"The Ardighieri name has acquired quite the... sudden shine," the man said, his smile the particular kind that meant something other than warmth. "One wonders what polish was used."
"One wonders many things at these gatherings," Alonso replied, lifting his glass with the unhurried ease of someone entirely comfortable with the question. "That is rather the point of them, is it not."
The man chuckled softly and drifted away, satisfied or otherwise.
Alonso let his gaze move across the room.
The ballroom climbed several stories above the floor, pale marble and dark wood, every surface carved and gilded, hundreds of candles throwing warm light across the ceiling in long flickering arcs. The floor had been polished to a mirror finish, the dancers above reflected in a second world below their feet.
Dozens of couples moved through the centre in the slow precise figures of a Venettian court dance, the music from the elevated quartet at the far end feeling less composed and more inevitable.
The women wore gowns of deep jewel colours, emerald and sapphire and a burgundy the candlelight turned almost black, their masks elaborate constructions of lacework and painted porcelain. The men matched them in dark velvet, their masks simpler, more severe.
At the edges, long tables carried food that took itself seriously. Whole roasted birds glazed in something dark and aromatic, aged cheeses that smelled of cellars and patience, pastries built with architectural ambition.
Alonso stood near one of the quieter corners, his own mask a clean matte black, his coat deep charcoal with a single silver detail at the collar. He held his glass and watched.
Two ladies passed close by, their heads tilting just slightly toward each other, a shared smile visible beneath their masks before they looked away.
A man in deep blue materialised at his elbow with the smooth efficiency of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Maestro Ardighieri, allow me the honour." A precise bow, the kind measured to the inch. "Conte Fabrizzi. I represent certain interests along the northern canal routes, and I have long admired the Academy's... particular curriculum." A pause weighted with implication. "I wonder if you might find the time, between your many engagements, to discuss a matter of some mutual benefit."
"Mutual benefit," Alonso repeated, as though tasting the phrase. "A generous framing. What would the Conte's side of that mutual arrangement look like, precisely?"
Fabrizzi smiled. "The kind that tends to make problems... quieter."
"How thoughtful," Alonso said pleasantly. "I will give it the consideration it deserves."
Which was none.
Fabrizzi bowed again, satisfied, and withdrew.
A woman in ivory drifted to his side moments later, her posture carrying the ease of someone raised to enter rooms like this.
"You collect admirers the way others collect debts, Maestro," she said, her tone light and precisely aimed. "One wonders if the two are entirely different things in your case."
"This city gives you plenty to wonder about," Alonso replied. "I find the wondering more honest than most of the answers."
She laughed quietly behind her mask. "Dangerous and charming. A combination Venettia finds entirely irresistible, as I am sure you have noticed."
"Hard to miss," he admitted.
She tilted her head, studying him with the calm appraisal of someone deciding something. "The Marchesa di Volturno has been watching you since you arrived, by the way. Third pillar from the left. She is not a woman who watches things without intention."
"Few people in this room are," Alonso said, not even glancing that way.
"No," she agreed, her smile carrying something wry underneath it. "But most of them are watching you wondering what you might do for them." A pause. "She is watching you wondering what you might do to her."
She smiled wider, a mischievous glint in her eyes, and drifted away before he could answer.
Alonso couldn’t help but chuckle quietly. Since when had he turned into this sort of Casanova figure? Genuinely amusing… if not occasionally exhausting.
He took a slow sip of his wine, which was truly excellent, and turned slightly as a new presence settled beside him, this one carrying a self-important air that was hard to miss.
The man was perhaps forty, his mask a pale gold, his doublet immaculate in the deep purple reserved in Venettia for those of ecclesiastical connection. The cut of him was precise, the posture of someone who had grown up understanding that how you stood in a room communicated everything before you opened your mouth.
"Maestro Ardighieri." The voice was warm, cultured, carrying the faint resonance of someone accustomed to being listened to in large spaces. "I am told you are a man of considerable... discernment. My father speaks highly of those qualities."
Alonso glanced at him. "And your father would be?"
"Cardinal Morvaine," the man said, with the particular ease of someone placing a card on a table and watching for the reaction. "I am his son, Edoardo. I represent certain of his interests here in Venettia, in an entirely personal capacity, you understand."
"Of course," Alonso said.
"He has great admiration for the Academy," Edoardo continued, his tone carrying the smooth warmth of someone trained to make every conversation feel like a confidence. "And for those within it who demonstrate... the rarer gifts. He believes, as do I, that talent of your calibre deserves the kind of support that only those with true reach can provide." A brief pause, pleasant and unhurried. "The Way has always been a generous patron to those it considers friends."
"That is a generous offer," Alonso said. "And what does friendship with the Cardinal tend to look like, in practice?"
Edoardo smiled at that, easy and practiced. "Doors that were closed become open. Complications that were present become... absent. And those the Cardinal counts as friends find the world considerably more accommodating than those he does not." He tilted his head slightly. "You are, if I may say, precisely the kind of man my father prefers to have on the right side of that arrangement."
"Rather than the wrong one," Alonso said pleasantly.
"I would never phrase it so bluntly," Edoardo replied with a smile.
"I am sure your father is a subtle man," Alonso said.
"The subtlest." A pause. "As I imagine you are."
Alonso held his gaze for a moment, then smiled, leaving it there.
"I think," Edoardo said carefully, reading whatever he found there and adjusting accordingly, "that you and I should speak again soon. Somewhere considerably more… private than this."
"I look forward to it," Alonso said.
I absolutely don’t.
Edoardo inclined his head, touched two fingers briefly to his mask in a gesture that managed to be both casual and deliberate, and moved away into the crowd with the confidence of a man who considered the conversation to have gone well.
Alonso watched him go and took another sip of his wine.
A Cardinal ranked the same as his supposed father and the Reapers of The Mantle. Serious power by any measure. The fact that one's son had sought him out personally at a social gathering said something about how seriously The Way took its shadow operations... things it could not perform in the light but needed done regardless.
In any case, nothing he had encountered since arriving suggested anyone suspected he was the hidden Sovereign. More than that, rumours had been circulating through certain channels of one of the Seven Saints, Aurelia, still searching for him in Brithelm.
That was, genuinely, the closest thing to good news he had come across since stepping foot in Venettia.
Alonso remained, picking at the food here and there, which was really good, and making his peace with the music, which was not his taste but had a certain architecture to it he could appreciate given the alternative was standing in silence. Inwardly he kept most of his focus on the slow, patient work of his internal Will and EM microconstructs, grinding away at the approach one careful iteration at a time.
In any case, he was being paid more than 60 Gold Crowns just to stand here as ‘security’, so complaints felt unreasonable.
Faces came and went. Each one wanted a private conversation later. The hours passed accordingly.
Near the end of the evening he excused himself to the patron who had hired him, a powerful merchant of advancing years and excellent taste in wine, who waved him off with genuine warmth and an open invitation for coffee anytime. Alonso smiled, shook his hand, and made his way out.
After all... he had a target to follow.
Accepting the security contract had complicated his second job of the evening. Poisoning the food or a drink would have been cleaner, but it would have rather undermined the role he had been hired to fill. So tonight… the old fashioned way it was.
He turned a corner, split a Will construct of himself from his own presence, the two diverging smoothly at the street's edge as he cloaked himself entirely. The construct continued walking. He didn't.
A breath later he blurred upward, clearing the roofline in silence, and landed at the edge of it.
He studied the target from above.
Renato Calvi. Merchant on the surface, money launderer beneath it, the kind of man whose books told one story and whose cellars told another. Three bodyguards flanking him as he moved through the canal-side street below, all carrying themselves with the practiced ease of people paid to be the last thing someone saw.
Mithril-rank by the look of them, though it was hard to say with certainty without a fight. And a fight was the last thing he wanted.
Alonso watched the group move along the embankment, the torchlight catching the water beside them in long broken reflections, the late evening crowd thinning around them.
He didn't move, simply stood in silence… watching.
His Will construct moved somewhere behind him at street level, casually, providing a clean secondary presence for anyone tracking him to find.
Alonso exhaled slowly.
It was time.
He narrowed the world around him until only him and his goal existed.
He had come to understand that what this world called Anima Velata, the merging of Will with masked intent, was considered of incredible difficulty and terrifying potential. Enough that the name alone carried much more weight than the title of Grandmaster. His reputation in Venettia had been built on exactly that.
And what he was about to do now… was prove it was not undeserved.
He masked himself completely. Not a sliver of intent, not a sound, not a distortion in the air around him, as though he simply did not exist.
Then he moved.
A single silent launch from the roofline, his trajectory carrying him in a long low arc across the night sky, closing the distance in one clean bound that brought him tangentially closer without ever landing in the target's line of sight.
At the apex of it, suspended for a fraction of a millisecond above the canal and the torchlit street below, he drew upon the certainty of the reality he imposed.
His Will manifested as a minuscule focused lens, threading silently through the night air.
No-Strike
One clean, surgical motion.
He told the world to enact a single, simple change. Exactly the amount needed. Nothing more, nothing less…
And the world responded.
Calvi's step faltered… and he dropped lifeless.
Alonso was already long gone before the corpse touched the stone.
His descent carried him into the narrow passages below, boots finding each step without a sound as he moved through the maze of alleys behind the canal facades, the city above becoming a distant memory of sound as the passages grew darker around him.
He approached one of the many secret entrances to Il Mercato dell'Ombra.
His token pulsed once from his pocket. The wall answered, bricks withdrawing and rotating in their familiar sequence, the archway opening into the warm amber glow beyond.
Alonso stepped through without breaking stride.
The market had more life at night than during the day, which was about as surprising as finding water in a canal. He moved through the crowd toward La Cancelleria dell'Ombra, presented his stored visual records as proof, and walked out with 82 Gold Crowns, each valued at 700 Silvermarks.
He went straight to the orb store.
Almost everything he earned ended up there. Grade 6 gear remained well beyond his current reach, and not without reason.
A Grade 6 piece came from either the special boss of a High-Grade Dungeon, something only Fifth State existences dared approach, or from one of the 21 Grand Dungeons scattered across the world, each one jealously guarded by its greatest powers. The armament they offered was what Reapers and Sovereigns actually used in the field. The gap between that and where he currently stood was not a small one.
His ambitions tonight were considerably more humble.
SP. As much as he could buy, as fast as he could buy it. Everything else could wait.
The merchant asked nothing. Alonso paid, took the orbs, and absorbed them without ceremony.
Stage 1 — 51.750% ➤ 52.180%
The returns were shrinking. Still worth it, in his assessment. It was one of the few things that could meaningfully accelerate his path toward the Fourth State, after all.
He wandered for a while after that, letting things settle above ground as the death of Renato Calvi made its quiet, inevitable ripples through the Venettian night.