Jerius watched the small jewelled statuettes scattered about the wall map in the strategy room with fascination.

Apparently, they represented every living being in the Guild, all of whom were now automatically tracked by the Cabal Network and their locations reflected in real time. The human mages were coloured in red, while the golems and animals green.

As silly as it was, Jerius tested it by pacing from one end of the small strategy room to the other, his eyes never leaving the tiny statuette marked in red on the map where the Administrator's Hall was marked. The statuette he eyed shifted slightly in its position, delighting him. He could not imagine the untold value to planning a siege defence with such information available at his fingertips.

Before Jerius split off with Mirayoung while heading to the strategy room, he was told about the several enhancements the Lockdown Protocol provided to the Guild. The map was one of them, the enhancement of which had led to every major landmark like the Dome, towers and other buildings, along with the denizens within, being animated on the map in explicit detail.

Another effect of the Lockdown Protocol Jerius discovered was tied to what he remembered deducing when he first stepped foot into the Guild. He deduced that the strange trees and floras that grew about and around the outermost wall of the Guild were part of a bigger array.

Since the protocol's activation, the trees had morphed, knitting tightly together into a hardened shell. They also spread over the Guild, darkening the sky as if forming a shield ceiling.

As the sky had been completely blotted out, no doubt by design to protect against any aerial attack like an artillery bombardment, so did most of the sunlight. In its place, the trees sprouted strange flowers that dispersed artificial light over the Guild, which again, marvelled Jerius.

All man-made buildings and towers he walked past also gave off a faint pulsation that revealed the wards inscribed on them.

Mirayoung had not gone back to her home under Fermand's insistence. In the administrator's words to her and Jerius, "With everyone gathering indoors, the wraith will grow ravenous, furious and desperate, becoming hypersensitive to the silly few who roam the streets alone or even in pairs. I'm not willing to take any risk with the both of you. Recover and get the strategy out first."

He was sitting alone admiring the map, as Mirayoung had instructed him to wait in the room. She had gone off to meet another archmagus called Holz the Warper, whom he remembered was the appointed guardian of the two Gatekeepers. Holz, along with the two mages in his care, was mandated to stay in the Administrator's Hall as well, where protection reigned supreme.

He did not need to be a denizen of the Guild to hear about the legends of Holz the Warper. Known for his love for battle, Holz the Warper was a warrior-mage-for-hire, a mercenary who had sought the pinnacle of ferocious war magic and fought in many wars across the centuries.

Jerius remembered reading the scrolls on the Kush'Tar Expeditions Nox undertook during its belligerent past, some of which talked about a gigantic 'man-demon' whom the Noxarian generals had in reaction, passed down a retreat-on-sight command. If he were to guess, Holz the Warper was the figure described in the 'man-demon' legend.

He saw little surprise that he was the guardian to the Gatekeepers. Being in hundreds of battles would have honed his instinct for danger and malice to a phenomenally unnatural one.

Hearing two pairs of footsteps, one heavier than the other, Jerius turned in time to see Mirayoung coming in with a giant of a man that made the lady mage look tiny in comparison. He could barely fit into the strategy room. Man-demon!

"I want you to meet Holz the Warper, the undefeated legend of the Guild," Mirayoung said. "You may address him as Master Holz."

Holz dressed less like a mage and more a warrior, cladded in gauntleted steel. He wore a light tile armor that would at most, with the right luck, bend a rusty sword but could otherwise hardly protect his torso. What drew Jerius's eyes most were the intricate tattoos of sigils and symbols inked onto all of Holz's exposed skin, and he hazarded a guess it was the same beneath his armour. Jerius recognised some of them as heraldry sigils, of three-headed rhinos, colossal beasts, giant warhorses and ships.

While armorial bearings conferred pedigree and rank, heraldry sigils transformed one's physicality over time, giving the inked mage the pinnacle of a warrior's body. For his body to be this muscled and sinewy, he must have the sigils engraved on his body for decades at least, where the progress of time allowed the heraldry sigils to exert incremental effect to a hugely noticeable degree.

His face was scarred and burnt, and Jerius could not fathom what he had gone through or why he did not choose to heal them, as if he were wearing them as badges of honour. The one scar over the deformed bridge of his nose was the most distinctive of all. His marred appearance gave the impossibly large man a fiery look.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Master Holz. Your reputation precedes you," Jerius said.

"Jerius of Nox," he said in a rumbling deep voice that Jerius suspected was acquired over time through magic. That low-pitched voice was imposing and would prove useful in commanding platoons in battle and inspiring fear in the enemies.

As Holz spoke, Jerius noticed he had a crooked jaw, reminding Jerius of Noxarian Lord-Commander Michas, someone whom he saw as the uncle he never had.

While the bards sang of a knight with a regal bearing making a last stand for Nox and clearing a path for Zenvix, the salt-and-peppered-haired Michas was anything but regal. He smiled with a crooked jaw and without his armour, proudly flaunted his enormous belly from years of ale. His right arm could barely swing a sword from an old injury, but his strategic mind made him relevant in every battlefield. While embellished, the last stand was real, and Michas, the uncle he never had, went down protecting Nox with all his heart.

While Jerius observed Holz's jaws, the behemoth towering over both him and Mirayoung was eyeing back for a long moment that made the seated mage uncomfortable. "You're almost a splitting image of Lyvia. What twisted sorcery has she woven on you?"

Twisted sorcery? Jerius said crisply, "Is it not too soon to impose judgment on a decision you scarcely under‒"

Holz had gripped his right arm as he said slowly, "I'm starting to see why. Your arcane roots are aged abnormally to those close to an archmagus, with a scent similar to Lyvia's arcane. You must have certain compatibility that she sought to try that twisted sorcery on."

"Stop befouling it," Jerius said. "I pleaded with her to do it."

"It's twisted because every action has a reaction, and with the full knowledge of that, she acquiesced with your plea. There are consequences to prematurely gaining such raw amounts of arcane, more so than the changes to your appearance," Holz said. "She must have put you through tailored training under a specially designed environment to protect you from an implosion or a chaotic collapse of your arcane roots."

Jerius paused for a second. "You're correct that my appearance is not the only consequence, but you'll hear nothing else from me. It's not pertinent to the matter at hand."

"It is a friendly advice," Holz said. "If you think you know all the consequences, think again. Some come to the fore, long overdue and when you least expect."

Ending the discussion, Jerius said, "Then I will just meet them heads on."

Wanting to get down to the true business of the morning, Mirayoung interjected, "Holz, please. We've a pressing matter that we need to seek your counsel. Everything else can wait."

"Then let's get to the crux of the matter," Holz said in agreement.

They stood by the living map built into the wall. With a flick of her fingers and a light touch of enchantment, the map morphed, no longer highlighting the denizens in red or green. Faint blue lines appeared, closing in on themselves to form tiny circles on the map in several locations, including around the Dome, the forest that led up to Mirayoung's house, parts of the lake and town square, Tower of Ze and the Administrator's Hall, among others.

"These are the active arrays in peacetime, without initiating the protocol," Mirayoung said, explaining to Jerius now as Holz would have known them by heart. "Simple entrapment spells. Nothing fanciful. Useful to protect my house's privacy, block a misfired spell if it's in the right place or hold down an unruly mage drunk on Moon's Dew. These will no more tickle a wraith than a bird's feather down your back."

She circled her fingers around parts of the map again, causing it to morph once more. Unlike the earlier counterparts that highlighted the powerful arrays, these newer lines burned a darker blue and cut across multiple locations. One even ran like a spine from northeast to southwest.

"Now these are the arrays set within the Guild that only become active when the Lockdown Protocol is initiated," Mirayoung said. "These are of interest, and Holz, you know these defensive arrays like the back of your palm." Pointing at the intersection between the northwestern region of the lake, she continued, "You are the one who set up the four Bir Arrays at every corner of the lake, if ever the Lady of the Lake goes rogue. Under normal circumstances, they only trigger from the movement in the lake but with the Lockdown Protocol, we can trigger it from a catalyst entirely external to the lake. My plan is considering tapping on the one here as we can set up the lure in the nearby well-protected Tower of Zyke. This array's area-of-effect restriction, which is designed for spirits, will be effective on the wraith."

"How do you intend to trap a Shadow Wraith, given its ferocity and speed, in an open area long enough to activate the array?" Holz said.

"A rudimentary perimeter and a containment squad should cut it," Mirayoung said. "It's not perfect but I will manage the gaps to give this plan a good success rate."

"You might be thinking the incorporeality of a wraith that allows it to bypass solid walls, means little difference fighting it between fighting indoor or outdoor. That's untrue. A whole lot of differences lie in the environment you choose," Holz said. "By fighting indoors, you can use sigils to seal off the escape path for the wraith. Few mages have fought wraiths before, and fewer Shadow Wraiths. And those alive are part of Cabal now. But if you read about their experiences from the Codex of Supernatural Creatures, you will know neither the ferocity nor the speed is the most haunting part of fighting one; it's its survival instinct, inclining it to escape at the slightest turn of events."

"Won't maneuverability be part of our countermeasure against a wraith's speed, which we have to sacrifice fighting indoors due to the space constraint?" Jerius asked.

"Only a fool with a death's wish will seek to overcome a wraith in a narrow alley or cramped area. But nor is it wise to seek a wide expanse of open ground for terrain advantage. If you do win, it'll only be through an unnecessarily hard-won triumph, as you have to grapple with its unopposed speed. Why, you may ask? Maneuverability only means as far as the furthest limit of an augmented warrior or mage. And no amount of magical augmentation will allow a man to jump thirty feet into the sky. And no amount of heraldry sigils, potions and artifacts will let anyone travel as fast as lightning," Holz said.

Jerius thought for a second. "This means you need only a big enough space, not necessarily an open one, to fight a wraith."

"Don't you travel faster than that, Holz the Warper?" Mirayoung said with a smile. "Perhaps young Lyvia may be able to learn that from you in a day or two to give him a fighting chance."

Jerius was unsure how he felt about Mirayoung's words. She had demonstrated a knack for injecting light-hearted remarks even in the most serious of discussions. It might be her way of coping with the recent series of bad news, including the demise of Ludger, whom he guessed to be a close associate of hers. Or it was simply the consequences of living through the centuries, a timescale that should never be within the grasp of mortals, that led to a diminished view of importance of most matters. Though, none of her words ever came off as flippant or irreverent; they were in fact far from being unpleasant even if Jerius was uncertain how he should respond.

Holz did instead, contemplating it with sobriety as he folded his arms, which accentuated his sinewy muscles. "Indeed, with the proper battlefield setup, warping may counter a Shadow Wraith. But without the proper body conditioning through the heraldry sigils over the decades, even a single attempt to warp will separate tendons from muscles, ligaments from bones. An untrained body is not made for it."

Jerius revisited in his head the 'man-demon' legends he heard. As were many other epics, stories and sagas the bards sang from street to street, or soldiers spoke in hushed whispers around a military campfire, many became embellished or laced with untruths. He needed only to look at the stories of the Battle of Nox for a glimpse of how the grapevines and hearsays stretched any facts.

But it seemed specific legends about the 'man-demon' were true after all, particularly around how the warrior-mage would teleport to any part of the battlefield within a defined space so long as he had certain markings set up beforehand. This earned him a fearsome reputation of a one-man army, for he was a walking weapon of mass destruction that was not limited by space and time; and of course, the nickname appended to his name that became 'Holz the Warper'.

"A wraith's strength is both its speed and incorporeality. It can pass through solid inanimate objects. But that's merely a problem to be solved. Enchant a massive indoor space such that a wraith can pass through the walls and ceiling but through which it cannot escape, and you now have a prison that can prevent it from fleeing when the situation turns against it," Holz said.

"It's right we seek your counsel," Mirayoung said. "Or we may have unknowingly hurt our chances."

"You think too highly of me and too little of yourself," Holz said. "Even without my input, I'm certain this will come to you by the second iteration of your strategy, half an hour later. It's simple, but effective. The differentiator is how well you prepare for it. The sigils you use. The coverage. The location. But I believe time is against us for too many reasons that a perfect setup is no longer an option."

"Indeed," Mirayoung said. "The Guild is a place of highly enriched arcane and spiritual essences. We run the risk of letting the wraith evolve to its final form if we don't ensnare it soon. Even I lack the absolute confidence to fight a Mind Wraith without harm."

"What worries Fermand the most and logically so, is the absence of knowledge of how much the wraith means to the mastermind's overall scheme," Holz said, his face hard and stern as a stone cliff. "Most of the effort in nurturing wraiths is spent before conception. Once conceived, they're highly instinctive creatures that wreak havoc wherever they go, with little maintenance needed. The mastermind can then invest an undivided attention on other, perhaps even more sinister parts of a bigger plan."

Mirayoung said, "I've been thinking about this but I haven't told Fermand about it. My view is, Aderis recognised the sheer impossibility of taking down the Guild. We are by all measurements and yardsticks, too powerful for that man and his accomplices to destroy. And I'm by no means speaking from a position of pompousness or presumption. It's simply so."

By her side Jerius began to grasp where the train of thoughts was going.

Mirayoung continued, "Our minds have been framed in by a false premise. Aderis does not seek to destroy. He seeks only to defeat us enough for an unobstructed path to activating the Ritual of Keys. And the wraith enables exactly that by embroiling us into aiding him. In essence, we defeat ourselves."

"Go on," Holz said, his crooked jaws tightened.

"The five Keys are the anchors and gateways between our and the Spiritual Realm over which souls of the deceased can cross. And they can be overwhelmed by creating a sudden spike in the volume of souls in the closest proximity to each Key. This spike forms a bottleneck, trapping souls here. But that's not the main problem. The Keys are unsurprisingly well built and the problem will resolve itself in time, albeit a long time. The biggest problem lies in what the bottleneck does to the Keys."

Narrowing his eyes, Holz said, "If you have a long line of refugees at your castle, you open more gates to ease the flow. But opening more gates means increasing your vulnerability to an enemy attack."

"As always, your understanding is accurate and prompt," Mirayoung said. "In a surreal sense, the Keys open to accept more souls but in turn, that makes them vulnerable enough for the Ritual of Keys to enact destruction. How will the ritual exactly achieve that? No scrolls I read mentioned that, and it's not merely a case of not reading enough. Spending a lot of solitary time by myself has the unintended effect of reading too much and too deep. I wager it's lost knowledge, which gives slight hope that Aderis and the mastermind behind him may not know as well."

"We do not make decisions based on hope," Jerius said.

"Nor am I planning to. It's a thought," Mirayoung said.

"There's a missing piece that I hope you can elucidate for me, Lady Mirayoung. To fulfil the Key at Nox, Aderis pitted the entire Bliaton against us. The wraith is unlikely to cause a mass number of deaths," Jerius said.

"The fulfillment of a Key in the ancient ritual does not come from wanton destruction or mass bloodshed. Or more accurately, mass bloodshed is not a prerequisite of fulfillment. That is simply a facilitator to create the right condition, which is the spike in the volume of souls," Mirayoung explained. "Again, I use volume rather than the number of souls, as is the common misconception of those who know about the Keys, even the Contract Bearers I had met. Even some of the scrolls I read espoused the same mistake."

"The wraith is drawn to hunt spiritually dense humans," Jerius said, thinking. "Does your volume of souls refer to the weight too? A wraith killed is equivalent to the deaths of say, a thousand humans."

"Therein lies the conundrum we are in. By defeating the wraith, we help to fulfill the condition of the Key at the Guild," Mirayoung said, as if she did not quite believe it herself. "But we also cannot let the wraith go unopposed. It will only grow stronger and more potent, evolving to becoming a Mind Wraith that will prove catasphrophic if it escapes from the Guild. One such wraith can destroy an unsuspecting hamlet or village in a night."

"There's the middle ground. We seal it," Jerius said.