The face of Dr. Thorne disappeared, leaving the screen of the private terminal black. The safe house was filled with a suffocating silence.

The silence was finally broken by Draven.

"No," he said, the word a low rumble. "Absolutely not."

He hit his fist on the table, the BANG loud in the small room. "It's a trap. It is the most obvious trap I have ever seen in my entire life. He wants you alone? So he can stick a knife in your back and sell your body to Sterling as a peace offering."

Seraph, who had been standing with her arms crossed, nodded in agreement. "Draven is right. Thorne is a trapped animal. He is desperate and unpredictable. He tried to kill us all. To trust him now would be tactical suicide."

She looked at Jonah, her gaze sharp and unwavering. "What I suggest we do is that we send a strike team to those coordinates. We neutralize Thorne, and we end this threat for good. We do not talk to him. We do not negotiate with him. We eliminate him."

The two soldiers had spoken. To them, the answer was simple. The enemy was the enemy. You do not have coffee with the monster you were sent to kill.

Jonah looked at Vanessa. She had been silent the whole time, her face showing she was thinking hard and analyzing everything.

"Vanessa?" Jonah asked.

She looked up, her expression troubled. "I don't think it's that simple," she said, her voice calm but strong. "Thorne is arrogant, yes. And he is a monster. But he is not stupid. He has to know we would think this is a trap. He has to know we want him dead."

She moved closer, looking straight into Jonah's eyes. "For him to reach out to you, his greatest rival, he must be in a position of absolute desperation. And a desperate enemy... is sometimes a useful one."

"Useful?" Draven scoffed. "He's the reason we're in this mess!"

"Yes," Vanessa agreed patiently. "Which means he is the only person, besides Sterling himself, who truly understands the Syndicate's technology from the inside. He knows their secrets. He knows their weaknesses. That kind of information.... It could be the key to winning this whole war."

The room was divided. The soldiers saw a target to be eliminated. The scientist saw a source of valuable information.

Jonah was caught in the middle.

He really disliked Thorne. He hated him deeply. Thorne had twisted his art, made a mockery of his soul, and brought a disaster to the world. Every instinct Jonah had screamed that Draven and Seraph were right.

But...

He remembered the old stories the first Artificer had shown him in the Sunken City. He remembered the civil war that had torn the creators apart. A war between two different beliefs.

The "symbiotic" group, who believed in a partnership with creation. That was him.

And the "forced synthesis" group, who believed in controlling creation, in building a better, stronger machine. That was Thorne.

They were two sides of the same coin.

And now, a new player had entered the game. The Sterling Syndicate. Julian Sterling was not a creator. He was an industrialist. He didn't care about the art of creation at all. He only cared about the product. He was the soulless, corporate "mass production" that threatened to destroy them both.

Could this be it? A chance to finally end the ancient war? A chance to unite the two different sides of creation against the common enemy that saw their sacred art as nothing more than a profitable assembly line?

It was a crazy idea. It was the thought of an artist, not a soldier. And it was a risk. A big, stupid, and fatal risk.

But it was a chance he had to take.

He looked at his team, at their faces that showed they didn't agree. He was the leader of this small, broken family. The final decision was his.

He took a deep breath.

"I'm going to the meeting," he said.

"Jonah, no!" Seraph said, taking a step forward.

"It's a trap!" Draven yelled.

"I know it's a risk," Jonah said, his voice calm but strong, stopping their arguments. "I know it's probably a trap. And I am not going to be stupid about it. I am not going alone."

He looked at each of them one by one, his gaze steady. "This is not about trusting Thorne. I will never trust him. This is about what he represents. This is about the information he has. Vanessa is right. His knowledge could be the one thing that gives us an edge against a corporation that can buy and sell countries."

He stood up, his decision made.

"Seraph, Vanessa, come with me," he ordered. "We'll proceed with maximum stealth, in full tactical gear. Draven, you will manage our operation remotely. You will stay here, linked to our comms, with a full military extraction team on standby. If things go wrong, and I mean if they even smell wrong, you send in the backup."

He looked at Seraph, who still looked very unhappy with the plan. "I am not asking for your permission, Captain," he said, his voice respectful. "I am giving an order."

Seraph stared at him for a long moment. He saw the fight in her eyes, the part of her that was a soldier fighting with her job to keep him safe. But he also saw a sign of something else. Respect. He had made a leader's choice, and he was ready to stick to it.

She finally gave a sharp nod. "Understood," she said. "But the moment I sense a double-cross, I am putting a bullet in Thorne's head. Understood?"

"Understood," Jonah agreed.

The debate was over. The decision was made. They were going to walk into the heart of the Undercroft where it all began, to make a deal with the devil. Jonah could only pray that the price wouldn't be their souls.

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