Infiltration

The afterglow of victory was a fleeting warmth against the new, permanent chill in her soul. Veridia Vex stood on a windswept hill overlooking the Tithelands, the last echoes of the Host Swap's intoxicating power fading into the quiet hum of her own being. For the first time since her exile began, the gnawing hunger of the Sieve was silent, sated by a vintage of triumph and humiliation that had been her sister's alone. It was a novel sensation, this peace. It was boring. Below her, the lights of Argent glittered, a perfect, maddening grid of order in the sprawling dark.

A shimmer of heat-haze in the cold air announced the arrival of the pest. Seraphine materialized, her illusory form draped in ethereal silks, a picture of smug, untouchable perfection.

"Enjoying the quiet, sister?" Seraphine's voice was a silken purr, dripping with condescension. "While you were preening over your little ratings victory, basking in the afterglow of your one clever trick, I was diversifying my portfolio. An army of brutes is so much more reliable than the fleeting whims of an audience, don't you think?" She gestured vaguely toward the distant mountains, where the faint glow of Orc forges tainted the horizon. "Warlord Grummash is quite receptive when one speaks his language: results."

Veridia felt a flash of pure, aristocratic contempt, followed by a cold stone of pragmatism in her gut. An army. Of filthy, grunting Orcs. A strategy of such brutish simplicity it was almost insulting. Yet, it was a strategy. A tangible force she could not match with spectacle alone. The life-link, that final, spiteful curse Seraphine had forged between them, was a constant, infuriating tether. She felt the distant echo of her sister's new alliance through it—a faint thrum of violent, disciplined power that was not her own. A war of attrition was impossible. She needed an advantage outside the demonic game. She needed a weapon that could shatter an army.

Ignoring Seraphine's vapid commentary on logistics and morale, Veridia focused inward, taking inventory of her winnings. Most of the Boons from her climactic performance against Ignis had been ephemeral, but one remained. A small, pulsating crystal, a gift from Matron Vesperia for the sheer aesthetic beauty of the Manticore's defeat. The Veil of Un-being. One hour of perfect, conceptual invisibility.

"I'm going to raid their treasury," Veridia declared, her voice flat and final, her gaze fixed on the citadel at the heart of the city.

Seraphine's laughter was like the shattering of fine glass. "The treasury of King Theron Ironhand? Oh, this is magnificent! They don't just dislike our kind here, Veridia. They *cleanse* it. To them, you are a spiritual disease. This will be your highest-rated episode yet. A suicide mission, broadcast live!"

Veridia's hand closed around the crystal. She crushed it. It did not shatter but imploded, pulling light and sound into its collapsing heart. The sensation was not of fading, but of being subtracted from the world. The wind no longer touched her skin. The scent of pine and cold stone vanished. She was a void, a silence, a piece of reality that had been neatly excised. She moved toward the city gates, a ghost walking into the lion's den.

***

Slipping past the city guards was trivial. The city itself was the true shock. It was a hell of a different sort, a hell of straight lines and sharp corners, of cobblestones swept clean of any character or filth. The architecture was severe, uniform, each building a block of disciplined stone, one indistinguishable from the next. The only sounds were the rhythmic, unified stamp of marching patrols and the solemn tolling of bells that marked the hours with grim precision. It was the oppressive, unbearable tyranny of order.

A deeper pressure pushed against her, a psychic weight her invisibility could not block. It was the city's collective, suffocating hatred, a constant, low-frequency hum of absolute certainty. On a stark plaster wall, a propaganda poster depicted a shining knight driving a sword through a monstrous, horned beast that bore a crude, but unmistakable, resemblance to her. Beneath it, the block letters read: PURITY IS OUR SHIELD. She heard snippets of conversation from passersby, their voices laced with a pious certainty as they spoke of cleansing the world of demonic taint and the glory of the Great Cleansing.

"My, my," Seraphine's voice echoed in her mind, the tone shifted from mockery to a kind of fascinated horror. "They really do hate us here. It's almost… sincere. Terribly unsophisticated, but the production values are impressive. This whole city is a single, monotonous set piece."

Veridia ignored her, navigating the sterile streets. Her own disdain for mortal squalor was replaced by a profound unease at their discipline. This wasn't the passionate, chaotic hatred she understood. This was cold, ideological, and absolute. She moved toward the central citadel, a spire of white stone that seemed to radiate an almost physical sense of conviction. This was their sanctum. And she was here to defile it.

***

The castle's mortal guards were just as oblivious as those at the gate. Veridia slipped through halls of polished marble, past tapestries that celebrated the Coalition's sanitized victories during *The Sweeps*. She found it soon enough: the Royal Treasury. A massive vault door of polished, unblemished silver, its surface a complex web of glowing, defensive runes that hummed with contained, holy power.

A single figure stood guard. A Paladin. He was perfectly still, a statue in immaculate plate armor that seemed to glow with a soft, internal light. His presence was more than physical. It was a font of holy energy, a passive aura of pure faith that sanctified the very air around him, imposing its own absolute reality on the space.

Veridia drew closer, her focus on the magical locks of the vault. As she entered the Paladin's aura, a sharp, burning cold lanced through her. Her Veil of Un-being, a magic of illusion and deception, began to sputter against the sheer, unwavering truth of the Paladin's faith. His presence wasn't a detection spell; it was a fundamental force, a law of reality that did not suffer a lie. And she, in her demonic concealment, was the ultimate lie.

Her invisibility flickered, the air around her distorting like heat haze. The Paladin's head turned slowly, his gaze sweeping the empty space where she stood. He had not seen her, but his expression hardened. He had sensed an impurity, a stain on the sacred air, a dissonant note in the hymn of his faith.

As his eyes passed over her location, her invisibility tore. For a single, violent instant, the Paladin's aura short-circuited the Boon, revealing a perfect, shimmering silhouette of her form against the silver door—a flash of horns, wings, and defiant pride. The magical crystal that powered her boon shattered into dust with a silent, psychic scream.

The Paladin's hand did not fly to his sword. It dropped, slow and deliberate, to the massive, rune-etched hilt of his greatsword. He took his first, measured step towards the empty space where the lie had been revealed.