Pak Yoonji prepared herself as a chunk of earth the size of a house flew through the air at her. She raised her weapon and extended the narrow sword's thin blade an extra five feet, enhancing it with a subtle lux weave that started red and mixed in blue and a hint of indigo.

  Her blade sliced through the small hillside her enemy had thrown her way. She jumped, leapt up onto one of the two falling halves, and pushed off lightly from there, carrying herself hundreds of feet into the air as she quickly wove a five-color technique to sustain her flight.

  Her quarry was getting desperate. She had him cornered now. He might have been able to get away if he hadn't been so intent on trying to keep his stolen prize. Yoonji tossed a Binding Snare technique at him. As she had suspected, he easily dodged it right into the Void Whispers trap she'd thrown at him immediately after.

  Her quarry screamed and thrashed as the net of indigo and yellow lux tightened around him. It would be infusing his mind and vision with nightmares while snaring him tightly in place. This chase was over.

  Yoonji dismissed the weave around her sword but kept the thin blade in her hand. It was narrower than the top joint of her index finger and made of icesteel so thin that, turned on its side, you could hardly even see the blade. Expensive, delicate, and exceptionally tricky to maintain, but Yoonji had counted on its aid hundreds of thousands of times in the past centuries.

  Now, she used it to slice an opening in the technique she had snared her quarry in while she wove a new pattern with her left hand and casually looped it over his shoulders. She twitched two fingers, and the pattern cinched down around his neck. The man screamed.

  Yoonji smiled in satisfaction. She took no delight in torture, unlike many of her fellows, but this one had led her on a merry chase, and she'd been so caught up in it she'd missed the excitement at Vardin City. Now all that was left was some mopping up work, hardly the thing for a Senior Inquisitor.

  Yoonji leaned in and let up on her technique just a little. The man's eyes opened. He stared into her face. She had the satisfaction of seeing fear and respect there. So many years she had worked for her position, rising from a remote archipelago province through the ranks, constantly having to prove that she was as good as the cultivators from the mainland, always marked as an outsider by her features. No one dared question her fitness now.

  “Dai Gaimon of the Golden Locks Sect," Yoonji chose her words carefully.

  The man whimpered in acknowledgment.

  "You are under arrest for robbery of an imperial vault and for impersonation of an imperial official. In addition, your sect and your master have been declared rebels against the empire to be hunted down and eradicated on sight. Do you know who I am?"

  The man shook his head weakly.

  "Do you know what I am?" Yoonji corrected.

  The man opened his mouth. A thin trail of gasps came out. Finally, “…quisitor."

  "That's right." Yoonji was pleased to have been correctly identified on the first try. Then again, this man was a Lux Dominion-level cultivator, only a step or two down from Prism, and he had to know just how much he'd been outclassed. Since she wasn't a prism, there were only a few options for who she could be.

  "I am Senior Grand Inquisitor Pak Yoonji, one of the ten fingers of the emperor." She thought about producing her badge of office, but it didn't seem as though he was in any condition to be impressed even by the 128-faceted diamond, which marked her rank and gave her office its nickname, the Adamant Cultivators. "Have you anything to say for yourself?"

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  The man's eyes rolled up in his head. "Glory to Prism Eri and a thousand curses upon the emperor. May he reign in hell."

  "I assure you he already does." Yoonji said casually. She held her weapon ready as she tweaked the technique around his throat. "But I tire of this, so let's get straight to the point. I will ask the questions, and you will answer." She smirked at him, knowing that he wouldn't be able to help himself. No one below the rank of Prism could withstand an Inquisitor's special interrogation techniques. "Did the rebel Prism Eri send you to raid this vault?"

  "Yes," he croaked.

  "And she told you what to look for?"

  "Yes."

  Yoonji sent a tendril of lux inside the man's robes and fished out what she was looking for: a pendant bearing a design that had a curious familiarity. She frowned at it. Something was tickling at the back of her mind. Something very, very old. She gasped and stared at her victim.

  "Do you know what this is?" she asked, holding up the emblem.

  "Prism Eri commanded it," the man said. "I asked no questions. She has a plan."

  "Indeed she does," Yoonji said, staring at the image. She turned it over. The number 5 was scratched onto the back. It was a key. But she needed to know more.

  Yoonji increased the violet lux in her weave, casting the prisoner’s memory back into the past.

  "Were you the only one she sent?" Yoonji demanded.

  "No, she sent seven of us. One of us had to be successful."

  "When did she send you out?"

  "Three months ago."

  Yoonji stuffed the man's mouth with lux as she thought. Three months was before the rebel Eri had taken action at Vardin City. This plan had been in the works for some time. No surprise. Prisms didn't go to the bathroom without months of preparation. Eri had doubtless been working on this plan for years. The question that Yoonji needed answered was whether Eri needed all seven keys or just one.

  She turned back to the man. "Where did Eri tell you to meet her?"

  "In Westgate, on the Festival of Red Lanterns."

  That was six weeks from now. If Eri's plans still held, perhaps she would be there. This could be Yoonji's big chance.

  She flipped the medallion over and over in her hand, staring down at the image of a tower emerging from the side of a mountain with a pattern of five stars overhead.

  She needed answers, but it was only by sheer luck that she had come across this thief. His infiltration of the vault had been nearly perfect, his getaway flawless. Only by chance, Yoonji herself was returning a borrowed treasure and the broken seal had caught her attention.

  The other thieves, wherever they were, could very well have achieved their goal and slipped by without notice. It was entirely possible Yoonji was the only one in the entire empire with a clue into their plans.

  A lesser inquisitor, of course, would immediately go to their superiors to report what was going on. But Yoonji had no direct superior, only the prisms and, of course, the emperor himself. She had spent centuries rebuilding the emperor's trust in her, looking for a chance to earn his favor and be granted the right to split Lumos into Lux. She had the look of a woman in her late thirties, though at her level of advancement looks were a matter of choice not years. Despite her exemplary record, none of her efforts had been enough to win elevation to Prism.

  This, though… if there really was about to be a Prism war kicking off, there was both danger and opportunity for a cultivator as advanced as Yoonji.

  She made up her mind. Slipping the disc into her robes, she turned back to the unfortunate man. "Thank you for your answers," she said. "I need only two more things from you." She wove a quick technique and used it to cover his head quite thoroughly. Then she swept her sword across in a quick flash. His head rolled free from his body, which dropped to the ground, spurting blood. Tendrils of lux rose off of him.

  A moment later, the man's shade appeared. He looked astonished and regretful. Yoonji pulled a square-cut pale gemstone from her pocket. Wrapping the shade in the yellow, green, blue, and violet technique known only to the emperor's most trusted cultivators, she pulled the man's shade toward her stone. He opened his mouth to scream, but Yoonji thrust the stone outward. It gleamed with inner fire as his shade was sucked inside.

  Once she had the shade properly secured, Yoonji stored the stone in her soul space along with the amulet he'd stolen. Then she picked up his head. She'd drop it back by the vaults along with a note for the guardians explaining that they had allowed a thief to get past their defenses, and then she'd be on her way.

  Not directly to Westgate, not if she still had weeks before the Festival of Red Lanterns. No, she needed facts. Was the Heart of Ice re-emerging at last? Was that Eri's next destination? And if so, how could Yoonji use this to her own advantage?