Chapter 240 — The Truth

Behind the door was a shattered space. There was no Stasis Hall at all, nor sixty thousand "seeds" to rebuild civilization—only a mad darkness shrouding all beyond. Enormous spatial rifts and violent torrents of energy raged in the distance; all that met the eye were floating debris, broken wreckage, and indistinct shadows in the chaos. A small patch of floor, a few torn sections of wall and dome—these were the only traces of the Stasis Hall that remained.

It was as though a savage storm had struck this place and torn the Stasis Hall utterly apart and devoured it.

It was a scene of despair, yet Camille had long ago come to accept this fact in peace. He simply closed the gate quietly, led everyone in another direction, and slowly told them what had happened all those years ago: "We made a fatal mistake... Even hiding here, we could not escape the magic tide.

"The magic tide struck the refuge and set off a chain reaction of spatial collapse. Apart from a small portion of the facility that was preserved, everything was destroyed by the energy tides and spatial storms. Sixty thousand people vanished without a sound. The only survivors were the 'Watchers' at the facility's center.

"The Watchers were caretakers who had volunteered to stay. We slept in a smaller stasis hall, waking once every twenty years to check on the state of the Stasis Hall and receive the latest news from the communications hall. We slept again and again, woke again and again, watching sixty thousand people lie senseless in the Stasis Hall, while from the communications hall came word that all was well with the Empire.

"You cannot imagine what that felt like... In the first hundred years after the facility was sealed, the last person we knew in the outside world passed away. By the one hundred and sixtieth year, the magic tide had still not come, the Empire was still flourishing, and we even began to doubt the necessity and meaning of this plan. Perhaps the magic tide would never come at all; perhaps we nine hundred-odd volunteers and sixty thousand 'seeds' were merely cowering in fear of a ridiculous doomsday prophecy, squandering our entire lives upon an illusory panic. Yet we still carried out our orders faithfully, still kept the oaths we had sworn in those years. In the two hundred and fortieth year after the facility was sealed, some could no longer hold on. A small-scale internal conflict broke out among us. Some made ready to open the great door from within, but in the end the Grand Archmage Vigma brought the situation under control. And then..."

Camille fell silent for a long while before his voice sounded again, low and deep: "We were startled awake by a shrill alarm. In the midst of the confusion, we received word that the fortress had suffered grievous damage. In the communications hall, we saw the final message sent by His Imperial Majesty. We were the last survivors. The necessity and meaning of the plan were at last vindicated—yet nothing had unfolded as we had expected.

"The Stasis Hall was destroyed. Two-thirds of the facility's structure vanished into the storm. The magic gates leading to the present world were closed by the influence of the magic tide. Even if the gates had not closed, we could not leave—the outside world could no longer sustain life. All that remained for our survival was this last foothold.

"We passed through chaos, through despair, through hysteria and even violent conflict. But in the end, we decided to live."