All Chapters of The Alpha’s Greatest Blindness: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The confirmation of the second hand’s death did not bring rest.I remained in the inner room of the private wing with the connecting door open, the silver cuff warm against my wrist, and the low residual current of the Burden moving under my skin. Kael stayed in the outer room. The healers had replaced his bandages twice since the body was removed. He had allowed a stronger draught for the pain only after Elder Orion and the captain of the permanent posts both refused to leave the wing until he did. Even then he sat in the chair only in short intervals, body angled so he could see the sealed panel, the outer door, and the connecting doorway at the same time.The quiet that followed the formal identification of the traitor felt heavier than the fighting that had preceded it. The familiar face was dead. The immediate breach was closed. The living master had not answered. The ridges remained still according to every scout report that reached the outer room.I used the stretch of silence

The private wing felt wrong without Kael in it.I remained in the outer room after the door bolted behind him, seated in the chair he had left, the silver cuff warm against my wrist. Elder Orion stood near the table with the old construction records still spread across its surface. The permanent posts held both ends of the corridor. The sealed panel and the known junctions remained under direct watch. Everything was in place. The absence still pressed against the space like a missing wall.Elder Orion did not speak immediately. He turned one of the aged diagrams toward the light and studied the incomplete lines that marked the deeper service level.“The collapse that closed it was recorded as structural,” he said at last. “Stone packed into the access points, then forgotten when the keep’s active plans were redrawn. If the second hand knew of the upper abandoned runs, it is possible the living master also knows of this level. Kael is right to inspect the seals himself.”I closed my fi

The healer arrived before the first mapping team returned.I stayed in the outer room while the man replaced Kael’s stressed bandages with clean ones and tightened the support around the rib wound. Kael submitted to the work with visible impatience, jaw set, golden eyes fixed on the sealed panel and the outer door even while the healer worked. He refused a stronger draught again. When the healer left, the bindings were neat, and the fresh blood had been cleaned away, but the limited way Kael moved still betrayed the cost of the descent and the earlier fight.Elder Orion had gone to coordinate the archive search. The permanent posts held the corridor. For a short interval, the outer room contained only the two of us and the low sound of the keep adjusting to the new underground threat.Kael tested the range of his left arm once, then let it rest against his side. He looked at me across the quiet space.“You felt the deeper level through the cuff before the captain reached the wing,” he

The next runner from the deeper level did not carry a sketch.He carried the smell of disturbed stone and the tight, controlled urgency of a man who had left a fight in progress. Kael had the outer door open before the second coded knock finished. The runner’s report was brief and clean.“Contact in the lateral branch. Four opposing wolves, no house marks, soft soles, prepared positions behind shored stone. The probe team has pulled back to the staged seal and is holding. Two wounded on our side, neither critical. The opposing group did not pursue beyond the marked turn. They are defending the branch, not advancing.”The private wing’s quiet ended in that single breath.Kael’s posture shifted into pure command despite the bindings and the residual pallor of blood loss. He issued a short sequence of orders—reinforce the staged seal with a second team under a captain from outside the original fourteen, hold the contact line without pushing deeper until numbers and withdrawal routes were

The token remained on the map through the next watch cycle, a small dark claim on the growing sketch of the deeper level.I stayed in the outer room of the private wing while the reports continued at their measured pace. The contact line held. The opposing group made no further move. The ridges stayed still. Kael directed each response with the same precise economy he had used since the first soft-soled print, but the margin he was operating on had become visible to anyone who remained in the room long enough to watch.The healer returned twice. The second time Kael’s patience fractured enough that the man left with a short, clipped dismissal and instructions to wait in the corridor until called. Elder Orion exchanged a look with me across the table that required no words. The wounds were not the only limit being reached.During a longer gap between runners, Kael set both hands on the edge of the table and leaned into them. The controlled breathing he had maintained for hours slipped.