You pressed your catalyst closer, watching the runes flicker as they absorbed the anomalous elemental waves. The readings were unlike anything Alice had described. This wasn't just a surge. It was a heartbeat.

The cold bit through your gloves, but you barely felt it. The sheer magnitude of the energy here was intoxicating, almost alive. You leaned in, adjusting the calibration crystal, watching the numbers spin.

Then the crunch of snow.

Not wind. Not an animal.

Heavy boots. Several of them. Surrounding you.

Your hand twitched toward your wand, but a boot slammed down on your wrist before you could even lift it. Pain shot up your arm as the catalyst skittered away across the ice, its amber light flickering once before dying.

You tried to twist free, but another guard stepped in, pressing the barrel of a Pyrogun against your temple. The metal was freezing, but the threat was warm.

The outpost sprawled across the mountain pass, a fortress carved into the rock itself. Soldiers moved between tents, their uniforms stark against the snow. No one looked at you. No one needed to. You were just another captured intruder.

They shoved you down a ramp into the subterranean base, the air growing warmer, heavier. The walls hummed with the same energy you'd felt above—the Ley Line, pulsing beneath the floor like a buried heart.

The command tent was at the center of it all. Maps covered the walls, pinned with red markers and annotated in a script you couldn't read. A single figure stood over the main table, his back to you, one hand tracing a line across a chart.

The guards shoved you forward. Your knees hit the floor.

He turned.