Chapter 36 The invisible Variable

Chapter 36 The invisible Variable
The air of anxiety in the Evaluation Spire had grown so thick that it was almost tangible. Sel Voras hurried towards the Deep Repository with an alarm that would make one think that the whole civilization of Vashen was going to explode if he didn’t do anything about it.

She was going through the recent evaluation record on the west of the evaluation spire and comparing it with the report of their parents when a consistent beep akin to the kind that followed before an explosion went off echoed across the Spire.

Such alarms in the Evaluation Spire went off on rare occasions, and when they happened, it meant something was about to go bad if not paid attention to. It was an echo that had not sounded for forty years. If the alarm had gone off now, whatever made it go off was too strong and needed acute attention.

She had arranged for Davan Rell to join her, as she believed that there was something the young adult wasn’t telling her. She had tasked the young man to keep an eye on Jorren, whose existence was beginning to become a thorn in his flesh. Whatever blindsided them like this shouldn’t be able to occur without them having a clue as to what went wrong. 

She hurried down the path to the deep repository and tumbled through the door, unconcerned with the formation the guards struggled to maintain because of her hurry. She rounded her desk at sat, shoulder set as she called up the Tiers of the system. Nothing seemed to have gone wrong.

Voras paused. The beep was still echoing. If the beep meant something was wrong with the system, it should be able to show her exactly what was wrong. If the system wasn’t showing her what exactly had gone wrong, there ther was big trouble, and that only meant one thing.

Whatever was responsible for what went wrong was hidden.

Voras thought of what that could be. Was it a ghost, a shadow, or something else? Sel Voras from ancient lore knew that ghosts could exist, but there was no record ever detailing the existence of one. The record, however, stated the existence of a shadow a century before, who reigned over the city of Vashen with an iron hand, yet wasn’t visible.

The alarm in Voras made her move. She pulled all the records, stopping short when she noticed something. Aside from making sure another human tracked Jorren, she had assigned a seal to follow up on Jorren’s soul and record events that Jorren himself wouldn’t be able to record.

She just realized in a rude shock that the seal was existing on a vacuum. It was not attached to the soul she assigned it to, and when she tried to find out why, the seal disintegrated.

Sel Voras blinked, wondering how Jorren’s soul was able to resist the seal on his soul despite being a negative resonance. Unable to explain it, she called up Jorren's file. When the file appeared, she didn't see a hologram. She saw a dark outline that was close to going transparent. 

Voras leaned back in her seat, anxiety and fear almost shaking her body. 

Jorren had vanished, as far as the ranking grid was concerned.

The door flung open, and a figure walked through, the scattered holographic images scattered across the air before Voras disappearing in a poof. Devan walked towards her desk cautiously, stopping a foot away, like the first day he did.

Voras closed her eyes. “Reports?”

Davan hesitated a moment. “Nothing substantial at the moment, except the initial attempt to access the Dormant Soulwell.”

Voras sat up, her eyes flicking open with rge burning in them. When she spoke, her voice was low and laced with iron. 

“What do you mean, nothing substantial at the moment? You were tasked with going to the dormant soulwell.”

“And I almost died going there,” Davan said, recalling the experience. “And I didn’t find anything there. It was a complete waste of time and energy for nothing.”

“Or you were just too late to find out anything at all,” Voras shot back with a low, firm voice.

Davan didn’t speak. He knew what had happened, but for now, he didn’t think he had to reveal anything to Voras yet. He hadn’t completely agreed with Jorren’s approach anyway, or with the fact that the Keeper was helping him. 

“When was your last interaction with him?” Voras asked.

“Two days ago,” Davan answered. He wasn’t lying, but that wasn’t exactly the truth anyway. After what he saw Jorren do the other day, he wanted to have a conversation with the Keeper alone. Whatever he gets at the end of that conversation would determine what he would do next.

Voras leaned back in her chair, turning it this way and that. For a moment, he looked at Davan like a customer looked at a material in the lower-tier two market to find out what was wrong with it.

“Jorren is morphing into something dangerous despite his architecture,” she said. “I don’t understand why, and it hasn’t made sense to me since the day his hand cracked the stone.” She stopped, as if admitting that alone cost her energy.

“My cause is to ensure that the system maintains a balance,” she continued. “The existing balance is the reason why the city of Vashan thrived in the last hundred years, because my predecessors committed to it. You should be happy that the system allowed you to commit to the same, too.”

Davan nodded. “I understand the requirement of the system. It is the reason I’m here. I wanted to state that I want out.”

Voras nearly jumped. Not everyone was selected to carry out duties that potentially affected the system in any way. Selecting Davan and the system accepting him for the task wasn’t just her doing. It was because the system wanted it. The bafflement that consumed Voras was so much that she had to ask Davan to repeat himself.

“I said I want out,” Davan replied. “I don’t think I’d be able to keep up with this mission.