Chapter 474: The Heavens Shall Fall (XV)

I stared at her for a moment longer and then sighed deeply.

“…Fine.”

Yennefer’s smile widened instantly, the threatening part about it, dissolving back into warmth so smoothly that you’d never know it had been there at all.

Her arms loosened from around my waist, and she moved around to my side, slipping her hand into mine with the casual certainty of someone who had already decided the hand was theirs and was simply collecting it.

Her fingers felt extremely cool against my palm.

“Good~” she purred.

She looked at the market street ahead of us, her wine-red eyes moving across the stalls with the calm attention of someone cataloguing rather than browsing.

“Walk with me~”

“I was already walking.”

“…Walk with me better.”

I had absolutely nothing to say to that, so I walked with her.

The market was busier deeper in.

The stalls pressed closer together around the central stretch, vendors competing for attention with increasing creativity, divine artifacts displayed beside street food, beside materials I recognized from Christina’s supply lists and materials I didn’t recognize at all.

The crowd thickened gradually, gods moving in both directions, conversations bleeding into one another until the whole street had its own low, continuous hum beneath everything else.

Yennefer moved through it like she owned the street.

Her dark hair drew eyes as we passed, the purple hints catching the afternoon light in deep, shifting flashes, and she paid the attention exactly zero acknowledgment.

Her hand stayed in mine.

“Tell me what you know,” she uttered, stopping at a stall displaying small crystalline artifacts without actually looking at them.

“About?”

“The Court. The bases. Everything.”

I looked at the artifacts on the stall.

“Five confirmed bases,” I started, keeping my voice low enough that it didn’t carry past her.

“Locations verified through multiple independent sources. Christina has the full files. Their leader is currently attempting a breakthrough to Peak 9✯, which means his attention is inward. The window is open right now.”

“How long does the window stay open?”

“Breakthrough attempts at that level take between two weeks and a month. We’re already one week in based on the intelligence timeline.”

Yennefer picked up one of the crystalline artifacts and turned it over in her pale fingers, examining it with an expression of mild interest that was entirely for the benefit of the vendor watching her.

“One to three weeks,” she stated

“Roughly.”

“And the Outer Gods.”

I was quiet for a moment.

Right… of course she knew about that too.

“Unknown quantity… Caelid said they were in contact, but he didn’t finish the sentence.”

“He didn’t need to.” She set the artifact down and moved away from the stall, pulling me with her by the hand.

“The Outer Gods don’t maintain contact with organizations like the Primordial Court out of friendship.”

“They want something.”

“They always want something.” Her red eyes stayed forward as we walked.

“The question is whether the Court is paying them in information, access, or something more significant.”

“Access?”

She glanced at me.

“The breakthrough attempt,” I continued.

“Peak 9✯ True God creates a specific kind of divine resonance during the process. If someone with the right knowledge was monitoring that resonance from outside the realm…”

“It would function as a signal,” Yennefer finished.

“A very precise, very powerful one.” She was quiet for a few steps.

“Ugh… They’re paying for something with their leader’s breakthrough.”

I looked at her.

“…I didn’t connect those two things.”

“I know.” She squeezed my hand once.

“That’s why you need me.”

We stopped at a food stall near the fountain.

The vendor, a broad-shouldered god with flour on his apron, was selling something that smelled like warm spiced bread and looked like small golden rounds stacked in careful towers.

Yennefer looked at them, then at me.

“Buy me one~.”

Of course, I bought two.

She took hers and ate it with the composed attention of someone conducting a formal review of the product, her expression neutral for three full seconds before her lips curled up in satisfaction.

“…Good,” she admitted quietly, as if the admission cost her something.

“Mm.”

She finished it and brushed her fingers together lightly.

“So,” she stated, her red eyes returning to me.

“The plan.”

“The original plan was to hit all five bases simultaneously,” I sighed.

“Quick, clean, no warning between strikes. Christina’s arrays handle the coordination. I handle whatever needs handling personally.”

“The leader’s base.”

“Yes.”

“Which is the most defended?”

“Significantly.”

Yennefer was quiet for a moment, turning and walking toward the fountain at the center of the market.

She sat on the wide stone edge of it and looked at me, the afternoon light catching the purple in her hair and the red in her eyes and the pale of her skin all at once in a combination that was almost unreasonably difficult to look directly at.

“The original plan is still good, but unfortunately, it has a gap,” she stated firmly.

“The Outer God connection.”

Well, of course, I didn’t know about them until today.

“If their leader’s breakthrough is a signal, then hitting the bases simultaneously destroys the Court, but it also confirms to whoever is listening that the signal was interrupted.” She folded her hands in her lap.

“The Outer Gods will know something happened. They’ll know someone shut it down.”

“And they’ll know it was me.”

“Eventually….” Her eyes held mine steadily. “Unless the signal completes before you destroy the bases.”

I looked at her.

“You want me to let him finish the breakthrough.”

“I want you to consider it…” She tilted her head slightly.

“A completed breakthrough produces a clean signal with a clean ending. The Outer Gods receive what they were waiting for and have no immediate reason to investigate further,” she paused, staring deeply into my eyes.

“A cut-off signal produces questions.”

“A Peak 9✯ leader is significantly harder to kill than an Intermediate one.”

“Yes… But I’m here for that, aren’t I?”

I sat down beside her on the fountain edge.

Thought about it.

The water ran behind us, steady and indifferent, the market noise sitting around us in its comfortable layers.

“…It’s the right call,” I nodded.

“I know.”

“I hate that it’s the right call.”

“I know that too.” She leaned sideways and rested her head against my shoulder with the same casual certainty she did everything.

“Hit the four secondary bases first. Quietly, with no survivors to send warnings. Then, when the breakthrough completes, and the signal goes out, hit the leader’s base immediately after.”

“The window between completion and the Court realizing all their bases are gone.”

“A few minutes at most… but those minutes should be enough for you.”

I looked at the fountain.

“…They should be enough,” I agreed.

After all…

This time, I was planning to actually use my race’s power.

Yennefer was quiet for a moment.

The market moved around us, unhurried and entirely unbothered, gods passing with their purchases and their conversations and their own small worlds.

“You would have figured it out eventually,” she added nonchalantly.

“Probably.”

“Probably too late.”

“Also probably,” I admitted.

“Hah~”

She laughed slightly.

Her head was still on my shoulder, and her hand had found its way back to mine at some point during the planning without either of us marking exactly when, her cool fingers sitting against my palm with a possessive manner onto it.

“Yennefer,” I called out.

“Mm.”

This was something I was really curious about.

“How do you know about the Outer Gods?”

Her face froze slighly.

“I’ve encountered them before,” she spoke a second later.

“Before…?”

Did they fight or something?

“In a previous situation that isn’t relevant right now.”

“It might be relevant.”

“It isn’t…” Her fingers tightened slightly around mine.

“What’s relevant is that they’re patient. Extremely patient. They don’t move quickly, and they don’t move visibly. If the Court has been in contact with them, that contact has been going on for much longer than your spies detected.”

“How much longer?”

“Decades at minimum.” She lifted her head from my shoulder and looked at me.

“Possibly longer.”

I looked at her.

“…You’re not going to tell me how you know this.”

“Not today…” she

“Yennefer…”

“Not today, Aestrea.” Her wine-red eyes held mine, and underneath the warmth in them was something that was asking me, clearly and directly, to let this one go for now.

“There are things I’ll tell you when the time is right. This is one of them.”

I held her gaze for a moment.

Then I looked back at the fountain.

“Fine.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I’m going to ask again tomorrow.”

“I know,” she smiled lightly, and the almost-laugh came back briefly.

“I’ll tell you no again tomorrow.”

“And the day after.”

“And I’ll tell you no then too.” She stood up from the fountain edge and held her free hand out to me.

“Come on. You haven’t eaten properly today, and I want to see the rest of the market.”

I looked at her extended hand.

“I had a skewer earlier.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“And the bread.”

“That was mine.” She wiggled her fingers slightly.

“Come on.”

I took her hand and stood.

She immediately turned and pulled me further into the market.

She paused at every third or fourth stall, choosing them without any clear pattern, examining items with calm, methodical attention, asking vendors questions that were more knowledgeable than they anticipated, and occasionally holding something up to me with a look that sought my opinion.

At one stall, she discovered a small glass bottle containing a substance that shifted between deep blue and violet when the light touched it, moving slowly like liquid despite the bottle being sealed.

She held it up, looked at it before glancing at me.

“This is interesting~”

“What is it?”

The vendor, a thin woman with silver markings along her jaw, leaned forward. “Captured starlight from the realm’s outer boundary. Pre-divine era. Very rare.”

Yennefer turned the bottle once more, set it down, and walked away from the stall. I looked at the bottle, then at the vendor, and I bought it.

I caught up with Yennefer six stalls later and held it out to her without a word.

She looked at it in my hand, then at me.

She took it.

Held it against the light briefly, watching it shift between blue and violet.

“…You didn’t have to,” she uttered, even though her eyes were practically sparkling.

“I know.”

She looked at it for another moment.

Then she slipped it into her pocket and kept walking, her hand finding mine again without looking down.

We ate at a small place near the end of the market street with four tables outside, where the food was served quickly and tasted much better than the presentation suggested. Yennefer ate with the same composed focus she gave everything, and we talked.

Not about the Court, the plan, or Outer Gods, just talked… about the fast… everything.

She told me about where she’d been for the months I hadn’t seen her, not all of it, the version with the gaps that she left probably on purpose, but enough for me.

I told her about Ruli and Leaf, their compression system, and the training ground platform with its excavated holes.

She listened with genuine interest, asking specific questions, the kind that meant she was actually tracking what I was saying and not just waiting for her turn.

…Well, she probably knew about everything I was talking about either way, but still, I continued as I… was firmly captivated by her attentive smile.

The afternoon light changed while we sat there, shifting from the direct gold of midday into the softer light of the phoenixes above the market, changing direction with it, their tailfeathers catching the lower light in longer, redder lines.

Eventually, Yennefer looked up at the sky.

“You should go back,” she suddenly spoke, making me also look at the sky.

It was getting late indeed.

“Your people will be wondering where you are.”

“…Probably not.”

She looked at me for a moment with those wine-red eyes.

“Four secondary bases first… Quietly, then wait for the completion signal.”

“Then hit the leader.”

“Then hit the leader.” She repeated, staring deeply into my eyes.

“And Aestrea….”

“Yeah…?”

“Be careful.”

The warmth in her eyes didn’t change, and neither did the seriousness sit underneath it.

“I mean that. The Outer Gods are patient, but they’re not passive. If something feels wrong during the raid, you pull back.”

“I don’t pull back.”

“You pull back,” she said, and her voice had gone to that specific temperature that meant the sentence was finished, and she wasn’t interested in the counterargument.

“Promise me.”

I looked at her.

“…I’ll consider pulling back.”

“That’s not a promise.”

“It’s what I have.”

She stared at me.

“…Fine,” she said, the same way everyone always said fine when they knew they weren’t going to get better than fine from me.

“But I’m holding you to the consideration.”

She stood up.

Smoothed the front of her clothing with both hands.

Looked at me one more time, the bottle-shaped outline just visible in her pocket.

Then she leaned down and pressed a brief, cool kiss to my cheek, her dark hair falling forward around both of us for a moment before she straightened.

“I’ll find you when it’s time,” she said.

Then she turned and walked back into the market, her black hair with its purple hints catching the evening light until the crowd folded around her, and she was gone as completely as if she’d never been there at all.

I sat at the table alone for a moment and looked at the empty seat across from me.

…Is it just me, or did her brain get better?

She doesn’t look as crazy as before.

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