Rex turned his gaze toward her, his eyes cool and observant, dissecting the tremor in her voice even as he maintained his stoic facade.
"I am trying to understand," Mireya said, her voice gaining a sudden, sharp edge of intellectual desperation, "what the entity's objective truly was."
"The change in how the Underlayer is governed, the start of the golem network, the planned movement of the civilian population... the careful choice of targets during the attack."
"It didn't just attack; it built something. It constructed a precise, lethal mechanism for a single morning."
She turned her head slightly, her gaze falling back onto the cold, unyielding markers of the dead. "The outcome it produced was inconsistent with total annihilation."
"If the primary goal had been the erasure of the Apostle network, the earthquake protocol would have been triggered at full output in the opening minutes, not held in reserve."
