"The moment they woke up and could stand, I brought them straight here, Father!" Named explained, as everyone gathered in the reception hall listened intently to his account.

Advisor Alex finally pieced the sequence of events together. It explained how his family had suddenly arrived unannounced, completely cured of the lingering affliction that had plagued them for months. Named added that when he first stepped out of their secluded prison, he found his wife's condition rapidly improving, her internal energy channels fully stabilized.

Upon exiting the residence, they had been astonished to find every single dark guard stationed outside completely neutralized. The mysterious masked warrior had laid low the entire garrison before ever stepping inside to purge the poison from Morina and Nurma.

"Do you have any idea who that masked man was?" Alex asked.

"No, Father. His entire face and frame were hidden beneath his cloak," Named replied.

Speculation rippled through the room regarding the savior's identity—a figure who had claimed to be dispatched by Advisor Alex himself. In truth, Alex had long fallen into despair over his family's condition, feeling forced into compliance when the dark army leveraged their lives to demand his cooperation.

The price for his family's cure had been his absolute obedience.

After a long silence, Advisor Alex exhaled deeply, resolving to lay bare the full truth.

"The reality is..." Alex began, taking a heavy breath.

He revealed that the dark forces had imposed a terrifying condition in exchange for his family's freedom and antidote. Alex had been instructed to commission custom armaments through Nasura, keeping them hidden until he found an opportunity to strike down Dasatama, the God of War.

That opening was meant to coincide with the outbreak of the grand war between the continental alliance and the Demon Lord's army. During the chaos, Alex was ordered to assassinate Dasatama from within, fracturing the righteous alliance and provoking a devastating civil war among the martial sects.

The dark army sought to fracture the righteous alliance from within, deploying every underhanded tactic to weaken humanity's defensive line.

Alex explained that this strategy stemmed directly from the heavy losses the Demon Lord's forces had suffered twenty years ago during their catastrophic clash against the Three Legends—the three supreme masters who represented the absolute pinnacle of their respective martial disciplines: Saint Yonan, Saint Ganada, and the Thunder Striker.

Through their ultimate sacrifice, those three grandmasters had wiped out over three-quarters of the Demon Lord's standing army, dealing a crushing blow from which the dark forces had struggled to recover.

The surviving dark operatives had suffered severe injuries, forced into two decades of deep seclusion just to mend their broken vessels. Now, as they prepared for a second grand invasion, their primary strategy relied on sowing discord among the righteous sects—intending to launch their main assault only after humanity had bled itself dry in internal conflicts.

That was the true strategy behind the coming war.

Barsha interjected, her expression sharp and analytical. If a veteran of Advisor Alex's stature could be compromised through extortion, then countless leaders across the continents—monarchs, sect leaders, and high officials—might similarly be operating under the dark army's influence.

Because of this omnipresent threat, Barsha emphasized that the Sky Squad had been specifically commissioned to uncover and dismantle these exact covert networks. The squad's core mandate from its very inception was identifying and purging the Mondu sleeper agents embedded within both martial academies and regional governments.

Advisor Alex nodded in firm agreement. He noted that the full details of the Three Legends' final battle had never been made public, as no civilian witnesses had survived the apocalyptic clash twenty years ago.

However, the Sky Squad's recent engagement against the dark forces at the Golden Crane Academy had successfully exposed the treason of Drakos and his son, Sengturi.

Their conspiracy had been shattered, preventing the mass-produced armaments from being distributed to Mondu sleeper cells across the realm. Furthermore, during the aftermath of the battle, a secret ledger had been recovered from Drakos's private sanctum.

That document had been reviewed exclusively by five continental advisors and kept strictly classified. It contained a detailed historical record of the war twenty years prior, offering rare insight into the events of that fateful night.

The Sky Squad had yet to be briefed on these findings, having returned directly to headquarters following the battle to recover from their injuries.

They were unaware of the classified pages recovered from the scene—pages that Dasatama and the five senior advisors had meticulously analyzed. The secret dossier confirmed that Drakos had served as a direct, trusted disciple of the Demon Lord Shura, operating as a high-level double agent within the righteous sects.

Shura had entrusted Drakos with critical clandestine directives. During the great war twenty years ago, Drakos had stood among the Demon Lord's inner vanguard, witnessing the entire world-shattering confrontation firsthand.

In his personal journal, Drakos had recorded that the strength of the Three Legends defied human comprehension. The three grandmasters had breached the inner sanctum, engaging the Five Gates and the dark vanguard simultaneously. The Demon Lord's standing army had proven utterly powerless to halt their advance, despite outnumbering them by hundreds of thousands.

Had the Three Legends engaged the Demon Lord in an isolated, one-on-one duel without the distraction of an entire army, they might have slain Shura outright.

Advisor Alex disclosed another critical intelligence finding from the classified dossier: the Demon Lord's grand invasion was imminent. The dark army had outlined a strict one-year timeline for total mobilization—a countdown that had initiated three months prior to the formal creation of the Sky Squad.

In truth, the decision by continental leaders and senior advisors to form the Sky Squad had been accelerated by this exact intelligence. Recognizing the impending threat, they had established the squad as an elite strike force to work alongside military intelligence in hunting down Mondu operations.

While military intelligence possessed extensive lists of suspected operatives, they had lacked the physical evidence required to execute arrests—until now.

Finally, Alex shared one last piece of intelligence that had been withheld from the general ranks: the prophecy of the Moon Flower. The Moon Flower was set to bloom in a few months' time, coinciding precisely with the grandest total solar eclipse in twenty years. It would manifest at a precise location known for enduring relentless, endless strikes of celestial lightning—the highest mountain peak on the Frost Line continent.

During the eclipse, the dark army intended to harvest the Moon Flower, a mystical botanical entity condensed from the raw essence of atmospheric tempests and eternal lightning. By absorbing the flower's concentrated essence, the Demon Lord intended to restore his full power before launching his campaign to conquer the realm.

Aji listened quietly, his expression unreadable. He was already well aware that the Demon Lord remained injured, actively utilizing the Blood Supreme artifact to restore his vessel after the Three Legends had severed his original ritual twenty years ago.

Aji had also anticipated their invasion timeline. For the young operatives of the Sky Squad, however, digesting such monumental news brought a stark realization of the apocalyptic conflict looming over the horizon—a secret far too dangerous to leak to the general public.

Had the general populace or the broader martial community learned of the impending invasion, mass panic would have ensued, triggering widespread chaos, economic collapse, and desperate migrations.

This was the absolute secret held by the highest leadership of the realm. The coming invasion was no mere rumor; it was an absolute certainty, and the forces of darkness were preparing their final strike with absolute precision.

And in the quiet shadows, Aji continued to prepare himself for the inevitable clash to come.