The Predators Dance

Catherine's mind became a lake of ice. Panic, frustration, fear all these futile emotions were drowned under a wave of cold, absolute focus. Her plan was a failure.

Her calculations were wrong.

She had pushed a pawn and triggered an avalanche.

So be it.

A strategist is not judged on their ability to craft a perfect plan, but on their ability to adapt when that plan shatters.

And right now, the chaos unfolding in Spinners' Alley was a spectacle of unparalleled informational richness. She could not intervene, but she could watch. She could learn.

Her psychic vision focused on the scene, a shadow theater of which she was the sole spectator.

The Inquisitorial squad wasted no time on subtleties.

Brother Micah, their leader, approached the door of Jun-Ho Park's house.

He did not attempt to pick the lock or break it down. He simply placed his palm on the dark wood. A pure white light, so intense it seemed painful even through Catherine's perception, emanated from his hand.

"In the name of the Flame, I judge this lock to be corrupt and this threshold, impure!" His voice, even perceived from a distance, was an instrument of fanatic certainty.

The wood groaned. The metal of the lock twisted and melted like wax, not from heat, but as if the very reality of its existence had been judged as false and had dissolved.

The door swung wide open in a supernatural silence. The Inquisitors entered, moving as a single entity, their white auras like lances of light in the darkness of the house.

Catherine felt Jun-Ho Park's pure terror, a high-pitched note of panic that overwhelmed all his other threads. The old man, cornered in his living room, dropped his lantern, which sputtered out.

"Heretic!" Micah's voice thundered from inside.

"By order of the Church of the Purifying Flame, you are under arrest for thirty years of complicity with darkness! Confess your sins, and perhaps your soul will know purification!"

Catherine expected them to seize him.

But The Rook was an adept of the Pathway of Pride, and his pride left nothing to chance. The moment the Inquisitors took a step toward the old man, the house itself seemed to come alive.

Invisible runes, engraved into the foundations, lit up with an oppressive gray glow.

The power of the Fortress. Catherine felt an immense pressure, as if the air in the house were thickening into tar. It was a seal of suppression, designed to stifle the powers of other Pathways.

The white light of the Inquisitors flickered, losing its intensity.

"A sorcerer's cage!" shouted one of Micah's acolytes.

The walls of the corridor began to groan, the stones seeming to press inward to crush the intruders. The floor beneath Micah's feet cracked, not to collapse, but to reveal spectral iron chains that shot out to ensnare him.

It was a battle of concepts. The Judgement of the Church, which sought to expose and purify, against the Pride of The Rook, which sought to dominate, constrain, and imprison.

The white light fought against the gray runes, each force attempting to impose its law on the reality of the room.

And in the midst of this chaos of conceptual magic, a new actress entered the stage.

From an alcove concealed by a false bookcase, a slender figure dressed in black leather appeared in a flash of movement. Catherine had not sensed her. She was an adept of the Pathway of the Secret Door, a specialist in discretion.

A woman. Her face was a mask of cold focus, two curved daggers in her hands. She was The Rook's assassin, the house's true security. Her name was unknown to Catherine, but her role was obvious: the executioner.

Her mission was not to protect Park, but to silence him if the cage was ever compromised.

The assassin, called Isabelle, did not throw herself at the Inquisitors. She went straight for her target: Jun-Ho Park.

Micah saw her. "Protect the heretic! He must be interrogated!" he yelled to his men.

The battle erupted on three fronts.

The Inquisitors fought against the house's traps while trying to stop Isabelle.

Isabelle, with supernatural agility, dodged the spectral chains and bursts of holy light, her daggers aimed at the terrified old man's heart.

And Jun-Ho Park, at the center of this storm of violence, did the only thing a cornered rat could do.

As the attention of all the predators was turned on each other Micah parrying a wall that was trying to crush him, Isabelle dodging a ray of sacred light Park threw himself to the floor.

He crawled into the darkness, slipping behind an overturned armchair. The service door to the kitchen, which no one was watching anymore, yawned like a promise of salvation.

No one saw him. No one, except Catherine.

Her mind, detached from the chaos, observed every move on the chessboard. She saw the old man slip out of the house, a trembling shadow disappearing into the night.

She had lost.

The Church would likely cleanse the house, leaving no evidence.

Isabelle would fail her mission and have to retreat. Catherine's lead, her only tangible connection to The Rook, was now in the wild, a terrified old man who could run anywhere.

But as panic threatened to overwhelm her, another thought, cold and exhilarating, took its place.

It was a disaster, yes. But it was also an opportunity.

The Rook would think his secret was safe, about to be purified by the Church.

The Church thought they had cornered a heretic, unaware that he had slipped through their fingers. Both factions were now blind.

But she, Catherine, the silent spectator, was the only one who knew.

The only one who knew that the prey had escaped the cage.

The hunt was not over.

It had just begun again, but on a much larger playing field: the entire city. And it was now a race.

A three-way race.

The Rook, the Church, and her. The first one to find Jun-Ho Park would win the game.

A thin smile spread across her lips in the gloom of her library.

The initial plan was dead. Long live the new plan.