A Few Hours Before...
The sun bled orange through the window of Connor's restricted quarters. Outside, students laughed, unaware. Inside, silence stretched like a held breath. Connor sat perfectly still on the edge of his bed, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes—too clear, too depthless—were fixed on nothing.
Elara stood by the door, her borrowed face a mask of patient waiting.
Then, Connor blinked. Not a normal blink. A reset. His spine straightened incrementally. His breathing pattern shifted. When he spoke, his voice carried harmonics that didn't belong to the eighteen-year-old body it inhabited.
"The envoy from Poseidon complicates things." It was Nefertiti speaking through him. Elara tilted her head, receiving the same transmission through their shared link.
"If House Poseidon sends a formal guardian disguised as a visitor, others may follow. One royal house breaking protocol invites scrutiny. Scrutiny invites delay."
"Delay is unacceptable."
Connor's hand moved independently of conscious thought, lifting to touch the faint, invisible mark beneath his collar. The connection opened—a thin, silver thread of thought aimed across the academy grounds.
"Duron."
Three seconds passed. Then, a whisper of acknowledgement, cold and patient.
"The Eighth Hand speaks.""Barracuda of House Poseidon has arrived at Arachis. His presence is a variable. We cannot afford word of this spreading to other royal houses. If they send envoys disguised as visitors, our numerical advantage collapses."
Silence on Duron's end. Then: "What would the Eighth Hand have me do?".
"Inform Saturn. The timeline accelerates. The Great Lord's will remains unchanged: Arachis burns. Winston's head is the price of their arrogance."
A pause.
Duron's presence flickered with something—not hesitation, but confirmation. "It will be done."
The connection severed. Elara watched Connor's face settle back into stillness.
"Our role?" she asked aloud, her voice soft, girlish. The dissonance between her tone and the ancient intelligence behind her eyes was nauseating.
Connor finally moved, rising from the bed. His joints popped softly, his body still learning to accommodate whatever now lived inside it.
"We do not fight at the walls," he said. "The Hands are few. Arachis has hundreds of Awakened—students, instructors, Sentinels. Even the Great Lord's chosen cannot slaughter an army alone without losses."
He turned to face Elara fully. "We build their army for them."
Elara's smile was slow, genuine. "Vessels."
Connor walked to the window, gazing down at the unsuspecting students below.
"By the time the Hands breach the gates, half these uniforms will be fighting for us. The instructors will be too busy with Falkore and Medusa to notice their own students turning on them. The Sentinels will hesitate to fire on children. And we—"
"—will be invisible," Elara finished.
"Precisely." Connor watched a group of first-years jog past, laughing at some private joke. His expression didn't change.
"The surveillance units Winston has on us," Elara said. "The ones watching this room."
"Already handled." Connor's voice was flat. "Duron rerouted their feeds thirty minutes ago. They're watching loops."
Elara nodded slowly. "Soon,"
Connor murmured. "Very soon."
---
Duron's quarters were sparse, impersonal—exactly what one expected of a career instructor with no family. A desk. A cot. A shelf of tactical texts. Nothing that suggested allegiance to anything but the academy.
Hidden beneath a floor panel, however, was another story. Duron knelt, his movements unhurried. The panel slid aside. Nestled in foam padding was a device the size of a palm—matte black, unremarkable, but humming with contained energy.
He activated it, and a holographic interface bloomed upward, visible only to him.
Saturn's face materialized.
The Ninth Hand was lounging somewhere dark, his impossible beauty rendered spectral by the blue light. His earrings caught phantom reflections.
"Greetings, my lord." Duron bowed."
To what do I owe this call, Duron?" Saturn's fingers traced lazy patterns through the air.
"I have a message from the Eighth Hand." Duron relayed the information, his voice flat, efficient.
Saturn listened without interrupting.
When Duron finished, the Ninth Hand's lips curved into something approximating approval.
"The Eighth Hand's counsel is noted. The timeline advances accordingly. You have your orders."
"I do."
"The Great Lord expects Winston's head on the table. Not at his feet. On*the table. Presentation matters."
"Understood."
"And Duron." Saturn's silver eyes sharpened. "Do not fail. Your usefulness is the only thing keeping the mark on your neck from becoming a noose."
The hologram died.
Duron sat in the silence for a long moment.
Then he stood, tucking the device into his coat, and began to move.
---
He walked through the academy corridors with the ease of a man who had memorized every hallway, every maintenance shaft, every blind spot in the security grid. He was not stopped. He was not questioned. He was Sir Duron, veteran instructor, trusted servant of Arachis. A ghost in the machine.
His first stop was the basement level, where the Aether suppression field's primary regulator hummed behind reinforced walls. He pressed his palm to a maintenance panel. His mark pulsed, and the lock clicked open.
Inside, three guards turned. "Sir Duron!" One of them called out, surprise flickering across his face.
"Do you have permission to—"He didn't complete the sentence. Duron moved. Not fast—efficient. His blade caught the first guard at the throat, the second through the ribs, the third across the spine.
Three bodies hit the floor in sequence, a wet percussion.
He stepped over them without looking down. Duron disabled the remote monitoring system. Then he planted a fragmentation charge—small, surgical, timed to detonate on his signal. Not destroy. Just disrupt. Long enough for the Hands to breach unopposed.
His second stop was the communication array on the fourth floor. A simple data spike, inserted into the junction box. When activated, it would flood all external channels with white noise. No calls for reinforcements. No distress signals. Winston would face his executioners in silence.
His third and final stop was the armory.
Duron pulled a small vial from his pocket—crimson liquid, dense as mercury. He poured a single drop onto the lock mechanism of the auxiliary weapons vault. The metal sizzled, reformed, and clicked open.
Inside were resonance blades. Anti-Aether rounds. Equipment that could actually harm the Hands of the Divine.
Duron reached inside and withdrew a single resonance blade—sleek, humming with dormant power. He tucked it into his coat. The rest he left untouched.He closed the door and reset the lock, leaving it unsealed.
'Let them find it too late. Or don't. It won't matter.'
He walked away, hands in his pockets, face calm.
The clock read 7:47 PM.
Thirteen minutes until the world caught fire.
---8:00 PM---
Garlack was mid-stride toward the main gate when the bridge shuddered. He felt it before he saw it—a ripple in the fabric of reality that made his teeth ache.
His hand flew to his halberd as he broke into a sprint. "Contact!" he roared. "All units, defensive formation! NOW!"
Sentinels scrambled into position. Their armor gleamed under the dying light.
Behind them, the academy's main gate loomed, its ancient wards pulsing with dormant energy.
A hundred meters out, the air split.
Purple light. Vertical. Three meters tall. Garlack had fought Null and Mutated beasts in the Dead zones. He had survived a Category 4 leviathan ambush. He had watched men die screaming, their bodies dissolved by Aetheric corrosion.
None of that prepared him for what stepped through that wound.
Four figures.
The first was a mountain of scarred muscle, his grin a bloody gash in a face built for violence. Great sword slung across his back. Falkore, Seventh Hand.
The second was a woman with dead eyes and a living thing squirming beneath her skin, its six eyes blinking in sequence. Medusa, Eleventh Hand.
The third was a pale, slender man whose stillness suggested a blade waiting to be drawn. Code, Twelfth Hand.
The fourth was a pale, gaunt figure with elongated canines, his posture radiating aristocratic contempt. Dreco, Tenth Hand.
The rift sealed behind them.
Falkore sniffed the air like a dog catching scent of prey. His gaze swept across the assembled Sentinels, and his grin widened. "The welcoming committee!" His voice was a rockslide. "Bit scrawny, though. You lot don't look strong."
Garlack stepped forward, planting himself between Falkore and the gate. His grip on his halberd was white-knuckled.
Behind him, his men shifted nervously. He didn't blame them.
"Hold the line," Garlack ordered, his voice low, meant only for his soldiers. "This isn't a fight we win. It's a fight we survive. Just for a few seconds. Vanessa's already airborne. Winston's mobilizing."
He met Falkore's manic gaze. "We hold."
Falkore laughed—a sound like breaking bones. "Hold, he says!" He cracked his neck, rolling his massive shoulders. "Alright, captain. Show me how long you can—"He moved.
Garlack saw it coming. His instincts screamed. He threw himself sideways—Falkore's fist, unarmed, passed through the space Garlack had occupied a heartbeat before. And punched a hole through the bridge.
Stone exploded.
The shockwave threw Sentinels off their feet. Beneath the bridge, the Lake's surface parted, water vaporizing on contact with sheer kinetic force. A crater thirty meters wide yawned where solid rock had been.
Garlack rolled, came up in a crouch, breathing hard.
Falkore withdrew his fist from the smoking rubble, examining his knuckles with mild disappointment.
"Fast," he admitted. "Good. Boring fights are such a waste of time.
"Medusa tilted her head, watching Garlack with those empty, hungry eyes.
"He's scared," she observed. "I can smell it."
Garlack didn't deny it.
He raised his halberd. "ALL UNITS—ENGAGE!"
---
Leo hit the ground running. His boots skidded on polished marble as he burst through the Commander Club's headquarters. Alarms blared. Holographic displays flickered with tactical data.
The academy's elite club leaders were already scrambling.
Torin Rook was on his feet, his massive frame blocking a display as he barked orders into his comms.
Rhys "Ironjaw" Volk was buckling his armor.
Jace Mirage was already halfway out the door, throwing knives materializing in his grip.
Liena Vos, Mistress of the Sniper Corps, was calmly cleaning her rifle.
Leo didn't bother with formalities.
"Rhys!" His voice cut through the chaos. "Secure the dorms. Non-combatant students get to safe rooms. Anyone without combat clearance, locked down NOW."
Rhys's mechanical jaw whirred as he nodded once, already moving. "On it."
"Jace! Scout the perimeter. I need eyes on every potential breach point. If they're hitting the main gate, they'll have secondary insertions. Find them."
Jace's answering grin was sharp. "Finally, some fun."
He was gone before the words finished—a flicker of movement, then empty air.
Leo turned to Torin. "You're with me. We sweep the interior. Infiltrators are already inside—I don't know how many, I don't know their faces. We find them before they find the students. "Torin's scarred face was grim. "Understood."
That left Liena. Leo's gaze swept over her—the precise way her fingers moved along her rifle's stock, the calm set of her shoulders.
She was always calm. That was her job.
"Liena," he said.
"Over watch. You see anything that's not ours on those walls, you put a round through it."
She looked up from her rifle, her expression smooth, professional. "Understood, Instructor Leo." She smiled.
It was the right smile. Perfectly timed. Perfectly warm. Professional courtesy from a trusted colleague.
But Rhys, halfway out the door, caught it.
A flicker. A beat too long. A subtle wrongness in the curvature of her lips—there for exactly one second before her face smoothed back into its usual composed mask.
Rhys blinked.
"Did I just...?"Liena was already walking past him, her rifle cradled in practiced arms, her stride unhurried. She didn't look back.
Rhys stared at her retreating back. His mechanical jaw whirred—a nervous tell he'd never been able to supress.
"Rhys!" Leo snapped. "Move!".
He shook his head, the moment dissolving into adrenaline and duty. He turned and ran toward the dorms, the image of that smile already fading from his conscious mind.
But not from his gut. Something's wrong. Something's very wrong .
He had no time to analyze it.
---
Across the courtyard, the first wave of students was being herded toward the dorms. Drake, Alexis, and Xian were caught in the current, shoved along by panicked bodies.
Jackson Storm was twenty meters ahead, his golden hair catching the emergency lights.
The main gate was invisible from here, but the sound carried—the crash of stone, the roar of something inhuman.
"What the hell is happening?"
Xian shouted over the noise.
No one answered.
Drake's hand drifted to his hip. Empty. His sword was still locked in Winston's vault.
He need it now, more than ever.
---
In Winston's office, the air behind the desk rippled.
Purple light. Silent. Precise.
Two men stepped through.
The whiskey bottles on the sidebar began to shudder.