The General's Daughter: The Mission

On the island’s southern edge—where Lara and the Norse sibling found the structure that they suspected was part of an ancient wall —the diggers hit something that made even the most seasoned archaeologists go quiet.

A stretch of wall.

Not the flimsy kind that rusts away in a decade, but a buried perimeter wall, thick and deliberate, as if someone long ago had drawn a hard line and meant it to last forever.

Excavation crawled at a punishing pace.

No backhoes, no drills, no roaring machines—nothing that could rattle the ground and shatter whatever secrets still slept beneath it. Every inch of soil had to be removed by primitive tools or loosened by hand.

The National History Commission doubled the workforce, but the tools looked like they belonged to another century: shovels, spades, mattocks, pickaxes.

Lara stood beside Ares at the edge of the excavation site, arms folded, eyes narrowed behind her sunglasses as she watched the diggers chip away at the earth like they were trying to free a fossil with toothpicks.

Shovels rose and fell. Dirt shifted by inches. Supervisors barked tired orders no one really listened to.

At this pace, they wouldn’t uncover the truth in her lifetime.

Her jaw tightened. ”Why aren’t they using an excavator? Or at least a backhoe to clear the upper layers?”

Ares turned to her, one brow lifting. The question clearly hadn’t come from a casual observer.

”Heavy equipment isn’t allowed near sensitive finds,” he said. ”Vibrations could collapse structures underground.”

”That would make sense if they were already on top of something fragile,” she replied evenly. ”But from a perimeter wall to a central palace, there’s usually several meters of buffer zone. Solid ground. Safe to clear.”

Now both of his eyebrows were up.

”And you know that... how?”

For half a heartbeat, she almost said, because I saw the blueprint of the palace.

Instead, she shrugged lightly. ”Historical accounts. Architectural studies. Ancient palace layouts are surprisingly consistent.”

Ares didn’t look convinced—but he didn’t dismiss her either. He studied her face for a moment, weighing something, then pulled his tablet from under his arm and handed it over.

”If you’ve got a better idea,” he said, ”show me.”

Lara took it, the stylus cool between her fingers. The screen lit her face as she began to draw—slow at first, then with growing certainty as memory guided her hand.

She sketched the line of the wall they had uncovered... then extended it... curved it... anchored it to terrain features that no longer existed above ground but were burned into her mind.

The outer defenses of Calma had long ago been swallowed by the lake. What remained buried beneath them now would be the inner fortifications—the walls that had guarded the imperial heart: Hevenfort Palace, the Helias Manor, administrative courts, barracks, the market stalls, gardens, corridors of power now reduced to dust and legend.

Her stylus moved with quiet precision, mapping avenues, courtyards, defensive choke points. Not perfectly. Not completely.

Just enough.

What appeared on the screen was a rough conceptual layout.

Not the blueprint of someone who had once walked those streets.

She deliberately left gaps. Simplified angles. Omitted entire structures. Too much accuracy would raise questions she couldn’t afford to answer.

When she finished, she handed the tablet back.

”This is only a draft,” she said. ”But if the wall you found is part of the inner ring, then the main complex should be somewhere here.”

She circled a section on the tablet where Hevenfort was.

Ares stared at the sketch longer than she expected, zooming in, rotating the image, cross-referencing it with whatever data he already had. The casual skepticism drained from his face, replaced by something sharper.

Interest.

Maybe even unease.

”This...” he murmured, ”would change how we approach the entire dig.”

Lara said nothing. She simply looked out across the site—at the sweating workers, the crawling progress, the earth that hid the bones of her world.

If they followed her map, they wouldn’t just find ruins.

They would find the heart of an empire.

And when they did, there would be no pretending she was just another historian who had read too many books.

She didn’t worry.

If questions came, she already had protection lined up—an explanation neat enough to satisfy officials and vague enough to bury the truth.

Themis. The scapegoat.

...

Ares summoned the chief engineers along with Philip Hardy, the chief archaeologist who had been running the operation with bureaucratic caution since day one.

They gathered beside a folding table littered with maps, soil reports, and half-empty coffee cups baked lukewarm by the sun.

”We’re changing the excavation protocol,” Ares said without preamble.

No small talk. No softening.

Just command.

He outlined the new approach—controlled heavy equipment to strip the upper layers, reinforced monitoring for subsurface vibrations, and rapid-response teams on standby if structural remains appeared.

It was efficient, aggressive, radical and decisive.

Exactly the opposite of what they’d been doing.

Philip Hardy’s mouth tightened. He shifted his weight, fingers drumming against a rolled blueprint as if searching for the courage to object.

”Sir, with respect, the Commission’s guidelines—”

Ares looked at him.

Not raised voice. Not anger.

Just a flat, unblinking stare that carried the full weight of authority.

Whatever Hardy had been about to say died in his throat.

”Understood,” he muttered, eyes dropping to the table. ”We’ll... adjust accordingly.”

Around them, the engineers exchanged quick glances—some anxious, some relieved, all aware that the project had just shifted into a higher gear.

Ares didn’t elaborate, didn’t justify himself, didn’t ask for consensus. He didn’t need to.

He had been appointed overall in charge of the excavation. He has the final authority. The one signature that overrode committees, protocols, and academic hesitation.

If he said dig, they dug.

Lara watched the exchange from a few steps away, expression calm, almost detached. Inside, however, something colder moved—anticipation edged with inevitability.

Good, she thought.

The sooner they reached the buried city, the sooner the past would stop whispering and start speaking out loud.

And when that happened...

No alibi in the world would be enough.