"Calm down," Ronan said, his voice steady. "Tell me exactly what happened. From the beginning."
Elara's jaw tightened, frustration bleeding through her expression. .
"The node just… vanished. One moment it was there, secured in the storage cache. The next, gone. No sign of forced entry, no broken runes, nothing." Her hands clenched into fists. "There were guards stationed nearby. Multiple rotations. No one should have been able to get close without being seen."
Ronan kept his expression neutral.
So it happened.
The original timeline had placed this theft later, but his interference accelerated it drastically.
In the novel, it had been Darius's vice leader – a forgettable character who'd sold out Class B to Class A after Armani promised his noble family political support in the future. A small betrayal that cascaded into larger consequences. The traitor had used insider knowledge to bypass security, steal the node, and deliver it to Class A.
