# Chapter 11: The Weight of a Name
The words on the screen swam before Relly's eyes: *systematic eradication of several families with 'reality-bending' claims... sponsored by a shadowy organization during the European witch hunts.* A cold dread, heavy and suffocating, settled in his stomach. It wasn't just that his family was forgotten; they were erased. Hunted. The grimoire wasn't just some inheritance; it was a death certificate passed down through generations. He leaned back, the cheap chair groaning in protest, the hum of the bar's old refrigerator the only sound in the room. As the full weight of it began to crash down on him, a new window flashed open on the browser, a garish pop-up ad. A woman's face, sharp and intelligent and achingly familiar, filled the screen. Pres Sanchez. Below her, the sleek, sterile logo of Sanchez Biotech and a simple, chilling slogan: *Engineering the Future.* The future, he realized with a jolt, was exactly what he was afraid of.
He slammed the laptop shut. The sharp crack echoed in the pre-dawn stillness of The Gilded Flask. The sudden silence was more deafening than the noise had been. He stared at the closed computer, its smooth black surface a dark mirror reflecting his own pale, strained face. The scent of stale beer and lemon-scented cleaning fluid filled his nostrils, the mundane perfume of his life, a life that now felt like a fragile shell about to be crushed. He ran a hand through his hair, his fingers trembling slightly. Gramps's terrified words echoed in his mind, a frantic, high-pitched counterpoint to the academic, dispassionate cruelty of the text he'd just read. *"They don't just kill you, boy. They unmake you."*
The goblin hadn't been talking about a simple threat. He'd been talking about a policy. A centuries-old, systematic extermination. And Relly, with his stupid, clumsy attempt at turning water into top-shelf whiskey, had just painted a target on his back that was visible across centuries. He stood up, the legs of the chair scraping against the worn linoleum floor. He needed to move, to do something, anything, to burn off the frantic energy buzzing under his skin. He started wiping down the bar, his movements jerky and automatic. The cool, damp cloth in his hand was a small, grounding sensation. He polished the polished wood until it gleamed under the low track lighting, his reflection a distorted blur. He saw a stranger—a man hunted by history and pursued by a woman who might be his savior or his executioner.
The pop-up ad replayed in his mind's eye. Pres's face. That cool, assessing gaze. *Engineering the Future.* Was she engineering his future, or just ending it? She was a CEO, a player in the exact world of corporate power the academic paper had hinted at. The shadowy organization wasn't some ancient cackling cult in a castle; it was a board of directors. It had stock options and PR firms. It had a face, and he was staring at it on a pop-up ad. The irony was so bitter it tasted like bile. He'd thought he was making a deal to learn about magic, to control this strange new power inside him. Instead, he'd just walked into the middle of a war he didn't understand, siding with a general who might have been planning to shoot him in the back all along.
He abandoned the bar and paced the length of the narrow room. Behind the bar, a collection of dusty bottles stood like silent soldiers. Above them, a crooked shelf held a few forgotten textbooks from his brief, abortive attempt at community college. He grabbed one, a heavy tome on world history, and slammed it on the counter. The thud was satisfyingly solid. He flipped through pages filled with maps and portraits of dead kings, looking for any mention of witch hunts, of alchemy, of anything that might connect. But it was all sanitized, academic. It spoke of mass hysteria, of religious fervor, of political opportunism. It didn't mention shadowy organizations or reality-bending families. It was the official story, the one humans were meant to believe. The lie.
His gaze fell back on the laptop. He couldn't leave it alone. It was like picking at a scab he knew would bleed, but the itch was unbearable. He had to know more. He opened it again, his fingers flying across the sticky keyboard. He ignored the pop-up, which had mercifully vanished, and went back to the digitized paper. The author's name was Dr. Alistair Finch. The name tickled something in his memory, but he couldn't place it. The paper was published in 1928 in a journal called *Obscura & Arcana*. It was a footnote, just a single paragraph, but it was the most real thing he'd read about his family since his father's drunken, rambling stories.
He copied the text into a document, the black letters stark against the white screen. *"While the majority of persecution during the so-called Burning Times can be attributed to socio-religious factors, a curious pattern emerges upon closer inspection of certain records. Several families across Europe—most notably the Moe lineage of Germany, the Al-Jazari of the Ottoman Empire, and the Florentine House of Veridian—were not merely accused of witchcraft, but of a more specific heresy: the fundamental transmutation of reality. Their eradication was unusually thorough, suggesting a coordinated effort by an entity with resources far exceeding that of any local ecclesiastical court. This shadowy consortium, whose name is lost to history, appears to have systematically hunted these lineages to extinction."*
Extinction. The word landed like a punch to the gut. He wasn't the last of his line; he was the last survivor of an extinction event. He was a dinosaur who'd just discovered the asteroid was still on its way. He leaned forward, his forehead resting against the cool plastic of the laptop's bezel. The low hum of the fan vibrated through his skull. He could feel the grimoire tucked away in the safe upstairs, a book of impossible power that was also his family's death warrant. Every time he opened it, he was risking everything. But not opening it, not learning how to fight back, was just a slower way of dying.
He straightened up, a new resolve hardening his features. Fear was a luxury he couldn't afford. He needed information, not just historical trivia. He needed to know about the *now*. Who was this shadowy consortium today? What was its name? He typed "Alistair Finch Obscura Arcana" into the search engine. The results were sparse. A few references to the paper in other academic works, all treating it as a curious but ultimately debunked piece of fringe history. But then he found it: a hit on a modern legal website. Alistair Finch. Not a historian, but a judge. A powerful fae lord who presided over supernatural disputes in his hidden court. The same name. Could it be the same person? A fae who'd lived for a century, publishing under a human name? It seemed impossible, but then, so did turning water into whiskey.
Before he could click the link, the screen flickered. Not a normal flicker. The colors warped, the text swirling into a vortex of neon green and black before resolving into a new interface. It was nothing like his clunky operating system. This was sleek, fluid, and utterly alien. The background was a shifting tapestry of digital constellations and flowing code. In the center, a simple question appeared in elegant, glowing script: *Seeker, what is your query?*
Relly's heart hammered against his ribs. This wasn't a virus. This was magic. He typed with a shaking hand: *Who is hunting the Moe family?*
The interface pulsed, the constellations rearranging themselves. Words began to form, not as text, but as coalescing light. *The question is flawed. The hunt is over. The quarry remains.* The words dissolved. *The Concordat maintains the balance. The Concordat enforces the Masquerade. The Concordat is the law.* A new symbol appeared on the screen, a stylized shield crossed with a sword. The Aegis Concordat. The name from Gramps's terrified rambling. It wasn't just a shadowy organization. It had a name. It had a brand.
He stared at the symbol, a cold sweat beading on his brow. This was it. The enemy. The force that had erased his family. The force that Pres, with her corporate power and ancient blood, was almost certainly a part of. He had to know. He had to know where she stood. He deleted the previous query and typed a new one, his fingers feeling like lead. *Pres Sanchez. Aegis Concordat.*
The interface shimmered violently, the digital stars flaring with a dangerous, angry light. A warning flashed in crimson letters. *QUERY RESTRICTED. ACCESS DENIED. FURTHER INQUIRIES WILL BE LOGGED.* The screen went black. For a terrifying second, he thought it had fried his laptop. Then, his familiar, cluttered desktop blinked back into existence. The only evidence of what had just happened was the lingering scent of ozone and the frantic thumping of his own heart.
He slumped back in his chair, the fight draining out of him. He had his answer, or as much of an answer as he was going to get. The connection was there. Pres was part of it. The Concordat. The law. The hunters. His partnership with her was a sham, a lie built on a foundation of his own ignorance. She wasn't here to help him. She was here to manage him. To contain him. To decide whether he was a resource to be used or a threat to be eliminated.
The first rays of the morning sun began to pierce the grimy windows of the bar, painting stripes of dusty gold across the floor. The city was waking up, oblivious to the ancient war being fought in its shadows. Relly felt a profound sense of dislocation, as if he were a ghost haunting his own life. He looked around the bar, at the scuffed tables and the familiar bottles, and saw it all as a temporary shelter. A cage he had built for himself, not realizing the whole world was the zoo.
He stood up and walked to the front door, flipping the sign from "Closed" to "Open." The little bell above the door jingled, a sound that usually meant the start of a long, boring day. Today, it sounded like a starting pistol. He was no longer just a bartender trying to save his failing business. He was Relly Moe, the last of a hunted lineage. And he had a choice to make. He could play the fool, pretend he didn't know, and let Pres lead him to the slaughter. Or he could start fighting back. He could use her, learn what he could from her, and turn the tables when the time was right.
The weight of his name settled upon him, not as a curse, but as a responsibility. He was the last. The only one left to carry the memory, the only one left to seek justice. He walked back behind the bar, his movements no longer jerky with fear, but deliberate and calm. He picked up a clean glass and a rag, his mind already racing, formulating a plan. He would need to be careful. He would need to be a better actor than he'd ever been. He would need to lie to a creature who had likely been perfecting the art of deception for centuries.
As he polished the glass, his eyes caught the reflection of the laptop screen. The Sanchez Biotech pop-up was gone, but the image of Pres's face was burned into his memory. *Engineering the Future.* He allowed himself a small, grim smile. Let her think she was the engineer. He was about to introduce a variable she never saw coming. He was the ghost in her machine, the last, unaccounted-for line of code in her perfect, sterile program. And he was going to crash the whole damn system.