Rain hammered against Brooklyn through the evening like distant gunfire.
Inside the bookstore, the air had become unbearably tense.
Steve Rogers sat near the counter with his arms crossed, staring at Elias and Celeste like he was trying to solve a puzzle missing half its pieces.
Which, to be fair, he was.
Hydra.
Pathways.
Fragments.
Gray fog.
None of it made sense to him.
But Steve was not stupid.
He understood one thing clearly:
The adults in the room were afraid.
And that terrified him more than the strange words themselves.
Elias broke the silence first.
"How much does Hydra know?"
Celeste leaned lightly against a shelf filled with old mythology books.
"Not enough to understand what they found." She paused. "Enough to become catastrophic if left alone."
"That narrows absolutely nothing."
Her silver eyes shifted toward the rain-covered window.
"Johann Schmidt believes the artifact is connected to ancient gods. He's half right."
Half right was usually worse than completely wrong.
Elias' thoughts moved rapidly.
The Tyrant pathway…
Storms.
Authority.
Wrath.
Domination over sea and sky.
If Marvel cosmology merged those concepts with existing divine forces—
His mind immediately landed on one horrifying possibility.
Thor.
Or more specifically—
The power structure surrounding Asgard itself.
The pathway authorities could begin attaching themselves to already existing cosmic domains.
Which meant Sequence advancement here might not simply require potions anymore.
It might require proximity to conceptual authority.
Celeste noticed his expression.
"You see the problem."
"I see several."
Steve finally lost patience.
"Okay, enough creepy secret club talk." He stood up. "Someone explain what's actually happening."
Elias immediately answered:
"No."
Steve's jaw tightened.
"You always do this."
"Because ignorance is safer."
"That's a stupid answer."
"It's a living answer."
Steve took a step closer.
"I'm not a kid anymore."
To Elias, fourteen was absolutely still a child.
But Steve's eyes held the same stubborn fire they always did.
The same fire that one day would make him charge armies with a broken shield.
Elias rubbed his temple slowly.
This was the problem.
The bigger the secrets became, the harder they were to hide from someone constantly near him.
Steve had already noticed too many things over the years.
The strange visitors.
The locked basement.
The impossible coincidences.
The way Elias sometimes knew events before they happened.
The way dangerous people occasionally entered the shop and left nervous.
Children noticed more than adults realized.
And Steve Rogers noticed everything.
Celeste spoke quietly.
"He deserves partial truth."
"No."
"You cannot protect him forever."
"I can try."
The woman studied Elias silently for several seconds.
Then:
"That sentence usually ends in tragedy."
The room became quiet again.
Elias hated that she was probably right.
Steve looked between them.
"What's Hydra?"
Elias answered that one at least.
"A dangerous organization."
"Gangsters?"
"Worse."
"How much worse?"
Elias looked directly into his nephew's eyes.
"The kind that believe people should become tools."
Steve's expression hardened immediately.
Good.
Hatred toward Hydra was healthy.
Celeste walked slowly toward the radio playing low jazz in the corner. She turned the volume down before speaking again.
"There's another issue."
Elias almost laughed from exhaustion.
Of course there was.
"The fragment Hydra recovered…" Celeste continued carefully, "…it reacted when Schmidt touched it."
That was bad.
Very bad.
Because pathway corruption often worked through compatibility.
If the artifact acknowledged Schmidt—
Then his spiritual structure aligned with Tyrant authority somehow.
Or worse—
With a corrupted variant of it.
"What exactly did they recover?" Elias asked.
Celeste hesitated for the first time since arriving.
"That's the problem. I'm not entirely sure."
Elias frowned.
"You saw it."
"Yes."
"And?"
The woman's silver eyes darkened slightly.
"It looked like a piece of bone."
Silence.
A very dangerous silence.
Elias felt cold creep down his spine.
Divine remains.
In Lord of the Mysteries, high-level remains retained terrifying corruption and mystical properties long after death.
If Marvel's ancient gods—or godlike beings—began overlapping with pathway symbolism…
Then the fragment could belong to something unimaginably ancient.
Steve suddenly spoke again.
"You people keep talking like the world's ending."
Neither adult answered immediately.
Because that was exactly what worried them.
Celeste finally sighed softly.
"The world isn't ending." She glanced toward Elias. "It's changing."
Honestly?
That might have been worse.
A soft creak echoed from upstairs.
All three froze instantly.
Elias' spirituality sharpened immediately.
Someone entered the shop.
But the front door bell never rang.
Intruder.
Celeste moved first.
Her figure blurred unnaturally for half a second before she appeared near the basement staircase entrance. No sound. No wasted movement.
High Sequence.
Definitely higher than him.
Steve stepped backward instinctively, eyes widening.
Elias extinguished the nearby candle with a flick of his fingers.
Darkness swallowed half the room immediately.
Then—
Footsteps.
Slow.
Measured.
Descending from the bookstore above.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Elias quietly slid a folded paper figure into his sleeve.
Celeste's expression became unreadable.
Steve looked ready to either panic or punch somebody.
Probably both.
The footsteps stopped just beyond the basement doorway.
Then a calm male voice echoed downward.
"You really should improve your concealment methods."
Elias' eyes narrowed instantly.
The voice sounded young.
Amused.
Dangerous.
A tall man stepped into view wearing a dark trench coat soaked from rain. Black gloves. Black hair tied loosely behind his neck. His face looked perhaps mid-thirties, but his eyes—
Ancient.
Far too ancient.
And around his neck hung a silver monocle.
Elias' spirituality exploded in warning so violently he nearly activated his paper substitute immediately.
Monocle.
Error pathway symbolism.
Oh, absolutely not.
The newcomer smiled pleasantly upon noticing Elias' reaction.
"Relax," he said warmly. "If I were truly hostile, your thoughts wouldn't belong to you anymore."
Steve whispered:
"That is the creepiest thing anyone's ever said."
Correct.
Very correct.
Celeste's voice turned cold for the first time.
"You shouldn't be here."
"And yet," the man replied casually, "here I am."
He removed the monocle carefully and polished it with a cloth.
Elias noticed something horrifying immediately.
The moment the monocle left his eye—
Reality around him stabilized slightly.
As though the object itself distorted existence.
No.
Not the object.
The man.
Elias forced himself calm.
"What pathway?"
The stranger smiled wider.
"Careful. Questions possess weight."
Definitely Error related.
Or Marauder.
Or something mutated between them.
The man's gaze shifted toward Steve.
For the briefest second—
His expression changed.
Interest.
Pure genuine interest.
Elias immediately stepped between them.
The stranger laughed softly.
"You're protective."
"You're breathing."
"Fair."
Celeste moved subtly closer now, silver eyes glowing faintly.
The stranger noticed and sighed dramatically.
"You always become tense around me, Celeste."
"That's because you enjoy ruining civilizations."
"Only badly designed ones."
Steve blinked slowly.
"…Why does everyone I meet lately sound insane?"
No one answered him.
The stranger finally looked back toward Elias.
"You've accelerated events, you know."
Elias stayed silent.
"The pathways adapting this quickly…" The man twirled the monocle between his fingers. "That wasn't supposed to happen yet."
Yet.
Meaning he knew far more than he should.
Elias' mind raced.
Another transmigrator?
An ancient entity?
A surviving angel equivalent?
The stranger tilted his head slightly.
"Oh, I wouldn't think too hard about classification. It tends to disappoint people."
Mind reading.
Or advanced deduction.
Neither option was comforting.
Celeste's voice sharpened.
"Get to the point."
The man sighed dramatically again.
"Fine." He looked toward Elias directly. "Hydra isn't your biggest problem anymore."
Thunder rumbled outside.
The stranger smiled.
"Something beneath the ocean has started dreaming."