Chapter 209: The Arbiter Sentinels

"What?"

Emily stared at Reinhard as if she had misheard him.

He had just explained that his bank balance exceeded one billion credits, and none of the women seemed capable of accepting it.

Maki recovered first. "Wait. How did you get that much money? The Baal Family’s wealth couldn’t have been transferred to you that quickly."

"Most of it came from another reward," Reinhard explained. "Athoth gave me one percent of the Baal Family’s wealth."

The room fell silent.

Lily slowly turned toward him. "You received a billion credits from the angel who helped us?"

"Something like that."

"Then we have to thank her!" Lily declared. "Does she have a phone number? An address? A social media account?"

Emily looked at Reinhard. "Was she the captain of Aurlieus Security? Or does she belong to Eclipse?"

"Neither," Maki answered before Reinhard could respond. "She’s an Unmasker Sentinel serving directly under the Arbiter."

Lily froze and then she slowly covered her mouth with both hands. Emily eyes widened in disbelief while Yuna trembled.

Yuna’s expression grew serious. "A Sentinel really came here in person?"

"That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you," Maki replied. "Do you understand what that means?"

Lily lowered her hands just enough to whisper, "I almost asked for a Sentinel’s phone number."

Emily gave her a strange look. "You think they’d destroy someone for asking a question?"

"Not for that," Maki said. "But you should be careful about what you say around them."

"Surely they wouldn’t execute someone for calling them a name," Emily remarked. "If they did, half the city would already be dead."

"That’s not the point!" Lily protested. "Their reputation is terrifying. They’re like the monsters in bedtime stories, except the stories are true!"

Reinhard couldn’t help laughing.

"I’m glad you’re all taking this seriously."

"Easy for you to say," Lily muttered. "You’re the one who met her and came back with a billion credits."

"That sounds like a good outcome to me."

"That’s exactly why I’m jealous!"

Maki rubbed her forehead, wondering how the conversation had turned into an argument about money and phone numbers. Then she took a breath and decided to explain what the title actually meant.

"The Arbiter stands above the twelve megacities. Its authority isn’t limited to one city or one organization. The Arbiter establishes rules that apply across the entire system."

She raised one finger.

"Under the Arbiter are three major divisions. The Executioner Body resides in Dravenfall. It handles dungeons and direct interventions when a threat requires force."

A second finger followed.

"The Severing Mind resides in Lunaris. It monitors the megacities, watches for threats, and gathers information that might otherwise remain hidden."

Finally, she raised a third.

"The Judge Soul resides in Grandis. It handles judgments, warnings, and violations of the Arbiter’s rules."

Yuna nodded slowly. "And the Sentinels?"

"They’re the last resort. When other forces cannot resolve a threat, a Sentinel can be sent to end it."

Maki paused before continuing.

"That’s why Athoth’s appearance matters. She isn’t simply a powerful Awakener. She’s an executioner acting under the Arbiter’s authority."

Reinhard remembered the way Athoth had spoken during their meeting. Her tone had been pleasant, almost playful, but there had been no doubt that she could carry out the threats she made.

He looked at Emily.

"Then how did she know so much about us and the Baal Family? Was the Severing Mind watching everything?"

"Possibly," Emily replied. "The Severing Mind monitors the megacities, but that doesn’t mean it personally observes every event. Sentinels also possess their own Singularities, which can give them ways to monitor events beyond ordinary methods."

"So she might have known about the situation before she arrived," Reinhard said.

"Exactly. We shouldn’t assume we understand the full extent of her information."

Maki nodded. "And we shouldn’t assume that a Sentinel’s personal abilities are the same as the Singularities they can use."

Reinhard glanced at her. "You sound as though there’s an example."

"There is."

Emily reached for her device and opened a photograph.

"Have any of you heard of Navada?"

The name meant nothing to Lily, but Yuna leaned closer to examine the image.

It showed an enormous stretch of ocean beneath a gray sky. Scattered pieces of ruined structures floated across the water, while distant fragments of metal and stone marked the remains of what had once been a vast city.

There was no island beneath them.

"This is Navada?" Yuna asked.

"It was," Emily answered. "Navada used to be a megacity. The island itself was completely erased. What you’re seeing is the debris and remnants left behind after the destruction."

Lily stared at the photograph. "An entire island?"

"An entire megacity, along with the island it was built on," Emily confirmed.

The lighthearted atmosphere disappeared.

Reinhard studied the image more closely. He had seen the destruction caused by powerful Domains, and he had fought someone whose transformation threatened to overwhelm an entire city. But the photograph presented a different scale of destruction.

There was no ruined skyline, no surviving district, and no foundation upon which the city might be rebuilt.

There was only the ocean.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Navada’s overseeing Saint possessed a Temporal Singularity," Emily explained. "At first, they used it for relatively practical purposes. They extended their lives, accelerated their movement, and shortened the time needed for training."

"Those sound like useful applications," Yuna observed.

"They were. The problem began when their research moved beyond manipulating the passage of time and toward traveling through it."

Maki took over the explanation.

"According to the surviving records, they eventually managed to send objects backward through time. At first, they could only move something back by a minute. Later, they increased the interval to an hour."

Lily’s eyes widened. "They actually succeeded?"

"With objects, yes. Their research was moving toward something far more dangerous."

"Traveling back in time could change the present," Reinhard said.

"Or create consequences they couldn’t predict," Emily replied. "The Arbiter considers time travel a taboo because of the potential damage to the timeline. Navada was warned to stop."

"By the Judge Soul?" Maki asked.

Emily nodded. "The Judge Soul issued a warning. When Navada continued, two more warnings followed. Eventually, the Executioner Body was dispatched to eliminate the overseeing Saints responsible for the research."

Reinhard looked back at the photograph.

"And they fought back?"

"They had already become a Calamity by that point," Emily said. "When the Executioner Body arrived, the Calamity repelled them."

For a moment, Reinhard felt a flicker of admiration.

An entire city had stood against one of the Arbiter’s divisions and survived its first attempt to eliminate it. Whatever else the people of Navada had done, their resistance had been extraordinary.

"Did they escape?" he asked.

"No." Emily’s answer was immediate. "They only delayed the inevitable."

She enlarged the photograph, revealing the vast emptiness where the island had once stood.

"When the Executioner Body failed, a Sentinel arrived."

Nobody spoke.

"The Sentinel destroyed the Calamity," Emily continued. "Then, with a single attack, the Sentinel erased Navada itself. The island, the city, and almost everything built upon it vanished."

Lily swallowed. "One attack?"

"One."

Maki’s expression remained grave. "That is why Sentinels are treated differently from ordinary Awakeners. They’re not merely another force sent to fight a powerful enemy. They’re what the Arbiter uses when a threat has reached the point where nothing else is sufficient."

Reinhard continued looking at the photograph. He had initially wondered whether the Calamity might have survived the Executioner Body. Now he understood that surviving the first confrontation had only postponed its end.

"Could Athoth do the same thing?" he asked.

"We shouldn’t assume that every Sentinel has identical abilities," Emily answered. "But they can use Singularities from different megacities. Aurlieus has a Saint with a Regeneration Singularity, while Elyndor has a Spatial Singularity. Those abilities can make a Sentinel extremely difficult to kill or allow them to move between spaces and evade attacks."

"So they can combine abilities that would normally belong to different cities," Yuna said.

"They can access abilities beyond their own personal Singularities, yes. But we don’t know every restriction governing that process."

"Which means fighting one would be a terrible idea," Lily concluded.

"That would be a reasonable conclusion," Maki said.

Reinhard leaned back. "Then I’m glad Athoth was in a good mood."

"You were joking with her!" Lily exclaimed. "You were actually joking with someone who could erase an island!"

"She didn’t seem offended."

"That’s not the reassuring argument you think it is!"

Emily shook her head, although a faint smile appeared on her face. "Reinhard has always been like that. He’s polite when he wants to be, but he doesn’t suddenly become a different person just because someone is powerful."

"It’s called having confidence," Reinhard said.

"It’s called being frighteningly comfortable with danger," Maki corrected.

Yuna glanced at the photograph again. "But why did her appearance affect Aurlieus Security and the allied organizations so much? They already had the evidence against the Baal Family."

"Because the evidence and the Sentinel’s presence served different purposes," Maki explained. "The evidence established what the Baal Family had done. It showed that they had authorized attacks against us, planned abductions, and committed other crimes. It also exposed their connections to organizations throughout Aurlieus."

"Some organizations willingly cooperated," Emily added. "Others were threatened or blackmailed. Some knew enough to suspect the truth but chose to look away. They won’t all face the same consequences."

"But once the evidence was presented, Security couldn’t simply ignore it," Yuna said.

"Correct. They had to investigate it properly. Athoth’s arrival made the situation even more serious because everyone understood that the Arbiter’s authority was now involved."

Reinhard nodded. The Sentinel hadn’t magically made the Ashcrofts innocent. Their evidence had done that. Her presence had made it much harder for powerful people to dismiss the evidence or interfere with the investigation.

"The Baal Family used its reputation and influence to intimidate others," he said. "Now those same organizations have to consider what happens if they try to protect the people responsible."

"Exactly," Maki replied. "Some will cooperate because it’s the right thing to do. Others will cooperate because the alternative has become too dangerous."

"Either way, they’ll have to answer for their actions," Emily said.

Lily folded her arms. "I’m still thinking about the billion credits."

Everyone looked at her.

"What? We just learned that an entire island was erased by one attack. I think I’m allowed to appreciate the fact that our family received a billion credits instead of an island-sized crater."

Reinhard laughed, and even Maki’s serious expression softened.

"That’s one way to look at it," he said.

"It’s the only way I want to look at it. I don’t want to become important enough for a Sentinel to visit us again."

"Agreed," Yuna said quietly.

The conversation gradually returned to ordinary matters. They had spent enough time in the hospital, and everyone was eager to leave. Emily still needed to recover fully, while the damage to their mansion would require repairs before they could return home.

Fortunately, Reinhard had already arranged for High-Grade Repair Talismans. The family wouldn’t need to spend their vacation worrying about the ruined house.

Lily stood and gathered her belongings. "Come on! If we’re going to Solmara, we should leave before something else happens!"

"Nothing is going to happen just because we take a few more minutes," Maki told her as she checked that they hadn’t forgotten anything.

"You don’t know that!"

"I know that rushing out without your bag would be a very good way to ruin the trip."

Lily looked down at the bag she had nearly left behind, snatched it up, and hurried toward the door.

The others burst into laughter.

A few minutes earlier, they had been discussing an authority capable of erasing a megacity with a single attack. Now Lily was impatient to begin their vacation, Maki was checking their belongings, and Yuna was helping Emily prepare to leave.

Reinhard watched them with a small smile before offering Emily his hand.

She accepted it, squeezing his fingers as she stood.

For all the dangers waiting beyond their home, these ordinary moments were still worth protecting.

And after meeting Athoth once, Reinhard had no desire to test his luck with a Sentinel a second time.