Gilded Ashes-Chapter 304: New Eon

"Well, Raizen..."

His voice was quiet. The same voice he used for everything - lectures, orders, comments that sometimes sounded like threats. But there was something underneath it now. Something Raizen couldn’t name.

"I have to admit."

A pause. The grey light caught the edge of Eiden’s face.

"You almost had me there."

Raizen didn’t move. Didn’t speak. His brain was running too fast and too slow at the same time - cycling through everything that had happened, everything he’d done, trying to figure out exactly how much Eiden knew and how much was a bluff.

Eiden turned back to the railing. Looked out over the city.

"The food" he said. "That was clever. And surprisingly tasty."

Raizen said nothing. Instead, he gave a doubting look.

"No, no! I mean it. I expected something more... Straightforward from you." Eiden tilted his head slightly. "Something simpler, more... Raizen-like. A distraction, maybe. A detour. Something I could see coming." He tapped a finger against the wet wood. "But drugging the meal? Quiet. Patient. Calculated." A pause. "I really didn’t expect that." 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

The compliment felt wrong in Raizen’s chest. Like being praised by someone who’d already decided the outcome.

"But it almost worked" Eiden continued. "Kenzo went down fast. Atman too - though I suspect he would’ve fallen asleep after the meal regardless." A faint smile. "The dosage was aggressive enough, but you didn’t overdo it. Impressive, actually, for someone with no formal training in -"

"Stop praising. Get to the point."

Raizen’s voice was sharper than he intended. But he needed answers.

"How did you stay awake?" The question had been eating at him since the platform - since he’d heard Eiden’s voice above him, clear and calm, hours after consuming a dose that had knocked out any man in minutes.

Eiden smiled.

It was a small smile. The kind that came from a place of experience rather than amusement.

"Well" he said. "When you spend your career meeting up with the smartest people in the world, there will always be people who try to stop you."

Raizen frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

Eiden’s hand went to his shirt pocket. From the outside, it looked like nothing - a regular pocket, flat, unremarkable. But when his fingers hooked the inner lining and pulled, a thin strip of cloth unrolled. Stitched into it, in neat rows, were vials. Tiny ones. No larger than a finger each, each holding a different color of liquid. And above all of them – a sharp, thin syringe.

Sewn into his clothes, a portable antidote kit.

"People have attempted to poison me before" Eiden mumbled. He let the strip hang for another moment, then rolled it back up and tucked it away. His tone was casual - the same tone someone might use to mention they carried an umbrella because it rained sometimes. "I just don’t take the risk anymore."

Raizen stared at the pocket. It made sense. Of course it made sense. A man like Eiden - someone who sat in rooms with the Echelon, who handled artifacts the military couldn’t explain (or afford), who operated in the spaces between power structures - wouldn’t eat unguarded food without safety.

He’d been outmatched before the meal even started.

But something else gnawed at him. Something that didn’t fit neatly into the antidote explanation.

"But then... How did you know we were on the branches below?"

Eiden looked at him. The smile returned - smaller this time. Almost fond.

"Oh? But it’s simple."

A silent second.

"I already knew your plan."

Raizen felt the ground shift beneath him. Not literally. But something inside his stomach dropped - the way it drops when you realize you’ve been playing a game where the other person could see your cards the entire time.

"I know that you were scouting the area before going in" Eiden continued. His tone was light. Conversational. Like he was discussing a student’s fieldwork report. "That was the right move, by the way. And you used the terrain to the best of your advantage. Going underneath the platform - smart. The guards never check below because nobody’s ever been desperate enough to -"

"Ugh, get to the point already."

Eiden blinked. Then he raised both hands in a small gesture of surrender.

"Alright, alright. Back to the point."

He folded his arms across his chest. The light was getting stronger now - details emerging from the dark. The lines of Eiden’s face. The texture of the railing. The faint mist rising from the wet wood as the temperature started shifting.

"So" Eiden said. "I already know that you want the staff."

He said it simply. Like stating a fact he was sure of.

"Still have no idea why, though. Alteea’s orders? Personal curiosity? Something else, maybe? I don’t know" He looked at Raizen’s face. "You don’t strike me as someone who collects broken artifacts without a solid reason."

Raizen stared at him.

The staff? He thought they were after the staff?

Not the files. Not Eiden’s biological reports. Not the documents that Alteea had sent them here to copy. Eiden - with all his antidote vials, his masterful confidence and his ability to read a room like a blueprint - had looked at every move Raizen made tonight and concluded that the target was the staff?

He made a mistake.

The realization landed softly. Like a card being placed face-down on a table. Raizen didn’t let it reach his face.

"But unfortunately" Eiden continued, "I cannot give it to you. As much as I’d love to be rid of it, I just can’t trust anyone’s hands."

As he said it - hands - his right arm moved. Almost absently, the way someone scratches an itch they’ve stopped noticing. His fingers reached up and rubbed the side of his head, and the motion pulled his sleeve back just enough to expose his hand.

Raizen had seen it before. Eiden’s weird hand. The skin darker than the rest of him - changed, as if something had stained it from the inside out. And running along the darkened skin, thin as threads, golden lines traced paths from his knuckles to his wrist.

The mark of something that had touched him and left its mark.

"...It’s something not even I understand yet" Eiden said.

Raizen remembered. The platform. The guard’s question. Eiden’s answer: Because it uses something not even the Echelon understands.

The same words. Almost exactly.

"What does that even mean?" Raizen asked.

Eiden was quiet for a moment. He looked at his own hand - the dark skin, the golden threads - and something passed behind his eyes. Not fear. Not confusion. Something more like the expression of a man standing at the edge of a map, looking at the blank space where the lines stop.

Then he sighed.

"Look, Raizen." His voice shifted. Lower. More direct. "I know you’re smart, so I’ll be blunt."

He turned to face him fully.

"I think I just discovered a new type of Eon."