Earth's Greatest Magus

Chapter 2962: Refugees

Dawnstar, Neo Terra

Thirty-six hours ago, just hours after Emery left.

Klea’s had been busy,

The refugee intake operation at Neo Terra had been her first priority the moment the ships began arriving, and she had thrown the full weight of the Earth faction’s organizational capacity behind it.

The docking platforms on Neo Terra’s northern edge had been converted into a processing center within hours of Emery’s departure. Screening formations were installed at every entry point. Medical tents rose in precise rows along the outer platform. Water and food distribution stations were positioned at regular intervals so that no arriving person had to wait long enough to become desperate.

Camila had overseen the physical setup. Beowulf had positioned warriors at every checkpoint — not aggressively, not as guards exactly, but visibly and calmly, because people in crisis needed to see that someone was in control of the space they were entering.

The screening process itself was methodical.

Every incoming refugee passed through a detection formation calibrated to the parasite’s spiritual signature. Those who cleared were registered, assigned temporary accommodation, and given a basic kit — food, clean water, a blanket, a numbered identification token. Those who flagged were moved quietly to a separate medical area, examined carefully, and either treated or placed in isolated observation.

Eight hours in, they had successfully processed ten ships. Nearly eighty thousand people.

It had gone well,

The schedule had been arranged before Emery left. Twenty cargo vessels from Dawnstar, carrying refugees cleared for relocation to Neo Terra, arriving in two staggered batches of ten to prevent the platforms from becoming overwhelmed. Ten had arrived on schedule. The remaining ten had not.

Klea waited two hours beyond the expected window. No message. No delay notification. No explanation through any coordination channel she had been given.

Just silence where ten ships should have been.

She turned to Camila.

"Hold the platforms," she said. "Keep the teams ready. I’ll be back before the next scheduled arrival."

To ensure Neo Terra’s safety, she left the Twilight Warriors and Soltz behind and departed alone. The Icarus wings spread from her back as she launched into the sky, accelerating toward Dawnstar at full speed.

Within the hour, she was flying above the city’s District 3 central transit hub.

She stopped.

Below her, where an organized flow of refugees should have been moving steadily between intake checkpoints and processing areas, there was only chaos.

Tens of thousands of people pressed against each other in every direction — refugees with nowhere to go colliding with city residents trying to leave, both groups generating a pressure the transit hub’s physical space could not absorb. Several official processing booths had been abandoned entirely, their attendants gone. What had presumably started as an organized registration line had long since collapsed into a shapeless, desperate crowd.

Klea descended and made her way toward the Merlin Apothecary Center and the Red Lotus office — the two Earth faction anchor points in the district.

What she found was only marginally better.

The apothecary center was overwhelmed. Its waiting area spilled out the front door and down the street, patients sitting against the outer wall in a line that stretched further than she could see from the entrance. Inside, she could hear Gwen’s voice — steady, calm, directing her team with the particular quiet focus she used when things were at their worst.

The Red Lotus has turned into another emergency station.

Klea found Nyx around the back, coordinating three volunteer teams through a communication crystal.

Nyx saw Klea’s arrival and reported the situation.

The teleportation gate — Dawnstar’s primary high-capacity transit formation, the one handling the bulk of refugee arrivals from Baeldum — had been operating at three times its designed throughput for over forty-eight hours. The formation’s stability had been deteriorating since the previous morning, and the flood of arrivals had long since exceeded anything the city’s infrastructure was designed to manage.

"That’s insane," Klea said. "What has the Alliance been doing? Where are the local guards?"

Nyx’s expression hardened. "What you see out there are Alliance enforcers. The city guards haven’t been present for at least twelve hours. They were pulled somewhere else overnight."

Klea went quiet.

She had been waiting on six missing ships — vessels that had been routed toward Dawnstar before transferring to Neo Terra.

A miscommunication between Dawnstar’s transit authority and the secondary docking platforms could explain the situation.

Possible. But it didn’t explain the missing guards.

"If nothing is done," Nyx said quietly, "something very bad is going to happen within hours."

Klea felt the weight of that settle over her.

Her quick thinking and diplomatic ability immediately showed their value.

She made two decisions immediately.

First: she contacted allied factions within Dawnstar through the Red Lotus network. She asked them to send men to increased security or at the very least to help transport refugees. Neo Terra’s platforms were ready to receive them — what was needed was simply the movement of people away from the overwhelmed transit hub.

Second: she went to the local district security headquarters herself.

The security building was quieter than it should have been. There should be thousands but Klea saw only a few hundred personnel. Far fewer guards than expected, and those present moved with the particular aimlessness of people whose organizational structure had been disrupted without explanation.

With her status, a grand magus and vice leader of the third biggest faction in Dawnstar, Klea was able to go directly to the commander in charge and ask her question without preamble.

"The transit hub has no city guards managing it. Where are they?"

The commander visibly nervous. "They are Reassigned."

"To where?"

A pause. The kind that meant the answer was uncomfortable. "The order came from the First District command. I don’t know the details."

Klea looked at him steadily. The First District had five times the regular guard and no refugee overflow problems. Pulling additional forces there made no tactical sense — not if managing the crisis was the actual goal.

She pressed further, with intimidating words first and the quiet edge of her spiritual presence second. The commander’s resistance did not last long.

"The order came directly from Lord Gerardy’s office," he said finally. "Reassignment to the outer checkpoint areas."

Outer checkpoints. Not the overwhelmed interior. Not the failing transit hub.

"The refugee intake numbers," Klea said. "Show me."

He produced the document reluctantly, clearly aware from Klea’s expression alone that whatever she found inside would not be good.

Klea took the report and scanned through the numbers quickly. The deeper she read, the heavier the pressure in her chest became.

"More than one million refugees in three days..." she muttered slowly, her brows tightening.

Her gaze lifted sharply toward the commander.

"Gerardy is insane. Those numbers are already far beyond what Dawnstar can safely contain. Even if the city devoted every district entirely toward refugee support, the logistics alone would collapse eventually. And the security risk..." Klea shook her head grimly.

At first, the report merely looked chaotic, exactly what one would expect from an overwhelmed transit system struggling beneath impossible pressure.

Then she noticed the second set of figures.

And immediately realized something was deeply wrong.

The intake records did not match the processing records.

Not slightly.

Not even remotely close.

Of the more than one million refugees registered entering Dawnstar during the last twenty four hours, nearly half had vanished somewhere within the system itself.

Not delayed.

Not redirected.

Gone completely.

Entire refugee groups simply disappeared from every downstream record after initial registration, as though they had been deliberately removed before ever reaching official processing centers.

Klea slowly lowered the document, her expression turning colder by the second.

This was no longer administrative collapse caused by overcrowding.

This was organized.

Klea folded the document and put it in her storage ring. Before leaving, she turned back to the commander.

"Send every available man to the gate," she said. "And arrange transport. All of it."

She returned to the Red Lotus office and explained what she had found to Nyx in quiet, precise terms.

"Something is very wrong here," she said. "I’m concerned about what has been happening to these people."

Hearing about the missing refugees, Nyx immediately connected it to the recent investigations surrounding the Governor trafficking network.

Her expression darkened slightly.

"Varkul knows more" she said quietly.

Klea immediately turned toward her.

The newly reformed Midnight Brotherhood under Varkul capable of operating through Dawnstar’s underworld without attracting attention. If someone had discovered where the missing refugees were going, it was likely him.

"Where is he?" Klea asked without hesitation.

Nyx quickly pulled out a communication crystal and transferred a set of coordinates.

"Last known location."

Before leaving, however, Klea glanced once more across the street toward the Merlin Apothecary Center.

Even from outside, she could still see Gwen and her exhausted team moving nonstop between patients while more injured civilians continued arriving every minute. Healers rushed from one bed to another beneath the glow of restoration spells while the waiting lines outside only kept growing longer.

Then another thought suddenly crossed Klea’s mind.

"Where is Grand Magus Kayelin?" she asked. "Why hasn’t she arrived yet?"

Nyx frowned immediately.

"I don’t know," she admitted. "She should have been here hours ago, but we haven’t been able to contact her."

That answer only deepened the unease already building inside Klea.

Kayelin was not careless. A Grand Magus healer disappearing during a crisis without sending even a single message was deeply abnormal.

Without wasting another second, thunder erupted behind Klea as the Icarus Wings unfolded once more.

She shot into the sky toward Varkul’s coordinates at extreme speed.

###

Not long after Klea left, Gwen—still busy directing treatments inside the apothecary center—heard something different from the usual noise outside.

At first she ignored it automatically.

The district had already spent hours filled with crying refugees, arguments, overcrowding, and occasional fights breaking out between exhausted civilians.

But this sound was different.

Screaming.

Real screaming.

Not panic from overcrowding.

Not the noise of another fight.

This was terror.

Gwen immediately turned toward the entrance.

Two streets away near the transit hub, the massive crowd was suddenly moving violently in one direction—away from something.

People shoved past each other desperately while others stumbled to the ground beneath the pressure of the fleeing masses. Through the widening gaps between buildings, Gwen finally caught sight of what they were running from.

One figure slowly walked against the flow of the crowd.

Then another emerged behind it.

Then several more.

They drifted out from a narrow side alley with unnatural movements Gwen recognized them instantly

Slack faces.

Slow unfocused eyes.

Corruption threading visibly beneath the skin around their throats and temples even from this distance.

The infected

Walking openly through the streets of Dawnstar.

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