The colossal chemical detonation that had vaporized the Archangel Sanctum and the surrounding forest sent a shockwave—both physical and political—straight through the heart of the Imperial Magic Academy in Austria. The dawn that broke over the capital was not one of golden light, but one tainted by a monstrous, towering column of toxic, oily smoke rising from the restricted grounds. The physical force of the blast, magnified by the magnesium and volatile chemical compounds, had rattled windows across the region, making any attempt to conceal the disaster utterly impossible.
Chancellor Altdorf was among the very first high-ranking officials to breach the security cordon, his usual demeanor of cold, detached intellectualism fractured by fury and cold panic. He was accompanied by a frantic contingent of the Empire's most esteemed forensic mages. What they found was not merely destruction, but an outright, searing insult to magical theory and a catastrophic blow to the Imperial treasury.
The entire 120 square meter complex had been replaced by a smoking, perfectly circular crater of fused earth and blackened rock, roughly twenty meters deep. The sheer, non-Aetheric intensity of the explosion had achieved what few high-level Fire spells could: the vaporization of the stone and metal structure, leaving behind only glass-like slag residue. The shockwave had brutally leveled a wide perimeter of the surrounding forest, snapping century-old trees like brittle twigs and scattering the debris outward.
The forensic mages, trained meticulously to detect and analyze residual mana signatures from any magical catastrophe, were immediately overwhelmed by the site's unique, terrifying profile. The air was thick with highly corrosive chlorine gas (a chemical byproduct of Daemon's lethal cocktail) and the immediate area was completely inert to their magical sensors.
"Chancellor, the sheer volume of the heat defies our categorization!" cried the chief forensic mage, shielding his face from the acrid fumes. "There is absolutely no residual mana, no evidence of a runic charge, nothing to suggest a spell of this magnitude. The explosion was purely chemical! This is not magic, sir, this is terrorism applied with a logic we do not possess!"
Altdorf stood at the edge of the crater, his face pale with a rage born of intellectual betrayal. He stared at the smoking, inert hole in the ground. To the outside world, this lab was known only as a secure, government-funded facility producing stable, non-magical compounds for the military—the B-1 materials. Now, the source of that critical supply, along with potentially priceless secrets, was gone.
Initial reports circulated quickly among the Constabulary that the students assigned as lab assistants—including the inventor, Daemon—had surely perished in the catastrophic inferno. However, after the teams were finally able to access the dormitory records and cross-reference them with the Academy's student manifest, the truth became chillingly clear: fifty students, including Daemon, were missing. None of their bodies were found, and no essential documents were left behind. They had vanished without a trace, taking their intellectual property with them.
Altdorf immediately retreated to his secure, heavily warded office for an urgent psychic link session with the only other man who shared the full, humiliating context: Duke Steiner.
The link established was immediate, intensely fraught with hostility, and crackling with mutual accusation.
"Altdorf! You guaranteed his containment! You assured me your pride would secure his knowledge! Now my supply of B-1 is cut off, and the perpetrator is gone! This is a complete failure of the Academy's security!" Steiner's psychic voice was a scream of cold fury and raw panic.
"Your B-1 supply, Duke, was merely a cost of securing the true intellectual property, which you have now squandered," Altdorf shot back, projecting absolute intellectual superiority despite the monumental failure. "The fact remains, Daemon has proven Sorin's assessment correct. He commands a science capable of mass destruction with no Aetheric footprint. This is the Dawn of Fire Sorin spoke of. You will take responsibility for your initial miscalculation regarding the nature of the threat."
Steiner quickly shifted from rage to calculated, dangerous threat. "The personal feud is irrelevant now. The commoner and fifty students are missing. We must assume they fled to an enemy state, taking the B-1 production knowledge with them. He is now classified as an Imperial Threat of the Highest Order—not merely a rogue student, but a terrorist wielding forbidden knowledge. His immediate recapture is a matter of state security. Where did they go? What did they take?"
Altdorf listed the official losses, projecting the mental image of the manifest: the stockpile of B-1 materials, all lab equipment, and fifty skilled, loyal commoner students. He carefully omitted any mention of the engines or airships, pieces of knowledge he still hoped to recover personally.
"He has taken the means of production and the engineers," Altdorf concluded grimly. "He is not merely fleeing; he is mobilizing. We must immediately alert the borders and mobilize the internal security forces. They are looking for a large group of skilled mages moving on foot or by magical transport."
Duke Steiner, his ambition now tainted by immense fear and potential political ruin, quickly announced, "I will mobilize the Imperial Constabulary and all dedicated tracking mages immediately. They must be tracked and neutralized before they reach the borders or strike a populated center. I will personally take command of the search."
Altdorf, however, projected a strong cautionary warning that chilled Steiner to the core. "Duke, the escape was planned over a year. Daemon has proven capable of bypassing our best Aetheric wards. Your magical pursuit will be blind. Your forces will be looking for traces of Aether, but this commoner uses chemical subterfuge. You are looking for a large convoy moving across the ground, and I suggest you investigate every smuggler's route, every unguarded forest path, and every rogue teleportation circle. You are hunting for fifty students, and I suspect you will find nothing but dust."
The Chancellor ended the link abruptly, leaving Steiner stewing alone in his office. The official public narrative would be simple: the Imperial lab was destroyed by a catastrophic, unforeseen chemical accident, and the inventor and his assistants were among the missing, presumed dead. The true knowledge—that fifty of the Academy's most promising, most organized students had coordinated a silent, massive exodus right under the noses of the Empire's leaders, using a technology utterly unknown to them—remained the terrifying, political secret shared only by Altdorf and Steiner. The commoners had simply packed up their future and vanished, leaving behind a crater that symbolized the utter failure of the Academy and the inevitable, impending collapse of the old Imperial order.