SUTRA, SERICE, TWO DAYS BEFORE.
"Well, they are gone already," Noah said, his voice quiet as he stared at the empty horizon.
"Don’t worry, he is going to be fine. Adam is strong, and I’m sure he is going to bring your friend back safely," Jin said with a reassuring tone, placing a hand on Noah’s shoulder.
"Yes, I’m counting on him," Noah responded, the knot of anxiety in his chest loosening just a fraction.
They started walking back inside the city.
"What kind of person is Evelynn? I know a few things from what Adam keeps saying at the shop, but her descriptions somehow don’t fit a princess. She seems a little bit…"
"Wild?" Noah let out a soft laugh. "Well, she is kind of crazy and outgoing. We were all inseparable since childhood, so she means a lot to us. Especially to Adam."
"I see," Jin murmured. He looked down for a moment, before continuing. "And, what about… Zoe? How was she?"
Silence followed for a few heavy seconds. Noah swallowed hard. "She was the kindest among all of us," he said, his eyes growing wet. "She was the one who deserved happiness the most."
"I see," Jin said with a genuine, warm smile. "I can't wait to meet both of them."
Noah looked up at Jin, his expression reflecting a brief flash of uncertainty, before he looked back at the road ahead.
They kept walking until they arrived at the Brass Lotus. As always, Jin's shop was a magnificent, cavernous mess of wires and gears. They headed deeper into the cluttered workspace, and Jin excitedly grabbed a heavy object off his workbench.
It was a mechanical gauntlet, forged from polished brass and dark ironwood, with complex pneumatic cylinders running along the forearm. Mounted on the wrist was a compact, spinning spool loaded with pearlescent white silk.
"Look at the tension threshold on this," Jin said, strapping the heavy device to his arm. He flicked his wrist, and a mechanism clicked. Instantly, three distinct threads of silk shot forward, wrapping securely around a heavy iron wrench sitting on a table ten feet away. With a sharp tug, the wrench flew through the air, landing perfectly in Jin's palm.
"It doesn't just work as a grappling hook for traversal," Jin beamed, holding up the wrench. "The micro-gears allow the threads to act like prehensile extensions of my own fingers. I can grab, pull, and manipulate objects from a distance with descent precision. But honestly, Noah, the speed at which this project is advancing is entirely thanks to your insightful suggestions. Some things would have taken me months to figure out alone, let alone the idea itself."
"Well, no need to thank me for that," Noah said, offering a modest shrug. "I already told you, I actually got the idea from an old superhero story I read when I was younger. Once I saw how you utilized the Queen's silk, it was one of the first practical applications that came to mind."
"Well, this might be the coolest thing I have ever made," Jin grinned, admiring the brass casing. "Just a few more structural touches, and it will be perfectly practical for a variety of uses."
Before Noah could reply, the atmosphere changed.
A heavy, suffocating pressure washed over the room. Noah’s senses flared instantly. Every instinct screamed at him. He spun toward the entrance, his feet shifting automatically into a low combat stance.
A colossal silhouette eclipsed the sunlight in the doorway, the figure walked slowly, each heavy footstep carrying an authority weight.
"There is nothing to worry about, kid. I’m obviously not here to hurt you," a smooth, resonant voice echoed off the cluttered walls.
The man stepping into the dim light of the shop was massive, his bulky frame intimidating enough to radiate raw power. He wore a tailored, crisp grey-and-white suit that was left casually open, exposing a heavy gold collar resting against his bare chest. Draped over his broad shoulders was a massive mantle of pristine white fur, framed by jagged, icy crystals that seemed to swallow the warmth of the room. As he raised a hand in a placating gesture, the dim light caught the jagged, glowing purple crystal that made up his clawed hand.
The person who had just entered the shop was none other than General Krul.
Who is this monster? Noah thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. The aura I sense from him... is it like Lian Mei's? No. It is more terrifying.
"What are you kids doing in here?" Krul asked. His voice was smooth, entirely unbothered by Noah's obvious hostility. He stepped further into the shop, his massive frame making the cavernous space of the Brass Lotus feel suddenly claustrophobic. "Did you create all those tools? It grabbed my attention from the outside."
Krul casually reached out and picked up one of Jin’s recent creations from a cluttered table. It was a remarkably simple, one-dimensional tool, a heavy brass bow-saw, the kind a jeweler might use to cut small metals. However, instead of a jagged iron blade, the saw was strung with a single, taut thread of white silk. At the base of the handle, a complex series of micro-gears kept the silk pulled to an agonizing degree of tension.
Krul looked at it, his eyes gleaming with sharp interest. To test it, he casually dragged the silk "blade" across the thick, solid iron anvil sitting on the workbench. With practically zero resistance, the silk sliced an inch deep into the solid iron, smooth as a knife through water.
A wild, predatory smile slowly stretched across Krul's face.
Jin, completely unaware of the monstrous nature of the man standing in front of him, could only judge that this was no ordinary visitor based entirely on Noah’s reaction. Jin swallowed his usual eccentric greeting and opted for caution.
"Yes, sir," Jin said, "Welcome to the Brass Lotus. You can buy the tools that you like in here, though not everything is for sale."
Krul kept investigating the calibrator, turning it over effortlessly in his massive grip. Then, he looked up at Jin, his eyes gleaming with sudden interest, before looking back down at the object.
"You are using the silk of the Queen," Krul murmured, lifting the saw to admire the frictionless cut it had just made. "And you managed to build a frame that can withstand its absolute tension without snapping. How impressive, young kid. So, you are one of her scientists, aren't you?"
Jin blinked, taken aback. "How did you recognize it? Her silk?"
"Doesn't matter now," Krul dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Tell me, kid, how old are you?"
"I am twenty-one," Jin replied instantly. He had meant to ask why a stranger would demand his age first, but the sheer presence pulled the words from his throat before he could even process the thought.
"I see," Krul said, his smile widening. "A young talent like you is wasted here. You figured out how to harness the power of such a complex material."
"Wasted?" Jin frowned, his pride bristling just enough to push through his apprehension. "I'm happy doing what I do, and I'm glad Queen Selena gave me such an opportunity."
"Oh, are you?" Krul chuckled. "Well, how about I make you a proposal then?"
Noah, who was listening to all of this with bated breath, felt his mind racing. The overwhelming aura, the jagged, glowing purple crystal that made up one of the man's hands, the mention of a 'proposal'... In a terrifying flash of logic, Noah managed to piece everything together. He knew exactly what this man was and where he came from, and, what he was about to say.
"Jin, don't..." Noah warned, his voice tight with panic.
Krul ignored Noah entirely. "How about you become a Utopian, Jin?" Krul offered smoothly. "We would like a great mind like yours with us."
Jin’s lips froze. The words he had just heard could not be compiled in his mind. The leap in logic was too sudden.
"What...?" Jin breathed out, staring at Krul.
"You will find a lot of smart people there who share your passion," Krul continued. "You will get all the resources you need and access to knowledge you can't even imagine, furthermore, one of my friends could be just the right mentor for you. And on top of that..."
Krul paused for a second, letting the silence hang heavy in the dusty air of the shop.
"...you'll get to do what you love, for eternity."
The heavy silence in the Brass Lotus felt suffocating. Noah's breath hitched in his throat, his eyes moving between the towering presence of General Krul and the frozen posture of his friend. Eternity. The word hung in the air.
Jin stared at Krul for a long moment, terror and fascination warring behind his eyes. Then, slowly, the awe hardened into something else. Resolve.
"I... I decline," Jin said, his voice unsteady at first. He cleared his throat and stood taller. "I am honored, General. Truly. But my place is here."
Krul's wide, confident smile faltered, not into anger, but into something closer to genuine disappointment. He tilted his head, studying Jin the way a collector studies a rare piece he can't acquire.
"Is that so?" he murmured. "A pity. I do not make such offers lightly, boy."
He raised his right arm , the one that was crystallized in purple. With his left hand, he gripped one of the crystalline spikes and snapped off a five-centimeter shard with a sharp crack that echoed through the quiet shop.
Both Jin and Noah flinched. Krul placed the glowing fragment onto the workbench without ceremony. It hummed with a faint, cold light.
"A parting gift," Krul said, his eyes locking onto Jin's. "For impressing me. The Eldritch Heart that runs through me is named Kharbonath , considered a crown jewel among the hearts under Utopia’s large possession. As for its physical properties..." He tapped the shard once with a heavy fingernail. "It is the hardest recorded metallic material on this earth. Let us see what your genius makes of it."
He turned toward the exit, his footsteps shaking the floorboards. At the threshold, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder.
"If you ever change your mind, come find me."
Then he was gone , swallowed by the street outside, leaving a heavy vacuum behind him.
Noah let out a long, shaking exhale and leaned against a worktable to steady his legs. He looked at Jin, who hadn't moved, his eyes fixed on the purple shard.
"Jin," Noah said, his voice dry. "What are you going to do?"
Jin didn't answer immediately. He reached out, his fingers hovering just above the fragment, feeling the strange warmth radiating from it.
"Sutra is my home, Noah," he said softly, his voice thick. He finally looked up, his eyes glassy. "I will never forget what Queen Selena did for me. I was an unwanted child. Without her, I'd be begging on these streets right now. Or dead."
Noah said nothing.
Jin offered a small, self-deprecating smile. "I want to build something that outlasts me. Something that earns me a place in history, not for my own pride, but because it's the only way I know how to honor what she gave me. The gift of a future." He exhaled slowly. "That's my dream. That's all it's ever been."
"That's a noble goal," he said quietly. "And for what it's worth , you're already the most talented inventor I've ever met."
Jin's face broke into a genuine, deeply touched smile. For a brief moment, inside the Brass Lotus, the shadow of Utopia felt very far away.
It didn't stay far for long.
Noah stepped out of the shop an hour later to clear his head, and walked straight into a city that no longer resembled itself. The usual vibrant hum of Serica's streets had curdled into something frantic and ugly. Word had spread fast , Utopia's forces had arrived , and panic had done the rest.
He stood at the edge of the crowd and watched. Merchants were dragging iron shutters down over their storefronts. People shoved past each other in tight knots, arms loaded with grain sacks, dried meat, and water.
It's the same, he thought, watching the chaos spill through the streets. It always starts exactly the same.
The frantic rush. The ordinary people reduced to animals by fear. He had watched it happen once before, in a city that no longer existed. He had been powerless then too. He had run, and survived, and carried the guilt of both ever since.
He was still standing there, jaw tight, when he felt it , a faint tickle against his wrist.
Noah looked down. A spider was emerging from beneath the hem of his sleeve. It was immediately wrong , the body too geometric, the legs too precise, as if something had built it rather than grown it. Before he could react, it lunged and sank its fangs into his skin.
"Ah, " He slapped his wrist hard. The spider was gone.
The effect was instant. His vision lurched sideways, the world spinning violently. His legs buckled and he hit the ground on both knees, the noise of the crowd dropping to a muffled, underwater roar. The dizziness lasted only seconds before it snapped away , but what replaced it was stranger.
He felt a presence enter his mind. Not invading , settling. Deliberate and precise, like a key turning in a lock.
"Noah."
The voice didn't come from the alley. It came from inside his skull, crystalline, composed, but threaded through with an urgency he had never once heard from her before.
The spider was hers, Noah realized, staggering back to his feet.
"Noah, listen carefully." Selena's voice was measured but taut. "The future of Sutra is in your hands. I need you to hear everything I am about to say. We do not have much, "
His hearing was abruptly cut off.