Agent Bethany Beltrop is assigned to the Containment Bureau, home of the Army of Angels’ Covenant Division, a quiet network sworn to protect Earth and the innocent from threats most people will never know exist. When Bethany discovers an old case that Covenant leadership closed for “insufficient evidence,” she reopens it and starts seeing what everyone missed: a repeating signature of burned-out eyes, no struggle, and victims tied to one place, Northgate Eye Institute. Northgate presents itself as a small-town clinic, friendly and clean, but Bethany’s investigation reveals it is a disguised alien clinic-ship operated by House Veylorn, refugees-turned-operatives from Veyrith Prime. For centuries they’ve survived by harvesting Vitreous Reserve from behind the human retina, an extraction hidden inside routine exams that accelerates aging and leaves patients collapsing into old bodies. Twenty-five years earlier, a botched procedure nearly exposed them when a trainee left a patient alone with the machine running. The family fought, panicked, and two weeks later the Containment Bureau arrived—then quietly walked away, leaving the case buried. Now Bethany refuses to let it die again. As Northgate announces a “Free Eye Exam plus Free Glasses” event, Bethany convinces Covenant to run a sting: undercover agents enter as patients wearing eye-guard smart contacts that block the harvest and record everything. The operation captures the method on camera and Covenant arrests the Veylorn family, proving the case, saving civilians, and closing a 25-year loop. But the victory cracks in the final hours. The true leader was never in custody: Commander Vael Rikhan Veylorn, nearly 500 years old, a former commander on Veyrith Prime, and the mind behind the outpost. While Covenant celebrates the takedown, Vael—hidden in the margins, initiates the ship’s Wake Protocol, reactivates the dormant clinic-ship, and launches off-planet. Bethany watches the sky swallow their escape, realizing the outpost wasn’t the end of the threat, only the message that Earth has been measured, mapped, and scheduled.