Deathtotenastronome preferred rooms that smelled like disinfectant and metal. The sterile scent meant rules existed. Rules meant levers. Inside the Death Regime relay chamber—violet-gray walls, sealed seams, pressure lights that never warmed—he stood under a narrow strip of illumination and watched the mission timer crawl toward a clean interval. His pupils held their signature cross-shaped glow, faint until he focused, then bright enough to make the air feel clinically awake. Across from him, a containment console displayed Sollarisca's Heliacalisunn State as a layered stack of civic organs: clinic routing, public signage cadence, dispatch spine, transport rhythm. The map did not show streets first. It showed breathing.
A Death Regime handler slid a sealed case onto the table. No flourish. No sermon. The latch clicked like a contract.
"Decapitation feint," the handler said. "You do not need the head. You need the neck to turn."
Deathtotenastronome placed two fingers on the case and felt the cold through the shell. "Which neck?"
"Continuity operators. Verification engineers. Escort coordinators." The handler's tone stayed flat, as if reading inventory. "Make AES reveal them under stress. Force an overcommit in authority. Capture their cadence. Extract proof."
Deathtotenastronome's mouth curved into a thin, private smile. "So I build an emergency that behaves like a system."
The handler didn't blink. "Half-hour window discipline. You shift nodes before they settle. You leave them correcting civilians instead of hunting extraction."
Deathtotenastronome lifted the case lid. Inside lay his tools in foam cutouts: slim vials with plum-violet caps, wafer-thin black-metal seals etched with cruciform glyphs, a palm-sized injector rig that looked like a medical device until you noticed the ritual markings along the barrel. He took out one wafer seal and held it between thumb and forefinger. The sigil did not flare. It waited.
"Copy their language," he said, more to himself than anyone. "Then sell it back to them as 'official.'"
The insertion craft touched Sollarisca's coastline under low rotor noise and colder weather cover. It wasn't dramatic. It was deliberate. He rode alone in the rear compartment, harness clipped, mask loose at his throat, listening through the hull to the engine's cadence. A system always revealed itself through repetition. When they crossed inland into Heliacalisunn State, the lights of Solarquiellebeque Reach{capital city} pulsed far away like a steady heart. He did not go there first. Capitals were where people looked. He wanted a place where people obeyed.
Sluaspool's clinic corridor sat along a service spine that fed small neighborhoods and supply lanes—routine enough to be trusted, important enough to matter. He stepped off the craft, coat falling into place, boots silent on wet pavement, and let his cross-pupil gaze sweep the street. He read the scene like a chart: a delivery truck backing into a bay, a nurse smoking in a doorway, a security camera cycling its pattern with a predictable pause between pans.
He moved on that pause.
Two fingers pressed to a maintenance seam, and the black-metal wafer slid into the gap like a key shaped as a parasite. It learned the clinic's cadence without lighting up. Deathtotenastronome's maroon-violet aura gathered tight around his shoulders—disciplined layers, thin enough to hide inside normal signal flow. He didn't "cast" so much as splice.
Inside the clinic's routing console, a containment warning appeared with the correct header font, correct municipal spacing, correct tone. It did not scream. It advised.
Quarantine advisory. Maintain lane order. Report to triage corridor B.
The first civilians complied the way tired people comply with a sign. They formed a line. They lowered their voices. They stopped asking questions that cost energy.
A receptionist glanced up, uneasy. "Did we—schedule a drill?"
A medic answered, already moving. "No. But the system says—"
Deathtotenastronome watched the compliance curve rise through the camera feed he'd quietly taken over. No panic. No stampede. Just a city accepting instruction as safety.
On the sidewalk outside, a Solar escort team arrived within minutes—orange-lit visors, disciplined spacing, palms open rather than weapons raised. They moved like professionals. That mattered. He wasn't hunting civilians. He was hunting competence.
One of the Solar escorts spoke into a mic with a calm that could be copied. "Verified lanes only. Stay inside the markers. We will guide you."
Deathtotenastronome's wafer seal recorded the cadence. It captured the phrase breaks, the breath spacing, the authority tone that made frightened people stand still.
A bystander whispered, voice sharp with fear. "It's the Death Regime—why is the clinic sealing?"
A Solar guard answered without looking at him. "Do not chase the noise. Protect the lanes."
Deathtotenastronome turned away from the clinic before anyone thought to look for a person behind the warning. His objective wasn't to "win" Sluaspool. It was to force predictable behavior, then leave before the correction became a trap.
He shifted to Solustshire City by cargo rail, riding in a maintenance car with his case strapped to his knee. The train's green-orange corridor lights flickered as they passed junctions: Redmount Town slipping by in the dark, then the more structured grid of Solustshire City's service yards. He used the travel time to assemble the next layer. One wafer became two. Two became a chain of listening points. Each seal learned a different civic rhythm—dispatch in one, signage in another, broadcast integrity in a third.
In Solustshire City, he hit the dispatch spine.
The injection was surgical: a routing override that looked like a routine congestion adjustment. Ambulances began looping into slower arterial routes. Hospital queues filled with "late arrivals," then generated the kind of complaint that creates public anger. The system started arguing with itself in front of witnesses.
A dispatcher slammed a palm on her desk. "Why are we sending them to Oragow when the nearest triage is here?"
A second dispatcher's voice cracked. "The console says it's authorized!"
Outside, an ambulance driver leaned out of the window and shouted at a crowd that had gathered to watch the delay. "Back up! We're rerouting!"
The crowd tightened, not violent yet, just dense enough to become dangerous.
"It's official—move aside!" someone yelled.
A Solar medic shouted back, sharp enough to cut through the noise. "Stop. Stay back. Follow escort markers!"
Deathtotenastronome watched through hijacked traffic cameras as a Star Regime elite arrived with a small kit and a colder expression. The figure's visor flashed green with verification glyphs that looked like math made visible.
Starconservation.
He recognized the name from the Westonglappa chatter he'd studied. A containment mind. A lane mind. Someone trained to treat trust as a physical asset.
Starconservation stepped into the intersection and lifted a small projector. Green lane arrows appeared on the asphalt—clean, unforgeable geometry linked to a checksum pulse.
"Manual override," Starconservation said. "Silence external packets. Dispatch stays local."
A Solar escort replied, tense. "If we shut packets, we lose speed."
Starconservation didn't blink. "You already lost speed. You're arguing with a forgery."
Deathtotenastronome's cross pupils brightened a fraction as he listened. He did not interrupt. He recorded the phrasing. This was the language he wanted—precise, repeatable, immune to emotion.
He deployed the next step.
A second containment warning—this one "escalated"—appeared across municipal screens in Solustshire City with a signature that mimicked an internal public-health authority. It ordered civilians to report to a "processing corridor" near Anedalesun Town's verification annex.
The compliance curve spiked.
A citizen's voice cut through the street like an anime blade. "He's hacking the city like it's breathing!"
Starconservation's head snapped toward the nearest kiosk, reading the refresh pattern the way a pilot reads turbulence. "Find the injection point. Now."
Deathtotenastronome was already gone.
Anedalesun Town sat smaller, colder in tone, with narrow streets that made escort geometry compressible. He arrived by ground vehicle at the edge of town and walked the last blocks on foot to keep his footprint clean. The verification annex was a modest building with civic signage and a predictable patrol rotation. He didn't need to break in. He needed to make it look like someone else was about to break in.
He leaked the feint through compromised civic channels: a short intercept claiming a BRD assassination team was inbound for an "administrative decapitation." The language was deliberate—just plausible enough to force a high-level response, just urgent enough to tempt a credential exception.
Within minutes, AES arrived in force. Not Supreme Commanders. Not Absolute Leaders. The middle layer that keeps nations moving: escorts, engineers, verification techs, operators with keyed access.
A Solar lieutenant-elite—Sunbrass—took point at the annex steps, orange shimmer tight around his hands like heat held in a fist. He wasn't posturing. He was ready.
Two Moon Guards accompanied the team, quiet and disciplined, their presence meant to stabilize a crowd before it started. A Star liaison stood beside them, eyes scanning for pattern breaks.
Sunbrass spoke once, calm, directive. "Hold the perimeter. No civilian movement into the annex. Verification stays inside the lane."
Deathtotenastronome's seals listened. They drank the cadence. They learned the posture of authority under pressure.
A Star tech stepped up to the annex console, fingers already moving across a portable verification spool. "Permissions are perishable," the tech said. "Nothing travels clean."
A Solar escort frowned. "We need a fast exception to lock the building."
The Star tech's reply came out hard. "Exceptions are what they want."
Deathtotenastronome's pupils brightened again. He didn't smile. He absorbed.
He triggered the first confrontation as a clock-tax, not a duel.
The annex doors sealed with a hiss. Overhead lights shifted to containment mode. A biohazard flag appeared on a public screen with the correct administrative header, the correct warning tone, the correct signature block.
Civilians outside saw the red icon and stepped back. Fear doesn't need a monster; it needs a symbol.
A Moon Guard murmured, tight. "That's going to start rumors."
Sunbrass's voice sharpened. "We hold the lane. No one runs."
From a side alley, Death Soldiers emerged—gray-violet armor, clinical masks, movements too smooth to be human fatigue. They weren't there to slaughter. They were there to make the defenders spend attention.
Starconservation appeared at the edge of the street, having followed the routing anomalies with ruthless efficiency. He lifted his hand, and green verification glyphs pulsed across the pavement like a heartbeat that belonged to AES.
"Collapse unverified broadcast slots," Starconservation commanded. "Silence is cleaner than poison."
A Solar escort shouted, suddenly raw. "It's the Death Regime! They're inside the system!"
Starconservation didn't even glance at the voice. "Name it later. Fix it now."
Deathtotenastronome let the confrontation happen in slices.
A Death Soldier raised a palm; violet sigils spun, and a thin aerosol shimmer drifted across the annex steps—harmless in dose, terrifying in optics. Sensors spiked. A kiosk emitted a warning tone. The crowd's knees locked.
Sunbrass stepped forward and snapped his hand outward. Heat shimmer rippled across the air and burned the aerosol into harmless steam before it reached the civilians. The action was controlled, a warning rather than an attack.
A Death Soldier lunged anyway, and Sunbrass met the strike with a solar flare that flashed orange against gray-violet. Metal rang. Magic pressure pushed. The exchange stayed tight, efficient, built to protect the lane rather than chase the enemy.
Deathtotenastronome watched the duel through a camera feed, then shifted his attention to the real target: the Star tech at the annex console.
The tech had opened a diagnostic channel.
It was a small mistake. A human mistake. A desire to "see" the problem quickly.
Deathtotenastronome's wafer seal slid into that channel like a needle into a vein. It didn't override. It mirrored. It copied the verification phrases as they were typed and spoken aloud.
Starconservation noticed the micro-lag and snapped his head toward the console. "Stop. Close the channel. You're feeding something."
The tech's eyes widened. "I—needed the—"
Starconservation cut the sentence. "You needed time. Time is what he sells."
Deathtotenastronome used the moment of human hesitation to force the decapitation feint to pay out. The system blinked.
For 0.6 seconds, a phantom authorization tier appeared on the annex display: Priority Routing—Operator Class. It carried enough weight to tempt the wrong hands into touching the wrong button.
A municipal official inside the annex stared at the prompt like it was salvation. "If I authorize that, we can reopen lanes—"
Starconservation's voice snapped into the room like a steel rod. "Do not. That's the trap."
Outside, a civilian shouted, panicked and furious. "Open the doors! The system says it's authorized!"
Sunbrass planted his feet and answered without heat. "Back. Stay inside the markers."
Deathtotenastronome heard it all. He recorded it all. Then he ended the confrontation the way he preferred: by leaving the defenders holding the mess while he carried the method away.
He withdrew his Death Soldiers in a clean sequence—two steps back, smoke cover, alley extraction—never giving Sunbrass a satisfying chase. A pursuit would have been emotional. Emotion creates stories. Stories create heroes. Heroes create focus. Focus was the one resource he didn't want to donate.
Starconservation took two strides after them anyway, green glyphs flashing in his wake. He raised his palm and launched a lattice of star-green lines across the alley mouth—containment geometry designed to pin movement.
Deathtotenastronome stepped into the edge of the lattice as if testing a blade. Violet sigils gathered around his wrists, then folded inward into a cruciform spiral. He didn't break the lattice head-on. He slid under its timing. The lines pulsed, and he moved in the micro-gap between pulses with a precision that made it look like luck to anyone who didn't understand systems.
Starconservation's eyes narrowed. "He anticipated the cadence."
A Solar escort shouted, voice ragged. "How is he always ahead?"
Starconservation answered without drama. "He's listening."
Deathtotenastronome vanished into service corridors that smelled of damp concrete and engine oil. He didn't celebrate. He verified results.
In his hand, a wafer seal warmed slightly as it completed its recording—phrases, tones, signature cadence, the procedural language AES used to make civilians obey the right thing. That language was now a weapon template.
He reached a quiet maintenance bay outside Soltrielleseer—industrial edges, low lights, the kind of place where cameras were plentiful and attention was scarce. He opened his case and placed the seals in order, like evidence on a lab tray. His cross pupils dimmed as he switched from hunting to filing.
On a secure channel, the Death Regime handler's voice returned. "Did you get what you needed?"
Deathtotenastronome's reply stayed calm. "I got their voice. I got their phrasing. I got their refusal points." He paused, eyes on the time stamp. "I also got the moment where they nearly touched the wrong authorization."
The handler didn't ask for poetry. "Next window?"
Deathtotenastronome looked at the civic map of Heliacalisunn State: Redmount Town to Solustshire City, Soltrielleseer to Solarquiellebeque Reach{capital city}. The nodes now had one additional layer—his listening sigils embedded where defenders would look last. He didn't need a bigger attack. He needed a better impersonation.
His cross pupils brightened again, faint violet reflecting off the black-metal seals.
"Start the half-hour," he said. "This time, we don't move the crowd first. We move the operators. Make them chase their own 'official.' Make them overcommit authority where we can see it."
On the edge of the map, a small icon blinked—broadcast integrity node—then steadied, as if the system had decided nothing was wrong.
Deathtotenastronome watched the steady light and felt the next interval forming, clean and inevitable.
Somewhere in Heliacalisunn State, a screen would soon display a message in AES's own cadence, with AES's own calm, with AES's own phrasing.
And the people who kept the continent governable would have to decide—fast—whether the voice was real.
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