The Hawk moved through the lower corridors of his hidden base without sound. He had used this place several times when crossing the Underground Dwellings. It was one of many bases that he had, and it had been a long time since he had any one spot which he could consider his home.
Above him, entire districts of stone and machinery stretched endlessly beneath the earth, filled with labourers, traders, and dim-lit habitation blocks where generations had lived and died without ever seeing the sky. Pipes hissed overhead. Great chains turned somewhere in the dark. The entire city groaned like a buried beast beneath the weight of civilization.
And through it all, the Hawk continued downward.
The sensation reached him instantly. It was a sharp severing that felt cold, and clean. One of his passive Selves had just been eliminated.
The transformation ability of the Hawk could work in an active and a passive form. In the active form, the Hawk could transform his body into that of another Axiom user, provided that he had already consumed their energy. The transformation would create a Self impossible to detect as fraudulent. He had eliminated many for these Selves. How many he did not know. He eliminated his wife. He had eliminated his uncle. He had eliminated his brother. He had eliminated all of his closest friends, and all of the people he had ever loved.
In the passive form, under the right conditions, the Hawk could allow certain individuals to operate freely and then take control of them at the right time. Most would never even realise that this had happened to me, as the Hawk specialised in planting this ability by the most subtle of ways possible. This was how he managed to build a network of agents, containing over one hundered passive Selves.
But with the death of one, the Faceless Soldiers had begun testing him directly.
The Hawk paused beside a rusted support pillar. He closed his eyes briefly and followed the fading remnants of perception left behind by the destroyed Self.
He saw three Soldiers, all Second Tier. There was no hesitation, or questioning.
They executed the passive Self immediately. This meant that they already suspected infiltration.
The Hawk opened his eyes again.
His expression remained calm, but internally, calculations had already begun shifting.
The Western Leader Self would need to be abandoned soon. That identity had served its purpose. What mattered now was the investigation itself, and the truth about the Dark Alchemist.
The more the Hawk learned, the less the figure resembled a person.
Instead, it resembled a pattern, or a recurring phenomenon, like a disease moving through history.
He continued walking.
Around him, the lower districts grew quieter. The workers here kept their heads down and avoided eye contact. Some glanced nervously toward the black robes of the Hawk before quickly turning away again.
Fear was natural, especially now.
The Faceless Soldiers had increased their patrols across every major district of the Central Realm. Entire villages were being searched. Communication routes monitored. Travellers detained without explanation.
The Lords knew something was happening, but they did not yet know what.
The Hawk reached an abandoned transit platform and stepped onto it alone. Ancient mechanisms groaned beneath him. Then the platform began descending deeper into the earth.
As darkness swallowed the shaft around him, the Hawk returned to his thoughts.
Solomon's Realm.
The revelation of their involvement disturbed him more than he cared to admit.
Very little information travelled between Realms unless permitted by the Lords themselves. Entire dimensions could exist in isolation for centuries.
And Solomon's Realm was among the strangest of them.
Initially funded by a select few Lords from the Central Realm, this was now a place that possessed more resources than any other Realm, in terms of wealth, Soldiers, and Watchers. This was a Realm obsessed with Higher Self practices, with transcendence, with the restructuring of identity itself.
The Hawk recalled the hexagram structure within the Dark Alchemist's body, not natural, but constructed, as though the man himself had been transformed into a living ritual.
The platform descended further.
Then another realization emerged: the banquets, the gatherings described in the hidden records. The Dark Alchemist had not ruled through armies, but through ideas. That was what terrified the Lords enough to erase him from history.
The Hawk's eyes narrowed.
What kind of philosophy could unite Clans that hated one another? What could cause enemies to sit together willingly beneath one table?
Another memory surfaced.
The final words recovered from one of the ancient records:
"He taught them the lie hidden beneath creation."
The platform finally reached the lower depths.
The doors opened.
A vast underground canal stretched before him, illuminated by pale lanterns reflected across black water. Ancient stone bridges crossed overhead while hooded travellers moved silently between hidden districts.
This was one of the oldest surviving sections of the Underground Dwellings.
A place even the Soldiers rarely entered directly.
The Hawk stepped forward.
And immediately, another Self vanished. This time more violently.
He felt panic before the connection broke, then agony.
The Hawk stopped walking entirely.
That was different. The Soldiers had not simply killed this one. They had interrogated it first, which meant they were learning.
The Hawk looked down at the water. Ripples moved slowly across the dark surface. For the first time in many years, he felt something close to unease.
How much did the Lords already know?
He replayed every movement carefully. Every conversation, disguise, false trail. Then suddenly, he realized the true danger. He knew now that the Soldiers were not following the Selves. They were allowing them to move, as if herding them.
This was a trap. The intention of this trap was not infiltration, but to observe him. The Lords wanted to know where the investigation itself would lead. And that meant they feared the same conclusion he did.
The Hawk turned immediately and moved toward a narrow side passage beneath the canal bridge.
His pace quickened.
The Dark Alchemist was not merely an enemy of the Lords.
No. That understanding had been too simplistic.
If the records were true, then the Dark Alchemist knew something about the structure of existence itself, something dangerous enough that entire histories had been rewritten to conceal it.
The Hawk entered a hidden chamber sealed behind fractured stone. Inside waited another figure cloaked in grey robes.
One of the few remaining agents still embedded within the lower archives of the Soldiers themselves.
"You're late," the informant whispered nervously.
"I was delayed."
The informant immediately sensed the tension in the Hawk's energy.
"What happened?"
The Hawk remained silent for a moment, then he spoke quietly.
"What do you know about the Transcendent Clan?"
The informant froze.
"I can't give that information to you."
"Why?"
"That name is forbidden."
"You are aware that I researched you were before I contacted you. I know everything about you, and about your family. It would be unwise of you to say no to me."
The informant sighed
"You're investigating Solomon's Realm?" he asked carefully.
"Yes."
Fear crossed the man's face instantly.
"You shouldn't investigate that place," he whispered. "People disappear when they get too close to it."
"That no longer matters to me."
The informant hesitated. Then he reached into his robes and produced a small black container.
"These were recovered from restricted archives beneath the Seventh Castle," he said. "I haven't opened them myself."
The Hawk accepted the container.
There were seals all across its surface. And the selves themselves were ancient, not from the Central Realm.
The Hawk stared at them silently.
At the centre of the seals was a symbol he now recognized instantly: a hexagram. It was the same structure he found within the Dark Alchemist's body.
The Hawk slowly looked back toward the informant.
"Who authorized this archive?" he asked.
"The order came directly from the King."
Silence filled the chamber.
And at last, the final implication emerged before the Hawk in full.
The King had known, perhaps not everything, but enough. It was enough to fear the Dark Alchemist, and to hide Solomon's Realm from the rest of the Central Realm, and to bury the records beneath the deepest archives of the Soldiers themselves.
The Hawk looked down at the black container again, and for the first time since beginning the investigation, he questioned whether uncovering the truth was truly the right decision.
"What could you possibly gain from such an investigation?" asked the informant.
"This is not about gain. This is about justice, ensuring that the world once more makes sense."
Having spoken, the Hawk then eliminated the informant. He had now begun a habit of removing any witness to his existence.
The Hawk did not yet know that the Supreme Leader already knew of his location.