawn**
Steve grabbed Yelra's hand and pulled.
"You didn't hear anything here," he said, already walking, the direction chosen before the sentence even finished. "And we don't need help from anyone."
"Steve—" Yelra complained, her voice carrying that quality of someone who had been set in motion without approving it. "With all that strength—"
"We have a lot to do."
"What do you mean, a lot to do?" Yelra looked at him sideways while being pulled along. "Is it that thing about two people in a room?"
Steve stopped.
Turned.
Looked at her with the expression of someone trying to determine whether what he had just heard was real or if his brain had produced a sound that didn't exist for some reason that needed medical investigation.
"You idiot," he said, in a very controlled voice. "Can't you think about anything that isn't idiocy? Do you really have a thousand years?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then start acting like it."
He pulled her again.
"I'm not acting on Dagon's orders."
Orzun's voice came from behind—not loud, not urgent, but with that quality of something said by someone who knows it will be heard if said the right way.
Steve didn't stop.
"Besides, I agreed to come with your group specifically to help you," Orzun continued.
"What a joke," Steve said without turning his face. "As if luck were that simple. Nobody helps someone without second intentions."
Orzun's footsteps drew closer. Not running—with that walk of a young orc who was keeping up without forcing the pace.
"I see the Steve I met a few days ago has changed a lot."
That made Steve stop.
Not immediately. Two steps later, with that specific delay of a phrase that arrives before the body fully processes what it did to him.
He stood with his back to Orzun for a moment.
"It's necessary," he said. "Otherwise I'll be a fool forever."
"I insist," Orzun said. The tone was direct, without the pleading quality Steve would have expected. "I'm on your side. Not Dagon's."
Steve remained still.
Yelra touched his arm—not to pull him in any direction, just contact. When Steve turned his face to her, she wore the expression of someone listening to something that wasn't sound.
"Try listening to him," she said. "I feel he's being sincere."
"I'm not interested in his plan."
A second of silence.
"The problem," Yelra said, in the voice of someone about to reveal information she would rather not have to reveal, "is that I still don't have a plan."
Steve turned completely toward her.
Yelra was touching her fingertips together with that gesture of someone who knows exactly what she did and is calculating how to present it in the least bad way possible.
"I don't have a plan," she confirmed. "I was waiting for something to occur to me."
Steve looked at her for a long moment.
"You," he said slowly, "are really an old idiot."
"Don't call me old."
"If you have a thousand years, you're no small thing. For your information, a thousand years is a lot."
"Immature child."
"You're the immature one."
"I have a thou—"
"Yelra." Steve's voice came out with that specific exhaustion of someone who realized a certain discussion had no productive end. "Try listening to his plan. If you feel he's sincere, that has to be enough."
Yelra straightened with that posture of small and completely unnecessary victory.
Steve swallowed his pride with that jaw movement of someone doing something he didn't like but realized he needed to do.
He turned to Orzun.
"What's your plan?"
Orzun's smile had that quality of a smile from someone who had been waiting for this question long enough to have rehearsed it and who was genuinely pleased it had arrived.
"Good that you asked."
---
They left the main path for a more secluded space—not hidden, just out of the direct line of sight from the nearest houses.
Orzun knelt slightly, his eyes sweeping the village with the attention of someone who had been observing long enough to notice patterns.
"Magic crystals," he said. "This village is full of them. In the walls, in the gardens, at the boundaries. They're part of Nessis's structure—probably for protection or maintaining the barrier that hides the entrance."
"And?" Steve said.
"My teleportation magic is weak." Orzun said it without shame—just fact. "I can't move anyone more than ten meters with what I have. But if those crystals are arranged in a pattern along the village boundaries, they work as amplifiers. They multiply the range by a factor I can't calculate exactly, but it should be enough to send you to the surface."
Yelra tilted her head.
"If it's only for Steve, wouldn't a single crystal placed near him be enough?"
Orzun began scratching his head with that gesture of someone who had found a flaw in his own reasoning and was genuinely trying to solve it.
"My magic works in a network. It needs multiple points to create a teleportation field with sufficient range. One crystal gives me a distance of maybe a hundred meters. With the crystals distributed along the entire boundary of the village—"
"Which spans several kilometers," Yelra said, still with that look of someone verifying the calculation.
"Yes." A pause. "The magic is weak, I'm not stupid."
Steve looked at the orc.
At the large hands of a young orc who still didn't carry the weight of decades on his shoulders. At the eyes that had that direct quality of someone who had never learned to be indirect because he had never seen enough advantage in it.
*It could be a trap. It could be exactly what it seems.*
There was no way to know for sure. And sometimes not having a way to know for sure was the only information available.
"I liked the plan," Steve said.
He turned to Yelra and took her hand.
"Let's do it."
---
The entire morning passed, and most of the afternoon.
The crystals of Nessis were not easy to find—all of them. Some were embedded in the stone of the walls in a way that required a sharp eye, others were in gardens whose aesthetic function hid their structural one. Orzun moved with that efficiency of someone with a clear plan, placing each crystal with precision in spots Steve couldn't fully evaluate but that Orzun chose with the speed of someone reading a pattern the others couldn't see.
Steve and Yelra followed, carried, and positioned where Orzun indicated.
Silent work, with that quality of a task that had its own rhythm.
In the middle of the afternoon, during a break while they waited for Orzun to inspect the northern sector of the boundaries, Yelra sat on a rock and remained silent long enough for Steve to realize something was wrong.
"Yelra."
She didn't answer immediately.
"Hey." Steve sat beside her. Not too close. Just present. "What is it."
"Something doesn't feel right," she said, without specifying.
"With the plan?"
"With the plan too." A pause. "But not only."
Steve stayed silent. He didn't press. Somewhere between Chapter 79 and this moment, he had learned that Yelra said what she had to say in the time she needed to say it.
She turned her face to him.
"Can you explain to me," Steve said, changing the subject with that naturalness that wasn't escape but redirection, "that thing about the power of Chaos not being controllable."
Yelra looked at him for a moment. Then her expression settled—the subject would be left where it was for now.
"Chaos is unpredictable by nature," she said. "According to the elder's accounts—which are much older than I am—only a being whose body contains the essence of at least four different lives or beings can come close to anything resembling control."
"Four."
"You. Me. And two more." A pause. "And even then it wouldn't be absolute control. It would only be enough containment so that the Chaos doesn't consume what holds it."
Steve processed that.
"It sounds impossible."
"Most things that matter seem impossible before they happen." Yelra said it with the voice of someone who had lived long enough to have seen enough impossible things occur. "It's the only reason I kept existing after about three hundred years. The expectation that impossible things happen at a sufficient rate to justify continuing."
Steve remained silent.
Then, unplanned:
"I'm sorry. For all of it. The immortality without choice. The children who can't be born. An entire people trapped in the same number."
Yelra looked at him.
"You already said that before."
"I'm saying it again."
The corner of Yelra's mouth moved slightly.
"You were raised well," she said, very quietly. "For a seventeen-year-old with such a difficult life, you were raised well."
Steve didn't answer.
But he didn't look away.
---
As the day turned into night through Nessis's specific process—the golden light gradually losing intensity until it reached a more amber, warmer tone, like a fire settling after hours of work—Dagon, Jelim, and Keara rested in the house the elder had provided.
It was simple space with that quality of hospitality that doesn't need ostentation because it has substance.
Jelim stood at the window, arms crossed, looking out at the village with that facial expression that didn't reveal what she was calculating but that was clearly calculating something.
"Don't you think it's risky," she said without turning her face, "to leave Steve to his own devices like this?"
"The kid won't run away."
Dagon's voice came from the corner where he sat, his sword laid across his legs with that posture of rest that was never completely rest.
"Even as bitter as he is," he continued, "he still has that naïveté that hasn't completely disappeared. And he knows what happens to the Nessira if he takes the risk."
"I hope you're right," Jelim said. "Because he's our only way to reach the Fantom."
"We'll reach him." Dagon's voice had that specific firmness of a statement that wasn't hope but the certainty of someone who didn't allow himself the alternative. "Me, you, and Keara."
Jelim remained silent for a moment.
Then:
"And Simon."
Dagon didn't answer immediately.
The silence that followed had that specific weight of a name spoken at the right moment for the right person.
"And Simon," he confirmed, in a voice that came out quieter.
On the other side of the house, Keara sat with her head slightly tilted and that expression of someone physically present but mostly somewhere else. Her hands in her lap with that stillness of someone who normally does things with her hands and now kept them still for a reason that wasn't rest.
Dagon looked at her.
"Keara."
"Yes." The voice came out with that automatic quality of a response that didn't require full presence.
"Don't lose focus."
"I'm not losing it."
"You are." Not an accusation. Just the kind of observation Dagon made—direct, without unnecessary softening. "If you don't focus, you won't see your daughter again."
The name of the daughter wasn't spoken out loud. But it was there, implied, with the specific weight of a motivation Dagon knew better than anything else in this world.
Keara raised her gaze.
Her eyes had that quality of someone who had just returned from an inner place that wasn't easy to inhabit.
"You're right," she said. And this time her voice was more present.
Dagon nodded once.
He looked back at the sword.
---
The night in Nessis was not darkness—it was the amber, quieter version of the day's golden light, with that quality of a place that had learned existence didn't require giving its maximum at every moment.
Orzun reached Steve and Yelra with that hurried step of someone who had finished a task and was genuinely satisfied with the result.
"It's done," he said, wiping his hands on his trousers with that gesture of work completed. "All the crystals in position. The network is complete."
Steve looked at him. Then at the visible boundary of the village from there—the line of stone and vegetation where, invisible to the normal eye, the crystals were now arranged in the pattern Orzun had spent the entire day calibrating.
"Will it work?" Steve asked.
"It should." Orzun said it with that specific honesty of someone who wouldn't promise more than he could guarantee. "The theory is solid. The execution was careful. The rest—"
"The rest is always the rest," Yelra said.
Orzun smiled.
"Exactly." He pointed toward the village. "Stay inside while I perform the ritual. It's necessary for you to be within the field when I activate it."
Steve nodded. He took Yelra's hand.
"Why do you always do that?" Yelra said as they walked.
"Because we're one now. Did you forget?"
"That doesn't mean you have to hold my hand all the time."
"It means that if I lose sight of you and something happens, I die." Steve shrugged with that naturalness of an argument he considered closed. "I'd rather not die."
Yelra remained silent for a moment.
"That is," she said finally, "surprisingly reasonable."
They went.
Orzun stayed where he was, watching their backs for a moment.
Then his smile changed quality.
Slightly.
---
Dagon woke without knowing exactly why.
It wasn't sound. It wasn't movement. It was that specific veteran perception of three years that had learned the absence of something could be as informative as the presence of another.
He got up. Went to the window.
The village was quiet with Nessis's normal nighttime quiet.
Then Orzun burst through the door running, without knocking, with that specific state of someone who had no time for protocols because the information he carried had urgency that wouldn't wait for protocols.
"Steve and the Nessira girl—" he panted, hands on his knees, breath carrying the quality of a long run. "They're escaping the village. Now."
Dagon was already grabbing his sword before Orzun finished the sentence.
"Take us to them."
Jelim was already on her feet, fingers curled in the activation position, the new mask that had replaced the cracked one—white, intact—already in place.
From the corner, Keara raised her gaze.
"Are you coming?" Dagon asked.
A pause.
"I won't be much help," Keara said. "Stay in my place."
Dagon looked at her for a second.
"So be it."
They left.
---
Nessis asleep passed on both sides in a blur of amber light and cream stone as they ran after Orzun, who moved at exactly the pace needed to be followed without being caught—the right distance, the right speed.
Dagon noticed that.
Not completely. Just as a detail registered in a layer of attention that wasn't yet analysis but was more than passive observation.
They left the village boundaries.
The underground forest closed around them with that specific transition from Nessis to the outside—the golden light replaced by the pale blue of the runes, the air gaining that denser, older quality.
Orzun stopped.
In the middle of a medium-sized clearing, surrounded by trees with that dark-green tone the Underworld produced, with no visible path ahead.
Dagon stopped two steps behind.
"Kid," he said, his voice carrying that quality of warning before anger, "why did we stop? Take us to where Steve is."
Orzun didn't turn.
His shoulders—those broad shoulders of a young orc that Steve and Dagon had seen carrying crystals all day—now had a different posture. Not the posture of a nervous or relieved or satisfied young orc. The posture of someone who had arrived exactly where he intended to arrive.
"Orzun."
The silence that followed had that quality of silence that isn't absence of response but preparation for a response that would change the nature of what was happening.
Orzun turned.
Slowly.
With that calm of someone for whom the moment of being seen held no urgency because control of the situation no longer depended on what the others did after seeing.
The face turned toward them was not Orzun's face.
It was a mask.
White. Smooth. Without ornament except for the painted smile—wide, fixed, with that quality of an expression that doesn't vary because it wasn't made to vary. And in the center, occupying the space where the nose, forehead, and eyes should have been: a question mark.
Huge.
Unmistakable.
Jelim felt something change in the air—not temperature, not pressure, but some more fundamental quality, as if the reality around them had slightly readjusted its arrangement relative to that figure.
The figure with Orzun's face and Cassius's mask tilted its head.
"Just a useful pawn in the chess game," it said. The voice was not Orzun's. It was an entirely different voice—calm, polite, with that quality of someone who chooses every word before speaking and therefore never says more than intended.
The blood drained from Dagon's face.
Not from fear—from recognition. From the specific difference between knowing something exists and being in its presence for the first time, understanding that the gap between knowing and being is much larger than calculated.
The name left before any decision to say it.
"Fantom."
The mask didn't change.
The painted smile remained exactly where it was.
And from the pocket of the coat—the impeccable black coat that was not Orzun's simple coat—a white-gloved hand withdrew a six-sided die that immediately began spinning between the fingers with the automaticity of years of habit.
Cassius tilted his head slightly.
Like someone who has found the person he expected to find and is genuinely pleased the meeting has finally happened.
---
**[STEVE AND YELRA: INSIDE NESSIS]**
**[DAGON AND JELIM: UNDERGROUND FOREST — CASSIUS PRESENCE CONFIRMED]**
**[SILVANO: APPROACHING]**