The night diner "Last Light on the Block" sat tucked into a narrow alley on the border between Ledgerhold's commercial district and its slums — one of the few places in the city where both Bank employees and poor residents could stop in without anyone paying much attention to anyone else, thanks to the "No Questions, No Stories" sign the owner, an old orc woman named Greta, had hung by the door years ago.

Aiden arrived first, choosing a table in a shadowed corner, back to the wall so he could watch the entrance — a professional habit so deeply ingrained he barely noticed himself doing it. He'd filed a minimal report on the Copperline incident to his superiors, describing it only as "a Golem malfunction, resolved," deliberately omitting any mention of the security signature tied to the Chief Executive's office. It was the first time in eight years of service that Aiden had knowingly withheld information from an official report — an act that, if discovered, could cost him everything he'd built to protect Lira.

He didn't let himself dwell on that risk for now. There were more urgent questions to answer first. He ordered two cups of hot tea — a strange habit he couldn't quite explain to himself, perhaps only an instinct to prepare some small gesture of goodwill for a meeting neither of them was certain would go smoothly. Around him, the diner carried on its quiet late-night rhythm, a few tired workers hunched over bowls of soup, none of them sparing a second glance at the man in the corner booth.

Morgana arrived on time, having traded her combat gear for a simpler leather jacket, her platinum hair tucked beneath a wide-brimmed hood — not a full disguise, just enough to avoid unnecessary attention. She scanned the diner once before approaching Aiden's table, sitting down across from him with the posture of someone always ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

"If this is a trap." she said, her voice low but edged with warning, one hand resting near the small blade hidden at her hip. "You'll regret ever being born."

"It's not a trap." Aiden replied, his tone flat enough to sound almost bored, sliding one of the hot cups toward her. "If I wanted to arrest you, I would have done it at Copperline, with my entire team, instead of coming here alone."

Morgana looked at the tea for a moment without touching it, her eyes still fixed on him with open suspicion. "You think a cup of tea is going to lower my guard?"

"No." Aiden said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward slightly, an expression that surprised even himself. "I just think after a night like that, both of us deserve something warm."

The silence that followed had a strange quality — not entirely comfortable, but no longer as openly hostile as it had been at the construction site hours earlier. Morgana eventually picked up the cup, taking a small sip, as if testing whether this unexpected kindness concealed something else entirely.

"All right." she said, setting the cup down. "What did you want to talk about that required a private meeting like this?"

Aiden drew a breath, organizing his thoughts before beginning. "I need to know everything you know about the mass debt collection two weeks ago in the western slums. Not as a Bank employee gathering evidence — because I believe it's directly connected to what happened at Copperline."

Morgana frowned, weighing for a moment whether cooperation made more sense than silence in this particular matter. "That collection was strange from the start. Normally the Bank collects debts case by case, based on individual credit records. But this time, they targeted an entire district all at once, regardless of each household's actual debt status. As if someone deliberately wanted to push the whole area into crisis simultaneously."

"Exactly what I suspected." Aiden said, pulling out a small magical recording device, projecting a data chart above the table. "I've been quietly tracking unusual patterns in credit records for three months. There's been a sharp spike in 'artificially manufactured bad debt' — loans with vague terms, interest rates adjusted abnormally right after signing, pushing borrowers into near-inevitable default."

Morgana leaned forward, studying the chart with sharp attention, though she couldn't read the specialized notation only Bank employees were trained to interpret. She recognized enough of the shape of it, though — the same predatory pattern she'd seen play out in family after family across the slums, now laid bare in cold, abstract data. "So someone is deliberately creating bad debt on a massive scale. But why? The Bank already controls nearly the entire city's Mana supply. What more could they possibly want?"

"That's exactly the question that's kept me up for three months." Aiden admitted, a note of self-deprecation in his voice. "By ordinary financial logic, this doesn't make sense. Unless the goal isn't direct financial profit at all."

"Maybe not about gaining more control." he continued, his tone thoughtful. "But about collecting something else. Collateral isn't always material. Sometimes it's memory. Sometimes..." he paused, a flicker of hesitation crossing his face before he continued, his voice dropping lower. "Sometimes, it's a soul."

Something in the way he said that last word made Morgana ease slightly out of her defensive posture. She noticed, if only briefly, a small crack in the cold professional shell of the man across from her — something personal, something painful, hidden beneath the numbers and charts he'd just presented.

"You're talking about someone specific." she observed, not quite a question.

Aiden didn't answer right away, his eyes drifting away for a moment before meeting hers directly again. "That's not something I'm ready to discuss right now. But yes, I have a personal reason for pursuing this investigation, not just professional obligation."

Morgana nodded slowly, choosing not to press further — an unexpected respect for boundaries from someone who, only hours earlier, she had considered an absolute enemy. "Fine. I have my own reasons for wanting the truth behind this too. So we're facing the same problem, just from two different sides of the same wall."

"Exactly." Aiden said, and this time his smile lingered a moment longer, an ease neither of them had expected to find in each other's company. "Which brings me to the proposal I wanted to discuss with you."

"I'm listening." Morgana said, arms crossed over her chest, though her posture had lost most of its earlier defensiveness.

"Your gang has access to areas and people I, as a Bank employee, could never naturally reach." Aiden said. "And I have access to internal data, credit records, things you couldn't get without breaking in at extreme risk. If we combine forces, we can find the truth far faster than either of us working alone."

"You're proposing I work with the Ancient Bank." Morgana said, a trace of mockery in her voice. "The very institution I've spent four years of my life fighting against. Do you have any idea how absurd that sounds, Aiden?"

"I'm proposing you work with me." Aiden corrected, his voice suddenly serious. "Not with the Bank. Personally, using what I know and whatever authority I still hold, to find out who's really behind this — and perhaps stop it before it causes more harm. I understand the distinction might sound like a rationalization, but to me, it's the most important line in this entire decision."

Morgana was quiet for a long moment, studying his face with the focus of someone who had learned to read sincerity through the eyes, through whether a person held your gaze or looked away when lying. And what she saw in Aiden's eyes now, under the dim light of the night diner, wasn't the cold calculation of a Bank employee carrying out a task, but the real exhaustion of someone who had been fighting alone for far too long — an exhaustion she recognized uncomfortably well, because she had carried the same weight herself for four years.

She thought of the long nights spent alone planning each job, carrying the responsibility for dozens of people who trusted her, with no one to share that burden except Wren — and even Wren, however loyal, couldn't fully understand what it felt like to be both a princess cast aside and an outlaw, the only thing standing between hundreds of poor families and a financial system crushing them daily. Perhaps that was why she recognized the exhaustion in Aiden's eyes so easily — because she'd seen it reflected back at her every time she looked in a mirror.

"Let me think about your specific proposal." she said finally, neither fully refusing nor fully agreeing. "Tell me exactly what you think this cooperation would look like."

Aiden nodded, seeming pleased that she was at least willing to listen further. "I could use my authority to open a legal, limited Mana credit account for an intermediary that your gang could use — enough to reduce the risk each time you have to break in illegally for relief Mana. In return, I need your help accessing areas and sources of information I can't reach myself."

Morgana raised an eyebrow, genuine surprise crossing her face for the first time in the conversation. "You're willing to violate the Bank's own regulations to do that?"

"I violated regulations the moment I hid information in my report on Copperline." Aiden replied, his voice strangely calm for someone discussing a decision that could destroy his entire career. "The question isn't whether I should break the rules anymore. The question is whether it's worth it."

That statement hung between them in a long silence, and Morgana, though she didn't say it aloud, sensed that the man in front of her — someone who, only hours ago, had been an absolute enemy — was standing at a crossroads much like the one she herself had faced five years earlier, when she chose to leave everything she knew behind to pursue what she believed was right.

"Fine." she said finally, her voice softening slightly. "I'll bring this proposal back to my crew. But I have to tell you now, Aiden — that is your name, right? — this decision isn't mine alone to make. I have a responsibility to the people who trust me."

"Aiden." he confirmed, slightly surprised to hear his own name from her lips — he'd never formally introduced himself throughout their entire exchange, which meant she must have learned it from somewhere, or overheard it at the scene. "And I understand that. I have a similar responsibility to what I'm trying to protect, even if I'm not ready to share the details with you just yet."

Morgana stood, pulling her hood lower before leaving the diner. But before stepping away entirely, she paused, turning back to look at him one last time.

"You're not like any Bank employee I've ever met before." she said, her voice carrying a mix of curiosity and caution. "That could be a good thing, or it could be exactly the reason I need to be more careful around you."

"Perhaps both." Aiden replied, and for the first time, a genuine smile — small and brief — appeared on his lips, an expression he couldn't quite remember the last time he'd worn.

Morgana raised an eyebrow slightly at his unexpected reaction, then turned and walked out without another word, leaving Aiden alone with his cooling tea and a whole new set of questions about the woman who had just walked out of his life — at least for now.

Outside, in the shadows of the alley, Morgana paused a moment before starting her motorcycle, looking up at the sky glittering with Ledgerhold's magical lights. She couldn't deny that tonight's meeting had stirred something in her — a curiosity, a reluctant respect, and perhaps, though she wasn't ready to admit it, a strange closeness toward a man she'd only just met hours earlier, under the worst possible circumstances imaginable. She kicked the engine to life and rode off into the night, already turning over in her mind how she would explain any of this to Wren, let alone the rest of the crew.