Chapter 332 - 325— Eight Doors

The interrogation wing lay deep beneath Elarion’s military complex, beyond two heavily guarded checkpoints. Eight windowless chambers lined a reinforced corridor, each furnished with a bare bolted table, two iron chairs, and a panel of reflective one-way glass. An observation passage connected the rooms, allowing Lucien and his officers to track every breath without being seen.

The prisoners had been separated immediately on arrival. Their gear was confiscated, their restraints double-checked, and a military healer had examined each for concealed magic before questioning began.

Torrin Vale occupied the fourth chamber.

He looked up with cold eyes when Cedric entered carrying a thick file. The intelligence chief pulled out the chair opposite him and opened the folder without a word.

"Where are my companions?" Vale asked, his voice strained.

"In separate cells." Cedric didn’t look up. "But well let’s start with your journey. Where did you come from?"

Vale stared at him, unblinking. "I’m not answering that."

"Your homeland, then. Which kingdom?"

"No."

"All right. Who sent you to Elarion?"

Vale leaned back, iron links scraping against the wooden arms. "You seem to have a list."

"I do, and your cooperation determines how long you stay in these chains."

"That depends on your questions."

"Then let’s start with the simplest one. Why did you cross our border?"

Vale went rigid, his gaze drifting to the dark glass beside the table. "Who’s behind that mirror?"

"Someone with the authority to decide your fate," Cedric replied. "But first, I need an answer."

"Then bring him in here."

"I’m the one establishing why eight heavily armed operatives breached our territory and stole state blueprints. Give me something usable, and I’ll consider bringing him in."

Vale jaw tightened, but he offered nothing.

Cedric turned a page with a sharp crack of paper. "My department tracked your group near Iron Junction. You were profiling military transport schedules and heavy armored vehicles. Yesterday, you intercepted a train and took classified blueprints."

He set the folder down with deliberate force. "Why the Warhound? Why that specific machine?"

Vale’s eyes narrowed into slits. "That’s what you call it?"

"Yes."

Vale absorbed the term in tense silence.

"Had you encountered a Warhound before entering Elarion?" Cedric pressed.

"I won’t discuss that."

"Did your employer send you here specifically for its schematics?"

Silence.

Cedric waited ten cold seconds, then gathered his papers and stood.

Vale frowned, an edge of unease breaking his composure. "That’s all?"

"For now. I have seven other operatives to break down, and you’re wasting my time."

Cedric reached for the heavy door latch.

"What happens to us?" Vale called out.

Cedric turned back slowly. "That depends on your mission. I know you committed treasonous theft, but I haven’t determined if you’re an advance strike team."

"We weren’t sent to kill your people," Vale snapped.

"Then why are you here?"

Vale looked down, teeth grinding.

Cedric waited long enough to make the silence heavy, then stepped out into the hall.

Inside the cell, Vale listened to the deadbolt slide home. Elarion’s intelligence apparatus had been onto them long before the train heist. What chilled him was Cedric asking about the Warhound by name—meaning the military knew far more about the machine’s significance than they were letting on.

In the observation passage, Lucien turned as Cedric emerged.

"Anything?"

"Vale is stonewalling on origin and sponsorship," Cedric reported briskly. "Refuses to confirm prior contact with a Warhound. But he instinctively defended their intent—swore they aren’t here as an assassination unit."

Malen stood with his arms tightly crossed. "A professional lie, or truth?"

"We’ll find out." Gandalf gestured toward the next door down. "Who’s next?"

"Durn. He bypassed the vault locks. He’s our door into the engineering angle."

Malen grunted. "He didn’t look like a casual thief when he cracked that vault door."

"Then let’s see how confident he is without his pick-set." Cedric grabbed the dwarf’s folder and walked down the hall.

Vashek Durn was on his knees, aggressively checking the bolts anchoring the chair to the stone floor when Cedric entered. The dwarf stood up quickly, eyes darting to the folder in Cedric’s hands.

"Where is my forge kit?" Durn demanded, his voice low and hostile.

"Confiscated and logged. You’ll get them back if you leave here alive." Cedric sat down, not offering Durn a chair. "Let’s talk about the Warhound."

"What Warhound?"

"The heavy vehicle schematics you pulled from the train safe. Why were you ordered to take them?"

Durn folded his thick, calloused arms, standing his ground. "I’m an engineer. Blueprints have value."

"Did your employer send you across the border to replicate our armor design?"

"Take that up with Vale."

"Did you receive a tactical description of the Warhound before leaving your territory?"

"Ask Vale."

"Have you seen one deployed in combat?"

The dwarf’s chest heaved slightly before he repeated, "Ask Vale."

Cedric leaned forward, narrowing the distance. "Let’s stick to your field, then. If you inspected an armored hull built in another realm, could you identify its forge of origin?"

Durn’s tone shifted from stubborn to calculating. "Not from the outside. You’d need to dismantle the power core and analyze the metallurgy."

"Would stolen blueprints bypass that need?"

"They’d lay out the core alloy specs, yes."

"Even if you had zero intention of manufacturing one yourself?"

"They’d tell you who built it." Durn caught himself, clamping his mouth shut.

Cedric noted the slip. The dwarf had just unwittingly revealed why an engineering expert was brought along: not to build a Warhound, but to trace where one came from.

"Thank you," Cedric said, standing up.

Durn took a threating step forward, chains rattling against the floor. "Listen to me. There’s a calibration hammer in my pack with tuned rune-locks. Tell your uneducated guards not to force the latches or they’ll blow their own hands off."

Cedric made a brief entry in the margin. "I’ll pass the warning to the explosive disposal team."

Durn’s jaw twitched.

"One last question," Cedric said, hand on the door handle. "If you only needed to verify construction specs, why steal military secrets instead of seeking an diplomatic audience?"

Durn glared at him. "You’re asking the wrong man. Go talk to Vale."

Pib Skarrow sat rigid in her chair, her eyes tracking the iron grate of the high ventilation duct, searching for structural flaws. She snapped her head toward the door the second Cedric unlocked it.

"Did the dwarf give you trouble?" she asked coldly.

"He was concerned about his equipment."

"He should be. Your people don’t look like they know how to handle high-tier gear."

Cedric opened her file, skipping pleasantries. "Origin, Pib. Where did your unit launch from?"

"Far enough away that your scouts missed us."

"Give me a location."

"No."

Cedric leaned across the table. "Then explain why a master infiltrator was assigned to secure Warhound schematics."

Pib’s cynical posture shattered for a split second. "That’s Vale’s department."

"Did you know what a Warhound was before crossing into Elarion?"

"Why does that matter to you?"

"Because I need to know if you were hunting a rogue unit or conducting military espionage."

Pib locked eyes with him, her throat moving as she swallowed hard. "Talk to Vale."

Cedric shifted tactics. "You spent three days probing our industrial perimeter. What were you scouting?"

Pib clenched her fists under the table. "Your defense infrastructure is heavy. That’s all you’re getting."

"Did you find the specific war-engine you were looking for?"

She went dead silent, refusing to look at him.

Cedric shut the folder with an authoritative thud. "We’ll continue this after a night in sensory isolation."

Pib watched him step out, her breathing shallow as the heavy iron door slammed shut.

In the observation room, Gandalf’s eyes were fixed on the next mirror panel. Inside, Elenwe Sarath stood in the center of her cell, slowly tracing subtle arcana patterns in the air to test the room’s dampening field.

"She’s mapping the suppression matrix," Gandalf murmured to Lucien. "She realizes every spell-line in this room feeds directly into a counter-drain."

"Can she break it?" Lucien asked cleanly.

"No. But she knows exactly how high the security level is. She knows she’s in a high-risk black site."

Cedric entered Elenwe’s cell. The Archmage lowered her arms instantly, turning to face him with absolute discipline.

"Where was your expedition dispatched from?" Cedric asked flatly.

"Commander Vale holds our operational security. Direct your inquiries to him."

"Who financed this operation?"

"Refer to Vale."

Cedric didn’t flinch. "Let’s discuss tactical deployment. Why risk an Archmage on a low-level blueprint theft?"

"The blueprint theft was not in our mission briefing when we crossed the border," Elenwe said smoothly—before her eyes flashed with sudden realization. She had just confirmed their mission parameters had mutated mid-operation.

Cedric caught the slip immediately. "When did your orders change?"

Elenwe’s expression turned to ice. "My statement is complete."

"Did you enter Elarion expecting mage-commando engagement?"

"No."

"Armored mechanical divisions?"

"We had no intelligence on your mechanized units."

"Then what were you sent here to track down?"

Elenwe met his gaze with unyielding calm. "Answers."

"Regarding what?"

"Ask Vale."

Cedric let the dead silence stretch, allowing the weight of her mistake to hang in the air. Elenwe didn’t break.

"Thank you," Cedric said, gathering his file.

As he reached the door, Elenwe’s eyes drifted directly to the black observation glass—looking precisely where Gandalf was standing.

"Tell the caster behind the mirror that his third ward-layer has a harmonic bleed," she said quietly. "If I wanted to breach this room, I’d start there."

Behind the glass, Gandalf’s grin vanished.

Lucien glanced at the mage. "A threat?"

"A professional assessment," Gandalf muttered, his posture stiffening. "She’s dangerous."

Cedric returned to the command center ten minutes later, throwing eight heavy files onto the tactical table.

"The remaining four—Aldis, Renna, Thorne, and Ghara—are battle-hardened and completely shut down," Cedric reported. "They’re executing a tight compartmentalization protocol. Everything routes back to Vale."

Lucien leaned over the table, examining the notes. "Summarize."

"Durn admitted the blueprints are used for identification and component matching—not necessarily manufacturing. Elenwe let slip that stealing the schematics was an improvised audible after they arrived in Elarion." Cedric tapped Vale’s folder. "They didn’t come here to steal technology. They came hunting for a specific Warhound already in motion."

Lucien stared through the glass into the fourth chamber, where Vale sat in isolation.

"The Veiled Church intercepted an active Warhound prototype six months ago," Lucien said, his tone grim. "Now eight high-level specialists enter our territory tracing the exact same chassis."

"They aren’t an invasion team," Malen added, his hand resting on his sword hilt. "They’re a retrieval squad tracking something dangerous."

Lucien looked at Cedric. "Go back to Vale. Strip away the interrogation script. Tell him we know his team’s mission changed halfway through. Ask him what machine he’s hunting—and tell him if it’s the Veiled Church’s rogue Warhound, we might be hunting the exact same target."

Cedric picked up the folder, his eyes sharp. "I’m on it."