Chapter 167: You Dig Deeper Into The Past

Veyris began walking towards the entrance of the tunnel, his mind already shifting from investigation to analysis. The records Nathan had retrieved would fill in the gaps, would tell him what the stones could not.

What he could not have known was that if he was not interrupted, he would have touched one of the statues that Elias had buried the bodies of one of his hunts, and he would have also discovered that the power that should be in that statue was gone…. And this was not the only thing he had missed.

In this situation, Veyris’s fastidious character had worked against him. Due to his desire not to miss anything, he had started from the depths of the tunnels and worked his way up, all so that he would be able to accurately determine that nothing had gone wrong with the batteries of power beneath this city.

If there was going to be any disruption to this system, it had to come from someone as powerful as Commander Yseult, and to hide her interference, she should have begun her work from the depths. This was the reason Veyris had begun working from the depths, as he disregarded the fact that Elias could in any way affect the operation of this place.

The second thing he had missed as he came to the surface level of these tunnels was the fact that there was another branching tunnel leading deeper into the depths, and it was this tunnel that Elias had run down into when he was inside the Fragment.

However, since Veyris had not discovered anything going up and the only thing of note was the slightly excessive power he had sensed inside the statues, he had shifted his mind away from these tunnels, only seeing it as a smokescreen to lure his attention away from the real prize.

Since Elias had been working here for more than four years in a particularly visible manner, there would surely not be anything for them to hide here, and Veyris had only walked through the tunnels to be sure.

And so he disregarded what was left and emerged from the tunnel entrance at the foot of the Palace walls, blinking in the sudden light.

The Senior Scribe waited a hundred paces away, surrounded by the cavalry escort Scribe Nathan had mentioned. Veyris crossed the distance in moments, his presence parting the guards like water around a stone.

Nathan bowed at him and turned around, walking towards a palatial tent that should have been set up by Veyris’s personal guards.

Veyris walked behind the scribe without saying anything until they reached a safe room, and the Scribe rested a heavy tome on a table and went to the side. His face was pale, his hands trembling slightly, the aftereffects of multiple teleportations, Veyris assumed, even after a day, the effect still wore down the Scribe, but that was until he saw the look in the man’s eyes.

“What is it?”

Nathan swallowed. “Lord-Captain… I think you need to read this yourself.”

Veyris took the tome. It was old, bound in leather that had been treated with preservative arrays now faded to near-uselessness.

Veyris arched an eyebrow, knowing that Nathan could not get a copy and had to directly bring an original copy of the records, which could only mean two things, and Veyris did not like either of those options.

It was barely visible, but on the cover of the book was written Stone… but the rest could not be seen as it had faded away over the years.

The scribes had read the record, and Veyris saw no reason to wait, and he slowly opened the leather tome, feeling the sting of broken runes on the leather cover on his fingers as the pages crackled as he opened it, the script ancient but legible to one with his training.

With eyes glowing with a rune resembling a key, he began to read.

The first pages were mundane, including construction records, supply manifests, and lists of personnel.

The Stoneward Asylum had been built during the Cleansing War, eight hundred thousand years ago, as a forward operating base for forces fighting… something. The records were deliberately vague on the enemy, referring only to “the incursion from beyond.”

Veyris turned pages faster as the content grew more interesting. The Asylum had not been built by mortal hands; it had been grown, shaped from the living rock by Angels and Siphons whose names were now lost to history.

The formations woven into its walls were not defensive in the traditional sense; they were designed to contain.

Contain what?

Veyris continued to read through page after page of boring records, since there were countless redacted contents, until he found the answer on page 347.

“The Lower Levels,” he read aloud, “are to be sealed indefinitely. Access is prohibited to all but the Warden and those specifically designated by the Council of Seven. The entities contained therein are not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Their awakening would constitute a Class-7 Apocalyptic Event.”

Veyris looked up at Nathan. “Class-7?”

Nathan shook his head. “I couldn’t find a reference. Whatever that classification means, it’s been scrubbed from every other record in the archive. There were copies of this record, but they were barely four pages long. I was lucky to pick the original record, Lord Captain, else we would not be able to get this much… I think this is far above our level.”

Veyris returned to the tome. The next sections detail the Asylum’s various expansions, each one adding new layers of wards, new containment formations, and new seals. The place was less a building and more a prison, a prison for something so dangerous that the ancients had buried it beneath a mountain and built a city on top of it just to be sure.

“What in the nine hells,” Veyris muttered to himself.

And then, on page 512, he found the section on the Asylum’s primary function, tentatively called the Observation Array.

“The Stoneward Asylum is equipped with a Class-1 Formation Array designed to monitor all Lumina fluctuations within a radius of five hundred miles. This array is capable of detecting the opening and activation of Class-7 Abnormalities, and the presence of any entity whose power exceeds the local Heavenly Restriction threshold.”

Veyris paused in his reading, ’That cannot be right, he thought, with a formation of this level, how could I have detected the opening of a fragment? Maybe the answer can be found ahead.’

“The array is powered by the convergence of seven ley lines beneath the Asylum, supplemented by the accumulated Lumina of the surrounding mountain range. Its sensitivity is such that it can detect the heartbeat of a star at maximum range.”

This was the summary that Veyris made after reading dozens of pages, and his frown only deepened.

“The array’s primary purpose is early warning. Should any significant Lumina event occur within its radius, the Warden will be alerted immediately, allowing for rapid response.”

Veyris read the passage three times.

’A damned Warden was to be called in case of a breach? That is ridiculous. There are only like thirty Wardens in the entire continent… I think.’

An array capable of detecting the very heartbeat of a star, powered by ley lines, supplemented by mountain-range Lumina, should be able to suppress the activation of a mere Fragment opening, should it not? Then how had he detected Elias’s Ascension?

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