"What kind of force?"

"Inquisitors," the advisor said. "Specialists rather than general soldiers. And an Archbishop. We believe Archbishop Caldris — third in the Church hierarchy — has been assigned to personally oversee the operation."

"Timeline?" Satou asked.

"Our best intelligence suggests six months from initial planning to deployment. We don’t know when planning began." The advisor spread his hands. "What we know is that the planning is active. The resources are being committed. This is not a theoretical future — it’s operational."

Satou turned to the map.

He was quiet for long enough that the room held its breath.

Then: "Your network knows they’re assembling Inquisitors. Does it know their specific mandate? Their operational structure? How Caldris intends to use them?"

The advisor hesitated — just fractionally. "Our information on internal Inquisitor doctrine is limited. We know the composition. The command assignment. Broad operational intent." He paused. "The specific architecture of how an Inquisitor assault is designed and executed — that’s beyond what our network can reach."

Silence.

Satou looked at Aldric directly. "You came here with incomplete intelligence."

"Yes," Aldric said. "But I came with the answer to the gap." He turned toward the door. "Cael. Come in."

The door opened.

A young man entered — pale, sharp-eyed, early thirties. The bearing of someone trained to significant discipline. Not military exactly, but something adjacent. The posture of someone who had learned that being readable was dangerous and had spent years correcting it.

He stood just inside the door and met Satou’s gaze without flinching.

Satou held his gaze for a long moment. Then looked at Aldric. "He’s yours."

"For three years," Aldric said. "He came to us through our eastern intelligence network. He’d been inside the Church’s Inquisitor corps for four years at that point and had decided what the Church was doing in non-human territories wasn’t something he could continue supporting." He paused. "Everything specific we know — Caldris, the Office of Holy Purification taking over, the Inquisitor composition — it all came through him."

"He’s how you knew before you arrived," Satou said.

"He’s why I came at all," Aldric said.

Satou looked at Cael. "Sit down."

Cael took the empty chair at the table’s end with the deliberate calm of someone who had been in difficult rooms before and had learned to treat every chair as equal ground.

He’d seen the settlement on the ride in. Had looked at it from the road with the assessment habits seven years of Inquisitor training had built — walls, patrol patterns, defensive positions, sight lines. Professional reflex.

The Church’s official classification of this settlement was: corruption node. Concentrated demonic energy degrading the surrounding region. Power base built on subjugation of lesser races.

Cael had spent three years feeding intelligence to Aldenmere with the abstract understanding that he was helping protect something that the Church was misclassifying. Riding through that gate had made it concrete.

He looked at Satou across the table.

The demon lord looked back. The flame-like eyes carried the complete, present attention of someone who did not need to perform alertness because it was simply the natural state.

Cael had stood in rooms with the Church’s most senior Inquisitors — veterans with decades of high-tier combat experience. He knew what dangerous felt like.

This was a different category of thing.

"Tell me about the Inquisitor assault structure," Satou said. "How Caldris intends to use them."

Cael settled into it with the precise delivery he’d developed over three years of intelligence work.

"Caldris is not making Valentine’s mistake," he said. "Valentine sent mass force expecting easy victory and wanted the scale to serve as demonstration of Church power. When it failed, the failure was equally large." He paused. "Caldris is methodical. He studied the failure extensively. He interviewed every survivor personally."

"What did the survivors tell him?"

"That the defenders fought at levels that couldn’t be explained or countered by conventional means. That the settlement’s command structure operated with unusual coherence under extreme pressure. That the demon lord himself was—" Cael paused, choosing words. "Beyond anything their training prepared them for."

He met Satou’s eyes steadily.

"Caldris concluded that the key variable is you. That the settlement’s exceptional defensive capability is connected to your continued presence and command. His entire strategy is built around that conclusion." His voice was level. "The Inquisitor strike team isn’t the main force. It’s the first phase. Twelve operatives — the best the corps has. Their sole assignment is to reach you before the main force engages. Eliminate the command structure. Then the military force arrives to handle what remains."

The command post was very quiet.

"Twelve," Satou said.

"Twelve Inquisitors specifically selected for this operation. All veterans. All with experience against high-tier non-human opponents." Cael paused. "In the Church’s assessment, twelve specialists have a better probability of success than another four thousand soldiers. The first assault proved that mass force against this settlement is the wrong approach. Caldris believes precision is the answer."

"He’s wrong about the mechanism," Satou said. "He may be right about the effect."

Aldric looked at him. "If they eliminate you, the settlement’s defensive capability drops significantly."

"It would hurt," Satou said simply. "Not collapse. But hurt, but that is if they are able to defeat me , because i ain’t seeing myself losing to anyone"

Kelvin was writing with focused intensity. Vessa’s scales had gone very still. Gruk’s jaw was set.

"Timeline," Satou said to Cael.

"The strike team assembles in approximately three months. Deployment follows their preparation period. Total timeline from now — four to five months before they reach this settlement." He was precise. "The main military force — two thousand soldiers, smaller and more mobile than the first — follows the strike team by approximately two weeks."

"Two thousand soldiers and twelve Inquisitors," Aldric said.

"Yes." Cael looked at Satou. "There is one more thing."

"Say it."

"Caldris has dispatched long-range observers. Multiple teams. Watching this settlement, watching the roads approaching it, watching any human presence that comes near." He paused. "He wants to know if alliances form before the assault. If they do, the Inquisitor timeline accelerates."