"Oh wow," Xozo breathes, stepping forward and peering into the drum with something close to delight. "Say whatever you want about the black tux syndicate, they sure are great at figuring out parties and gifts."

The corridor winds like something uncertain of its own shape. Eileen walks beside Xozo, the two of them moving through light that hums pink and low. The walls on either side shift in texture every few hundred feet, brick, velvet, pressed tin, a panel of chalk drawings that smudge under the air but never fade. Someone has tried to map something here, but the lines loop inward, endless.

Xozo talks the whole time, not nervously but not warmly either. She speaks with the rapid, eager rhythm of someone who has memorized a script and is trying very hard to make it sound casual. "I used to think success was, like, a ladder," she says, skipping over a floor tile that pulses faintly underfoot. "But that's so linear, so limiting. My coach taught me that success is more of a spiral or a sigil. Like… an upward echo and the core it's about reframing your personal void into a revenue opportunity."

Eileen hums softly to herself, letting the words tumble out of Xozo's mouth. She offers a hum now and then, not quite agreement, more the kind of encouragement one gives a child who wants to open a lemonade stand on the moon.

Not that Xozo notices. She is too busy gesturing, with at least one of her hands visible, while the other always vanishes into her cloak and when she gestures, it looks as if the fabric itself is excited. "There's this whole structure to it, right? You start by identifying your phantasmal blockages. That's like the parts of you that still cling to past lives and old scarcity beliefs. Then you map your aura flow into your spectral alignment chart, which reveals your resonance axis. Mine is glint based, obviously. Which makes sense."

"Obviously," Eileen says kindly.

"And once I knew that, I could finally unlock my core orbit potential and that's when the real breakthroughs started. I'm talking about passive energetic dividends, vision based clarity loops, synergistic soul craft, the whole thing."

The corridor gives a quiet shudder as they pass beneath a stone arch covered in tiny bells, none of them ring. Eileen, not wanting to be rude and appreciating the route guidance to the knowledgeable Quills, holds her breath. She really wants to ask why the hallway seems to be breathing, but it feels too rude to interrupt.

So instead, she simply listens as Xozo inhales sharply through her nose, winding herself up for the big reveal. "I didn't even know what ectoplasmic synergy was before the dream," she says. "I was just going to school, being miserable, pretending I didn't care. Then boom, this dream hits me like an echo from the beyond."

She pauses dramatically, her cloak swirling as she stops in front of a curtain made of maroon glass beads hanging like rain pretending to be precious. "The dream started in this abandoned market, totally empty, except the food court which had three suns, all rotating backwards. And then… the clipboards."

Eileen tilts her head slightly. Xozo clarifies, "Floating. With pens attached. Hundreds of them. They started chasing me, and every time I turned around, there were more. I tried to hide in a candle shop, but they kept spawning, multiplying, breeding. By the end, they were singing a pitch deck in a twelve part harmony."

Eileen places a hand lightly on her chest, more for Xozo then herself. "Right?" Xozo beams. "And when I woke up, there was a brochure underneath my pillow. Spirit stock grade paper too, still warm, must have been hot off the press."

Eileen nods now, more out of sheer kindness. Xozo grins, basking in the moment. "And that is how I got involved with ectoplasmic synergy. Trust me, the passive income alone will set me up. They'll see I'm worthy of the respect my ancestors garnered."

Xozo turns and flourishes the curtain in front of them. Each smooth maroon bead swaying gently, strung on fine silk thread anchored to the ceiling. Some even vibrate after witnessing the flourish, as if they appreciate the drama of the story.

"I don't know, Xozo," Eileen says gently. "Passive income doesn't often come with buying so much of the product up front. This ascension accelerator you mentioned…"

Xozo eyes flick toward the curtain as if it might have ears and Eileen finds her words trailing off, "As a former business owner, I've had to wrestle with the intricacies of inventory and overhead... It's an often overlooked specialty...."

Xozo shrugs beneath her cloak, the movement exaggerated, slightly theatrical. "I'm just not explaining it well," she says. "My coach will do a much better job. We'll go see them after we get the information from the Ebony Quills."

She lifts one hand and cuts off any reply from Eileen with a practiced wave. "Trust me, they'll convince you right away. You could even be my first downline distributor."

Eileen chooses not to reply. Instead, she smiles, soft and sweet, the kind of smile meant to change the subject without bruising the moment. She gestures toward the curtain. "The Quills?"

"Yeah," Xozo says, her voice dropping just slightly into a mix of fear and respect. "Just a headsup, they're efficient. They handle administration for the entire complex. Rumor is they would've taken over the supply chain too if Zenthos hadn't blocked it in committee."

She pauses and chews at the inside of her cheek. "But they've been distracted lately. Preparing for the broadcast, which means…" She pauses again, dramatically, as if Eileen could ever possibly guess what she is about to say next.

"It means they haven't been eating enough, which is probably the only reason this is even going to work. So my advice? Don't try to overpower them. They're not a species you can beat physically."

Eileen nods thoughtfully, as though beating them physically had ever even been an option for her. Then Xozo, with a quiet breath, reaches forward and parts the beads. The strands clack softly as she passes through, the maroon glass catching the light and holding it like a secret with glow bottled up inside.

Moving beyond the curtain, Eileen enters a large atrium, cool and immaculate, impossibly tall. Towering concentric rings spiral upward into the gloom, each floor packed with shelves, library books, and writing desks arranged with obsessive care. The levels rise twenty high, maybe more, each one identical in layout, as if the entire place has been copied from itself again and again.

At the center of the room sits a massive desk carved from dark wood. It gleams like something polished with too much focus. On and around it swarm hundreds of tiny faeries, each no taller than pint sized candlesticks, with ivory skin and thin maroon wings like dried blood pressed between pages.

The faeries do not flutter, they flit. It is not only a feature of their size, but something enhanced by the glint across their wings, like wet thread catching light. They move quickly and precisely, lashing one another with delicate, gleaming strands attached to whips while shouting in what seems to be their native tongue, a language made entirely of syllables that sound like melting consonants slurred over the din of a noisy bar.

Eileen watches for a long moment, then nods slowly. "Well," she says quietly, mostly to herself, "it's tidy, at least."

She steps forward, following Xozo, doing her best not to avert her gaze. It is clear these creatures would not respond well to kindness, or to violence, as Xozo had mentioned. That means she would need information if she was to succeed here.

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Her eyes begin to register the threads attached to their whips, which are slick with each other's wounds. 'Blood used like ink?'. The strands arc and flick, the blood splattering onto slips of paper, guided with uncanny precision. Crimson ink flows into the grain of the scrolls, which curl and uncurl with an almost thoughtful grace, fluttering toward the desk and away again.

It is a grisly sight, all rhythm and repetition. Somehow almost beautiful in its horror, in that sick, twisted way the brain will do anything to rationalize the violence it sees. An errant thought stealing Eileen's breath a moment later. 'If madness had a script, it would look like this.'

A hand at the small of her back guides her gently from the moment and nudges her toward a red rope waiting queue, where two figures already stand ahead.

One of the figures ahead is cloaked in black, trimmed with burnished gold. It does not speak, and the faeries, now sharp eyed and silent, pass it scroll after scroll. Each document disappears into the folds of its robe, vanishing like smoke drawn into the mouth of a bottle. The second figure is more difficult to ignore. It is a broad, lizard shaped creature standing upright, its scaly frame restless with irritation. Its shoulders are hunched with the heavy patience of someone used to waiting, and its claws, though not clean, appear recently wiped enough to avoid offense. It shifts from foot to foot, emits a huff that smells faintly metallic, and paces just slightly in place. When Eileen and Xozo step into line behind it, the creature turns.

Its nostrils flare, reacting to the scent rising from the gift drum Xozo pushes on the hand truck in front of them, the aroma wafting up dense and complex, filled with the warmth of braised roots and unfamiliar spices, but beneath that lies the unmistakable crawl of something else. There is the subtle scrape of tens of thousands of tiny legs moving together in a kind of buried symphony, not loud but present, a sound more felt than heard.

Xozo does not hesitate. She looks directly at the creature and speaks with a voice designed to carry. "Some creatures forget they're at the bottom of the food chain," she says, as if continuing a conversation already in progress. She glances sideways at Eileen, her words pointed but casual, before looking again at the creature in front of them in challenge. Her smile is slow and deliberate, it carries no friendliness, only an almost theatrical anticipation, the expression of someone who knows exactly what will happen next.

Eileen blinks, caught by the sharpness of the remark. The casual cruelty in Xozo's tone is so unexpected that it takes her a moment to catch up to what is happening, her eyebrows drawing together slightly as her mind tries to make sense of the provocation. She does not understand the strategy yet but the moment is already unfolding.

"I don't beg," the lizard growls. Its voice is low and hoarse, thick with offense. "If I want the drum, I will take the drum. If I want a taste, I will take a taste."

Without warning, it crouches and lashes out. One talon punching clean through the side of the drum. The metal hums with the force of the strike, splitting in a long, clean tear. Steam bursts into the air in a soft hiss, and the creature lifts its claw to its mouth, licking slowly. Its eyes begin to gleam, the hunger in them shifting into something more focused followed by a flicker of surprise, of recognition, and then something that might even be delight.

The creature's eyes narrow, it lowers its claw but does not speak again right away. Instead, it seems to weigh the moment, turning slightly so that its body now faces both Eileen and Xozo as well as the massive desk. It does not retreat, it does not advance. Finally a sound escapes its throat, something between a chuff and a warning growl, a statement of intent made more with breath than words.

Eileen does not flinch, but she does step gently to the side, her movements careful and fluid, as if she is trying to avoid startling a wild animal or slipping past a very old, very temperamental machine. Her expression remains calm, almost kindly apologetic, as if this were nothing more than a slight inconvenience and not the prelude to something more dangerous.

From the desk, the faeries shriek in sudden unison. The sound is thin and sharp, like tearing paper, "Next."

The lizard tenses, for a moment, it looks toward the desk, then back toward the drum, then toward Xozo and Eileen. It huffs again, more forceful this time, and its lips pull back from its teeth in a show that might be intended as a threat or perhaps something more uncertain.

"I will enjoy my meal," it says, not to any one person but to the room itself. "At my leisure."

The faeries do not repeat their command. Instead, there is a stillness, taut and brimming. A silence that feels stretched, as though the air itself is waiting for something to break. Xozo's voice answers, low and syrup slick. It cuts through the room with unnerving ease. "It's not your meal," she says.

She does not look at the creature, her gaze is fixed instead on the desk, where the faeries have frozen in their flitting, their small bodies hovering with precise stillness. Their wings no longer shimmering with motion, only with tension.

"It's a gift for the Quills," Xozo continues. "It's their meal, and you've stolen it."

The lizard does not understand at first, its eyes shifting from face to face, searching for something to anchor the moment. But then as the silence deepens and no one else moves, comprehension begins to dawn. There is a flicker behind its eyes, not confusion, not even fear at first. Just the sense of something terribly old and terribly true clicking into place.

The realization arrives slowly, and when it does, fear follows fast behind it.

It tries to move, but it is already too late.

Xozo is already moving. She grabs Eileen and throws them both to the floor in one fluid motion, Xozo using her body to cushion Eileen's impact. Together they slide across the polished tiles with just enough force and just enough speed to carry them out of reach. There is no time for a scream, no time for panic, only the abrupt change from standing to falling and the coldness of the floor sweeping beneath them.

Behind them, it happens. The sound is not like an attack, it is not even like a meal. It is something older, something deeper, like thunder trapped in a glass jar. First loud, then distant, then gone. There is a flurry of motion that cannot be seen, only felt. A rush of heat, of wind, of voices layered over each other so tightly that they become one continuous sound. Then silence, not true silence, but the echo of something vast and final. A hush that arrives not as a consequence, but as a response to a ritual that presses in at the edges, not emptiness but the opposite, a fullness so dense it gives the illusion of stillness.

Xozo continues to hold Eileen down. Her grip is firm but not rough, more protection than restraint. She stays like that until long after the sound has died, until the last flicker of wing and whip has fallen into stillness. The air is thick with something unnamable, a texture that clings to the skin and sinks into the hair, into the folds of clothing, into breath.

The atrium is immaculate. Not a trace of what just occurred remains. No claw marks, no torn metal, no blood. Even the gift drum has been righted, its surface sealed again as if it had never been pierced. The tiles around it gleam, each one polished and untouched. Scrolls drift through the air in graceful arcs, curling and uncurling in perfect rhythm, as if the interruption had never happened.

Eileen sits up slowly, the movement cautious and deliberate. Her eyes move across the space, searching for some sign, some remnant, but there is nothing, it is as if the lizard never existed. She frowns, soft and slow, and thinks again of Xozo's earlier words. 'Efficient', 'They handle administration.' Her heart stirs uneasily at the memory of the creature's voice, the confusion in its final expression, the fear.

'Did it have to die? Did it really?'

She tucks the horror down into the center of herself, placing it where she stores things she does not have the time or space to feel and it sits like a stone in her belly. Measured as she is though, her face gives nothing away. She rises instead to a stand, moving with a calm that is practiced, her breath shallow and controlled. The taste of the moment lingers in her mouth, bitter like tea brewed too strong.

Until she finds herself lingering again on the creature's final expression. There had been fear, yes, but not the raw panic of prey. It had been deeper, the kind of fear only parents know, the kind that sits in the bones and blooms in the moment they realize they will not see their brood again. It is a fear that speaks of things left unsaid and duties left unfulfilled, especially of the souls that survive in the wake of the event. Without fully understanding why the event has to take place. Eileen finds her head bowing slightly as she offers a slow breath, the kind of thanks a body gives not just for survival, but for surviving something it wishes it had never seen.

When she looks up, she sees that Xozo is already several feet ahead, moving briskly, pretending nothing happened. But when she notices Eileen has not followed, she stops, turns, and walks back to her. Her voice is lower now, almost a whisper, as though what she is about to say is a confession, or at least something meant to pass quietly between two people and not into the room itself.

"Maybe don't mention my ectoplasmic synergy venture to them," she says, glancing toward the faeries. "My coaches have lost quite a few downline distributors. The Quills aren't exactly open minded about passive income streams."

Eileen does not reply aloud, but a thought rises in her mind, clean and clear. So they eat the downline distributors, just for mildly inconveniencing them? The idea settles into her bones. It is not surprising, but it is new, a truth reshaping her understanding of the situation. These faeries had to be treated like criminals they were. It was likely they were not governed by concepts like negotiation or fairness. They would require a different kind of solution, a different kind of posture, the sort reserved for dealing with cruel adults. The same kind she has prepared to use with the Dawkith Lorth she is here to meet.

Before she can say anything more, Xozo speaks again. "Eileen, this is Mora Relle. Mora Relle…"

Xozo gets no further.

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