Chapter 72: The Eclipse Syndicate’s Hound

Chapter 72: Chapter 72: The Eclipse Syndicate’s Hound

"The wolf may lose his teeth, but never his nature." — Aesop

•••

Far from Aethelgard, the Eclipse Syndicate received a report inside a dimly lit room.

The report contained only three lines, and none of them brought good news.

Their handler had stopped responding.

His laboratory had been reduced to melted glass and human teeth.

And the research folio containing nine years of work was missing.

That meant someone had taken it, and the Syndicate’s secrets were now in unknown hands.

A man with spotless cuffs carefully turned the page.

"Recover the folio," a voice ordered from the table, where a black sun surrounded by a ring of teeth was engraved. "Eliminate everyone who has touched it."

"I’ll need the list of names," the man replied.

TSS!

The wax hissed beneath the signet.

The man’s name was Gideon Vane.

[ Level 55. Blood-Alchemist.]

Known simply as the Vane, he was the Eclipse Syndicate’s last resort when problems needed to disappear.

He had once eliminated everyone inside a compromised Syndicate Chapter house, including the landlord.

In thirty years of handling such assignments, none of his colleagues had survived long enough to describe his methods.

He rarely raised his voice because he never needed to. His methods were quiet, and a single opened vial was often enough.

He traveled light, carrying only one trunk and one coat, neither showing a single bloodstain.

There was something unsettling about his stillness, almost as if he kept his own bodily fluids stored away in jars.

That evening, Gideon boarded a coach heading south.

He studied the passenger list as though he were choosing something from a menu.

Then he settled into his seat and slept peacefully throughout the journey.

After all, a man who had never feared becoming someone else’s prey had no reason to lose sleep.

•••

Aethelgard Academy was still mourning when it announced a new appointment.

For the semester, a visiting professor would teach Restorative Alchemy.

Professor Gideon Vane arrived with glowing recommendations from three coastal institutions, spotless clothes, and a calm, gentle voice.

He took over the late professor’s canceled classes and gave such a touching speech in his memory that several second-year students began crying.

Joel attended the first lecture with his notebook, maintaining his usual disguise.

Ranked fiftieth out of three thousand students, he sat quietly and took notes like everyone else.

But four minutes into the lecture, he noticed something strange.

It wasn’t one particular thing. It was several small details.

Vane always smiled half a second before speaking, as though every expression had been carefully rehearsed.

His eyes moved across the students, never resting on anyone for long, yet somehow observing everyone.

He casually used the word "exsanguination" while explaining how to prepare broth. Nobody laughed, and he clearly hadn’t intended it as a joke.

When a student asked about preserving corpses, Vane answered with remarkable enthusiasm, even managing to mention the late professor with genuine-sounding sadness.

Then there were his hands.

Throughout the forty-minute lecture, he made no unnecessary movements. Every gesture was precise and controlled.

Only the chalk dust settling on his spotless cuffs seemed out of place.

And beneath his expensive cologne, Joel noticed something else.

A faint smell of old iron.

’He smells like a coin.’

Joel briefly activated [ Soul Sight] from his seat in the third row.

What he saw made him pause.

Most people’s souls resembled ordinary rooms.

But Vane’s soul looked like a dark cellar filled with carefully arranged shelves.

Each shelf held something that had once belonged to a living person.

There were more than two hundred of them.

And every single one had been carefully labeled.

Joel immediately deactivated Soul Sight.

He finished his notes and spent the rest of the lecture behaving like an ordinary student, blinking and paying attention at the right moments.

At the door, Vane personally thanked each departing student for sharing the academy’s grief.

He even addressed everyone by name.

Names he had memorized from a list during his journey.

That night, Joel opened his vault and retrieved the correspondence he had stolen from Malakor.

It took him eleven minutes to find what he was looking for.

In the margin of an old procurement invoice, beneath the symbol of a black sun surrounded by teeth, someone had written:

Retained: The Vane. Purpose: Cleaning. Rates available upon request.

And directly beneath it was another note.

Payment accepted in kind.

[Ding!]

[Hidden quest advanced: Undertow. The Syndicate has dispatched a recovery asset.]

[Threat logged: Gideon Vane. Level 55. Class: [Blood-Alchemist]. Standing: elite cleaner. Cover: visiting chair, Restorative Alchemy.]

"A hunter," Joel said. "Sent to find a thief. He has over two hundred victims, and now he’s been given a new list of targets. Thomas is on it. So is everyone who investigated the ruins. And whoever took the folio."

Nyx emerged from the wall, clearly excited.

SHHSH!

"Shall I kill him, Architect?"

"No. If we kill their cleaner, the Syndicate will send someone even more dangerous."

Joel studied the invoice.

"Let him stay. Let him hunt. Every place he searches and every person he contacts will tell us something about the Syndicate."

•••

At midnight, Joel gathered everyone around a map of the academy.

"You want me to spy on a Level 55?" Roan asked. "You want me to plant listening devices on someone who wipes out entire Syndicate hideouts?"

"I want you to charge him for it," Joel replied. "Can your rune lattice listen without being detected?"

Roan’s annoyance immediately turned into interest.

TIK-TIK!

His chalk moved across his slate as he began working.

He already had a design in mind, something he had developed after the ambush.

Fourteen small slates sealed in wax. Each could detect pressure and mana without releasing any signals that a Blood-Alchemist might notice.

The seals would last seventy hours, and their dull wax covering would make them look like ordinary plumbing materials.

Together, they could monitor locations where Vane spent more than a minute.

"Passive listening is technically surveying," Roan explained. "And surveying is legal. I checked."

"You checked whether it was legal?" Joel asked.

"I checked how much the fine would cost."

Roan examined his design again.

"But we need something belonging to him. A personal item to use as a key."

"He keeps his chalk in his pocket," Nyx said from the ceiling, sounding rather pleased with herself.

"Then we’ll borrow something from that pocket," Joel replied.

A short piece of chalk soon arrived through the pipes.

Roan held it near his compass.

The needle spun briefly before settling in one direction.

TCK!

"He’s staying in the visiting faculty wing," Roan said, studying the reading. "Third floor. Two rooms. He specifically requested the one with the north-facing window."

"A man who wants to watch the entrances from somewhere difficult to climb," Joel remarked. "Smart."

Meanwhile, Sybill began strengthening the lattice with her listening hexes.

The gray magic settled over the slates, allowing them to record everything without physically disturbing anything.

"Listening is safer than touching," she said.

She glanced at the others.

"Touching is how people end up drained of blood and turned into broth."

[Ding!]

[Surveillance network established: rune-lattice, 14 nodes. Monitoring: Gideon Vane. Detection risk: negligible.]

[Billing note: materials charged to the subject. He has not yet agreed to this.]

•••

Over the next four days, Roan’s surveillance network followed Gideon Vane’s movements across the academy.

The fourteen slates recorded everything, sending their findings back to Joel one location at a time.

On the first day, Vane visited the ruined laboratory twice.

He stood exactly where Thomas had stood, holding his palm over the melted glass for the same amount of time.

Strangely, the slates detected no mana activity.

Whatever method Vane used to examine the ruins, it wasn’t ordinary magic. Joel suspected it involved something the Blood-Alchemist had paid for with blood.

Before leaving, Vane placed a condolence card at the annex.

He held it for exactly two seconds, as though weighing it.

On the second day, he visited the records hall and the cadaver vault.

At the vault, the living muscle curtain reacted to his presence. It leaned toward his heartbeat but refused to open.

Vane stood there for a long moment, smiling at it like someone recognizing an old acquaintance.

On the third day, he visited the memorial garden.

He counted the forty dead students and left a wreath in their memory.

Then he went to the inquiry pavilion, where he quietly observed the Inquisition’s investigation from a distance.

The inquisitors noticed him too.

Neither side approached the other.

Both were investigating the same incident, and both believed they were the ones doing the hunting.

Meanwhile, Thalassa gathered information through the academy’s laundry water.

She discovered something unusual.

Vane’s collars always returned perfectly clean.

The man never sweated.

"Sweat is the body’s way of complaining," Joel remarked, recording the discovery. "Apparently, his body has nothing to complain about."

Then came the fourth day.

Just before dawn, one of Roan’s slates detected Vane standing outside a window in Hall Nine.

He remained there for exactly forty seconds before leaving.

Later that morning, the bursar’s office recorded a new request from the visiting professor.

He wanted access to the academy’s merit rankings and the Class schedules of students who had survived the Deep Dive expeditions.

Joel read the report twice.

His expression remained calm.

"He’s following the same clues as Thomas," he said. "A unique Class capable of absorbing kinetic energy. One student in the registry."

Sybill frowned.

"Except Thomas needs official permission to investigate. This man doesn’t."

"And he has over two hundred victims behind him," she added. "He won’t hesitate to make more."

Joel leaned back in his chair.

"True. But I know his face, his disguise, where he sleeps, his habits, his movements, and the order of his investigation."

He tapped the documents on his desk.

"I even have his employer’s invoices."

He gathered the surveillance reports into one folder.

"Meanwhile, all he has is a dead handler and a destroyed laboratory."

Joel opened another file and wrote Gideon Vane’s name at the top.

"The hunter came looking for the thief."

He smiled faintly.

"Unfortunately for him, the thief found the hunter first."

Roan glanced at the folder, then at the campus map covered with the faint glowing lines of his surveillance network.

"Just so we’re clear," he said, "I built an entire surveillance network using fourteen slates and a stolen piece of chalk."

He pointed at himself.

"When people write about this someday, I expect proper credit."

A notification suddenly appeared before Joel.

[ Ding! ]

[ The hunter’s trail converges on Hall Nine. Subject’s next move: unscheduled.]

[ Recommendation: remain boring. Improve at it.]

Nyx watched from the shadows above the map, her crown pulsing slowly.

Unknown to Vane, she had become another shadow following him.

"Architect," she said. "What happens when he comes for the folio?"

"He’ll make an appointment," Joel replied. "Men like him always assume they’re the ones in control."

He dipped his pen into the ink.

Then, beneath Gideon Vane’s name and the note Does not sweat, he wrote one final sentence and underlined it.

The hunt is billable.