Honkai Star Rail: Summoning the Chrysos Heirs — Chapter 106

Chapter 106: Found Them

Evening descended, painting the room in the warm, orange afterglow of the setting sun. The dying light filtered through the gaps in the curtains, casting elongated shadows across the floor. Cyrene lay on her stomach atop the soft mattress, her calves swaying idly in the air behind her. Both hands gripped her phone, the screen illuminating her face with the interface of the Esper Forum.

Discussions regarding abnormal events flooded the boards, but the vast majority were nothing more than wild speculation and hearsay. Truly valuable intelligence was buried under mountains of garbage. Cyrene swiped lazily, her thumb gliding over the endless stream of clickbait.

“Unknown creature spotted late at night in Xinhai City’s East District again! Pictures included for proof!”

She tapped the thread. The attached image was a blurry, pixelated mess of gray fur, and the comment section was already a warzone.

“This is clearly just a stray cat, okay?”

“Have you ever seen a two-meter-long stray cat, person above?”

“…Maybe it mutated.”

Cyrene stared at the screen for a second before exiting the thread, a faint, amused smile touching her lips. Dozens of these posts popped up every day. A chaotic mix of truth and paranoia, mostly ending in false alarms.

She scrolled past a few more useless threads and was just about to lock her screen when a voice echoed in her mind.

“Cyrene.”

Gentle, yet carrying a piercing clarity, the female voice connected through her consciousness.

Cyrene’s thumb froze over the screen. She knew that voice intimately.

‘Aglaea? Is there a situation?’ she responded softly through their mental link, her body already shifting. The lazy posture vanished as she sat up, her spine straightening. Aglaea rarely initiated contact at this hour. And beneath the regal calm of her tone, Cyrene caught a distinct, razor-sharp edge of seriousness.

“I found them.”

The words were unhurried, perfectly measured, but they made Cyrene’s pupils contract into tight pinpricks.

“The people from the Divine Advent Cult.”

A sharp intake of air slipped past Cyrene’s lips. She didn’t waste time on unnecessary questions. Tossing her phone onto the pillow, she closed her eyes and let her consciousness sink.

The sensation of physical gravity peeled away, replaced by the familiar, weightless embrace of the void. Seconds later, her mind anchored itself within the Data Space.

She opened her eyes. The vast, ethereal sea of stars drifted slowly overhead, casting a gentle luminescence over the quiet villa in the distance. Outside the wrought-iron main gates, Aglaea stood waiting.

“You’re here,” Aglaea said, offering a slight nod.

She raised her right hand, her slender fingers spreading gracefully. In the next breath, countless microscopic golden threads bloomed from her fingertips. The radiant strands intertwined and condensed in the empty air between them, rapidly weaving themselves into a massive, translucent screen of light.

“This is a real-time feed I have captured through the Golden Threads,” Aglaea explained, her voice steady and professional. “About fifteen minutes ago, abnormal cognitive fluctuations surfaced in the Seventh District, southwest of the city. At that exact moment, the Golden Threads detected an interference pattern identical to the one you described.”

With a light flick of her finger, the blurred static on the light screen snapped into sharp focus.

Cyrene’s gaze locked onto the projection, and the sight instantly forced the breath from her lungs.

It was a secluded street, suffocating under the heavy cover of night. The sparse streetlamps bled a sickly, dim yellow light over the empty pavement. Right in the center of the frame, three pitch-black figures stood anchored in the shadows.

They wore heavy black robes, their oversized hoods pulled low to completely swallow their faces in darkness. Yet, just above the fabric of those hoods, an emblem was faintly visible in the gloom: a grotesque fusion of a half-moth and a half-cocoon.

Cyrene’s hands curled into tight fists.

It was them. The exact same uniforms she had witnessed in that innocent bystander’s Remembrance.

In the projection, several pedestrians were scattered around the three cultists. But their postures were horrifyingly wrong. It was as if someone had severed their connection to reality—they stood frozen in place, arms hanging dead at their sides, their eyes wide and hollow.

It perfectly mirrored the eerie stasis from the earlier Remembrance fragments. The entire street had been hijacked.

One of the robed men bent down, effortlessly hoisting a dazed middle-aged man off the pavement by his collar. The victim offered zero resistance, his limbs swaying like a puppet with its strings cut.

Cyrene pressed her lips into a thin line, a cold, solemn light flashing through her diamond-shaped eyes. She took a slow, deep breath, forcing her rising adrenaline to settle.

Then, she turned to the regal woman beside her.

“Agy, well done.” The admiration in Cyrene’s voice was genuine, carrying a hint of her usual warmth. “As expected, once your Golden Threads are spread across the city, nothing can hide in the dark.”

A faint, elegant curve touched Aglaea’s lips, but she dismissed the praise with a slight shake of her head.

“They are moving.”

She plucked a single golden strand. The projection instantly shifted its angle, tracking smoothly from above.

“My Golden Threads are continuously mapping their path. If you wish, you can watch with me and see exactly where they intend to take him.”

“Of course.” Cyrene nodded, her eyes darting back to the screen.

The three cultists were already dragging the middle-aged man away from the secluded street. They moved with terrifying speed, yet their footfalls were completely silent. Like three drops of ink sliding through water, they wove through the night without a sound.

After a brisk five-minute march, they veered into an even darker, narrower alleyway. At the dead end stood a rusted, dilapidated iron fence, and just beyond it, a half-open manhole cover.

The leading cultist bent down, casually hauling the heavy iron disc aside with a single hand. One by one, the three figures dropped into the sewer. The limp body of the captive vanished into the black maw of the well right after them.

The feed plunged deeper, riding the perception of the Golden Threads.

A pitch-black underground passage filled the screen. Damp, rotting stone walls boxed them in, while a drainage ditch choked with murky, viscous liquid flowed sluggishly beneath their boots. The air down there had to be thick with a putrid stench. Even though Cyrene was safely insulated within the Data Space, merely looking at the slimy water stains and the vile sludge coating the ground was enough to make her skin crawl.

The three black-robed men handled the subterranean catacombs with chilling familiarity.

Left. Right. Straight ahead. Left again.

The complex web of tunnels didn’t slow them down for a second. They moved with the mechanical precision of people who had walked this exact route a thousand times.

Cyrene burned the feed into her memory, silently logging every turn, every junction, and every dead end.

About eight minutes later, the lighting in the projection shifted.

At the end of the suffocatingly dark tunnel, a faint, flickering warmth bled into the shadows. Torchlight.

The cultists finally slowed their pace. They rounded the last jagged corner and stepped out into an underground cavern far more expansive than the cramped tunnels.

Cyrene’s pupils dilated.

It was a massive, semi-circular subterranean hall. A ring of burning torches had been driven into the rough-hewn stone walls, their violent, dancing flames throwing twisted shadows across the cavern floor.

And illuminated by that shifting firelight, Cyrene saw them.

Black robes.

Not three.

Dozens.

Dense clusters of dark figures occupied every corner of the hall. Some gathered in small groups, whispering in hushed, echoing voices, while others stood perfectly still in the deeper shadows, watching in silence.

In the dead center of the room sat a crude, massive stone table, cluttered with indistinguishable tools, scattered documents, and vile stains.

And there, at the far end of the hall, painted directly onto a flattened section of the cavern wall, was a colossal emblem. It was drawn in a dark, glistening red pigment—or perhaps something far worse than paint.

The left half of a feathered moth. The right half of an unbroken cocoon.

Watching the flames dance across that blood-red symbol, the corners of Cyrene’s mouth slowly curled upward into a chilling, predatory smile.

The Divine Advent Cult.

Found them.