31. Lumi
THIRTY-ONE
LUMI
Mika’s cell rang. She answered, listened for forty-five seconds, and hung up with an expression Lumi had only seen twice before—once when Mika landed her first paid coloring gig, and once when she’d found a twenty-dollar bill in a coat pocket.
“Twelve.” Mika held up her phone. The list on the screen was longer than Lumi expected.
“Twelve people reached out after I started making calls. Most aren’t ready to go public yet.
But two are.” She held up two fingers. “A Portland colorist and a Chicago writer. Both willing to testify publicly that he’s a plagiarizing waste of oxygen. ”
Kael looked up from the PR timeline he’d been building at the far end of the table. “That’s not the legal term.”
“It should be.”
Keanu set down his pen. “...I’ll rephrase it for the filing.”
“The colorist—Dana Reeves.” Mika consulted her notes.
“Harlan mentored her in 2018. She developed a technique for atmospheric depth—layered washes over digital linework. Six months after she left his studio, he published a tutorial claiming the technique as his own. She couldn’t fight it. No platform, no money, no proof.”
“And now?”
“Now she has proof. She kept her original files. And she’s furious.”
“The Chicago writer?”
“Yara Okonkwo. Same pattern. Mentored in 2019. Developed a scripting format for non-linear panel storytelling. He used it—credited himself—in a published interview where he called it ‘my proprietary method.’” Mika’s voice went flat. “Her proprietary method. With her name nowhere on it.”
Three women. Three careers. Three versions of the same predator wearing a mentor’s smile.
Lumi sat on Keanu’s floor surrounded by the bones of her own stolen history and the stories of two women she’d never met who understood exactly what it cost. The man hadn’t targeted her because she was vulnerable. He’d targeted her because she was talented, and talent was what he consumed.
Keanu was already drafting. “Pattern of behavior makes the case devastating. One accusation is a dispute. Three is a predator. I’ll coordinate depositions with both witnesses this week.”
Mika dropped into the chair beside Lumi. Bumped her shoulder. “Three women who were told their work wasn’t theirs.”
“Three women who know better now.”
ZEIR
The corporate war required a different kind of weapon.
While Keanu assembled the legal artillery and Lumi organized the creative evidence, Zeir operated on the front Slade understood best: money.
He started with the distributors.
Axan Dark’s catalog moved through six major distribution channels. Four of those channels also carried Titan Comics—Slade’s publishing arm, the machine bankrolling Harlan’s campaign. The overlap wasn’t incidental. It was leverage.
He didn’t make threats. Threats were loud, traceable, and beneath him.
Instead, he made calls. Quiet conversations with distribution executives who’d built profitable relationships with Axan Dark over the past decade.
He reminded them—gently, precisely—how much of their annual revenue flowed through his catalog.
He mentioned, in passing, that Axan Dark was evaluating its distribution partnerships for the coming fiscal year.
He asked thoughtful questions about their other major accounts. He let the silence do the arithmetic.
Three distributors requested meetings with Slade’s team within forty-eight hours. Not to drop Titan—nothing so dramatic. To ask questions. To express concerns about reputational risk. To suggest, politely, that the Harlan Cray situation might benefit from a quieter resolution.
Slade’s supply chain didn’t collapse. It developed stress fractures.
Next: the board.
Titan was publicly traded. Slade’s position as CEO depended on shareholder confidence, and shareholder confidence depended on a board that didn’t enjoy reading about funded plagiarism campaigns in financial trade publications.
Zeir didn’t contact the board directly—that would leave fingerprints.
He ensured that the right journalists received the right background information about Titan’s recent expenditures.
Legal fees. PR campaigns. A funded accusation against an independent artist. The kind of spending that made governance committees uncomfortable.
Two board members reached out to Slade’s office within a week. Not to intervene. To ask questions Slade didn’t want to answer.
The landscape shifted. Not through force—through repositioning. The way you won a territorial dispute not by fighting but by making the other side realize the ground beneath them had eroded.