Dai got involved because of a connection to royalty and Popp followed him into it and absolutely no mention of Avan himself being involved. That's a little nugget of information Avan tucks away as he nods and keeps mixing. He'll sort this timeline out one way or another.

"This Hadlar fellow going around attacking kingdoms, what do you mean when you say he 'came back?'"

If he had to guess, he'd say it's probably the name of the same Dark Lord who's started going around attacking kingdoms in his own time, but he'd like to keep the guessing and assuming to the things he can't get Popp to talk about directly.