The Council chamber was a cathedral of power.
Seven High Lords sat on crystalline thrones arranged in a perfect heptagon, each seat radiating with the ambient pressure of a Tier 6 mage's presence. The air itself felt dense, as if the room were filled with invisible honey. To a normal mage, standing in this space would feel like standing at the bottom of an ocean. To me, with my supercritical core and the Stone's cooling loop working overtime, it felt like being inside a pressure cooker.
I stood in the center, my hands bound in mana-suppression chains that hummed with a low, angry frequency. The chains were theater—I could feel that they weren't actually touching my mana pathways. They were designed to look intimidating while barely functioning. Someone had sabotaged them.
High Lord Vasir stood to my left, his grey hair pulled back in a severe knot, his robes simple compared to the ornate gold-and-white vestments of his peers. His mana presence was different from the others. Where the other Lords radiated power like bonfires—hot, bright, obvious—Vasir's presence was surgical. It felt like being examined by a microscope made of ice.
"The anomaly during the Resonance Scan," Vasir announced, his voice carrying the perfect mixture of suspicion and scholarly interest. He didn't look at me; he addressed the chamber as if I were a specimen on a table. "This 'Hero' showed a fractional phase-delay during the crystal's secondary harmonic. A delay of point-zero-three seconds."
The Head Councilor—a broad-shouldered woman named Architect Theln—frowned. "Point-zero-three seconds is within normal variance for a recovering subject."
"Normal variance for a standard mage," Vasir countered. He pulled out a crystalline data-slate, projecting a three-dimensional graph into the air. "But observe the pattern of the delay. It's not random noise. It's structured."
The graph showed my mana signature during the scan—a series of peaks and valleys that looked, to my eyes, like a seismograph during an earthquake. Vasir highlighted three specific dips.
"These troughs occur at exact intervals: 0.847 seconds, 1.694 seconds, 2.541 seconds. A perfect harmonic sequence. This suggests either a foreign resonance pattern embedded in his core structure, or..."
He paused for effect.
"...deliberate contamination by Demon King remnants designed to corrupt dimensional anchors."
The chamber went silent.
I kept my face carefully neutral, but inside, I was racing through the implications. The "harmonic sequence" Vasir was describing was real—it was the Stone's maintenance draw creating a rhythmic pulse in my mana flow. But Vasir was framing it as external contamination rather than internal architecture.
He was protecting me by giving the Council a threat they understood.
"You're suggesting the Demon King's forces planted a memetic payload in the Hero?" Councilor Theln's voice was sharp. "During the initial summoning? That was your ritual, Vasir."
"Which is why I'm bringing this to your attention," Vasir said smoothly. "If there's contamination, it occurred during the transit through the weakened dimensional barrier. The same barrier we destabilized when we intercepted Zalarus's ritual."
He let that hang in the air—a subtle reminder that the Council's own actions had created the vulnerability.
"I petition for full tactical interrogation," Vasir continued. "Isolate the Hero in a contained environment. Map his mana structure completely. Verify that launching him through the portal won't trigger a catastrophic resonance failure that could shatter the Lens array."
Another Councilor—an elderly man named High Lord Kestor—leaned forward. "We need him ready in four days, Vasir. The Reformist faction is gaining votes. If we delay the launch, they'll have time to move for a full Council review of the colonization authorization."
"Then I suggest you let me WORK, Kestor." Vasir's voice turned cold. "Because if he's carrying a hostile resonance and you launch him anyway, the feedback could destabilize the entire dimensional anchor. Earth doesn't just become uncolonizable—it becomes unreachable. The portal network loses a primary node, and we lose access to seventeen subsidiary dimensions."
The threat was clear: better a delayed Hero than a destroyed infrastructure.
Councilor Theln's eyes narrowed. She was clearly doing the political math—weighing the risk of Reformist interference against the risk of dimensional catastrophe.
"How long?" she finally asked.
"Six months minimum to map a contaminated core structure—"
"Absolutely not."
"—but I can perform an initial stability assessment in one month," Vasir finished, as if she hadn't interrupted. "If the boy is clean, we proceed with the original timeline. If he's compromised, we have time to develop countermeasures."
Theln looked at the other Councilors. Three of them nodded slightly. Two remained impassive.
"One month," Theln declared. "You have thirty days to verify the Hero's stability. You will submit weekly progress reports. If at any point you determine he's not contaminated, you will release him immediately for Sanctification."
"Acceptable," Vasir said.
"And Vasir?" Theln's voice dropped, taking on the weight of an Archmage's threat. "If this is a political delay disguised as a safety concern, I will have you stripped of your seat and bound to a compliance oath. Am I clear?"
Vasir bowed, his expression perfectly neutral. "Crystal, Architect."
The Council dismissed us with a wave. Guards appeared—heavy, armored men whose mana signatures felt like granite walls. They gripped my arms, and Vasir led us out of the chamber.
As soon as the massive doors closed behind us, I felt the pressure in the air shift. We were still being watched—surveillance runes tracked every step through the Tower's public corridors—but Vasir's posture changed. The stiff, formal Councilor became something looser, more focused.
"Keep your eyes down," he murmured, barely audible. "Look defeated. Scared."
I let my shoulders slump. Let the chains rattle as if they were actually restraining me.
We descended. Three flights of ceremonial stairs, past the Hall of Records, past the Sanctification antechambers. Then Vasir turned down a maintenance corridor that smelled of dust and old parchment.
The guards didn't follow. Vasir had dismissed them with a curt gesture, claiming "contamination protocols require isolation."