Time/Date: TC1853.01.20 – Midday

Location: Metropolitan Police Station, 4th Ring – Official Meeting Roo

Darian’s expression tightened, jaw clenching. "That is your mother, Mara. You should show some respect. But knowing that Selene raised you—" his voice dripped with disdain, "—it makes sense why you lack even the most basic sense of etiquette or filial piety."

"Raven," she corrected quietly. The two syllables carried finality. "My name is Raven. Just Raven. Mara Brenner died eleven days ago."

She paused, letting that declaration settle like ash. "And as to parentage—we will get to that later. Right now, I just want to know why Caelia Lin stole Selene Lin’s alchemy potions and submitted them under her own name. Why is everything she has achieved to date actually based on her sister’s work?"

"I NEVER!" Caelia refuted, standing up so abruptly that her chair scraped against the floor. Anger flashed across her face—genuine anger mixing with something else. Fear. Real, visceral fear that showed in the tightness around her eyes, the way her hands clenched into fists.

Sensing that things were going in the wrong direction, the Advocate Liang moved to interrupt, but Raven’s gaze shifted to her with such focused intensity that Advocate Liang actually took a step back. For just a moment, Peak Essence Gathering pressure concentrated on the lawyer alone—not enough for anyone else to notice, just a whisper of spiritual force that carried a very clear message: Interrupt me again at your peril.

The lawyer’s face went white. Her hands, which had been rising to gesture, dropped back to her sides. Years of defending wealthy clients had given her instincts for danger, and those instincts were currently screaming that this girl—this supposedly powerless, cultivation-crippled victim—was not someone to antagonize.

What in the void did I get myself into? Advocate Zhao thought, suddenly questioning why she’d agreed to take this case despite the generous retainer

"Really?" Raven’s tone suggested polite skepticism tinged with amusement. "But the Alchemy Guild records state otherwise."

"It wasn’t me," Caelia said, the words coming out rushed, desperate. "That’s—that’s something they’ll need to take up with our tutors. I submitted what the tutors told me to submit. If there was any confusion about whose work was whose—"

"Mmm, yes," Raven agreed thoughtfully, nodding as if this made perfect sense. "But unfortunately for Selene—and I guess fortunately for you—most of those tutors have already passed away."

Caelia showed a brief moment of relief. A flash of triumph crossed her face—there’s no way to prove it now, no witnesses left to contradict my story—before she caught herself and schooled her expression back to wounded dignity.

In the observation room, Selene slumped in her chair, all the excitement draining away. "No... no, she’s going to get away with it again. Just like always. No proof, no witnesses, and everyone believes her perfect victim act..."

But Raven’s expression hadn’t changed. She simply watched Caelia with the calm patience of a cat that had already caught the mouse and was just waiting for it to realize there was no escape.

"Yes," Raven said, her voice carrying casual agreement. "The potions made when you were children—those can’t be proven to have been stolen. Not without living witnesses or original records."

She paused, and something in that pause made Caelia’s relief freeze in her chest.

"But what about the ones made at the Empire First Academy?"

Caelia’s face went blank. "What potions?"

In the observation room, Selene asked the exact same question at the exact same moment, her voice filled with confused surprise. "What potions?"

"Well," Raven said, her tone still conversational but her eyes sharp as blades, "according to the records, you majored in healing arts at the Academy. But you minored in Alchemy." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Caelia’s violet eyes had gone very wide.

"It was your Alchemy talent that got you admitted into the Empire First Academy three years ahead of your peers," Raven continued. "The Academy was quite disappointed that you chose healing arts as your major—they’d been hoping to train you as an alchemist. But according to your academic records, to maintain your early admission status, you were required to take Alchemy as a minor subject."

Interesting, Raven thought, watching Caelia’s face cycle through shock, fear, and desperate calculation. There’s almost nothing about her adult alchemy work on the public networks—almost like someone deliberately scrubbed it from the records. But the Academy’s internal databases were easier to access than she probably thought. And that look on her face right now? That’s panic. Pure, undiluted panic.

She’d used her technomage skills the night before—abilities from a past life combined with this world’s technology—to hack into the Empire First Academy’s records. When Lieutenant Holt had mentioned Selene’s incredible performance at the Alchemy Guild test, Raven had gotten curious. A little late-night sleuthing had uncovered this particularly tasty information.

Caelia’s carefully maintained composure was fracturing like ice under too much weight.

Raven decided to push harder. Take the gamble. "The Academy will have kept records of your practice potions. They would have preserved the spectographs in your student files—standard procedure for tracking alchemical development. I’m sure the police have already subpoenaed them."

In the observation room, Wu’s eyes widened. Damn it. We never thought to look into her school records. His mind raced—why hadn’t they considered the Academy? They’d been so focused on the childhood theft and the recent crimes that they’d completely overlooked years of potential evidence sitting in academic archives.

He grabbed his communicator, speaking urgently into it. "Priority one—I need Caelia Lin’s complete academic records from Empire First Academy. Everything. Transcripts, evaluations, alchemical spectograph archives, and practicum assessments. Subpoena it immediately."

Then he pressed the intercom button, his voice filling the interview room with official authority. "The records have already been subpoenaed. We should have them shortly."

It was a bluff. The records would take at least two days to come through, probably longer given the Academy’s bureaucratic protections around student privacy. But Wu could see that Raven had just found the pressure point—the one piece of evidence that couldn’t be explained away or attributed to dead tutors.

And sometimes, in investigation work, you had to push the boundaries of procedure to crack a case wide open.

In the interview room, the effect was immediate and devastating.

For the first time since walking into the Metropolitan Police Station, Caelia Lin completely lost her composure.

The mask shattered.

"You can’t do that!" Her voice rose, cracking with genuine panic that couldn’t be faked or controlled. "You can’t just subpoena my private academic records based on some—some thief’s word! Those are confidential student files! There are privacy laws! You need specific evidence of wrongdoing before you can—"

Her voice was getting higher, faster, the words tumbling over each other as decades of carefully controlled fear finally found an outlet. At the same time, Raven indicated behind her back to Selene and Commissioner Wu.

Behind the observation glass, Wu turned to Selene. His voice was low, intense, carrying absolute authority. "Listen to me very carefully. It’s critically important that you’re calm when you go in there. Do not become hysterical. Do not let emotion overwhelm you. Follow Raven’s lead exactly. Do you understand?"

Selene nodded, her hands trembling.

"This is your one chance," Wu continued. "Your only chance to make Caelia break completely. If you lose control, if you let fifty years of anger turn you into the villain she’s painted you as—you’ll play right into her hands and she’ll recover. Can you do this?"

Selene closed her eyes, taking a deep, shaking breath. Fifty years of systematic psychological destruction. Fifty years of being told she was the liar, the thief, the jealous parasite. Fifty years of watching this woman steal everything—her work, her talent, her future, her love—while playing the victim so perfectly that even Selene herself had started to doubt her own memories.

It all came down to this moment.

She had to be calm. Had to be controlled. Had to not blow this opportunity with emotional outbursts that would make her look unstable.

She nodded again, more firmly this time. Composed herself with visible effort—straightening her spine, smoothing her expression, drawing on every lesson learned from years of navigating Caelia’s manipulation.

Then she walked toward the door.

***

In the interview room, Raven looked at Caelia with slight amusement—the expression of someone watching an opponent realize they’d walked straight into a trap.

"But wasn’t it Selene’s work that got you into the Empire First Academy?" she asked, voice carrying mock-curiosity. "Wasn’t that the real reason you insisted Selene had to attend the Academy with you—to keep her close so you could continue using her potions?"

She tilted her head, studying Caelia like an interesting specimen. "Without Selene there to produce work you could steal, everyone would have realized you were a fraud. Would have known you were a liar and a thief who’d built your entire reputation on stolen talent."

Darian, watching this exchange with his military commander’s instincts firing warning signals, felt confusion warring with growing certainty that something was very, very wrong. Caelia wasn’t reacting like someone falsely accused. She was reacting like someone cornered—trapped with no escape route.

"I am NOT a thief!" Caelia screamed, all the careful composure of decades finally shattering like glass. "SELENE is the thief! She stole everything from me! My health, my bloodrite, my talent—EVERYTHING!"

The door opened.

Selene walked in, moving with careful calm that cost her everything to maintain.

The effect on Caelia was immediate and visceral. Seeing her twin—her victim, her tool, her scapegoat for fifty years—standing there with that expression of terrible understanding on her face made something break completely inside Caelia’s chest.

Selene had been listening to every word from the observation room. Had heard Caelia’s twisted version of their childhood—the version where Selene was the villain and Caelia the long-suffering victim. And listening to those lies had finally made everything click into place. All the pieces of a puzzle she’d been too conditioned, too gaslit, too broken to see clearly.

"So just because I was born stronger," Selene said quietly, her pale blue eyes meeting her twin’s violet ones with devastating clarity, "you decided I had taken everything away from you."

Her voice was steady, calm—the steadiness of someone who’d finally understood the truth after five decades of confusion. "That’s why you stole my life. You spent nearly thirty years systematically destroying everything about me—my work, my reputation, my future, my self-worth—just because you couldn’t stand that I was better than you?"

"You were NEVER better than me!" Caelia’s scream shattered the remaining illusion of composure. Pure rage erupted—fifty years of bitter jealousy and resentment finally unleashed like a dam breaking.

She pointed at Selene’s face with shaking fingers, her voice rising to a shriek. "You stole it ALL from me! Those looks—" her voice had gone shrill, inhuman, "—those were supposed to be MINE! That alchemy talent that made everyone praise you? MINE! Your superior bloodline that got you noticed by the Lin family? MINE, MINE, MINE!"

Her face twisted with an ugliness that had nothing to do with physical features and everything to do with the poison that had festered in her soul for half a century. "You stole it all from me in the womb! You took the health that should have been mine, the beauty that should have been mine, the talent that should have been mine! Why were you even born?! You should have died and let me have what I deserved!"

The words hung in the air like toxic smoke.

Selene’s voice, when she finally spoke, carried terrible understanding. "So that’s why you poisoned my bloodrite. That’s why you made sure I’d have a full regression. Not just failure—complete and total destruction of my bloodline manifestation."

Caelia started laughing.

It was a horrible sound—a mixture of glee, triumph, and complete hysteria. The laugh of someone who’d been holding back for so long that the release felt better than breathing. The laugh of someone who’d finally admitted the truth and found it liberating rather than damning.

She laughed and laughed, the sound echoing off the walls of the interview room, and every person listening felt their skin crawl at the madness in it.

The sound jolted Darian out of his shock like a splash of ice water. His military instincts fired warnings through every nerve—this has to stop right now, this has to stop before she destroys everything that’s left.

He grabbed Caelia’s shoulders and shook her hard, trying to break through the hysteria. "Caelia! Caelia, STOP!"

She blinked. The laughter cut off as suddenly as it had started, replaced by a look of confused disorientation—like someone waking from a nightmare to find the nightmare was real.

Looking around the room, Caelia finally saw what she’d done. Saw Darian’s horrified face. Saw Raven’s knowing, satisfied expression. Saw Selene’s vindicated fury. Saw the lawyers’ pale shock and the way they’d taken several steps backward, as if afraid to be associated with her.

She’d confessed. To everything. In front of witnesses and recording devices, and people who couldn’t be bribed or threatened, or manipulated.

She burst into tears—real ones this time. Not the calculated performance of a master manipulator, but the genuine horror of someone who’d just destroyed themselves and couldn’t figure out how it had happened.

Darian turned on Raven and Selene, his voice harsh with anger born of desperate damage control. "Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted? To destroy your mother?"

He tried to make it about filial piety, about proper respect, about the sacred bond between parent and child. "She carried you for nine months! Faced death to give birth to you! And this is how you treat her? This is the thanks she gets?"

Then, turning to Selene, he made his choice. Things had spiraled completely out of control. The confession couldn’t be unsaid. But maybe—just maybe—he could contain the damage by redirecting attention back to Selene’s crimes.

A look of guilt flashed across his features—there and gone so quickly most people would have missed it—before his expression hardened into something cold and ruthless.

He had to protect the Long family. No matter what.

"And you," he hissed at Selene, his voice dripping with venom. "There is a blood hunt for you. After running away from drugging me and my wife with Amber Kiss eighteen years ago, you were meant to die. The blood hunt still stands. I demand that this woman be handed over to me immediately."

Selene stepped back, genuine fear flashing across her face as the threat hung in the air between them.