Back above, in the sterile, sunlit sanctum of the council chamber, the conversation had shifted from the mechanics of war to the nature of the enemy. The atmosphere was thick with the kind of tension that precedes a desperate gamble.
One of the surviving Apostles, an older woman whose face was a roadmap of scars from demon skirmishes decades past, leaned forward, her sharp eyes fixed on the Avatar.
"You spent time embedded as Tremor using his remains right...? Observing the Underlayer's structure from the inside, more intimately than any of us," she said, her voice carrying the gravelly authority of someone who had seen too many young soldiers die for false intelligence. "What is your honest assessment of Mordecai's true strength?"
"Are we facing a genuine existential threat that justifies committing every remaining resource we possess, or are we potentially overcommitting to a target that has been artificially inflated by recent chaos?"
