Arriving at Caliban

The fortress-monastery known as the Rock sailed silently through the void, its immense silhouette cutting across distant starlight like a moving metal graveyard filled with sorrow and secrets.

Chen Xi stood before the observation window in his guest quarters. Displayed within were processed star charts and navigation data streams. The twisting currents of the warp were shut out behind thick adamantium and the Gellar Field, yet his thoughts had long since flown to those coordinates that no longer existed—Caliban.

Several standard days of limited investigation had been like scraping at an airtight iron wall with his fingernails, yielding almost no progress.

The records at the edge of the archives were filled with deliberate vagueness and poetic embellishment, while Chief Librarian Ezekiel's scrutinizing gaze was like an icy probe, constantly seeking to uncover the true intentions behind Chen Xi's psychic statements.

The information gained from attending the briefings had been limited to confirming the fact he already knew: an attack had indeed occurred.

An invisible stalemate hung over him.

The "limited trust" granted by the Inner Circle felt more like carefully calculated isolation.

He could sense that the Dark Angels' core secrets—the ten-thousand-year hunt for the Fallen Angels, as well as the truth behind the Lion King's slumber—remained tightly locked away in the deepest reaches of the Inner Circle, beyond the easy reach of any outsider.

But to Chen Xi, none of that mattered. He already knew the Dark Angels' little secrets, even secrets they themselves did not know.

"They are afraid," Chen Xi murmured to the hooded attendant standing silently beside him. It was less a conversation than an attempt to sort through his thoughts. "Afraid of outside scrutiny, afraid of the chain reaction that exposure might bring, even... afraid of the thing they are guarding."

The hooded figure shifted