The BE11 Hermes Slipjet descended into Staging Facility 117, its black hull reflecting the sickly sodium glow.

  Countess Helena Voss stepped from the ramp, her boots clicking against the grated floor as she strode with purpose to the information terminal. She laid a slender hand on the interface. Data bloomed behind her eyes—arcane algorithms and telemetry threading directly into her brain.

  In combat, her gates flared with lethal precision. Density hardened her against artillery; phasing rendered barriers irrelevant. But it was systems analysis where she excelled. Encrypted protocols unraveled beneath her scrutiny. Patterns surfaced where others saw noise.

  She had risen through SoulCorp without patronage, without escort, without excuse. As an Auditor of the Compact, her edicts required no appeal.

  Helena had been dispatched to uncover an impossible anomaly: a low-tier labyrinth, on a hell planet, had somehow granted a unique artifact, and then it broke. She braced against the console as the volume spiked. Sifting through terabytes of noise, she distilled the essentials into a shimmering energy dossier. With a thought, she flung that data-bundle through her perception gate, projecting a lattice of runes, glyphs, and energy flows into the air.

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  Unlike other auditors who traveled with entourages of aides and guards, Helena operated solo. Her closure record required no supervision.

  “What’s this?” she murmured, eyes narrowing as a new clause ignited in the data stream: a recent Rebirth had triggered Epic-tier artifact criteria. This Rebirth contained a divine-grade core. Absurd. Another line blinked into view: the labyrinth had been forced to siphon mana from adjacent sites to balance the user’s karmic gate. Balance what? She dove on, and the final revelation shook her: a confluence crystal had touched a fully merged soul, forging an anchor that bound them together and forestalled both user and artifact annihilation.

  When she tried to summon a video feed, the terminal retaliated in jagged bursts of corrupted light. Pain lanced through her perception field. She yanked her hand away and stumbled back as sparks danced across the ancient terminal. Every thread made sense on its own, yet their convergence here—of all places—defied reason.

  Possibilities cascaded:

  Unauthorized divine infusion.

  Deliberate systems sabotage.

  Karmic interference.

  Emergent anomaly.

  None were acceptable. Each required correction.

  She pressed her fingertips to her temple and exhaled. The probability curve favored intentional interference.

  The slipjet hovered over the abyss that had once been a beginner’s labyrinth—now an open wound in the planet’s crust.

  She needed to find Benjamin Bernard Barnaby.

  Not to question him.

  To dismantle him.

  To extract the impossible truth that pulsed within him like a stolen star.