Chapter 65 | What Was In That Dungeon?!

Chapter 65: Chapter 65 | What Was In That Dungeon?!

What he didn’t know: why these two. What made Shira Voss and Mira Elys specifically worth targeting. What the Ashford family stood to gain from their silence.

He wrote: Shira — Gale Strike. Mira — Resonance. Both S-rank Gifts. Both in the same dungeon on the same day.

He looked at it.

’Not just two heroines,’ he thought. ’Two specific Gift types. Gale Strike and Resonance. Wind pressure and sound frequency. What do those two Gifts have in common that would make someone with cross-family authority want both of them removed simultaneously.’

He sat with it.

The answer didn’t come.

He made breakfast.

=======

Morning.

Both wives came out. They ate.

Shira was quieter than usual — not the processing quiet from last night, something different. More internal. She ate carefully and looked at the window and said nothing for most of the meal.

Mira came out with her hair up again and the board uncapped and ate with her left hand so the right was free for the marker, which she had started doing in the last week without Kai noticing when it had become the habit.

Halfway through, the board came up.

Denko. What has he found.

"Still working the supply chain," Kai said. "The dampener device trace is solid but the purchasing account has three layers of corporate structure between it and the Ashford family directly. Takes time."

How much time.

"He said days. Not weeks."

She lowered the board and ate.

Shira said, still to the window: "The Ashford family. What do you know about them."

"Major family," Kai said. "Cross-family authority — that’s unusual. Most families operate within their own jurisdiction. Cross-family authority means they have standing agreements with multiple other families. Political weight."

"Hero academy connections," Shira said.

"Probably."

"Vanguard," she said.

He looked at her.

She was still looking at the window.

"The Ashford family has had a seat on the Vanguard Academy oversight board for eleven years," she said. "I know because the oversight board approved the joint expedition assessment framework. The framework that made a joint-family dungeon run possible under Vanguard auspices."

Kai was very still.

"They wrote the framework that made the expedition possible," he said.

"They had a seat on the board that approved it," Shira said. "That’s different. But yes." She paused. "I knew this at the time. After the incident I looked into the expedition authorization. The Ashford seat on the oversight board was how the joint-family structure got approved. I thought it was standard process. I didn’t think—" She stopped.

"You didn’t think they built the framework specifically for this," Kai said.

"No," she said. "I didn’t think that."

She picked up her spoon.

She ate.

Mira’s board came up.

The oversight board. Who else sits on it.

"I don’t know," Kai said. "I’ll find out."

She lowered the board.

He made a note.

====

Denko called at ten.

"I pulled the Vanguard oversight board composition," Kai said, before Denko could speak. "Ashford family has a seat. Who else."

A pause.

"You already know," Denko said.

"I’m confirming."

Denko listed them. Five families total. Kai wrote them down. Three he recognized — established hero families with long Vanguard ties. The fourth was a name he didn’t know.

The fifth was the Calloway Foundation.

Kai looked at the page.

"The Foundation has an oversight board seat," he said.

"Had," Denko said. "They were removed fourteen months ago. Conflict of interest filing. The removal was contested."

"Fourteen months ago," Kai said.

"Yes."

"That’s eight months after Kai’s license application was filed," he said.

"Yes," Denko said. "And six months after the first Foundation representative showed up at your door."

Kai looked at the wall.

"They weren’t just monitoring the registry," he said. "They were coordinating. Ashford organized the expedition. Foundation managed the containment afterward. Two families. Different functions. Same objective."

"That’s what the supply chain is starting to suggest," Denko said. "The dampener device purchased through the Ashford-connected firm. But the operatives were Foundation-contracted. Two families working in parallel."

"Why the split," Kai said. "Why not one family handling everything."

"Plausible deniability," Denko said. "Neither family is directly traceable to the other’s actions. The Ashford family destroys the heroines. The Foundation manages the aftermath. If either operation gets exposed, the other family is clean."

Kai wrote it down.

"The oversight board seat," Kai said. "The Foundation was removed fourteen months ago. Why."

"Conflict of interest filing," Denko said. "Someone filed it. The filing is public record but the filer is listed as anonymous." A pause. "I’m looking into who filed it."

"Good," Kai said.

"Kai." Denko’s voice shifted. "The Ashford family. They’re not small. Cross-family authority, oversight board seat, Vanguard connections. What you’re building here — when it’s complete, it’s going to point at people with significant institutional protection."

"I know," Kai said.

"You need to be careful how you use it," Denko said. "Not just safe. Careful. The wrong move at the wrong moment and it disappears."

"I know," Kai said.

"Just making sure," Denko said.

He hung up.

Kai looked at the notebook.

The timeline was filling in. He added the oversight board seats, the Foundation removal, the plausible deniability structure.

He looked at the question he had written two nights ago.

What do Shira Voss and Mira Elys have that the Ashford family needs contained.

He looked at the Gifts column.

Shira — Gale Strike. Mira — Resonance.

He wrote underneath: Ashford oversight board. Vanguard framework. Joint expedition.

He wrote: What were they about to find.

He stopped.

He looked at that.

’Not what they had,’ he thought. ’What they were about to find. They were both advancing toward something. Both at peak performance. Both in the same dungeon that the Ashford family controlled the classification on.’

’What was in that dungeon.’

====

He went to Shira’s door at noon. Knocked.

"Come in," she said.

She was at the desk. The physio sheet was closed — she wasn’t pretending to read it today. She was just sitting with her hands in her lap.

He sat in the chair.

"The dungeon," he said. "The SSS-rank dungeon. What was in it."