He came back through the megalithic arch and sealed it from the Sector 12 side — not permanently, the specific spatial configuration that made the gate inaccessible from the outer approach without disrupting the arch's structural integrity, the same principle as locking a door rather than removing it.
He would need to come back.
The transit back to the estate was direct, the spatial fold straightforward across terrain he had mapped thoroughly. He arrived, registered that it was early morning by the estate's light conditions, and updated his channel status.
The primordial atmosphere's higher ambient pressure had produced the channel condition that intense high-pressure environments produced: not damage, the specific tightness of pathways that had been working harder than their standard calibration accounted for. Isolde's preparation kit had the compound for this. He took it, ate, and slept for five hours rather than the two the source chapter specified, because five hours was what the channel recovery actually required.
When he came down, the team was at breakfast.
The briefing ran for two hours.
He laid out everything in the sequence that would produce the clearest picture: the gate survey's convergence data, the Abyssal Trench and the boss, the megalithic arch and what it led to, the primordial world and what his spatial sense and Fate's Eye had documented in the time there, the Obsidian Hearth and the innkeeper's intelligence, Lord Vorash.
He showed them the specimens: the violet-veined herb in the stasis container, the Obsidian Mastodon core, the spatial map documentation of the environment's layout.
Rosanne, Mika, Jessica, and Donna were quiet through most of it in the specific way the team was quiet when the information being received was significant enough that they were allocating full attention to integration rather than response.
Rosanne asked three questions, all of them good ones.
He answered them.
"Someone on the framework side has been providing operational intelligence to Vorash," he said, at the end. "The gate targeting is too precise for someone operating blind from the other side. The specific node positions that were converted — those aren't positions you'd find by trial and error. Someone who understands the Dominion's gate network gave him the map."
"The faction that was behind the fuel hub contamination," Rosanne said.
"Possibly the same faction. Possibly a different one with the same interest in disrupting Valerian's northern alliance." He looked at them. "Both of those things need to be running in parallel — the Vorash situation and the internal intelligence leak. The leak is more immediately actionable because it's on this side."
He looked at the specimens.
"I need to get these to the academy's research infrastructure," he said. "What the primordial world's specimens can tell us about what Vorash is building, what the gate conversion is extracting and why, what the mana structure of the pre-framework environment looks like under proper analysis — that's months of work, and it needs Isolde's team and the restricted archive's support to do correctly."
He looked at the team.
"That means returning to the capital. The diplomatic mission's primary objective is complete — the treaty framework is signed. The secondary objective, the intelligence on the gate network, is what I'm carrying back."
"We can close out the remaining Dominion liaison work before we leave," Rosanne said. "There are two follow-up sessions with Larsen's office that were scheduled."
"Handle those," he said. "I'll arrange the transit logistics. We leave in three days."
The Valerian Imperial Embassy in the Dominion's administrative district maintained a secure communication suite that the diplomatic channel ran through — the specific infrastructure that allowed the Emperor's office to receive classified communications from the field without the Dominion's monitoring architecture being able to intercept them.
He presented the relevant documentation at the front desk: Rosalind's seal and Eternity's charter authentication. The combination produced the immediate response appropriate to imperial proxy authority, and he was in the secure suite within fifteen minutes.
The embassy official who facilitated the connection — Felix, a junior member of the imperial diplomatic corps — had the professional manner of someone who had managed sensitive situations before and was managing this one. He asked no unnecessary questions.
The connection to the capital took eleven minutes to establish through the secure relay.
Valerian came through first, followed immediately by Elena. Both of them clearly had been waiting — the connection request had been flagged as priority through the relay, and neither of them had delayed.
He gave them the same briefing he had given the team, condensed to the essential elements: the gate convergence, the Trench, the primordial world, Lord Vorash, the operational intelligence leak.
He shared the documentation through the suite's secure upload: the spatial map, the specimen analysis notes, the architectural records of the megalithic arch.
Elena's response was to go quiet in the specific way she went quiet when she was processing something that required all of her available capacity. When she came back: "The specimens. What are the stasis conditions?"
He described the dimensional inventory's configuration.
"The academy's deep-analysis arrays in the restricted laboratory are calibrated for exactly this kind of unusual material," she said. "The mana frequency mapping alone is going to require a significant run. I'll have the team prepped before you arrive."
Valerian had been looking at the architectural records of the megalithic arch while Elena was speaking. "The script above the arch," he said. "The restricted archive has matching notation in the deep-history section. Pre-mana-event, last accessed five years ago for a separate research project."
"I need access to those records when I return," Markus said.
"You'll have it," Valerian said. He held the connection steady for a moment. "Vorash has been operating for thirty years. The gate conversion has been running for thirty years. What changes now that you've found the source?"
"The intelligence leak changes now," Markus said. "And Vorash's timeline changes. He knows the Trench boss is gone because the boss was drawing on the accumulated reserves he had been building for thirty years. He's going to know someone accessed the other side." He looked at Valerian directly. "Whatever he's building in the citadel, the timeline accelerates the moment he understands his harvest operation has been disrupted."
A silence.
"How much time," Valerian said.
"I don't know yet," Markus said. "That's what the research needs to determine."
Valerian nodded. The nod of someone who has received accurate information about an uncertain timeline and is accepting the uncertainty rather than requesting a false precision.
"Return as quickly as the mission logistics allow," he said. "The research team and the archive access will be ready."
"Three days," Markus said. "The remaining diplomatic follow-up and the transit."
"Three days," Valerian confirmed.
The connection closed.
He sat in the quiet of the secure suite for a moment.
Lord Vorash had been operating for thirty years with a thirty-year supply of accumulated mana.
He had been alive for fourteen.
The gap between those two numbers was the honest accounting of the situation, and he held it without dramatising it, because dramatising it was not the same as addressing it.
Three days to close out the mission. Then the capital. Then the research. Then what the research produced.
One thing at a time.
He went back to the estate.