"The portal… It's physically fine," the man stammered, keeping his head bowed low. "We've checked the foundation stones. We even replaced all the primary power arrays and the supporting spirit-ink inscriptions. Everything on our end is pristine, sir. But it still won't catch the signal. It's as if the destination has simply… vanished."
"Weird…" William didn't explode in rage as the man expected. Instead, he became unnervingly still. He stood in the centre of the plaza, his mind racing through a thousand possibilities. "Did you try to contact other towns? Are the neighbouring hubs reporting the same failure?"
"In fact… all the towns we've reached via long-range spirit-sense are reporting the same issue," the man said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "It has been like this for three days, sir."
