"Now," she said, voice steady again, "you said you had questions."
Makun's heart pounded. Beforehand, he only assumed the memory was important. He was not sure. But the moment she asked, he knew that interaction was not something he should share.
Last time at Old Town Plaza, the Veiled Lady made it clear. If Makun was telling the truth, if she was satisfied, she would answer three questions.
The fact she brought it up could only mean she was satisfied with the exchange.
Makun forced himself to calm down. Three questions.
He had thought about them in the morning and in the afternoon. He thought about them on Sunday. Now he had to decide which question to ask first.
What would benefit him.
What would harm him.
Which question sounded important but would be useless.
He wanted to ask about the chains. About people feeding on him. But that was not a question he wanted to expose.
Makun was skeptical about her true intentions. The Presence had mentioned people coming after him after his awakening.
Maybe she is one of them.
Questions about the Tiers, the Routes, the Suppression, he had them. Quite a lot, actually. But he knew the book would give him most of that.
If he could access it.
How do I get to it, he thought.
The only way to reach what was locked inside the book was to raise his level. He needed to know where he stood right now, and how to choose a route without dying.
This, he had to know.
It was his only survival path.
But he planned to ask that at the end.
The book gave him everything. History. Information about tiers. The goal of a mystic. One thing the book did not do was give updated information.
Did the book know about the current Great Families. Maybe, if some survived through different epochs. But things change fast. Weak families become powerful. Powerful families fall.
Did the book know about the Concord's current reach. The world economy. The way the Suppression operated now.
Not at all.
It could only speak about what happened in its time, then guess. It could not tell the exact situation.
Makun needed actualized information. Information that linked the mystic world and the normal world.
With that, he could understand his standing. He could understand the world. He could plan how to move.
Makun tried to compress everything into one question.
How do you get all the actualized information in one sentence.
Well.
"Who currently holds real power in our world?" He looked at the Veiled Lady. "Skip the common tropes. Skip the public noise. Get into the real structure."
The media loved to pretend decisions were made by the people, for the people.
Did the people decide they wanted war in 2027.
Did the people design laws that protected the rich and pressed the poor into the ground.
No.
They were paying consequences of a chess game they never agreed to play. Pawns moved and sacrificed without apology.
Before Friday, before awakening, before the book, Makun would have thought the chess players were politicians and multinational corporations. He would have thought they held the board.
Now, with what he knew, he saw them differently.
They were still pieces. Kings and queens, sure. Valuable. But still pieces that could be removed if someone higher decided it was worth it.
The question was simple.
Who held real power.
The Veiled Lady looked at him, interested.
She did not expect this. She expected questions about the most flashy and powerful routes and quick advancement.
This was different.
With this alone, she could tell he had plans to climb.
Was it related to the entity. Did the thing he mentioned in the darkness ask something of him.
She did not know. She had not been able to get access to those memories.
But for a being like that to appear around him meant something.
"World power," she repeated.
She stayed silent for some time. Then she spoke.
"You asked me to skip the lies. Fine." Her gaze stayed on him. "The people with real power are the Great Families."
"Great Families?" Makun questioned.
"Yes, Great Families." She repeated it like it should be obvious. "I am not speaking about public dynasties people argue about on the internet. I mean true Great Families."
She paused.
"Above them, or at their height, is another layer. A group of unidentified individuals who hold real authority."
Makun sucked a breath.
"They are powerful beings," she continued. "Powerful enough that their knowledge does not circulate. Powerful enough that their connections reach deeper layers of the Deep."
The more she spoke, the more careful she became.
"I am not sure myself," she admitted. "I do not have authority for such information. But one thing is certain. They do not interact with the normal world."
She leaned slightly forward.
"They set rules. They bargain. They fight among themselves. Then they act through proxies to implement those rules in the world."
Makun's chest tightened.
"Their names are unknown," she said. "Their goals diverge. We do not know them, only their effects."
Her eyes drifted, as if she was searching through old conversations.
"I heard they oversee what you could call the lower elite. Secret societies. Occult groups. Industrial networks. Old money. And the Concord's working hands, when it fits."
"How did they get such power?" Makun asked. "Such influence."
"Not sure," she murmured.
Then she added, quieter.
"What I do know is that much of what people call technology, both inside the Veil and outside it, is the result of that reach."
She paused.
"Either knowledge they secured. Or pacts made with otherworldly beings."
Makun held his breath.
"What they sacrificed," she said, "I have no idea."
Makun went still for a moment.
He could have guessed some of it. He had lived long enough to know the world was not fair. But hearing it from someone so deep into mysticsm yet still far from the top, made it worse.
If she was far, then he was nothing.
Were the ones who chained me inside those Great Families.?
Was it those unnamed individuals above them?
How far do I have to climb to know who attacked me?
This he had to figure out but he already knew the answer.
Deeper.
He could only get those answers by diving deeper into this world.