The Last Mortal

CHAPTER 5: FACE-SLAP AT THE PALACE TURNSTILES

"Keep your head down and walk like you belong here," Mira murmured over our private com-link, her voice a low crackle in my earpiece.

We stood in the outer courtyard of Grand Patriarch Veyn’s administrative palace, surrounded by sprawling gardens of glass lilies that grew only in high-density essence soil. The sheer concentration of the golden mist up here made my lungs itch, but the null-threaded duster swallowed the ambient tracking waves before they could burn my skin. All around us, middle-ring aristocrats and high-ranking officials stepped through the security turnstiles, presenting their polished lineage tokens to the automatic sensors.

I checked the interior HUD of my black ballistic visor. The fake identity loop I had coded from Captain Vane's stolen token was fluctuating, its encryption parameters decaying by the second.

"The security relay is cycling its keys," I whispered, keeping my hands buried inside my pockets. "We have less than two minutes before the automated defense grid marks this token as dead."

"Then get moving," Mira replied from her position across the plaza, where she was pretending to adjust a delivery ledger. "The outer vault access point is right through those turnstiles. If you get stuck there, the automatic turrets will tear you apart."

I adjusted the collar of my coat and stepped into the nearest queue. The aristocrats around me kept a polite distance, their multi-colored bloodline auras pulsing with a quiet, arrogant warmth. To them, my faceless mask and heavy duster marked me as a private high-tier mercenary—a common sight among the wealthy houses.

"Hold it right there, mercenary," a sharp, high-pitched voice cut through the hum of the plaza.

A sleek, silver-robed official stepped out from the main gate kiosk, flanked by two heavy enforcers carrying active kinetic halberds. The official wore an ornate brass crest pinned to his shoulder, identifying him as Master Lin, the palace's chief master of ceremonies. His narrow eyes locked onto the front of my duster coat, tracking the fake Iron-rank pulse my token was leaking.

"The palace courtyard is restricted to Silver-rank bloodlines and above during the morning titration cycle," Lin said, his voice dripping with bureaucratic malice. He held out a long, metallic pointer, tapping the center of my chest with the tip. "Your signature is leaking baseline gray stone. How did a common Iron-rank ditch-digger manage to secure a high-tier security token?"

"The border vanguard authorized my transfer for an inner-ring transport job," I said, my voice sounding flat and mechanical through the visor's vocal filter.

"The border vanguard doesn't authorize garbage to walk the sacred grounds," Lin sneered. He didn't bother checking his digital ledger. He simply raised his right hand, his fingers instantly catching fire as his Flame-Grip technique activated. The heat from his palm was intense, a deep orange glare that caused the surrounding air to ripple with violent pressure. "You're a runner from the lower tiers. Let's see how long that cheap ballistic visor lasts against an active lineage brand."

He lunged forward, aiming his blazing palm straight for my face, intending to brand-scald my flesh and melt the composite mask into my skull to make an example of me in front of the crowd.

The burning hand slammed against my visor.

The aristocrats in the queue didn't even blink. They expected to see smoke, the scent of burning hair, and a screaming criminal collapsing onto the gravel.

Instead, the orange fire died instantly. The moment his flaming palm made contact with the mask, the absolute vacuum within my directory dragged the thermal energy out of his hand, swallowing the fire whole. The heat dissolved into nothingness, leaving the black surface of my visor completely cool to the touch.

Lin froze, his fingers still splayed against my mask. The smirk on his face shattered into a look of pure, unadulterated panic as his internal tracking data returned a zero-density failure. "My element... where is the combustion loop? My ancestral line is cold."

"Your line is an outdated script," I said.

Before his enforcers could swing their kinetic halberds, I brought my right hand up and slapped him across the face with the full weight of my compiled stone-shaper essence. The impact wasn't loud, but the density of the Iron-rank stone code turned my palm into a solid block of granite.

The slap launched Lin sideways. He spun twice in the air before crashing face-first into the brass turnstiles, his silver robes tearing against the metal tracks. The pristine brass crest on his shoulder shattered into a dozen pieces.

"Intruder!" one of the enforcers roared, raising his halberd.

I didn't give them a chance to execute their security protocols. I reached out and caught both of their weapons barehanded, establishing a direct physical ground wire. The Null key inside my consciousness slammed open, locking onto their identical Silver-rank guard bloodlines.

I pulled.

The two enforcers let out synchronized dry heaves, their knees hitting the gravel simultaneously as their vibrant physical signatures were forcefully uninstalled through their arms. The silver light in their eyes died out, leaving them gasping on the floor as baseline mortals.

The automatic scanning turnstiles behind Lin instantly short-circuited as the massive backdraft of stolen essence flooded the local terminal. The red emergency runes flared across the gate pillars, but the defensive laser barriers failed to drop, their code corrupted by the sudden negative-energy void I had anchored in the courtyard.

I stepped over the groveling master of ceremonies, snatched his high-tier master token from his belt, and pushed through the broken security gates.

"Mira," I said into the com-link, my visor's HUD already mapping out the subterranean corridors ahead. "The gates are down. Move into the secondary transit line now."