He had known.

Not in the specific, detailed way of someone who had run the calculation and arrived at the conclusion through deliberate reasoning — in the specific, prior way of someone whose body had already accepted the outcome before the eyes confirmed it, the heavy shoulders and the exhale arriving not as a response to what he was seeing but as the release of something that had been held in anticipation of it...

It would be a complete lie if I said I wasn’t .expecting it.

The teleportation formation lay ahead with the specific, final quality of something that has been thoroughly and deliberately ended — the cracked lines running through the formation’s geometry not with the random, explosive pattern of destruction applied from the outside but with the particular, systematic quality of damage that has been produced by someone who understood what they were destroying and destroyed it correctly. The lines had a method. The cracks followed the formation’s own structural logic, running along the channels that carried the most critical functions, compromising the connections that the entire apparatus depended on in precisely the order that someone who knew the formation would have targeted.

Not monsters.

Monsters did not understand teleportation formations well enough to dismantle them. Monsters applied force. This had applied knowledge.

A day ago, the formation had been the most valuable piece of infrastructure in the settlement — the specific, absolute value of an exit point carrying the compressed desperation of thousands of awakeners who had been managing their fear by maintaining access to it, the knowledge that it existed converting the Star Domain’s considerable danger from something inescapable into something survivable-in-principle.

Now it was rubble with good geometry.

Ambrose moved closer with the specific, focused quality of someone who has been reading environments professionally for long enough that the reading has become automatic. She crouched beside the formation’s remains and applied the contemplative, analytical attention of someone who is not looking at destruction but at the specific, informative character of the destruction.

"It doesn’t look like this was broken by monsters." Her voice carried the quiet, certain quality of an assessment that has finished its process and is reporting its result. "All these lines and the pattern of destruction — too systematic. Most probably, the formation was destroyed from the other side."

Hah.

The sound formed in Lukas’s awareness without making it to his mouth — the specific, dry acknowledgment of someone who has received a confirmation they were not surprised by and is not pretending otherwise.

He looked at the formation’s remains and assembled the picture with the flat, honest clarity of someone who has been in the Star Domain long enough to understand how the people outside it responded when things inside it went wrong at this scale. The news would have moved fast — the specific, institutional speed of information traveling through channels that existed precisely for the purpose of moving information about catastrophic events quickly to the people whose job it was to respond to catastrophic events. The warriors and administrators on the other side of the portal would have received whatever they received and would have made, with the specific, cold pragmatism of people responsible for containing catastrophes rather than reversing them, the decision that the decision required.

Close the portal.

Not a rescue. Not a reinforcement. A containment — the specific, brutal arithmetic of an organization choosing to sacrifice the people already inside rather than risk whatever was inside getting out, or risk sending more people in to share the fate of the ones already there.

The formation had been destroyed from the other side.

The portal to the Roaring Dragon settlement was gone.

His gaze moved from the formation to the sky above it — the specific, slow movement of someone whose thoughts have arrived somewhere that requires looking at something large and empty rather than something specific and present. The solemn quality that settled over his expression was not performed.

New awakeners.

The thought arrived with the specific, heavy quality of a category of people he belonged to — had belonged to, in the specific, technical sense of someone who arrived yesterday rather than years ago. People who would step into the Star Domain at the Star Domain’s standard entry point for this region and find, instead of the settlement’s walls and the queue and the institutional apparatus of a place that processed new arrivals, the ruins and the carnage and the specific, absolute absence of the infrastructure that new arrivals needed to survive.

They would most likely die.

Not pessimism. Not the specific, dark indulgence of someone manufacturing tragedy for the emotional experience of it. Just the honest, accurate assessment of someone who had done the calculation against his own early days — the specific, raw vulnerability of a new arrival with no guild, no cultivation depth, no knowledge of the local geography, no star crystals, and no one extending them Brian’s particular brand of uncalculated kindness — and had arrived at the number that the situation produced when the variables were applied honestly.

More than ninety percent. And that was the optimistic figure, contingent on arrival proximity to where the settlement had been. Otherwise the figure rounded to something that did not benefit from being stated precisely.

He held the heaviness of it for the duration it deserved.

Then turned to Ambrose.

"You seem to know a lot about all these things."

The observation came out quiet and genuinely curious — not the specific, pointed quality of a question with a predetermined destination but the honest inquiry of someone who has been accumulating observations across a day of shared navigation and has arrived at a moment where the accumulated weight of those observations has resolved into a single, direct acknowledgment.

She had known about the inner region. About shadow worms and ancient star beasts and the Bloodborne ritual. About Star Mother’s talent and the sacrificial circle and what happened when the possessed team’s formations were read correctly. About how to navigate the thinning fog by the quality of the star energy density rather than by landmarks. About the formation’s destruction pattern and what it implied about who had been responsible.

Lessons about local geography did not produce all of that.

Something in Ambrose’s expression shifted — the specific, slight softening that occurs in people who have been asked something that is, in its quiet way, closer to the truth of them than they were expecting to be approached with in the current context. The smile that appeared behind the mask was not the cold, composed expression of someone managing the interaction. It was more unguarded than that.

"Of course." The answer came with the specific, instinctive quality of something that has been true for long enough to have stopped feeling like a fact and started feeling like a feature. "I took lessons about the local geography ever since I was a child."

She said it the way people say things that are simultaneously completely true and completely insufficient as descriptions — the specific, surface-accurate statement that leaves everything underneath it exactly where it was.

Local geography.

Lukas looked at her.

The gears that turned in his awareness were not the fast, analytical turning of someone running a threat assessment — they were the slower, more considered turning of someone assembling a picture that has been building across the entire day and has just received a piece that clarifies the shape of what it is becoming.

The mask. The sword. The two thousand star crystals produced without apparent difficulty. The knowledge that no curriculum of ordinary Star Domain education produced. The specific, composed authority of someone who had been born into a context where the Star Domain’s most dangerous territories were considered appropriate subjects for childhood study.

Local geography.

Said by someone who had grown up somewhere that considered this forest, this domain, this entire region of the Upper Realm’s most dangerous territories to be the local geography worth knowing.

The woman beside him, who had hired a sword instructor in the middle of an active star beast siege and had navigated the inner region with the specific, calibrated competence of someone who had been preparing for exactly this category of experience since childhood, was looking at the ruins of the teleportation formation with the specific, quiet expression of someone for whom this outcome had also been, in some part, anticipated.

Extraordinary, he thought.

And left the rest of it, for now, exactly where it was.

Before he could get too lost in guessing her identity, Lukas asked another important question:

"Now what? Where should we head next? I need to return to the real world. Do you know of the nearest settlement with a working teleportation formation?"

This...

Ambrose fell silent and didn’t answer immediately, seeming to sink deep in thought. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

I know, but getting there with our current cultivation is impossible. You need to be at least at the Blood Infusion stage before even thinking about moving around the settlements.

Lukas’s expression did not change. He was indeed very much aware of this fact.

Most awakeners spent their entire lives working around a single settlement. Only those who had reached the Blood Infusion stage could think about leaving and exploring the outside world for greater opportunities.