Azareth had been under full lockdown for six hours.
Malvick stood at the war room's central table, both hands flat against the map surface, and did not look up when the door opened.
"Report," he said.
Lieutenant General Renata Voss crossed the room without hurrying, a folder tucked under one arm, and set it down beside his hands.
"Victoria's gone dark," she said. "No official statement from the royal family in nine hours. Their communications grid is up but nobody's answering on any channel we have access to."
"Nine hours." Malvick tapped one finger against the map, twice, slow. "He doesn't sit on information nine hours. Something's making the choice for him."
Renata pulled a chair back with her foot and sat, flipping the folder open without ceremony. "Border patrols report unusual light activity over the capital last night. One reported what he called a vertical fracture in the sky. Wrote it up as weather."
"It wasn't weather."
"No." She rubbed the back of her neck. "It wasn't."
Malvick straightened, arms crossing, weight settling back onto his heels. The war room's overhead light buzzed faintly, one bulb a half-second out of sync with the rest, the kind of detail that only became noticeable during silences nobody wanted to fill.
"And Hood," he said.
Renata's expression didn't change, which was its own kind of answer.
"Nothing," she said. "Guild communications from Blinding Light have gone quiet along with everything else. No confirmation, no denial, no request for reinforcement. Nine hours of silence from the strongest man in the country."
Malvick exhaled through his nose.
"He doesn't go quiet," he said. "Nineteen years, and I've had him brief me from a hospital bed, from a collapsing building, once from inside an active gate break. Every single time."
He picked up the folder she'd set down, flipped through two pages without reading either of them, and set it back on the table harder than the motion required.
"Say it," Renata said.
"Say what."
"Whatever you're holding back. You've read that page twice. Your eyes haven't tracked a single line either time."
Malvick looked at her for a second too long.
"I want to go get him," he said.
Renata's eyebrow went up. "You want to fly into a kingdom that's gone dark, past a capital reporting sky fractures, to personally retrieve a Legendary-rank Divine Hierophant who has not, as far as we know, asked anyone for help."
"When you list it like that it sounds worse."
"It sounds accurate."
He set both hands flat on the table again, staring down at the map, at the small marked circle that stood for Victoria's capital. Under his palm, weeks of border coordination sat filed under Gregory Hood's name, the one channel in Azareth's entire intelligence structure that had run without interruption since the day it opened.
Until nine hours ago.
"Nineteen years," Malvick said, quieter now. "You spend that long reading someone's silences and you learn what they mean before you learn what their words mean. His silence means something has happened badly enough that reporting it costs more than he can currently afford."
Renata studied him for a moment. "You're worried about him."
"I'm assessing a regional threat."
"You're worried about him."
Malvick didn't answer that directly. He rolled his shoulder once, the old habit of checking an injury before trusting the joint with weight.
"He attended a funeral once," he said, "under a fake name, for a soldier who wasn't even his to grieve. Left a lily and a bottle of whiskey and walked out before anyone could ask him why he cared." A pause. "He doesn't just stop talking to me. Not without a reason he doesn't want me to see yet."
"So you want to fly in."
"I want to fly in."
"Even though the last time both of you were in the same city, the two of you nearly leveled it declaring a man dead who apparently isn't."
Malvick's jaw tightened. "That's a separate conversation."
"Is it."
"Renata."
"I'm not arguing against it," she said, raising both hands. "I'm making sure you've actually thought it through and this isn't just you deciding to run headfirst into whatever happened over there because the silence is eating at you."
He let that sit for a moment before he answered.
"Give me until morning," he said finally. "If he's still dark by morning, I'm going. Diplomatic protocol or not."
Renata closed the folder. "And if he's dark by morning because he's dead."
"Then I want to be the one who confirms it. Someone who knew him, someone who's earned the right to be the one who finds out." He looked at her. "He'd do the same for me. He has. Twice."
"I know."
"So don't ask me to sit here and wait for someone else's paperwork."
She held his gaze, then nodded once, the argument settling into the same shape it always settled into between two people who had run this disagreement enough times to know exactly where it would land.
"Morning," she said. "Not tonight."
"Morning."
The door slammed open before either of them could say anything else.
A Secret Service officer stood in the frame, out of breath, one hand still on the door handle like he hadn't fully decided to stop moving. Malvick's head came up.
"General." The officer crossed the room fast, boots loud against the floor, and leaned in close enough that whatever came next wasn't meant for the room.
He whispered it.
Malvick went very still.
"Say that again," he said.
The officer said it again, quieter this time, like saying it softer made it more likely to be true rather than less.
Malvick's hands came off the table.
Renata was already standing. "General."
He didn't look at her.
"Gregory Hood is here," he said, to the room, to her, to nobody in particular. "He's requesting refuge."
For a moment nobody in the war room moved. The overhead light kept its half-second stutter, indifferent to the two people staring at each other across a table that a minute ago had been covered in maps and now felt like it was covered in something else entirely.
"Bring him in," Malvick said. "Now. Personally. I don't care what protocol says about processing."
The officer was already moving.
Renata caught Malvick's arm before he could follow.
"You wanted to go get him," she said. "He came to you instead."
Malvick looked at the door, at the corridor beyond it, at nothing in particular for a second that stretched longer than it should have.
"That's worse." Malvick's voice had dropped, quieter than before. "He doesn't ask for refuge. He's never asked me for anything in nineteen years. If he's asking now, there's nothing left where he's standing that he can go back to."
He pulled his arm free and walked out after the officer, and Renata followed, leaving the maps spread open on the table behind them, Victoria's capital still circled in ink that nobody had bothered to update in nine hours, because there had been nothing left to mark.