The room had fallen still.
No one spoke during the last five minutes of footage. Not as the ground buckled, not as the creature emerged. Not even when Layla and Irina's absence became obvious—when it was just two cadets left against something that didn't belong in a standard dungeon sequence.
The only sound was the faint ticking of crystal time counters and the occasional scratch of stylus against mana-slate.
And then—
The lance.
The moment Sylvie raised her hand, every scout leaned forward.
Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
But intentionally.
Together.
The golden glow, the spiraled weapon, the crackling hum of Authority—
It wasn't just another glyph.
It wasn't healing.
It wasn't reinforcement.
It wasn't utility.
It was something else.
Something new.
When the lance launched, a visible pulse erupted through the screen's mana feedback interface—brief, dense, high-tiered, categorized in-system as:
[UNREGISTERED STRIKE | GOLD-SPECTRUM | CLASSIFIED INTERFERENCE: NULL]
