§ May 22nd, 2032.
Paris, UES.
CORG Central Headquarters — Underground Level 7 04:47 There were no windows.
Underground Level 7 of CORG’s central headquarters did not exist on any official architectural blueprint of the building.
It appeared on no elevator system.
Access came through a staircase that only became visible after three sequential biometric verifications, retina, Don, and a fourth category of identification CORG had never publicly named.
Because naming certain things makes them real to people who do not need to know they exist.
The room itself was circular.
Dark stone walls reinforced with a compound extracted from SS-grade Fissures that blocked every known form of signal transmission, sonic, digital, energetic, or Don-based.
What was said inside that room remained inside that room by physical design.
Not merely by protocol.
At the center stood a round table.
No head seat.
Intentional.
Fifteen chairs.
Fifteen individuals.
A single source of light, a diffuse panel in the ceiling illuminating just enough to reveal faces, but not enough to erase shadows.
Someone, many decades ago, had decided that CORG’s Inner Council should not be a comfortable place.
That subtle discomfort kept people honest.
To Aldren Mous’s left sat Vorath.
An orc with grayish-green skin.
One hundred and forty-three years old.
Permanent representative of the Northern Grand Leagues.
SS-grade Ghoj of compressed gravity.
He wore a broad coat that poorly concealed the width of his shoulders.
His arms had remained crossed since taking his seat, and had not moved once.
To Aldren’s right sat Yselith Faern.
A mixed-blood elf.
Eighty-seven years old with the appearance of thirty.
Director of CORG Classified Intelligence.
S-grade Pattern Reading Don, not mind-reading, but behavioral analysis with a precision that made the distinction academic.
A closed notebook rested before her.
She never opened it.
She did not need to.
Beside her sat Dumas Rei.
Human.
Fifty-eight years old.
Former general of the joint UES-CORG forces, now Chief of External Operations.
Grade-A Tactical Amplification Don.
The type of man whose silence made everyone around him feel they should remain silent as well.
The remaining twelve were distributed around the table.
Humans and non-humans.
Different ages, races, genders.
A dwarf bearing insignias from the Alpine Zone.
A feline hybrid, reddish fur, vertical pupils, representing the interests of registered Hybrids within the UES.
A being with an almost human appearance, except for the translucent quality of its extremities suggesting otherwise, representative of races classified as Lesser Entities.
Fifteen individuals.
Each with access to information most world leaders would never see.
All silent.
Aldren Mous did not stand to speak.
He spoke seated.
Which, to those who knew him, meant whatever was about to be said required no theater.
“Last night, at 21:23, North Pole Base 121 ceased to exist.” His voice emerged calm.
Factual.
“A single individual.
Thirty-eight minutes.
Classification X neutralized without effective resistance recorded.” No one made a sound.
“The final surviving agent transmitted an identification code before signal loss.” He activated the screen.
“This code.” 3€21# It hovered in the air.
White against darkness.
“The system required time to locate it.
Which, for those familiar with our indexing capabilities, is information in itself.” Aldren looked around the table.
“We have decided to remove it from the system entirely after this meeting.
It will be archived as a physical handwritten document inside an X-grade vault.
No digital copies.” Vorath uncrossed his arms for the first time.
He placed both hands upon the table with enough weight for the surface to subtly register the impact.
“Why handwritten?” he asked.
His voice was deep, carrying the characteristic accent of Northern Orcs, one that turned consonants into something slightly heavier than expected.
“Because,” Aldren replied, “the encryption level attached to this code was designed to resist any intelligence system possessed by CORG or any global power.” Pause.
“And yet the system still managed to locate it eventually.” Another pause.
“That means someone, at some point, anticipated we might try.” Silence.
Without opening her notebook, Yselith Faern spoke.
“When was the code generated?” “2029.” The word landed in the room differently from the others.
Aldren watched faces shift.
Not all of them.
But enough.
“Yes,” he said.
“2029.
The year of Eclipse.” He allowed ten seconds to pass before continuing.
Not for drama.
Because ten seconds was the amount of time information of this scale required to settle within people professionally trained to process it.
“For the newest members of the Council,” he said, looking toward the three individuals integrated within the last two years, “I will provide context.
The rest of you may correct me if I omit anything relevant.” He activated the second layer of the display.
A map.
Southern Africa.
One nation highlighted.
ANGOLA “Angola.” Aldren pronounced the name without special inflection.
“A nation which, according to global Don indexes, should not deserve first-level strategic attention.
Eighty-seven percent of the population possesses no registered Don.
No internationally ranked academy.
No CORG-classified hero force.
No Dungeons above Grade B officially registered within its territory.
A country classified, in every evaluation model this organization uses, as a secondary-interest zone.” Pause.
“And yet.” He advanced the slide.
KATTA BESHLIK “In the Katta language,” Yselith Faern said, as though reading from somewhere inside herself, “it means The Five Great Ones.” “Correct.” Aldren continued.
“In 2029, an entity emerged in southern Angola.
Not from a Fissure.
Not from a Dungeon.
Not from any origin our systems managed to trace.
It simply…
appeared.” “We classified the event as a Spontaneous Entity Emergence, the category we use when we have no better explanation, which occurs less frequently than we would like and more frequently than we publicly admit.” He activated the classification on the screen.
ECLIPSE — CLASSIFICATION: § The room became very still.
The § symbol, the eighteenth category within CORG’s classification scale, was something most Council members had studied in theory.
Very few had ever seen applied to a documented real-world case.
§ meant: Threat whose nature transcends standard evaluation parameters.
Risk of systemic collapse of local or global reality.