It didn’t take long for the truth to settle over the capital like a cold fog. The Roderick family was gone. not missing, not hiding, not barricaded. Completely, gone.

  A vanishing act so clean it looked like something out of a magician’s script. Not a door left ajar, not a trace of arcane residue, not even a servant left behind in panic. By midday, the entire estate had already become a symbol of failure, its empty halls surrounded by soldiers who looked increasingly desperate.

  From the Torvares manor, the group watched the movement of the city through the windows and balconies, Silver Talon members running back and forth, mages shouting contradictory orders, investigators arguing in the streets. All of them frantic. All of them empty-handed.

  Kaela leaned against the windowframe, expression flat. “They’re running around like drunk chickens. Pathetic.”

  Maurien’s gaze followed a squad of soldiers searching the same street twice. “No leads. No trails. Not even footprints.”

  Gaius grunted. “They burned their tracks well.”

  Ludger crossed his arms, jaw flexing as he observed the chaos below. “They didn’t burn them,” he said quietly. “They erased them.”

  Everyone turned toward him.

  Ludger continued, voice cold and analytical. “The Rodericks had ties with Verk. With the Velis League. With those advanced runic engineers. If Verk’s armor could create thrusters, sensory cloaking, self-repair systems… then disappearing an small army isn’t impossible for them.”

  Viola nodded slowly, processing the implications. “You think they used runic tech to vanish? Move their entire family without being detected?”

  “Maybe,” Ludger said. “Or maybe they used something worse.”

  His eyes narrowed as he recalled the night before, the unnatural downpour, the persistent storm, the mist thick enough to blind even Kaela.

  “Think about the timing,” he said. “Gaius arrives. The weather turns unnatural. Then the same night, the Rodericks vanish.”

  Maurien hummed. “You think the storm was manufactured.”

  Ludger nodded. “If they used runic weather manipulation, detection spells wouldn’t pick up the intent. Only the mana fluctuations. But the rain suppressed elemental sensing, and the mist suppressed vision.”

  He let out a slow, angry breath.

  “They probably engineered the perfect escape route. Masked the estate, blocked detection, moved everyone in the fog… and vanished.”

  Kaela crossed her arms, annoyed. “So we basically got tricked by the weather.”

  “Weather with runes,” Ludger corrected. “That’s different.”

  Gaius stroked his beard. “Runic meteorology… that’s a nasty field. Rare, expensive, difficult. The kind of thing only the Velis League or a wealthy criminal syndicate would dare use.”

  “And the kind of thing only desperate nobles would pull off,” Viola said softly.

  The group fell silent again, watching from the windows as more and more soldiers argued in the streets. Ludger’s voice cut through the quiet.

  “If they’re willing to use this much power to vanish once…”

  He clenched his fists.

  “…they’ll use something far worse when they come back.”

  And this time, they wouldn’t be running.

  Luna slipped into the room so silently that half of them didn’t notice until she spoke, her voice emerging from the shadows near the window, cold and flat as ever.

  “I didn’t find anything either.”

  Everyone turned. She stood there with her hood partially lowered, rain still clinging to her cloak, eyes as sharp as blades, and just a hint more frustrated than usual.

  Maurien raised an eyebrow. “Not even you?”

  Luna shook her head, expression unreadable. “I watched the Roderick manor from the rooftops. From alleys. From the old watchtower. I circled it for hours, waiting for any movement.”

  She paused.

  “But there was nothing. No sound. No scent. No mana trail. No broken illusions. Nothing out of place except the mist, and as soon as it cleared, every trace was gone.”

  A long, heavy silence settled after Luna’s report, one of those silences where everyone was thinking the same thing but didn’t want to be the first to say it. Ludger finally broke it. And his voice was low, rough, and far too calm for the weight behind it.

  “…This is going to be troublesome.”

  Kaela snorted. “Understatement of the year.”

  But Ludger wasn’t joking. His gaze was fixed on the window, eyes narrowed in the direction of the now-empty Roderick estate.

  “They didn’t vanish to escape justice,” he continued. “They vanished to reorganize. To prepare. To move from the open into the shadows.”

  Maurien nodded grimly. “A retreat, not a defeat.”

  Gaius crossed his arms. “Indeed.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ludger dug a thumb against his temple, thinking fast. “And we’d be idiots to believe they left without planting seeds behind. Informants. Puppets. Bought-off officers. Senators loyal to them. Maybe even mages we haven’t identified yet.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “It’s impossible for the entire Senate to suddenly be clean after decades of corruption just because one house vanished in the night.”

  Viola exhaled heavily. “So you think they left agents behind?”

  “I’m certain of it,” Ludger said. “The Rodericks built their power by weaving threads everywhere. Nobles, guards, guilds, merchant routes, underworld brokers. You don’t just cut off a web that big overnight. Not without leaving spiders crawling around.”

  Luna nodded sharply. “He’s right. Even from what I’ve observed on the rooftops, the behavior of some Senate-connected guards changed days before the disappearance. They were preparing something.”

  Kaela tapped her foot. “So it's not just Verk. Not just the Rodericks. We’re hunting a network.”

  Maurien’s eyes narrowed with a familiar intensity. “A network with backups. Contingencies. Maybe even new leaders waiting in the wings.”

  Gaius cracked his knuckles slowly. “Which means if we want answers… we’ll have to dig deeper than a missing estate.”

  A faint hum vibrated through the air, soft, mechanical, unmistakably Velis in design. Everyone turned toward the front windows. A runic carriage was rolling up the street, powered by a glowing blue core. It slowed, hissed steam, and stopped directly in front of the Torvares estate gate.

  Ludger blinked. Maurien tilted his head.

  Kaela grinned. “Ah. The monocle brigade.”

  The guards opened the gate, and out stepped Dalan and Linne, looking as confused as two engineers who’d just walked into a political meltdown without reading the manual.

  Dalan blinked up at the manor. “Uh. We didn’t expect this many guards.”

  Linne elbowed him. “We didn’t expect anything, Dalan. We were told to come immediately. That usually means someone exploded something.”

  Kaela raised a hand. “Technically, yes.”

  Ludger rubbed his forehead. Once the pair was ushered inside, introductions followed:

  Dalan stared at Gaius like a child meeting a myth. Linne stared at Viola like she’d stepped out of a political painting.

  When everyone finally sat down, Viola summarized the last forty-eight hours with cold efficiency, the disappearance, the storm, the mist, the investigation, the Senate panic.

  By the time she was done, Dalan looked like he needed to sit twice.

  “…You’re telling me,” he said slowly, “that Rodericks vanished. Their entire family vanished. And the Senate has no idea what happened?”

  Kaela nodded brightly. “Yep!”

  Maurien sighed. Gaius massaged the bridge of his nose.

  Dalan held his chin with both hands, brows furrowing so hard it looked painful. “Things were already chaotic in Coria… but now? Investigating anyone on our side will be extremely difficult. People are paranoid. The guards are on edge. And whoever supported Verk from the shadows is probably dismantling evidence right now.”

  Linne crossed her arms, more calm but with a sharp tension behind her eyes.

  “And with someone like Verk,” she added, “it’s not surprising. He had the wealth and status to maintain several secret outposts. Storage facilities. Safehouses. Redundant labs. The Velis League is full of old projects and abandoned bunkers no one remembers.”

  She shook her head.

  “Searching for them without clues is pointless. It could take months, or years, if we rely on normal investigations.”

  Dalan nodded grimly. “Especially now that half the witnesses in Coria are terrified and the other half are trying to pretend the last week didn’t happen.”

  Ludger leaned back, absorbing their words.So, the hunt had another obstacle: A genius runic engineer with multiple hidden bases, backed by a noble house that vanished into thin air. This wasn’t a trail. This was a maze.

  But the look in Ludger’s eyes said something very simple: It didn’t matter how long it took. He’d dig them out of every hole they hid in.

  Rufas arrived later that afternoon, stepping through the front doors of the Torvares manor with the same crisp posture and polished uniform as always, but the difference was immediate.

  His usual calm, diplomatic smile was there… but strained. Tight around the edges. As if even he couldn’t pretend this situation was normal.

  Everyone paused what they were doing, Ludger, Viola, Gaius, Maurien, Kaela, the recruits, Dalan and Linne, turning toward him like a single unit waiting for a verdict.

  Rufas swept his eyes across the room, lifted a hand in greeting, and let out a controlled breath.

  “…I came as soon as I could. I thought it best to give you all an update.”

  He took a seat, posture straight, but exhaustion clinging to his shoulders.

  “I joined the investigation personally,” he said. “Right after I received confirmation that the Roderick estate was empty… I headed there myself with an Imperial Guard strike team.”

  Kaela leaned forward. “And?”

  Rufas shook his head slowly.

  “…Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

  Maurien frowned. “Nothing as in…?”

  “As in perfect.” Rufas spread his hands in a gesture of helpless disbelief. “It was like walking into a painting. No dust, no stray fibers, no mana residue, no runic signatures. Not even the faintest trace of arcane manipulation. The entire estate was cleaned down to the spiritual level.”

  Linne grimaced. “So they sterilized it.”

  “Exactly,” Rufas said. “No suspicious tools. No secret rooms. No items left behind. No ledgers, no hidden compartments, no forgotten trinkets. No signs of teleportation or mass movement.”

  He paused, voice lowering.

  “It was too perfect. Which, unfortunately, makes it useless.”

  Gaius grunted. “Runic concealment tech.”

  Rufas nodded. “Likely. Or something worse.”

  Viola folded her arms tightly. “So nothing linking them to Verk.”

  “No,” Rufas said. “Not a single thread.” He sighed, the rare sound of genuine frustration escaping him. “We cannot formally accuse the Roderick house of any specific crime at this time. We have suspicions. We have circumstances. But evidence… no.”

  Kaela scoffed. “Convenient.”

  Rufas didn’t deny it.

  “But,” he added, straightening slightly, “I can punish them for something else.”

  Everyone looked at him.

  “They were ordered to remain in the capital during an Imperial inquiry. Disobeying an order from the Imperial Guard is a serious offense. Enough to strip privileges, titles, land, potentially even more.”

  Ludger narrowed his eyes. “Will that matter if they’re gone?”

  Rufas gave a cynical smile. “Not immediately. And I don’t expect to find them anytime soon… but it makes them legally fugitives. It allows us to seize any public-facing assets and cut off their political authority.”

  Viola tapped her fingers on her armrest. “So they’ll be hunted by the Empire itself.”

  “Yes,” Rufas confirmed. “But people with their resources… I doubt the hunt will be quick.”

  Ludger leaned back in his seat, jaw tense.

  So even Rufas, trained, competent, and backed by the Imperial Guard, had run headfirst into a wall. A wall made of money, secrets, and runic shadows. The kind of wall only Ludger knew how to break.