# Chapter 606: The Expedition Assembles
The air on the tarmac of the hidden base tasted of ozone and wet concrete, a sharp, sterile flavor that did little to mask the underlying scent of anxiety. It was a place built for function, not comfort, a sprawling expanse of reinforced hangars and barracks nestled deep within the Crownlands' most secure mountain range. The sky above was a perpetual, gunmetal grey, the low ceiling of clouds trapping the sound and amplifying the controlled chaos below. Captain Bren stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his posture ramrod straight, a monument of military discipline. Inside, the echoes of the Soren-echo still screamed, a phantom pain that flared whenever he allowed his focus to waver. He buried it beneath layers of procedure, beneath the rhythmic crunch of boots on gravel and the crisp snap of commands.
Before him, his new strike force moved with a lethal grace that belied their disparate origins. They were a patchwork army, a living symbol of the Dawnlight Protocol's fragile alliance. A squad of Crownlands Wardens, their polished steel plate gleaming dully under the overcast sky, provided a solid, unyielding core. They moved in perfect lockstep, their tower shields a mobile wall, their polearms a forest of sharpened tips. Interspersed among them were Sable League operatives, a stark contrast in their dark, flexible leathers and featureless masks. They flowed like water, their movements silent and economical, disappearing and reappearing in the peripheral vision of the Wardens, testing their flanks with blunted training daggers. And then there were the Inquisitors, or what was left of them. Three of them, clad not in the ornate robes of their order but in simple, grey fatigues, their faces grim and set. They had been Valerius's men, once. Now, they were Bren's. Their Gifts were subtle—sensory amplification, minor telekinesis, a touch of precognitive danger sense—and they used them not with zealotry, but with a weary, professional precision.
"Hold the line!" Bren's voice cut through the air, a gravelly bark that carried years of command. "The League is not your enemy, they are your scalpel. Inquisitors, I want a three-second warning on any flanking maneuver. Warden, second squad, lower your shields by a foot. You're creating a blind spot."
The Wardens shifted, the scrape of metal on metal a harsh grating sound. A League operative, a woman with a lithe build and a silver serpent tattooed on her neck, used the opening to slip through, her blunted dagger tapping the shoulder of the Warden commander before he could even register her presence. He grunted in frustration. The Inquisitor standing beside Bren flinched, his eyes widening a fraction of a second too late.
"Too slow," Bren said, his tone flat. "The King's Voice won't wait for you to get your bearings. They will be faster, and they will not use blunted steel. Reset. Again."
The team disengaged, the tension between the factions a palpable, electric hum. The Wardens resented the League's shadowy tactics, seeing them as dishonorable. The League operatives viewed the Wardens as clumsy brutes, their heavy armor a death sentence in a real fight. And everyone watched the reformed Inquisitors with a mixture of pity and deep-seated mistrust. It was Bren's job to forge these jagged pieces into a single, sharp-edged weapon. He had done it with conscripts from the mud farms and sons of nobles who had never known hardship. This should be no different. But it was. The enemy wasn't just a rival army; it was a corruption of the soul, a perversion of the very power some of his soldiers wielded. And the objective wasn't a strategic asset or a piece of land. It was a ghost.
He watched them re-form, his mind drifting back to the cavern. The feel of the Soren-echo's fist against his ribs, the hollow, vacant look in its eyes. It wasn't Soren. He knew that. But it was made *from* Soren, from his pain, his strength. The memory was a splinter in his mind, and every time he pushed his team, he felt a phantom ache in his side, a reminder of the price of failure. He forced the thought down, replacing it with the cold calculus of the mission. The Sunken Library of Aeridor. Intelligence suggested it was guarded by a cell of the King's Voice, fanatics warped by the Bloomblight. They would be expecting a frontal assault. They would be wrong.
A low thrum began to vibrate through the soles of his boots, a familiar sound that grew steadily louder. The massive hangar doors at the far end of the tarmac rumbled open, revealing the sleek, predatory shape of a 'Strix-class' transport airship. Its hull was the colour of a stormy sea, designed to absorb light and vanish against the clouds. It was the crown jewel of the Sable League's clandestine fleet, a gift to the Protocol, and their ride into the heart of the darkness. The drill broke down as soldiers turned to watch the vessel, a shared moment of awe cutting through the factional animosity.
Bren didn't turn. He knew who was coming. He felt her presence before he saw it, a subtle shift in the air, a change in the pressure. The sound of a single set of footsteps approached, unhurried, confident. He came to attention and pivoted on his heel.
Chancellor Nyra Sableki stood before him, her black coat immaculate against the drab backdrop of the base. She wore no insignia of rank, yet she commanded the space with an effortless authority that outstripped any general's. Her face was a mask of composure, but Bren, who had seen her in the war rooms of the Spire, who had watched her argue with princes and Inquisitors, could see the fine lines of strain around her eyes. The weight of the world was pressing down on her, and she was the only one who refused to buckle.
"Captain," she said, her voice even. "A report on your team's readiness."
"They'll hold, Chancellor," Bren replied, his gaze unwavering. "They're learning to trust each other's strengths. It's a slow process."
"Time is a luxury we no longer have," she said, her eyes scanning the assembled soldiers. They stood straighter under her gaze, a mix of pride and apprehension on their faces. "I am not sending you soldiers. I am sending you specialists. Each of you was chosen for a unique skill. Your task is not to fight as one, but to fight as many. You are the scalpel, the hammer, and the eye. Do you understand?"
A chorus of affirmations rippled through the ranks. Nyra gave a curt, satisfied nod. She turned back to Bren, her expression softening almost imperceptibly. She reached into an inner pocket of her coat and produced a small, leather-wrapped object. She held it out to him.
"Grak finished it this morning," she said quietly.
Bren took the object. It was heavy for its size. He unwrapped the leather to reveal a monocular lens, its housing made of the same strange, non-reflective black metal as the bracers Grak had forged for Soren. The metal was cold to the touch, and it seemed to drink the light around it. The lens itself was a flawless, crystalline disc, but when he looked through it, the world didn't magnify. It… changed.
He raised it to his eye, scanning the tarmac. The grey concrete remained grey, the airship remained a dark shape. But then he looked at his own hand. A faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of white-gold light clung to his skin, a barely visible aura that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He panned across his soldiers. The Wardens glowed with a steady, robust light, the colour of a forge's heart. The League operatives had a thinner, quicker silver light, like flickering candle flames. The Inquisitors… their light was muted, threaded with veins of shadowy grey, a testament to their past and the constant struggle to keep their Gifts from consuming them.
"It's attuned to his essence," Nyra explained, her voice low enough that only he could hear. "Grak believes the metal resonates with the unique frequency of his Gift. It won't show you Soren himself, not from this distance. But it will show you his echo. The Bloomblight that animates the husks is a corruption of his power. Through this lens, you will see them. You will see the light of Soren's soul, twisted and trapped within the darkness. You will be able to distinguish the true husks from the cultists who serve them."
Bren lowered the monocular, the afterimage of the auras dancing in his vision. It was a brilliant, terrible tool. It gave them an edge they desperately needed, but it also made the enemy more real, more personal. It wasn't just a monster they were hunting. It was a piece of the man they were trying to save.
"This changes the mission parameters," Bren stated, his mind already recalculating. "We can prioritize targets. We can identify the source of the corruption."
"Exactly," Nyra confirmed. "You are not just going to retrieve a fragment, Captain. You are going to perform an extraction. You are going to find the anchor point, and you are going to use this lens to sever the connection the Withering King has forged with Soren's power. You are going to bring a piece of his soul home."
The weight of the object in his hand suddenly felt immense. This was more than a mission. It was a spiritual exorcism. He met her gaze, and for the first time, he saw past the Chancellor, past the commander of the Protocol. He saw the woman who was sending the man she loved into the jaws of hell, armed with a sliver of hope forged by a dwarf and a prayer.
"I understand, Chancellor," he said, his voice rough with an emotion he refused to name.
"Board your ship, Captain," she ordered, her formal mask snapping back into place. "You have a long journey ahead of you."
Bren gave a sharp salute, turned, and strode toward the airship. He barked orders, his voice carrying across the tarmac. The strike force moved with renewed purpose, their earlier discord forgotten, replaced by the grim reality of their task. They filed up the ramp into the belly of the Strix, the metal clanging under their armored boots. Bren paused at the top of the ramp, looking back at Nyra. She stood alone in the center of the expanse, a solitary figure against the vast, grey canvas of the base. The wind whipped at her coat, making her seem like the only thing standing firm against a coming storm.
He raised the monocular to his eye one last time, pointing it at her. Her aura was the brightest he had ever seen, a brilliant, blinding silver-white, shot through with threads of vibrant, desperate gold. It was a star in the encroaching darkness. He lowered the lens and gave her a final, firm nod. Then he disappeared into the ship.
The ramp retracted with a hydraulic hiss. The heavy cargo door sealed shut. The thrum of the engines intensified, rising to a powerful roar that shook the very foundations of the mountain. The Strix lifted from the ground, its landing gear retracting into its hull. It hovered for a moment, a silent, dark predator, then pivoted and accelerated, climbing into the thick blanket of clouds. Within seconds, it was gone, its presence fading until only the memory of its roar remained.
Nyra stood on the empty tarmac long after the sound had vanished, the cold wind a physical presence against her skin. She was alone with the weight of her command, with the terrible knowledge of what she had just sent those men and women to do. She had armed them with the best tools, the best intelligence she had. But she was sending them into a trap she didn't even know was sprung. She was sending them to fight a battle on the wrong front.
She closed her eyes, the image of Bren's resolute face burning behind her eyelids. She had given him an order, a strategic objective. But the words she had held back, the true command of her heart, echoed in the silence of her mind.
Bring him home, Captain. All of him.
The sound of frantic, pounding footsteps on the tarmac broke her reverie. Her eyes snapped open. She saw a figure sprinting from the direction of the command tower, a blur of motion and desperation. It was Isolde. She wasn't running like a soldier; she was running like someone whose soul was on fire. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a terror that went beyond the fear of physical harm. It was the look of someone who had seen the shape of the abyss and realized it was staring back.
Nyra's blood ran cold. This was not a scheduled report. This was not a routine communication. This was a cataclysm.
Isolde skidded to a halt a few feet away, gasping for breath, her hands on her knees. She looked up, her eyes locking with Nyra's, and the words she spoke shattered the fragile, strategic reality Nyra had so carefully constructed.
"The library," Isolde rasped, her voice ragged. "It's a lie. The mission… it's all a lie."