Chapter Summaries

Elliot forced his way into the Nobles' House and confronted the nobles under Theresia's watch, using his strength and mysterious backing to establish a tense balance. Tobias began the proceedings to select a new emperor and nominated Fourth Prince Crawford.

• The nobles fled into the Nobles' House, but Elliot blasted through its locked doors and entered the council hall with Theresia hovering overhead.
• Elliot sat at the council table and laid down his longsword as the nobles, aware of his power and backing from [Casting Forge] and Theresia, avoided challenging him.
• Tobias abandoned his plan to impeach Sidney and announced that the Nobles' House would select a new emperor because Sidney could not govern.
• Tobias nominated Fourth Prince Crawford for emperor.

Elliot negotiated with the Sacred Blood Nobles over the Empire’s succession and the division of the Royal Family’s holdings. He secured control of the Hearthfire District and access to the Imperial Palace, leaving the amber-bound Victoria, Sidney, and Michel protected while he prepared to carry out his plan.

• The Nobles' House unanimously approved Crawford as emperor, with Elliot voting in favor.
• Elliot rejected the nobles’ allocation proposal and demanded control of the Hearthfire District and the Imperial Palace.
• The nobles opposed Elliot’s demand for the Imperial Palace, where Victoria, Sidney, and Michel remained trapped in [Amber].
• Elliot and the nobles argued and threatened one another before agreeing to preserve the Hearthfire District under Elliot’s authority.
• The agreement allowed Elliot and his subordinates to enter the Imperial Palace, while the nobles stationed observers there and required both sides to approve changes.

After securing the Hearthfire District through negotiations with the nobles, Elliot returned to his mansion while both sides prepared for a future confrontation. He planned an inspection tour to reassure the Communion, whose extensive presence across the district had begun to resemble a modern system of government.

• Elliot secured the Hearthfire District but recognized that the nobles had only postponed their conflict with him while they dealt with the Royal Family.
• Conrad watched Elliot return and ordered ten tons of tempered steel delivered to fit the Nobles' House with a sturdy door.
• Elsa received Elliot's telegram announcing his public tour of the Hearthfire District and understood it was meant to reassure its residents.
• Elsa ordered a grand welcome and gave workers and believers half a day off so they could attend Elliot's visit.
• Vanessa recognized that the Communion's network of believers and services functioned more like a nation than a Secret Society.

Elliot gathered the Communion’s believers to steal the Difference Engine Core from [The Thinker], which the Sacred Blood Nobles could use to monitor the Hearthfire District. Eleanor entered the Night Watch Bureau under cover and approached its underground machine room with Dorothea disguised as her colleague.

• Elsa arrived at the dream Courtyard and found Vanessa, Allen, and Dorothea gathered for a combat mission.
• Vanessa revealed that the Communion would take the Difference Engine Core from [The Thinker] before the nobles seized control of the Night Watch Bureau.
• Eleanor agreed to lead the operation, and Vanessa planned to use Dorothea’s mirror to get the group in and out.
• Elliot worried that Tobias might have foreseen the mission and brought several believers near the Bureau as backup.
• Eleanor entered Headquarters with official documents, then changed course toward the underground machine room with Dorothea posing as her colleague.

Eleanor and Vanessa infiltrated the underground machine room to steal the Difference Engine Core, but the alarms brought the nobles’ soldiers to The Thinker. After Allen rescued the core, Vanessa stayed behind to perform a sacrifice ritual that made the door vanish.

• Eleanor and Vanessa passed the security checkpoints, and Vanessa hypnotized a guard so they could enter the machine room.
• Vanessa used Spirit Vision to identify a door, but Eleanor’s key triggered an alarm; they eventually found The Thinker and Allen removed the Difference Engine Core.
• Dorothea sent ravens through the passage to hold off the approaching soldiers, while Crow warned the group that nobles had arrived.
• The group realized Vanessa was missing, and Allen rushed out to find her drawing a ritual by the first door.
• Vanessa revealed that her ritual was a sacrifice, then entered it and made the door vanish.

Elliot’s group escaped Tobias’s prophetic ambush using Dorothea’s mirrors and corpse-based abilities, though the crow form of Dorothea lost much of her intelligence. They returned safely to the Hearthfire District, leaving Elliot convinced that Honey-related powers could evade prophecy.

• Elliot chose the empty iron room marked as important by [Analysis] and ordered Dorothea to open mirrors as gunfire and crows sounded outside.
• Dorothea sent corpses with abilities such as [Acid Spit] and [Corpse Explosion] through the mirrors, throwing the Communion’s Believers into chaos and delaying the soldiers.
• The deaths of many crows reduced Dorothea’s vitality and intelligence, leaving her in idiot mode, so Allen watched her closely as the group escaped through the mirror passage.
• The group checked a randomly selected safe house, disguised themselves, and took a prepared carriage back to the Hearthfire District.
• Elliot concluded that Tobias had timed the ambush to maximize his gains, but Honey-related abilities had escaped Tobias’s prophecy and helped the group evade capture.

Elliot wondered whether Tobias had replaced the Difference Engine Core with a fake and tried to understand the cryptic prompt Vanessa had received from [Analysis]. Eleanor explained that the underground doors had held confiscated [Relics], leaving Elliot to realize that the object that could change fate might have been one he sacrificed.

• Elliot reasoned that his unexpected powers had helped Vanessa and her group escape Tobias's ambush, and that disrupting the course of history could weaken future prophecies.
• Elliot questioned whether the Difference Engine Core Allen had retrieved was genuine, since Tobias might have anticipated the theft and planted a fake.
• Elliot asked Eleanor about the many doors in the underground machine room, and she explained that the Night Watch Bureau had originally been founded to control dangerous [Relics].
• Eleanor said [The Thinker] could locate most [Relics], allowing the Bureau to recover and store them behind the doors.
• Elliot realized that the item Vanessa's [Analysis] said could change fate might have been a [Relic], and feared he had sacrificed it without knowing what it was.

Tobias discovered that the attackers had stolen the true [Philosopher's Stone] along with the sealed door, despite his prophecy and precautions. The chapter ended with him finding a precisely drawn sacrificial rune whose target was blank.

• Tobias learned that Elsa's bizarre acid-spewing forms had overwhelmed the Helms Family knights and that the attackers had escaped with the fake Difference Engine Core.
• The Knight Captain revealed that the attackers had also taken [The Thinker]'s true core, the original [Philosopher's Stone].
• Tobias insisted the sealed door could not have been opened or bypassed, and demanded to know how the attackers had stolen the core.
• The Knight Captain explained that they had removed the door along with the surrounding wall, leaving a clean rectangular hole.
• Tobias found a precisely drawn sacrificial rune at his feet, with its intended great being left blank.

Elliot learned that the Imperial Capital was suffering energy shortages after he sacrificed a door and whatever lay inside it. He discovered that the sacrifice was making Vanessa’s progress rise on its own, while the nobles planned to let Theresia’s Bronze Angel Statue stop functioning.

• Conrad told Elliot rumors that Emperor Trist had returned, Tobias had gone mad, and the Imperial Capital was facing energy shortages.
• Elliot suspected that his sacrifice had taken an energy source from the Imperial Capital and wondered what he had lost with the door and the [Relic] inside it.
• Elliot checked the Difference Engine and discovered Vanessa’s progress bar advanced without any offerings.
• Elliot realized Vanessa’s advancement could now continue without him supplying materials and turned his attention to the Imperial Capital.
• Conrad told Elliot that the Throne no longer needed corpse offerings, but the nobles planned to stop supplying offerings to Theresia and let her statue cease functioning.

Elliot learned that the nobles were preparing to stop maintaining Theresia, whose functions included destroying monsters, monitoring the Imperial Capital, and upholding a limited form of justice. The chapter left him confronting the wider consequences for the Empire’s poorer districts and orphanages as public services began to disappear.

• Conrad explained that Theresia’s Bronze Angel was a weapon that could identify and destroy monsters across the Imperial Capital, and that rumors said her flesh and blood were sealed inside it.
• Conrad revealed that Theresia monitored the city through her link to the Night Watch Bureau’s [The Thinker] and upheld [Justice] by imposing a fragile form of order on the Empire.
• Elliot realized the nobles’ decision to abandon Theresia would remove a symbol of the Empire’s struggle to improve, and Conrad said Empress Sidney could have led the Empire further toward change.
• Conrad warned that the wealthy districts might fare better, while poorer districts would lose security and public services such as streetlights, heating, and gas maintenance.
• Elliot worried that orphanages would lose heating and support, and Conrad admitted that the Royal Family’s orphanages probably would not be maintained either.

Elliot prepared to use Sterling Family resources to support the orphanage and Communion, then began a long [Ascension] after meeting its historical requirements. As the countdown started, he wrote down Holly Strauss, Maeve Strauss, and Simon Strauss, considering how he might help them and respond to the dangers surrounding them.

• Elliot asked about the orphanage and learned it had been built but lacked staff, so he requested Sterling Family emblems, uniforms, weapons, and access tokens.
• Conrad hinted that Lady Camilla was beneath the mansion, and Elliot recognized the warning after learning that Evan was with her.
• Elliot placed [Path: Glimmer] into the Difference Engine’s [Ascension] slot, meeting the Important Historical Node requirement and starting a longer countdown.
• Elliot reflected on Vanessa’s declaration at the Investiture Ritual and Sidney becoming empress as the two historical nodes, then resolved to disrupt the forces shaping the Empire.
• Elliot wrote Holly Strauss’s name as he considered rescuing Sidney’s arrested subordinate, then noted Maeve Strauss’s danger inside [Primordial Blood] and Simon Strauss’s unusual supernatural abilities.

Elliot became curious about how Simon had learned the Supernatural without ever ascending, so he took control of Vanessa and went to question him. Vanessa found Simon at the hospital, where his stories about the Communion’s strange food-related treatments delayed her from getting to the point.

• Elliot decided to speak with Simon about how he had learned the Formless Arts as a mortal and took control of Vanessa through the Difference Engine.
• Vanessa left the Canteen with takeaway food after Dorothea packed her leftovers and a late-night snack.
• Vanessa found Simon at the hospital, where he explained that Elsa Water was used for treatment and that Believers sought food buffs through enemas.
• Simon told Vanessa that a patient’s curry enema had turned to stone inside his intestines, and Vanessa realized she needed to get to the point.

Vanessa investigated Simon’s background and agreed to take his papers into the Dream, where Flora recognized them as pages from the Mourning Poetry Society’s Sacred Relic, [Mourning Poems]. The pages’ unexplained names and condition left open the possibility that someone with High Rank had altered them.

• Simon agreed to become a Supernatural person because supernatural power could help him treat the Believers, despite his past dislike of it.
• Simon showed Vanessa two old sheets bearing his and Maeve’s names, and Vanessa asked to take them into the Dream for clues.
• Vanessa brought Simon to the Office Building to request supernatural materials and showed the papers to Flora.
• Flora recognized the sheets as pages from [Mourning Poems], a Sacred Relic whose pages could not normally be written on or torn out.
• Vanessa questioned whether the pages had been altered by someone with High Rank, since the Mourning Poetry Society had no High-Rank Supernaturals.

Elliot learned that the Mourning Poetry Society had once possessed the original [Thing of Immortality] and considered whether the Thrice-Great artifacts could together create a new era. He suspected Flora’s talent might repair her inferior [Thing of Immortality] into the true [Great Thing], but had no leads on the [Philosopher’s Stone].

• Flora told Elliot that the Mourning Poetry Society’s records and relics were mostly lost, though it still had the charter signed by Emperor Trist, the [Mourning Poems], and an inferior [Thing of Immortality].
• Flora described the Thrice-Great: the [Difference Engine] could calculate the world, the [Philosopher’s Stone] could create things, and the [Thing of Immortality] had reportedly been intended to be called the [Great Thing].
• Elliot realized the [Great Thing] might grant mortals inexhaustible power and let them bypass advancement bottlenecks, much as Flora’s inferior artifact had empowered her.
• Elliot proposed that combining the Thrice-Great could let the [Difference Engine] calculate a world, the [Philosopher’s Stone] create it, and the [Great Thing] provide power to establish a new era.
• Elliot wondered whether Flora’s fourth-rank talent could repair her inferior [Thing of Immortality] into the true [Great Thing], but decided to wait until her talent was complete.

Vanessa arranged advancement materials for Simon and Elsa, planned to move the Mourning Poetry Society to the Imperial Capital, and sent Flora to investigate its past. Elsa reached fifth rank and gained a talent that could force a blood moon, leaving Elliot weighing whether it could combine with Maeve’s resurrection ability.

• Flora found that Simon had met the requirements for advancement, and Vanessa arranged for him to receive materials for reaching third rank under her supervision.
• Vanessa learned that the Mourning Poetry Society’s donations had grown and decided to move the entire Society from New Scandinavia to the Imperial Capital before its supporters demanded the money back.
• Vanessa assigned Flora and Allen to travel by ship to bring the Society over and investigate its history, including [Mourning Poems] and the thrice-great.
• Vanessa brought Elsa to the sacrificial ritual first, and a few pieces of ore advanced Elsa to fifth rank.
• Elliot examined Elsa’s talents, including [Honey Moon], which could force a blood moon, and considered whether it could combine with Maeve’s resurrection ability.

Elliot chose the [Honey Moon] Talent for Elsa after [Analysis] revealed it corresponded to the [Blood Lord], a power he suspected could change fate. Elsa discovered she could summon the Blood Moon, but it was already in the sky and she could not make it disappear.

• Elliot compared Elsa's three Talent options and used [Analysis] to identify [Kind Mother] as [Honey Lord] and [Honey Moon] as [Blood Lord].
• Elliot decided that [Honey Moon] might be the choice that changed history and made Elsa's Talent permanent.
• Elsa realized she could control the Blood Moon, while Simon recognized how such power could disrupt lunar-based Formless Arts and rituals.
• Elsa tried to change the moon but found that she could only summon the Blood Moon, which was already present.
• Vanessa told Simon it was his turn to make a sacrifice.

Elliot advanced Simon to the first rank and discovered that, like Maeve, he could choose two talents. Simon’s Transformation revealed a huge insect form that could fly, leaving Elliot and the others startled by the unexpected creature.

• Elliot examined Simon’s supernatural tree, chose the Rationality path, and advanced him to the first rank, gaining another point of Spirituality.
• Elliot saw Simon’s talents—Transformation, Acidic Blood, and Elytra—and selected Transformation, then realized Simon could choose a second talent.
• Vanessa asked Simon to test his transformation inside the ritual, and he became a large, dark insect with a hard carapace and powerful mandibles.
• Simon found that his insect form forced him to remain in a state of Rationality, then received the Elytra ability as his carapace developed wing cases and transparent wings.
• Simon beat his wings and rose into the air.

Elliot advanced Simon to the second rank, giving him a mantis-like [Shell Species] form and choosing talents that let him evolve by consuming corpses and resist mental attacks. Simon tested [Cold Blood] and discovered that it made him coldly calculate ways to kill Elsa.

• Elliot chose [Elytra] for Simon, allowing him to fly in his transformed form.
• Simon said he believed he was a [Shell Species] and wondered whether Strauss had kept his supernatural power hidden within him.
• Elliot advanced Simon to the second rank and selected [Evolution], which gave Simon a chance to gain abilities by eating enemies' corpses.
• Elliot chose [Cold Blood] over [Claw Strike+], granting Simon immunity to mental attacks and replacing his rationality with cold blood in his other form.
• Simon felt his blood turn cold and instinctively calculated seventeen ways to kill Elsa.

Elliot advanced Simon to the Third Rank and chose talents that strengthened his carapace and let him release swarms of insects. With ore nearly exhausted, Vanessa told Simon that reaching the Fourth Rank required an Ascension task, and Elsa went to organize supplies.

• Simon asked Elsa for corpses to eat, but Vanessa warned that Elsa's corpses carried [Honey], which could leave Simon broadcasting its scent across the Imperial Capital.
• Elliot considered the risks and possibilities of Simon's [Evolution], then used ore to advance him from the Second Rank to the Third Rank.
• Elliot chose [Swarm Breeding] from Simon's Third Rank talents, while Simon also gained [Heavy Armor].
• Vanessa panicked when Simon mentioned releasing bugs, so he folded away his wing cases without testing [Swarm Breeding].
• Vanessa said Simon needed to complete an Ascension task before reaching the Fourth Rank and advised him to follow Dorothea's task; Elsa went to organize things.

Elliot gathered the Communion’s believers to rescue Maeve after learning that [Worm] had won its battle with [Primordial Blood]. Their search was stalled when Elsa and Simon could no longer sense Maeve, but a new emergency quest revealed that [Primordial Blood] was fleeing the Sea of the Moon.

• Elliot restricted Simon’s diet and ordered special materials so Simon could strengthen his carapace without risking dangerous evolutions.
• The Difference Engine issued an emergency quest announcing that the battle between [Worm] and [Primordial Blood] had been decided, and Elliot feared Maeve was in danger.
• Elliot gathered the Communion’s believers to enter the Sea of the Moon and rescue Maeve, while Elsa and Simon tried unsuccessfully to sense her location.
• The Difference Engine issued a second emergency quest revealing that [Primordial Blood] feared [Worm]’s attacks and was fleeing the Sea of the Moon.