Solaria Royal Guild Headquarters - Chief's Office.

The atmosphere in the richly appointed office was thick enough to choke on. The heavy oak desk, the plush sofa, the tactical maps on the wall—all seemed to press in under the weight of the news. Three people occupied the space, the air crackling with tension.

Chief Koff, a mountain of a man with a build forged by decades of combat, sat behind his desk. A worn leather patch covered his left eye, a testament to the very dangers he now spoke of. His face, usually a landscape of stern confidence, was etched with deep lines of regret and frustration.

Across from him, perched on the edge of the sofa as if ready to spring into action, was Resmond. The knight's handsome features were pale, his blonde hair disheveled. His hands, clad in fine leather gloves, were clenched into white-knuckled fists on his knees. He looked utterly heartbroken, but his grief was rapidly giving way to a furious search for the truth.

Between them, both physically and emotionally, stood Tia, the Vice-Guild Master. Her short, practical green hair framed a face currently pinched with concern. She acted as a reluctant anchor, trying to keep the conversation from capsizing completely.

Koff's voice was a low, gravelly rumble, each word heavy. "Sir Resmond... on behalf of the Guild, and personally... I offer my deepest condolences for Kaela. The loss of the Red Cross Vanguard is a tragedy. She was one of our brightest."

"Condolences?" Resmond spat the word out as if it were poison. His voice trembled, not with sorrow, but with suppressed rage. "You offer me condolences while her body is lost in that pit? While we have nothing but a severed communication spell and silence? She is not lost, Chief. She was sent. And she has not been proven dead. I will not accept your words until I see proof with my own eyes."

"Resmond, please," Tia interjected, her voice calm but firm. "No one is giving up on them. But we must be strategic—"

"Strategic?" Resmond cut her off, his gaze locked on Koff. "Then be strategic with me. I will lead a retrieval team. Today. I will go into the Maw and find out what happened."

"Absolutely not." Koff's denial was immediate and final, leaving no room for argument. He leaned forward, his single eye boring into the knight. "You are a valued Knight of Solaria, Resmond. Throwing yourself into that deathtrap after a lost cause is not strategy; it is suicide. Or have you forgotten the reports? The complete annihilation of the Sunstone Battalion in those depths generations ago? That dungeon does not take prisoners. It consumes legends and spits out ghosts."

The mention of the Sunstone Battalion, a historical horror story every Solarian soldier knew, hung in the air. But Resmond was beyond hearing cautionary tales.

"If it's so dangerous," he hissed, rising to his feet, "then why did you send Kaela in there? Why did you send the woman I love on a mission to a place you equate with a meat grinder?!"

The roar echoed in the office. Tia flinched. Koff did not. Instead, a profound weariness settled over his features. This was the question he had been dreading.

"I sent her," Koff said, his voice dropping, heavy with guilt he couldn't fully hide, "because she was the best. Precise, cautious, and brilliant. Her orders were reconnaissance only. To observe the dungeon's abnormal activity from a safe distance and report back. She was explicitly commanded to avoid engagement, to retreat at the first sign of a Dungeon Lord's attention." He paused, the unspoken 'she didn't follow orders' lingering, but he was too decent to voice it against the dead. "The Maw... it has been stirring. Monstrous evolution rates, strange energy pulses. The Kingdom needed to know why. I trusted her to be smart enough to get that information and get out."

His explanation, logical and full of painful truth, did nothing to cool the fire in Resmond's eyes. It only redirected it. The knight stood there, vibrating with helpless fury, caught between a grief he wouldn't accept and a mission he was being denied.

The knight stood, trembling, not with fear but with the sheer, explosive force of helpless rage. The office, once a place of strategy and honor, felt like a tomb for his hopes.

"You trusted her to be smart," Resmond repeated, the words hollow. "And now she's gone. And you tell me to do nothing. To accept your... condolences and sit in Solaria while her remains are defiled by monsters in the dark." He turned his back on them, striding towards the ornate door. "I see how the Guild values its 'brightest.'"

"Resmond, stop!" Tia's command was sharp, but it was Koff's next words that froze him in place.

"If you walk out that door with the intent to breach the Maw without royal and guild sanction, you will be branded a deserter," Koff stated, his tone devoid of its earlier weariness, now pure, hardened command. "Your rank, your titles, your standing—all forfeit. And you will not be granted the honor of a retrieval mission for your own corpse when that dungeon swallows you whole, as it has so many others."

Resmond's hand, reaching for the door handle, clenched into a fist. The price was unthinkable. Disgrace. To fail Kaela in life was one thing; to fail her memory by becoming a nameless traitor was another.

Tia seized the moment of hesitation. "There is another way," she said, stepping forward, her mind working rapidly. "Chief, the stirring in the Maw hasn't stopped. If anything, the silence from the Red Cross Vanguard suggests the anomaly is more active, more dangerous. We cannot ignore it. And Sir Resmond... his motivations, while personal, align with the Kingdom's need for intelligence. Sending him in alone is suicide. But sending a properly equipped, high-level suppression team with him, with explicit orders to investigate and retrieve any evidence of our people... that is not just a rescue mission. It's a necessary tactical response to a growing threat."

Koff's single eye narrowed, weighing Tia's words. She was leveraging his own sense of duty against his protective instincts. "A suppression team for a full-scale dungeon incursion requires resources, authorization from the Crown, and weeks of planning. We don't have that time if, by some miracle, any of them are still alive."

"Then we don't plan a full incursion," Tia countered. "We plan a surgical strike. A small, elite team. Level 60 minimum. Their sole objective: reach the last known coordinates of the Vanguard, secure any survivors or remains, and gather immediate intelligence on the dungeon's state. In and out. Twenty-four hours maximum."

Resmond turned back, a glimmer of desperate hope in his eyes. "I will lead it. I will sign any waiver, forfeit any claim to Guild support if I fall. Just give me the chance to bring her home."

Koff looked from Resmond's determination to Tia's calculated proposal. He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking. The memory of the Sunstone Battalion was a ghost in the room, but so was the face of Kaela, one of his best. And Tia was right—the dungeon's abnormal activity was a tangible threat to the Kingdom's borders. Ignoring it was not an option.

"Forty-eight hours," Koff finally grunted, the word sounding like it was dragged from him. "Not a minute more. The team will be my choice—veterans who know when to retreat. You will follow the team leader's orders without question, Resmond. Your personal quest does not override mission parameters. Is that understood?"

The compromise was bitter, but it was a chance. Resmond gave a stiff, formal nod. "Understood."

"And Tia," Koff said, turning his gaze to his vice. "You will handle the logistics. Use the black budget. I want no public announcements. This stays a covert guild operation. If the Crown asks, we're conducting a routine boundary reinforcement survey."

Tia nodded. "I'll assemble the team by nightfall."

As Resmond and Tia turned to leave, Koff's voice stopped them once more, lower now. "Resmond. Find out what happened. But remember—the dungeon is a living thing. It adapts. The thing that took Kaela... it may not be a monster you can simply run through with a sword. Prepare for worse than you can imagine."

Resmond met the Chief's gaze, the knight's fury now forged into a cold, sharp blade of purpose. "I pray it is," he said quietly. "I pray it is something I can make suffer."

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