Deep beneath the encampment, hidden far below the refugee processing grounds, a corpulent man in layered purple robes stood silently behind a massive wall of formation glass.
Gerardy Dawn,
The eldest prince of the Red Dawn faction and current lord of Dawnstar watched the containment chambers below with increasingly strained patience.
Six containment halls.
Six hundred test subjects.
Another batch.
Another attempt.
Beside him stood two figures.
One was Grand Magus Hendrik, commander of the Royal Guard. Broad-shouldered and heavily armored, the veteran cultivator radiated the steady presence of a lifelong military man whose loyalty had never once wavered in over two hundred years of service.
The other figure remained far harder to read.
Dark fabric covered the person's face completely, seamless and unnaturally smooth beneath the dim laboratory lights. It did not resemble a disguise so much as a deliberate refusal to possess an identity at all.
