The infirmary was never quiet.
Even during the brief lull in the fighting, there was always movement. Stretchers floated in on guided rails. Healers moved like machines. Essence hummed through the reinforced halls like a constant pulse. Pain was everywhere, but it was orderly pain. Managed. Processed.
That was what made it perfect.
I stayed hidden just outside the spatial fold I had anchored earlier, my perception stretched thin and precise. From here, I could feel everything without being seen. Every injured demon. Every fluctuation of deathmist. Every rune.
Lyrate moved among them like she belonged there.
She wore the appearance of a standard medical officer, her aura muted. To anyone watching, she was just another healer responding to an endless stream of wounded soldiers.
To me, she was a blade moving through a crowd.
The first group arrived together.
Two captains. Several dozen soldiers. Among them, many of the marked ones. I felt their runes immediately. They pulsed faintly, buried deep, connected to something far away.
Lyrate guided them into a recovery hall under the pretense of stabilization. As the doors sealed, she lifted her hand slightly.
She did no dramatic motion and made no obvious activation chants. Crimson mist surged out of her hand and the air itself changed. A soft toxin, woven through her Law of Creation, spread evenly through the room. It wasn’t poison. It didn’t damage the body. It simply shut consciousness down, clean and fast.
The traitors collapsed first.
The others followed seconds later.
Her voice touched my mind. ’Clear.’
Space folded, and I was there beside her, standing among rows of unconscious demons. The smell of blood and scorched flesh hung heavy in the air.
I didn’t waste time and raised my hands.
I reached inward, touching the Star of Origin within my Dawn Core. It responded immediately, a deep pull that resonated with the foreign structures inside their bodies. One by one, I located the runes.
I was careful not to remove the runes or destroy them outright. Doing so would have been reckless and loud in a way that mattered far too much. Instead, I worked on them from the inside, breaking the invisible connections that allowed them to function as a whole.
I twisted their internal pathways, snapped the links that synchronized them with whatever lay on the other side, and left only hollow frameworks behind. To any external observer, the runes still existed exactly where they were supposed to be. They continued to pulse faintly, their structures intact, their presence unchanged, as if nothing had happened at all.
But they could no longer listen.
If the Eternal was watching, if it was monitoring its anchors the way a predator watches its traps, it would see no warning signs. There would be no alarms, no sudden collapse, no disturbance worth reacting to.
Everything would appear normal on the surface, while in reality the connection had been severed completely. The anchors remained, but they were blind and silent, unable to open a path or answer a call.
That was the only outcome I could allow.
I stepped back as Lyrate reopened the hall and called for transport. The unconscious demons were moved out alongside real casualties, mixed carefully so no pattern formed.
This repeated again and again.
Each time Ragnar sent traitors back injured from the battlefield, Lyrate received them. Each time, I arrived for only seconds, disrupted the runes, and vanished again.
Hours passed like this.
Then Knight’s voice cut through the link.
’We can begin now.’
I turned immediately and flashed away.
The second infirmary was smaller, tucked deeper into the second layer. I arrived to find Primus already there, lying on a medical platform, his breathing steady, his injuries convincing enough to fool any healer.
Two demons lay unconscious beside him, their bodies still and their breathing shallow. I could sense the runes inside them immediately. Marked, just like the others. Knight stood a short distance away, his shadows already withdrawn, his presence folded so completely into the surroundings that even nearby sensors ignored him.
Lyrate arrived a heartbeat later, slipping into place without a sound, already understanding what needed to be done.
I repeated the same careful process as before. The same level of control. The same deliberate restraint. I did not destroy anything, did not leave behind scars or traces that could raise suspicion. I only disrupted what mattered, severing the connections quietly and leaving the outer structures untouched, exactly as they were meant to appear.
When I was done, Primus slowly opened his eyes and pushed himself upright, moving with the practiced ease of someone waking naturally from sedation rather than force.
None of the healers gave him more than a passing glance. To them, this was routine. Another patient cleared. Another body sent back to duty.
Within minutes, he was discharged, and no one questioned a thing.
The third layer took longer.
The remaining traitors were not on the frontlines. They were placed deeper within the structure of the war, stationed in logistics, coordination hubs, and transport routes where damage could be done quietly and efficiently. Reaching them directly would have raised questions, and questions were the last thing we wanted.
So we created our own reasons.
Primus provoked them into confrontation with calculated precision. Minor disputes that escalated just enough. Accidents that were inconvenient but believable. Moments of tension that turned physical in the chaos of an active war zone. At the right instant, Knight moved from the shadows, striking cleanly and without spectacle, knocking them unconscious before they could react or call for help.
From there, they were delivered to Lyrate.
And I followed soon after.
Each time I worked on another set of runes, the Star of Origin within my Dawn Core trembled a little less. The resistance faded faster. The patterns grew easier to unravel.
My own comprehension of the runes and their structure was improving. Whatever synchronization once bound them together was now broken. By the time the final one was dealt with, I felt it clearly.
The connection was gone.
973 anchors still existed across the battlefield and its layers, embedded within living bodies. But none of them could open a door anymore. None of them could answer a call. None of them could serve as a bridge for what waited on the other side.
I stepped back into the void overlooking the battlefield, my perception spreading wide as the fight resumed its brutal rhythm. Eternal forces surged forward again, abominations rolling in heavy waves while Phantoms guided them like living weapons.
Yet something had changed.
The hidden unseen threat was gone for now.
The battlefield was loud with violence and destruction.
But beneath it all, a deep silence had finally taken hold.
The first phase was complete.