The scent of cinnamon and engine oil floated through the alleys of the Grand Bazaar. Beneath it, past false walls and security sensors, a man sat in a vault of whispers.
Leviathan.
His beard had gone grey in places, but his body was all steel and scars. He smoked in silence until the secure line lit red.
"Nyah."
"You're needed."
"Thorne?"
"Affirmative. He's moving too fast."
"Or just fast enough," Leviathan said.
He crushed the cigarette beneath his boot and stood, reaching for a coat lined with ceramic plates.
Elias Thorne moved with purpose through the glass corridors of the Duchess Corporation's European headquarters. Every step echoed with new authority.
Magritte walked beside him, dressed in a cobalt silk suit, effortlessly sharp. The board members were waiting. Most had tried to oust him three times already.
He entered the room like a storm hiding behind sunlight.
"Gentlemen. Ladies," Elias began, "I know you all expected a different ending last week."
One snorted.
Elias clicked a button. Behind him, a hologram projected an intricate web of financial crimes connected not to Elias, but to them.
"If you challenge me again," Elias said, voice cool, "I'll let the world see the rest."
The room was silent.
Until someone clapped.
Valerie Dexter stepped in from the shadows. "Impressive. But you still haven't won."
Her presence hit Magritte like a wave.
Elias raised a brow. "Valerie."
"Don't pretend, Elias. The game's just starting."
Far away, Landon Crick watched the events unfold through a wall of screens.
"Dexter's in play. So is Leviathan. Thorne is cornering us."
A younger man nearby clean-shaven, too confident scoffed.
"He's just one man."
Landon turned, slow and deadly. "He was *always* just one man. That's what makes him dangerous."
He pulled up a paused frame of Elias shaking hands with a UN official.
"Find Magritte's weakness. She'll be his leash."
That night, Elias couldn't sleep.
In the dark, fragments came to him. The waves. A storm. Screaming. Metal tearing.
And a voice young, feminine whispering: "You're not ready, Elias. But you will be."
He jolted upright in bed.
Magritte was gone from her side of the mattress.
He walked out to the terrace. She was there, barefoot, staring at the stars.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked without turning.
"I remembered something," he said.
"Was it good?"
"No. But it felt real."
She looked at him. "Do you trust me, Elias?"
"I'm learning to."
"You'll need to."
She stepped close, placing a hand over his heart.
"Because everything's about to burn."
In a quiet lab beneath Prague, Leviathan opened a cryo-chamber. Inside, a pale figure gasped awake eyes glowing with unnatural light.
A scientist gasped. "What is this?"
"Insurance," Leviathan replied. "If Thorne becomes what I think he might… we'll need her."
"Her? What's her designation?"
He smiled grimly. "Magritte, Version One."
The night was wet, the kind that felt like it soaked through skin and memory.
Elias Thorne stood before the rust-red door of a building long thought abandoned. Magritte's coordinates had brought him here with no context, no explanation.
He stepped inside.
There was music low jazz humming like a heartbeat and a fire crackling in a wall-mounted hearth. The scent of jasmine and old money hung in the air.
Magritte sat at the far end of the room in a leather armchair, a half-empty glass of something dark in her hand.
"You came," she said, not looking up.
"I had questions."
"And I have one answer."
He approached. "Only one?"
"For tonight."
Elias stopped two feet from her. "Then make it count."
Magritte looked up finally, her gaze softer than he expected. "What if I told you I'm not what you think I am?"
"I'd say neither am I."
They sat in silence, shadows crawling over the room like slow ghosts.
Then Magritte slid a file across the table.
"Your shipwreck... wasn't random."
Elias froze.
Magritte leaned forward, her voice a whisper. "You were supposed to die that night, Elias. Your family was planning it."
Elsewhere, Valerie Dexter watched a projection feed of Elias and Magritte in the Red Room.
She sipped wine with one gloved hand.
Behind her, Dexter Inc. operatives waited for instruction.
"Magritte is in too deep," one of them said.
"No," Valerie replied. "She's exactly where I want her."
One of the screens flickered an image of a cryo-lab in Prague.
Valerie smiled darkly. "Soon he'll learn she's not the only Magritte."
Later that night, Elias returned to the Thorne estate.
Jude greeted him at the door, eyes wary.
"You're being followed again," Jude said.
"I know."
"They're using old family codes Landon's fingerprints."
"Let them follow," Elias muttered. "I want them to see where I'm going."
They stepped inside. The manor creaked under memory. Dust still clung to the chandelier. But in the main hall, someone had left a single photo frame on the piano.
It showed Elias aged sixteen smiling beside a woman with flame-red hair.
He didn't remember taking it.
At an underground chamber in Marrakesh, Landon stood before an altar. Beside him, a robed figure with no face.
"He's begun unlocking the memories," Landon said.
The figure rasped, "Then we initiate the Sigil."
Black liquid spilled across the altar's grooves, forming a symbol older than language.
The wind shifted.
A cry was heard something ancient, waking.
Back in the Red Room, Magritte lingered long after Elias had gone.
She pulled out a small black box from her coat.
Inside, a ring. Not for marriage.
For power.
A relic. Cursed, maybe.
She slipped it on.
Her eyes flickered violet.
And far away, in a sealed vault, something screamed.