One night had passed since escaping the observation tower. Kaelan and Soren were hiding in the basement of an abandoned building near the boundary between Broken Quarter and Ember Fringe. It had apparently once been a maintenance worker's station, with rusted lockers and half-collapsed pipes still remaining. While Soren checked the outside through a gap in the window frame, Kaelan stared at the second fragment of the Membrane Cartographer's records using Lira's resonance link. The fragment—one of the Membrane Cartographer's map records obtained in the fourth incident—had encrypted sequences floating across its surface, inscribed in a way completely different from modern quantum circuits. According to Lira, decoding this encryption through the resonance device required a process of manually inputting specific frequencies. "[serious]Do we really have to try frequencies by trial and error each time?" Lira's presence responded through the resonance link. A sensation mixing language and pressure conveyed something close to "yes." Kaelan picked up the resonance device again. First attempt. Nothing. Second attempt. The device reacted faintly, but it faded immediately. Fifth attempt. Seventh attempt. Soren returned. He leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, quietly observing Kaelan's work. His silver-white long hair glowed faintly in the dim space. "[serious]Which attempt is this?" "[serious]Eighth. But some of them didn't feel completely unresponsive." "……" Soren said nothing, but his silence was neither criticism nor impatience. He was simply waiting. Kaelan felt slightly helped by that and moved into the ninth attempt. Tenth attempt. It felt close. Eleventh attempt. Wrong. Twelfth attempt. The moment Kaelan entered the input, the device responded—or so he thought. But the sound was different. The room's lamps flickered all at once. The resonance device in Kaelan's hand began heating up, reaching a level of "too hot to touch" within two seconds. When Kaelan instinctively set the device on the floor, its surface had turned red. Lira's voice reached him. "[cold]……This is not decryption. This is transmission." Kaelan froze for a second. "[surprised]Trans, mission……?" "[serious]I have accidentally re-ignited the residual fragments of the old resonance locks that remained at the observation tower site remotely." Soren was already moving toward the window. He looked outside. Five seconds later, he turned back. "[serious]Quantum lattice sensor scan lights have started running. Three directions. Pellucid Mandate." Kaelan stood up. "……I got the closest wrong answer. The direction was right." "[serious]If you have time to think of excuses, run." Both grabbed their belongings simultaneously. Kaelan tried to pick up the resonance device but it was too hot, so he pulled his hand back, wrapped it in the edge of his jacket, and shoved it in his pocket. The fragment went with it. "[serious]I don't think my operation was bad—I think the encryption in the fragment itself contained a trap." "[serious]It was your mistake." Kaelan and Soren pointed at each other at almost the same time. "It was you." "It was you." For a second, their eyes met. Both fell silent. That synchronization in this situation wasn't funny, wasn't funny at all, but the timing was so perfectly aligned that something inside Kaelan loosened just slightly. Soren headed toward the door without a word. Kaelan followed. — While running, Lira's voice reached him. "[serious]Paradoxically, to completely cut the signal, you need to approach the transmission source. The location where the residual signal from the observation tower is strongest—you must physically approach there and overwrite the resonance, or the sensors will keep detecting it." "[surprised]You're saying to approach the transmission source, the same place Vitreous Guard is heading to?" "[serious]Yes." Kaelan and Soren exchanged glances while running. Soren said nothing, but he changed his pace and shifted direction. Toward the observation tower ruins. — The observation tower ruins were in worse condition than yesterday. The Veil—the entropic collapse force that could not be defined by either magic or quantum technology—had expanded its erosion wave again. Layers of different air density overlapped, and with each step, the soles of their feet felt subtly displaced. The boundary between ground and space had become ambiguous. The spatial folds that Soren had avoided through body sense yesterday had doubled in number today. And there were already people there. Vitreous Guard—the armed security force of Pellucid Mandate—six of them, deployed. Clad in protective armor with white Pellucid Mandate insignias on their shoulders. Magnetic tether launchers on their wrists. Standard restraint equipment. But the figure standing at their center was not standard. A black long coat. A man in his late forties with a quantum lattice direct-connection terminal mounted on his left arm. Standing on collapsed stone, surveying the entire ruins. His gaze contained neither urgency nor anger. Just the eyes of someone organizing. Eyes like organizing data. Soren spoke quietly. "[serious]……A central district operative. The equipment grade is different." Kaelan didn't know who that person was. But Lira's voice reached him. "[serious]Director Caspian Mourne. The Director of Pellucid Mandate. Age 47. He almost never appears at field sites personally." The Director. In person. Something grew heavy in Kaelan's core. This wasn't on the scale he'd anticipated. Soren had pointed this out—the possibility that the Veil's rapid increase was artificially induced. Including this morning's fragment misfire, there was a possibility that someone had intentionally created this place, this situation. "[serious]Should we run?" "[serious]If we don't cut the signal, the pursuit won't end. Lira is right." Mourne gave a quiet order to the Guards. His voice didn't reach this far. But the Guards began dispersing. They were searching for the resonance device. They'd been ordered to retrieve it. At that moment, Lira's voice came through the resonance link. Not words—just Kaelan's name. Short and quiet. Not anger or instruction, just that. Kaelan felt something in that voice's quality for just a moment. —This person doesn't want me to die, that sensation. An inexplicable intuition, but he felt it clearly. But there was no time to think about it. He looked forward. The Veil's erosion wave jumped up another level. The Guards moved. — The combat was chaos. With the Veil's spatial distortions occurring intermittently, six Guards advanced from two directions. Soren moved first. Soren's physical situation assessment was faster than Kaelan's—they'd learned that from acting together in Ember Fringe. Soren stepped through three consecutive spatial folds while driving a wedge into one corner of the Guards' encirclement. Moving unarmed against armored opponents was unreasonable, but Soren's movements had no waste. The physical abilities honed at Quiethold—the monastery of Therric Ridge—came through directly. Kaelan raised the resonance device. The stronger the Veil's erosion, the more unstable the resonance becomes, but conversely, that energy could also be utilized—theoretically. He'd never actually done it. But if he didn't do it now, what was the device for? Mourne didn't move. He watched the entire situation from atop the collapsed stone. One of the Guards fired a magnetic tether. The target was Kaelan. Soren intercepted it. Direct hit to the right shoulder. The moment the magnetic tether—the restraint bolt—struck Soren's shoulder joint, it deployed and locked the entire joint. Soren's right arm became completely immobilized. The next moment, a second bolt grazed Soren's temple. Soren collapsed. Into Kaelan's arms. "[scared]Soren——!" Soren was unconscious. Heavy. Kaelan instinctively caught his body. A metal restraint device dug into his right shoulder. His temple was red. Something snapped. The resonance device screamed. Kaelan's emotion directly connected to the frequency—this was what Lira had called "the direct connection between emotional disturbance and resonance." Control was lost. The device began full-power discharge. Kaelan didn't have the training to control it. It just happened. The Veil's erosion wave and the resonance discharge collided head-on. BOOM! Three local spatial folds occurred in rapid succession. Two of the Guards were blown away armor and all, disappearing into the space rifts. Ruins debris floated up and fell. The Veil's light twisted red and blue. And Kaelan's left ear went silent. It became quiet. On the left side. Not sound—just nothing there. His right ear had also become very distant. He couldn't even hear tinnitus. Complete silence fell on his left side. Mourne opened his mouth. Kaelan could only catch half of it. Straining his right ear's distant hearing, he pieced together only the words he could pick up. "……That power must be……controlled……It exceeds what……a novice like you……should handle……The Veil is……not a threat……that should be eliminated." He said the Veil was not a threat that should be eliminated. Kaelan received those words with half his hearing lost. Mourne's eyes had changed—not fear. Eyes that appraised. Intellectual interest. This man was researching the Veil. He was trying to use the Veil. Lira's voice reached him. From his right ear, barely. "[serious]Left——the Veil's rift, the Membrane thinned emergency escape route——you can only pass now, jump left!" Kaelan jumped while carrying Soren. To the left. Or so he thought, but he jumped right. A rock mass loomed ahead. One meter to impact. His brain had processed "left-right" in reverse—apparently spatial recognition gets distorted when hearing is lost. One meter to the rock. "[serious]Left, left!!" The resonance link literally "pushed" with force toward the left direction. Kaelan twisted his weight to correct. Still carrying Soren, he slipped past the edge of the rock and dove into the Veil's rift. — He emerged in the shadow of Ember Fringe's abandoned structures. Thud—he fell to his knees. Still holding Soren, he sat in the mud. The Guards' pursuit didn't come—the Veil's rift had already closed. Kaelan couldn't move for a while. His left ear was still silent. His right ear was still distant. Lira's voice reached him through the resonance link—that was his only salvation. Soren was unconscious, the restraint bolt still embedded in his right shoulder. The fragment was in his chest pocket. He'd taken it out, but decryption was zero. Evening light slanted through the walls of the abandoned structures. The air of Ember Fringe carried the smell of thin dust. In the distance, the Veil's erosion sound—a low, steady vibration—transmitted through the ground. Since his left side couldn't hear now, sound didn't feel three-dimensional. Everything came from the right. Kaelan looked at Soren's face. Until now, Kaelan had never experienced "someone getting hurt because of me." He'd had major regrets before. Like failing a task and scorching a desk, or creating unnecessary debt with Tessek at Hollow Arcade. But this time, a human was hurt and unconscious, and it came directly from his own recklessness. Kaelan faced that head-on. His stomach felt heavy. This wasn't anger or panic—just simple, weight. Lira's presence was quietly there. "[gentle]……Do you want to save Soren?" "[serious]Of course I do." Lira continued. "[serious]In Soren's condition, regular medical care cannot be used. From the Neural Tag registration status—the neural identifier integrating identity and payment—if he's taken in, he'll be immediately marked for detention. There are records of a non-legal medical facility in the basement of Conduit Ward reaching faintly through the resonance link." Conduit Ward—the labor district of Eloria where quant