Europe. Schicksal Headquarters.
The hall's vaulted ceiling soared overhead, its stained glass slicing the afternoon sunlight into scattered shards of color that spilled across the dark marble floor.
A faint woody fragrance hung in the air — pine incense Otto had specially ordered from Florence.
Local time here ran six hours behind Arc City.
Otto Apocalypse sat behind his old oak desk, a top-of-the-line laptop open in front of him.
The screen displayed the login page for Honkai Impact 3rd.
His favorite characters were already all SSS-rated, decked out in full best-in-slot gear. But right now, the Bishop of Schicksal didn't have the heart to so much as click the mouse.
Because three more screens sat in front of him.
The one on the left showed Schicksal's global operative deployment map.
The light marked "K-0017 Siegfried" had been grayed out over the Arc City region for a long while now.
Over the past forty-eight hours, he hadn't sent back so much as a punctuation mark.
The middle screen streamed live news.
Arc City International Airport had gone into emergency shutdown an hour ago.
The official reason cited was "a major leak risk in an underground high-pressure gas pipeline."
All flights had been canceled, and a top-level cordon had been thrown up across a three-kilometer radius.
The screen on the right.
It showed a thermal image captured by one of Schicksal's low-orbit reconnaissance satellites.
Otto rolled his chair closer, propped his chin on one hand, and narrowed his eyes.
Above Arc City International Airport hung an anomalous zone roughly four hundred meters in diameter.
On the thermal scan, it showed up as an eerie, deep-blue cold spot.
Worse still, every reconnaissance pulse that passed through the zone vanished like a drop of ink in the ocean — without so much as a returning echo.
"Seems Shenzhou's gas leaks have evolved the intelligence to devour electromagnetic waves."
The corner of Otto's mouth curved into an elegant, utterly frigid smile as he reached for the cup of Earl Grey at the edge of the desk.
The door swung open.
Amber walked in.
She wore a crisp, dark-gray uniform, a tablet tucked under one arm. Her expression was as cool as ever, but the faint crease between her brows gave away her anxiety.
"Lady Cecilia's comm signal cut out ten minutes ago."
Amber turned the tablet around and held it out to Otto.
"Her last confirmed position was in the airspace over Arc City International Airport."
Otto took the tablet and skimmed the data curve on the screen.
The moment the signal dropped to zero matched, down to the second, the moment the anomalous magnetic field had appeared above the airport.
Across the room, on the sofa by the floor-to-ceiling windows, Kallen Kaslana flipped through a fashion magazine she'd gotten from who-knew-where.
At Amber's report, she closed the magazine and turned her head.
"What about the girl's aircraft? Any wreckage signal?" Kallen asked.
"None," Amber said, shaking her head. "The entire aircraft, along with every piece of electronics aboard, vanished into that anomalous zone simultaneously."
"Simultaneously."
Otto repeated the word softly.
He rose, walked over to the screen on the right, and tapped it twice with a long finger, zooming in on the satellite image.
The edges of the deep-blue cold spot were sharply defined, forming a rough, irregular oval.
"A gas leak couldn't write a physics script this elegant." Otto traced the oval's edge in the air with one finger. "To form a signal-devouring zone of this scale at three hundred meters altitude — I can't think of a second explanation besides a high-power directed electromagnetic pulse weapon."
He turned to look at Amber.
"But here's the problem — with humanity's current tech tree, not a single nation on earth could build a 'miracle' on this scale."
Amber didn't respond.
She pulled up another file on the tablet.
"The latest intel from Cioara." Amber's finger slid across the screen.
"The Starfire Furnace training camp finished its assessment last week, and the new recruits were given leave. But the core area's clearance level has been raised to S-rank, and her access is being blocked at the perimeter."
Amber paused.
"All we can confirm is that some kind of unconventional enhancement training is underway inside. The source of the technology is a complete black box."
Otto leaned against the edge of the desk, arms crossed over his chest.
"And Siegfried?"
"He's gone dark. Forty-eight hours with zero response, every communication channel silent."
Otto tilted his head, his gaze deepening.
It wasn't unusual for Siegfried to go quiet.
That beast of House Kaslana often went off-script on missions.
Half a month ago, he'd activated the highest-tier infiltration Silent Protocol, ostensibly to deal with the mess of his "illegitimate daughter" — and to stick around and "save Kevin" while he was at it.
But now there was more than forty-eight hours of silence, on top of Cecilia's disappearance after landing, and that unexplained electromagnetic black hole hanging over Arc City.
Stack the three together, and the tension on this stage could no longer be papered over.
He glanced over at Kallen.
Kallen said nothing.
She'd set the magazine down, hands folded over her knees, gaze fixed on the distant ridgeline outside the window.
Her expression couldn't be called anxious, but it was nowhere near relaxed either.
"Bishop." Amber's voice pulled Otto's attention back. "Should we consider deploying additional personnel to Arc City?"
Otto was silent for a few seconds.
He walked back behind the desk and sat down, lacing his fingers together beneath his chin.
"No need."
His tone carried absolute composure.
"Cecilia hasn't been out of contact long enough to trigger protocol yet. Given that there's clearly some large-scale signal blackout over Arc City, and her aircraft never crashed, she's most likely still alive."
"Give her twelve hours. If the curtain still hasn't lifted by then, we'll decide what to do next."
Amber nodded.
She logged the order on her tablet, then looked up, meeting Otto's eyes.
"In that case, should we factor in a more extreme possibility?"
She chose her words carefully.
"Siegfried and Cecilia — two S-rank agents, both out of contact at once. Should we include the possibility of... defection by either or both, in our assessment?"
The office fell silent for a beat.
Otto looked at Amber and let out a low, sudden laugh.
There was pure absurdity in that laugh, laced with a faint, superior amusement.
"Are you telling me an unfunny joke, Amber?"
Otto spread his hands, his tone dripping with theatrical mockery.
"The head of House Kaslana and the head of House Schariac, joining hands to betray Schicksal?"
"If even the most stubborn knight and the most devout Saint in this world have turned traitor, then I, Bishop of House Apocalypse, might as well start considering handing over the papal crown."
Amber didn't laugh.
Her expression remained as businesslike as ever.
Otto let the smile fade from his lips and leaned back in his chair.
"Put another way — if Siegfried and Cecilia really have done something that defies Schicksal's orders..."
He gazed up at the ceiling, where the stained glass cast Biblical scenes across the dome in scattered color.
"...it must be because they believe that whatever they're doing matters more, and is more just, than Schicksal's orders."
Otto brought his gaze back down, a flicker of amusement crossing his eyes.
"In that case, I suppose I'd better ask myself whether I've been handed the villain's script in this little play."
Kallen rose from the sofa.
She walked over to Otto's desk and looked down at the satellite image of Arc City.
"Cecilia isn't someone who gets herself into trouble easily."
"Of course, Kallen. Your judgment is always right."
The instant Otto turned toward her, the commanding weight in his eyes softened into something impossibly gentle — even unabashedly deferential.
Kallen didn't press the topic further.
She turned and walked toward the door.
"I'll have Yae Sakura get ready. If we need to deploy in twelve hours, I don't want jet lag slowing us down."
"Thud."
The door shut behind her.
The instant the door closed, the gentleness drained from Otto's face, and he was once again the unfathomable Archbishop of Schicksal.
He picked up the cup of black tea, now gone completely cold, and glanced at the dark-brown stain pooled at the bottom.
"And," he said, as if picking up a thought he'd left unfinished, his voice cold and clinical.
"If we can't deploy strategic-level force, and Arc City really is an abyss capable of swallowing even two S-rank agents..."
He set the teacup down with a soft click.
"...then sending in any number of pawns would only add meaningless cannon fodder to the show."
Amber tucked away her tablet and turned toward the door.
She paused just before reaching it.
"Anything else you need, Bishop?"
"Get me a fresh cup of tea, hot this time." Otto turned back to the screen on the right. "And push the satellite feed's refresh rate to maximum — thirty seconds per frame. I want to watch that field and see just what kind of monster it's trying to hatch."
Amber left.
Otto was alone in the office.
Outside, the sun had already begun sinking toward the west.
The saints' faces in the stained glass warped into strange shapes as the elongating light and shadow stretched across them.
Otto turned his chair to face the right-hand screen, fingers tapping the armrest at an even, unhurried pace.
The deep-blue cold spot still hung there.
Like an invisible eye had grown above Arc City, coldly watching the Bishop from beyond the board.
"Siegfried. Welt."
Otto spoke the two names softly.
"Let me see just what you two have hidden away in this game — the things you don't want brought into the light."
The alarm blared before the impact hit.
Inside the cockpit, the round attitude indicator spun wildly, its needle bouncing across the dial in a frenzy — then the entire instrument panel burst into a spray of orange sparks, taking the overhead lighting down with it.
The cockpit plunged into darkness.
Cecilia gripped the control stick with both hands, her body pinned into the seat by the straining seatbelt.
The aircraft tumbled through violent turbulence — three full rotations, at least, or so her inner ear told her, though in an environment with no reference point at all, that judgment wasn't reliable.
There was only one thing she was certain of: the sky outside the cockpit was gone.
The instant the aircraft was swallowed by that curtain of purple light, every communication signal to the outside world dropped to zero at once.
Only white noise remained on the radio channels.
GPS positioning vanished. The inertial navigation display flickered a few times, then settled on an absurd number: altitude negative twenty-four thousand meters.
The engine was still running.
Cecilia paid no mind to the malfunctioning electronics.
She judged the aircraft's attitude the most primitive way possible — by the direction blood rushed inside her ears.
She was falling.
She hauled the control stick back to its limit. The auxiliary thrusters spat blue-white flame, and the nose forced itself up through the violent shaking.
A grinding screech of metal against rock tore up from beneath the wings.
Then came a violent impact.
The seatbelt bit into her collarbone.
The padding inside her helmet absorbed most of the shock, but her temple still slammed against the cockpit wall, and white light flashed across her vision.
The aircraft came to a stop.
The cockpit's emergency lighting flickered on.
Dim yellow light illuminated the spiderwebbed cracks in the bulletproof windshield.
Cecilia spat out a breath tasting of rust and wiped the corner of her mouth.
Blood streaked her glove.
She rolled her neck and flexed her limbs, confirming nothing was broken.
She hit the emergency release for the canopy.
The hydraulic lock let out a click, and the transparent canopy popped upward.
Outside air poured in.
The smell of it froze her fingers for an instant.
It carried some indescribable, acrid mix of decay and ozone, like a garbage dump after a storm.
Cecilia stood, planted a foot on the cockpit's edge, and swung herself out of the aircraft.
Her combat boots landed on rough, rocky ground.
Loose gravel crunched faintly underfoot.
The aircraft had crash-landed on a massive floating slab of rock.
The slab was about half the size of a football field, its edges jagged and torn, as if something had ripped it straight out of the earth's crust.
She walked to the edge and looked down.
Below her lay a city.
An inverted city.
Skyscrapers hung with their spires pointing downward; roads and bridges looked like toy blocks flipped upside down.
Dim violet light leaked from the buildings' windows, but there was no trace of human activity.
The entire city lay wrapped in a thick, purple-gray haze, utterly silent.
She looked up.
Above her stretched an endless void.
No stars. No moon. No clouds.
Only a bottomless black.
Cecilia stood at the edge of the rock for about five seconds.
Then she turned and walked back to the aircraft.
She opened the weapons compartment on the aircraft's side.
From inside, she pulled out a suppressed submachine gun, two pistols, six spare magazines, a tactical knife, and two Flashbangs.
She slung the submachine gun across her chest, holstered a pistol on each thigh, strapped the knife to the outside of her calf, and clipped the Flashbangs to her belt.
Last, she drew a silver-white, long-barreled sniper rifle from a hidden compartment beneath the pilot's seat.
It was her signature weapon.
Schicksal's family crest was engraved into the barrel.
Cecilia slung the rifle across her back and worked the bolt, confirming a round was chambered.
She didn't waste more time puzzling over questions like where this place was, or why the sky had torn open.
Seventeen years as an operative had taught her one simple truth: before you figure out what's going on, make sure you live long enough to reach the moment you do.
____
Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter
________________________________________
If you want more chapters, please consider supporting my page on (P). with 50 advanced chapters available on (P)
👻 Join the crew by searching Leanzin on (P). You know the spot! 😉