STRINGS OF THE MASTER : WHEN MYTH BECOMES REALITY

The hum of the jet's engines was the only sound for a long while, steady and unyielding as the clouds gave way to the frostbitten blues of upper Siberia. Outside the reinforced windows, the landscape was a blur of white and steel sky. Inside, tension was far louder than any turbulence.

Brakka sat at the helm, fingers gliding across the console with precision, eyes flicking occasionally between the altitude display and the encrypted map overlay. His concentration was total, his silence absolute.

Vranos, however, was anything but quiet.

Lounging in a reclined seat upholstered in dark synthetic leather, he stretched like a cat, arms over his head, one leg crossed casually over the other. His crimson jacket hung open, his shirt undone at the collar. He stared at Fenrir and Elira sitting on opposite ends of the cabin.

"Well," he drawled, eyes glinting mischievously. "It's not like I was expecting romance novels, but the tension between you two could power half the grid."

Elira said nothing. Fenrir didn't even blink.

Vranos chuckled. "You know, usually lovebirds just fight or sleep together. This whole cold war thing? It's a bit melodramatic."

"Shut up," Fenrir muttered without turning.

Vranos grinned wider. "Ah, there it is."

Elira stood, brushing off his comment like static. She crossed the cabin toward the supply compartment at the rear of the jet. The walls shifted open with a hydraulic hiss as she entered the compact operations bay built into the aircraft.

She checked the rows of stacked reserves—power cells, compact fusion batteries, nano-sheath armor patches, emergency data sync units. Everything was there. Everything was calibrated. Still, she checked again. Then again.

She could feel the ghost of Fenrir's eyes behind her. He hadn't spoken much since the chamber, since the moment they returned and she said nothing about what she had seen. And she hadn't told him yet about the replica core in her arm. It wasn't just secrecy—it was fear.

Ever since the exposure to the true Purpose Core, she had expected… something. A shift. A surge. Clarity. Power. Revelation. But instead…

Nothing.

Or perhaps something so delicate that it moved beneath the surface of conscious thought. Like a breath beneath water. She didn't feel smarter. Or stronger. Or different. And that terrified her more than any vision of transformation ever could.

Was she unchanged?

Or was the change already underway, too subtle for her to recognize? Would she wake up one morning and find herself speaking someone else's words?

Failure wouldn't just mean mission collapse. It wouldn't just mean disgrace or recalibration. Failure could mean Fenrir's death.

And for the first time in her short, immortal existence, Elira wasn't sure she could survive that.