Camille Vossa rarely lost sleep, but tonight she watched the encrypted scrolls unfurl across her private tablet like ancient ghosts demanding audience. The term Fifth Concord kept surfacing at the corners of the Daemir Group's legacy webs—never in ink, never in plain contracts, only in poetic sub-clauses and metaphor-laced trusts.
Her glass of wine had gone untouched.
"System," she said softly, "cross-reference Fifth Concord with known succession treaties and failed monarchies."
System: "Correlation detected. 14% overlap with dynastic transitions between 1780 and 1920. Flagged pattern: assassinations followed by bloodline nullifications."
Camille tapped her pen against her chin.
"So... not buyers. Historians. Possibly architects."
She sat back, staring at the ornate seal on the latest scan. A crest buried under two layers of cipher and parchment—a crown split by silence.
"They don't want jewelry. They want heirlooms that whisper in rooms with no walls."
She encrypted her findings, tagged the file C2-GHOST, and sent it to Alexis.
High above Florence, a storm drizzled over Marco's forge as golden light flickered through thick stone walls. He stood at the anvil, hair tied back, apron stained, sleeves rolled. In his hand, a small chisel carved an inner band with near-imperceptible runes.
The prototype was almost finished.
He had named it Exile's Signature—a sovereign band of unpolished gold, forged in ancient alloy, marked only with the phrase: Silentium Coronat.
Not a ring for a finger. A declaration for a legacy.
He exhaled slowly as the final groove cooled.
"This one is not meant to shine," he said aloud. "This one is meant to endure."
He uploaded high-resolution images into the secure system and sent the package to Alexis with one word: Done.
At a small university café, Iris quietly sipped her tea, eyes subtly tracking Alexis through the reflection of her spoon. He was at the counter, ordering something painfully normal. Notebooks, hoodie, the ever-present calm air around him. A ghost in daylight.
She'd tried something small this time.
A casual lookup on the Axis Goods employee directory.
It returned with pristine formatting, perfect spacing, redundant entries.
Too clean.
She'd worked with data before. No real system was ever this... sterile.
Then she tried a walk-by past the store after hours. Lights dimmed, manager chatting with a customer who seemed to vanish the second she looked again.
Earlier that day, she'd watched Alexis exit Axis Goods. But an hour later, she'd seen him reading in a bookstore across the street.
She flipped open her journal under the table.
"There's something I'm not seeing. I'm not sure what I'm chasing. I just know he's not what he looks like."
She looked up again.
Alexis caught her eye. Or... seemed to. He blinked slowly. Then looked away.
Was it accidental?
Alexis sat at his console that night with one hand resting on his ring, eyes fixed on a new alert.
System: "Client 003 has re-established contact. Secure courier package received."
He opened the live scan of the envelope. No name. Only a black wax seal—ornate, pressed with an archaic sigil traced to a kingdom that had collapsed over 150 years ago.
System: "Seal linked to House Baltren. Last confirmed lineage dissolved in 1864."
Alexis: "And yet someone mailed it today."
System: "Contained within: a request. 'I seek a crown to mark the end of my line.'"
Alexis leaned back in his chair.
"People really do get poetic when power runs dry."
System: "Encryption matches with C2 format. They may be affiliated."
Alexis: "Or watching."
He let the thought sit in silence.
Then another ping.
System: "New chatter detected in elite closed forums. A blogger posted a blurred image of Vaelore Atelier. Thread titled: 'The ghost boutique.' Screenshot already circulating in underground watchlists."
Alexis frowned. "Who saw it?"
System: "Thread deleted. IP bounced through multiple relays. Primary hit from a Tokyo art board. Secondary from a private Russian collectors' net."
"Linh?"
System: "She is already handling it."
Da Nang – Linh Tran
Linh cracked her knuckles and opened a disguised burner node that led directly into a darknet mirror.
"Alright, you slippery thread," she whispered. "Time to rewire your memory."
She injected a false timeline into the forum's metadata: made it look like the thread had been an art project from 2021, complete with fake comments, troll reviews, and a botched meme campaign.
Then she flooded the same boards with noise—photoshopped fake logos, ridiculous backstories, even a fictional documentary clip.
Finally, she messaged Alexis:
"Crisis buried. Created distraction campaign: Vaelore as cursed house brand. Should buy us two weeks of calm."
Alexis replied: "Approved. Send Iris a free fake coupon just for laughs."
Linh grinned and got to work.
Florence – Marco
Marco boxed the first prototype in a hand-carved teakwood box and labeled it with a false artisan code. He stared at it for a long moment before wrapping it in silk.
"May you speak softly in the rooms that listen hardest," he whispered.
Back in Buenos Aires, Camille was already meeting with a contact—an archivist named Lucia who worked behind marble doors in a museum no one talked about.
Camille placed the Concord Seal on the table.
Lucia paled.
"I thought they were myth."
Camille didn't smile. "Everyone does—until they write you a check."
Lucia nodded. "You're dealing with the kind of people who don't buy luxury. They purchase permanence."
Camille: "That's why they came to us."
At his apartment, Alexis closed the console and stood. He glanced down at his ring. The gold caught the faint moonlight, and in its curve, he saw not himself—but the empire he was building brick by brick in silence.
System: "Final update: Storefront traffic increased 38% in the last 48 hours. Four inquiries. No names. Only coordinates."
Alexis: "Keep them in queue."
System: "Understood."
He pulled on a coat and stepped into the night.
Time to disappear again.