Chapter 165: Emily Was the Plan

The room remained quiet after the revelation about Marvello.

The Ashcrofts now knew that the Black Moon operation was being prepared in another city, that the festival had been chosen because of the crowds, and that the bombs were meant to create the suffering necessary for the phenomenon to appear.

Yet one question remained unanswered.

Why Emily?

"Then why have you been trying to get Emily?" Lily looked toward the restrained A-Rank.

The man looked at her for several seconds before answering. "Because we needed her."

"For what?" her expression tightened.

The A-Rank didn’t answer immediately. Reinhard remained silent beside Emily. He wasn’t going to interrupt. The prisoner had already started talking, and there was no reason to give him an excuse to stop.

Maki was the one who noticed the wording. "You said needed." The A-Rank’s eyes shifted toward her. "That means Emily isn’t simply your objective. She’s part of the operation itself."

The man’s silence was enough of an answer.

"What does that mean?" Lily frowned.

The A-Rank finally leaned his head back against the wall. "Someone has to take responsibility."

"For what?" her eyes narrowed.

"For everything that happens in Marvello."

Maki’s expression changed and she looked toward Reinhard, then toward Emily. "A scapegoat."

The prisoner didn’t deny it, and the room grew noticeably quieter.

Maki folded her arms and began putting the pieces together. "If the Black Moon appears over a populated city, there will be casualties. There are already illegal experiments involved, prohibited Space manipulation, and whatever devices you’ve planted throughout Marvello. If the city is destroyed or thousands of people are injured or killed, someone will have to answer for it."

Yuna’s expression hardened. "The Baal Family can’t simply stand in front of the Association and admit that they deliberately created a Black Moon over a major city."

"They don’t have to," the A-Rank gave a faint smile.

Lily’s eyes widened slightly, and Maki looked back at him. "They need someone else to carry the responsibility."

"Exactly."

The answer settled over the room. Emily had been quiet throughout the exchange, but she now understood where the conversation was going.

Maki slowly turned toward her. "Emily was involved in the original Black Moon Incident." Emily nodded.

"She survived it," Maki continued. "She knows things about the Black Moon that most people don’t. She has firsthand experience with it, which means it would be believable if someone claimed she had continued researching it afterward."

Lily’s expression grew increasingly uncomfortable, but Maki wasn’t finished. "Then there’s her Gnosis." Emily lowered her gaze.

"Everyone knows it was shattered," Maki said. "Everyone knows you were told that you would never recover. Then, somehow, your Gnosis returned." She paused. "Most people don’t know how."

Reinhard’s expression remained neutral. The Akasha Investment System was something only he knew about. To the outside world, Emily’s recovery had no obvious explanation.

"Then your rise started," Maki continued, looking at Emily. "D-Rank to C-Rank. C-Rank to B-Rank. B-Rank to A-Rank. All in an absurdly short period."

"Which is something that should be celebrated," Lily frowned.

"It should," Maki agreed. "But to someone constructing a false narrative, it’s useful."

Emily’s eyes narrowed. "They can claim that you discovered something during your research. They can claim your Gnosis restoration came from forbidden experimentation. They can claim your rapid growth was the result of whatever you discovered about the Black Moon."

Yuna’s hands slowly tightened. "And now she’s famous," she added.

Maki nodded. "Exactly. Emily isn’t some unknown Awakener they can quietly accuse of something and hope people forget about. She’s one of the most famous Awakeners in Elyndor."

"Which makes her perfect," the prisoner smiled.

"So you just need to make everyone believe she did it?" Lily looked at him with clear irritation.

"Not everyone," the A-Rank shrugged.

"They don’t need evidence strong enough to convince everyone," Reinhard finally spoke. Maki looked toward him. "They just need enough evidence to make people doubt her."

"Exactly," Maki nodded slowly.

That was the real danger. A lie didn’t need to become universally accepted. It only needed to become believable enough that people stopped knowing what the truth was.

Reinhard could already imagine how the story would spread. Emily survived the first Black Moon Incident and then she begins learning more about it. She discovered how to reproduce it which lead to her Gnosis being restoring and her rapidly growing.

Then she returned to Marvello and recreated the Black Moon. Thousands died but she escaped. The pieces were all real, but the conclusion would be completely false. To someone hearing the story for the first time, though, it would sound disturbingly reasonable.

His expression turned colder. "And then Baal appears." The A-Rank’s smile widened. Lily looked toward Reinhard as he continued thinking aloud. "After the disaster, the Baal Family leader emerges publicly. He doesn’t present himself as the person responsible."

Maki immediately understood. "He becomes the expert."

"Exactly," the prisoner nodded. "He knows the Black Moon better than almost anyone. He can talk about his experience with it, explain its dangers, and then claim that the phenomenon may have applications for Awakener growth."

"While Emily becomes the criminal who abused that knowledge," Yuna’s expression hardened.

"Criminal. Terrorist. Researcher. Whatever the public wants to call her," the A-Rank smiled.

"Baal gets to control the narrative," Maki’s eyes narrowed.

"They don’t merely want Emily blamed," the prisoner nodded. "They want the Baal Family to become the people everyone listens to after the disaster."

"That is much more ambitious than simply framing her," Reinhard’s eyes remained fixed on the man.

"Of course it is," the prisoner said, sounding almost proud.

"But she would never confess," Lily looked toward Emily.

The A-Rank laughed.

"What?" Lily’s expression hardened.

"She would."

"No."

The man’s smile didn’t disappear. "You don’t know her as well as we do."

Lily took a step forward, and Yuna immediately caught her arm. "Lily."

She looked at Yuna. "She wouldn’t do that."

Yuna’s expression remained serious. "She would."

"Yuna?" Lily stared at her.

She looked toward Emily, her hands tightening slowly. "If they threatened one of us, Emily would cooperate."

Lily shook her head. "But she wouldn’t let them destroy her reputation."

"She wouldn’t care about her reputation," Yuna’s expression softened slightly, her voice quieter. "She’d care about keeping us alive."

Emily closed her eyes.

She didn’t argue or deny it because there was no reason to. Yuna was right. If the enemy placed Lily, Maki, Yuna, or Reinhard in danger and told Emily that accepting the blame would keep them alive, she already knew what she would choose.

Her reputation meant nothing compared to them.

She slowly opened her eyes. "Because I love you all too much not to."

The room went quiet.

Lily looked away. Maki’s expression softened, though the anger in her eyes remained. Yuna’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Reinhard didn’t say anything and simply looked at Emily.

For a moment, the details of the operation mattered less than what he had just realized. Baal hadn’t merely studied Emily’s abilities but also her heart. They knew what she valued, and they knew what she would sacrifice, and they had designed their plan around it.

He finally looked back toward the prisoner. "How did you know?"

The A-Rank met his eyes. "How did you know exactly what Emily would do?" Reinhard continued.

"We’ve been watching her," the prisoner smiled.

"For how long?" his eyes narrowed.

The man didn’t answer, and that silence was enough.

Reinhard kept watching him. The prisoner had already revealed more than he intended, but Reinhard wanted to know how much of Emily’s behavior had been studied.

The A-Rank finally spoke again. "She always prioritizes her family." He looked toward Emily. "She will risk herself if someone she loves is in danger."

"She won’t abandon them," another A-Rank, still restrained nearby, quietly added.

The first continued, "She has already chosen other people over her own safety more times than anyone should."

Yuna’s expression darkened. The man looked toward Emily. "She would even choose to die if it meant protecting them."

Reinhard’s expression changed.

Emily looked at him, and Maki noticed it too.

That wasn’t something that could simply be learned from a ranking report. Anyone could know that Emily was loyal to her family, and anyone could know she had sacrificed herself before. But saying it with that level of certainty meant someone had been studying her closely.

"Who told you that?" Reinhard’s voice grew quieter.

The prisoner didn’t answer.

Reinhard waited but he said nothing. Yet the silence itself was an answer. Someone had given the Baal Family information about Emily that went deeper than her public reputation.

"They studied her like a target," Lily looked at the man with renewed anger.

"This isn’t a contingency plan they prepared after meeting her," Maki’s expression hardened. "They built the operation around her."

"They know what she will choose," Yuna looked at Emily.

Emily lowered her eyes.

Reinhard remained unnaturally calm. He wasn’t angry in the way Lily was, and he wasn’t visibly shaken like Emily, instead he was calculating, connecting everything together.

The Black Moon would be created. Marvello would suffer. Thousands of people could die. Emily would be blamed. She would be pressured into confessing.

The Baal Family leader would emerge afterward as an expert on the phenomenon, and the entire public narrative would be built around the idea that Emily had used forbidden knowledge to recreate the Black Moon.

He looked toward the A-Rank. "You don’t need Emily to summon the Black Moon." The prisoner’s smile faded slightly. "You need Emily afterward."

The A-Rank didn’t answer, and that silence confirmed it.

Everything suddenly made more sense. The order to capture Emily alive. The number of Awakeners sent to the manor. The way they had ignored the possibility of casualties among themselves and hadn’t been sent to kill Emily.

They needed her alive.

She had to survive the disaster, had to be there when the accusations began, and if the Baal Family held one of the Ashcrofts hostage, they believed they could force Emily to accept the blame.

"They really thought they could do that to her," Lily clenched her fists.

"They didn’t think," Maki shook her head slightly, looking toward Emily. "They were certain."

Emily remained silent while Reinhard looked at her, then back at the prisoner. The A-Rank’s confidence had begun to disappear, and Reinhard noticed.

He had one more question.

"Then how did you know she would become desperate enough to accept help in the first place?"

The prisoner’s expression froze.

For the first time since the interrogation began, he didn’t look amused, didn’t look confident. He simply stared at Reinhard, who noticed the change immediately. The man’s fear had returned, and this time it was stronger than before.

The A-Rank didn’t answer.

Reinhard’s eyes narrowed.

Whatever the answer was, it mattered, and judging by the prisoner’s reaction, it was something the Baal Family desperately wanted to keep hidden.