Chapter 82: Investigation!
It was still early morning, yet it was a much different atmosphere than Damon expected. The daylight filtering into the war chamber felt muted, as if even the sun was reluctant to shine over the scorched remnants of the night before.
The outer rings of Bastion Sanctum still smoldered. There were craters everywhere, with multiple buildings being completely obliterated. Claw marks were also engraved all across the fortress, and the abyssal residue hung heavy in the air.
The stench of charred Abyssal flesh had not yet faded.
Yet inside the central sanctum, past a dozen layers of spatial reinforcement and detection formations, Damon stood before the elevated dais of command. His cloak, ragged from the night’s battle, still bore streaks of blackened blood, not his own.
Lady Syllana stood at the edge of a conjured map, arms folded, her brows furrowed in grim thought.
"You’re certain?" she asked, her voice taut.
"I saw it myself," Damon replied. His tone wasn’t cold, but it was measured, exact, like a blade honed on the truth, "The rift didn’t form naturally. It was tethered to an internal spatial anchor, a structure rooted within Bastion itself."
He gestured, and a flicker of space magic rippled around his fingers, casting an illusory replay of the collapsing gate and the tethered rune beneath the statue.
"From my understanding, this anchor wasn’t placed recently either. It was embedded into the outer wall, concealed beneath formation glyphs. This would’ve taken months of planning, and the person who did it knew exactly where to hide it, and had access to do so."
As Damon finished explaining, Syllana’s knuckles withered with frustration, continuously knocking against the table as she thought.
"If what you say is true... then someone within these walls betrayed us."