Alterra: Clair-Obscur

(It is highly recommended to read "Alterra: Foreign Eden" before this, as certain characters and events may carry over or be mentioned in passing.)

Kusunoki Sakuta has one of the strangest job descriptions: travel to an alternate world, evaluate the highly advanced androids running Alterra Robotics' regional operations, and ensure nothing catastrophic happens on his watch. He's been reasonably successful at the first two. The third remains a work in progress.

His latest assignment takes him to Florienne, the most refined, most culturally prestigious, and most quietly treacherous nation in western Caelum. A country built on centuries of aristocratic tradition, it runs on image, reputation, and the kind of social architecture where the most dangerous moves are the ones that never look like moves at all. At its heart sits Fleurdelis, the elegant enclave city administered by Réseau Iris, Alterra's fifth subsidiary. Officially, a media and broadcast conglomerate. What lies beneath that official face is exactly why Sakuta is here.

But Fleurdelis reveals itself slowly, and what it reveals is not reassuring. Behind the gaslit boulevards and high-society events, something darker has taken root: occult undercurrents the city's authorities have never fully managed to suppress, dangerous influence flowing through channels that appear on no official record, and a growing suspicion that Réseau Iris is not simply a corporation embedded in Florienne, but something threaded through the city at a depth that goes well beyond legitimate business.