Doubts and the Mission Begins (First Update)

Before Natasha Romanoff began the operation, she raised doubts about the mission. She leaned closer, carrying the scents of body wash and shampoo, hot black tea and butter cookies. "The Trinity? I've never heard of this organization!" she said. "Its name has never appeared in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. Is this some organization like Hydra?"

"There's plenty S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know! In fact, S.H.I.E.L.D. had only just touched the surface when it was met with a counterattack from beneath." The arcanist curled his lip disdainfully. He was quite willing to tell her about Kamar-Taj's fifteen hundred years of observations of the mundane world, provided Natasha gave up her fixed notion that "S.H.I.E.L.D. knows everything."

Over Kamar-Taj's long course of development, the Sanctum Sanctorum's mundane agents had inevitably clashed and cooperated with certain groups in economic matters. It was an exceptionally long and fascinating story. Even the mundane agents themselves had formed secret societies based around families. No matter how the members of those societies changed, their purpose was always to provide Kamar-Taj with supplies and people.

Mundane families referred to arcanists with honorifics such as angels and exalted ones. Gifted children from those families would join Kamar-Taj to study, completely leaving behind worldly concerns. This phenomenon was called "ascension." Like the Malik family's Black Stone Ritual, it was a means of forging family consensus. Likewise, arcanist apprentices who rose from mundane families into Kamar-Taj formed the earliest arcanist families, but their ties went no further than that. Even without an order from The Venerable One, arcanists would not show much concern for their blood relatives. After all, their pursuits were fundamentally different; they had nothing to talk about.

The histories of those mundane families had provided Salomon's purge with abundant experience, because some mundane families had indeed tried to become independent after treating