The heavy silence of the archive room pressed down like stone. Lord Trevor stepped forward, his spotless white robes brushing against the floorboards as he knelt to pick up the fallen journal. He didn't look angry; his face bore the devastating weight of a man who had carried a mountain on his back for seventeen years.Marcell remained by the doorway, his eyes fixed on the floor, unable to meet Angie's gaze. His hand never left his sword hilt, but it trembled."You look at us like we are monsters, Angie," Trevor said softly, his voice echoing in the cold stone vault. He closed the journal and held it tightly against his chest. "And perhaps we are. But if we had not acted that night, there would be no Alced left for you to stand in. There would be no Earth. There would be nothing.""You murdered his parents," Angie whispered, her voice cracking as she pressed herself tighter against the archive wall. "You and Marcell. You handed them to the executioners.""We sacrificed two people to save two entire dimensions," Trevor countered, his voice suddenly sharp, cracking with a lifetime of suppressed panic. He gestured to the glowing blue containment crystals around them. "What do you think magic actually is, Angie? Do you think it is a natural resource? A gift dropped from the heavens by benevolent gods?"Angie didn't answer, her wide eyes moving between her father and the uncle who had raised the boy she loved."It is a current," Trevor explained, stepping closer. "A highly volatile, manufactured energy grid created by the Ancients. The Temple of Time is not a monument; it is a siphon. It anchors the tethers that pull life force from the core of the lower realms—including the world Chris calls Earth—and converts it into the ether that allows our world to exist. Without it, Alced's atmosphere collapses. Our soil turns to toxic ash. Our cities crumble into the void.""Chris's father, King Robert, found out," Marcell finally spoke, his voice a raspy, broken shadow of its usual commanding baritone. He still didn't look up. "He saw the toll it took on the lower worlds. He saw the sickness, the plagues, the cosmic decay spreading across Earth because we were bleeding them dry to power our paradise. Robert was a good man, but he was a romantic. He wanted to sever the tethers. He wanted to shut down the Temple of Time and return the stolen life force, regardless of the cost.""And the cost was our total annihilation," Trevor barked. "If the tethers had been severed, Alced would have ceased to exist in a matter of hours. Billions of lives snuffed out. Robert was willing to commit genocide against his own people to satisfy his conscience. We tried to reason with him. We begged him. But he had already begun the equations to collapse the gates."Trevor pointed a trembling finger toward the lower levels of the palace. "So, Marcell and I made a choice. A horrific, unforgivable choice. We betrayed our king to the Sages. We allowed them to purge the royal household to protect the grid. But we managed to extract one concession: the boy would be spared. Chris's bloodline was the only one pure enough to act as a living battery, a stabilizer for the tethers if the grid ever fluctuated. Marcell swore to hide him, to raise him in the mud, to keep his mind docile so his instinctual negation magic would never wake up and unravel the fabric of our world."Marcell finally raised his head, his eyes hollow and wet with tears. "Every potato we dug, every bedtime story I told him... it was a layer of insulation, Angie. I wasn't just hiding him from Valakor. I was hiding him from himself. Because if Chris ever discovered his true nature, if his anger ever triggered the negation of magic, he wouldn't just destroy his enemies—he would dissolve the tethers. He would finish his father's work and collapse the realms."Angie felt the blood drain from her face as the horrifying truth settled in. The traveler at the border, Malakai, hadn't been lying about the betrayal. But he had omitted the catastrophic truth: Chris was a walking doomsday device. And downstairs in the courtyard, his anger had just been unleashed.A sudden, violent tremor rocked the archive room. The glowing blue crystals on the walls flickered wildly, turning from a serene azure to a frantic, bleeding crimson. The stone walls groaned as a low, terrifying hum vibrated through the floorboards.Trevor looked down at the trembling floor, his face completely draining of color. "The lower gates... the negation has been triggered. He knows."