"Fire!"
The order cracked behind Reyvis.
The Earthshakers answered as one, their firing solutions drowning the command deck in thunder.
"Payloads received. Twenty seconds until impacts, Commissar," the officer snapped.
Black arcs of smoke curved along the horizon, already reaching for the tiny shapes exposed far away.
Reyvis's eye tracked them through the monocular.
—
Two figures.
Gliding forward without hesitation.
On the left—a one-armed psyker, his silhouette flickering with unnatural distortion.
On the right—an Aeldari Autarch, red armor catching the light like a blade drawn against the sky.
No infantry screen.
No armored vanguard.
No attempt at concealment.
Just the two of them, advancing into a killing field ten kilometers wide.
Reyvis lowered the monocular slowly.
"…Interesting," he murmured.
—
"One, two… three, four." Kochav squinted, counting the distant streaks carving across the sky.
He exhaled through his teeth.
"Eight, huh?"
He tilted his head toward Shadowgaze, who glided beside him with predatory calm.
"Guess we each get four?"
—
"Tch. Just do your job," Shadowgaze hissed.
Invisible force snapped around Kochav's chest as she yanked him closer, psychic grip hard and precise.
Woosh.
The Vraskariin scales beneath them screamed.
Their surfaces shuddered, blue-white arcs crawling along etched veins as opposing currents bit into one another.
The air distorted.
Hair rose.
Teeth rang.
Then the scales repelled.
They split apart in a violent lateral shove, flinging the two riders sideways as the incoming artillery screamed closer—dark shapes tearing holes in the sky.
Kochav laughed through clenched teeth, boots skidding as he reoriented mid-glide.
"Not very nice," he muttered.
—
The first shell detonated between them.
Light vanished—replaced by violence.
The explosion tore the air apart, shrapnel screaming outward in a murderous halo.
Metal fragments and pulverized stone slammed into their psychic wards, each impact ringing like a hammer strike.
Their shields shuddered.
Not cracked—but close enough that Kochav felt it in his bones, a deep, nauseating resonance that rattled his teeth and blurred his vision.
Heat washed over them. Pressure followed.
Shadowgaze snarled, emerald lightning flaring along her armor as she compensated instinctively, forcing their trajectories apart before the shockwave could tumble them.
Kochav twisted mid-air, arm snapping forward as he anchored himself to the field, breath ripping from his lungs.
"Okay," he gasped, the grin still there—thin now, strained.
"That one counted."
—
Then he leapt.
Psychic force detonated beneath his boots as he kicked off the scale, hurling himself skyward in a brutal arc.
The ground fell away beneath him, the world shrinking as wind screamed past his ears.
For a heartbeat, he was weightless.
At the apex of the jump, he moved.
His hand shot out and snapped shut.
The scale he had been riding answered, ripping free from the field below and rotating mid-air with a metallic shriek as it turned upright.
Kochav drove his arm down again—hard.
The scale followed like a falling spear.
He plunged after it, gravity reclaiming him as he slammed his palm toward the earth.
The scale hit first.
It buried itself into the ground with a tortured scream, stone exploding outward as it punched deep. The earth buckled around it, cracking in jagged rings.
For a breath, the world held still.
Then the air bent.
A localized dead zone flared into being around the embedded scale—static crawling across nothingness, space itself humming with restrained violence.
Loose debris lifted and scattered, repelled violently from the invisible boundary.
The next incoming shell struck the edge of the field—
—and detonated in a blinding flare, the explosion flattened and swallowed by the barrier before it could reach them.
He held his breathe and focused his falling.
"Anchor set."
—
Reyvis tracked the falling psyker through the monocular.
Then his focus shifted.
Something else had entered the deadzone.
A familiar silhouette—black, iridescent, wrong against the ash-choked sky—was being dragged inward, pulled hard toward the Spire's heart.
Another scale.
Uncontrolled.
Flat.
Reyvis frowned.
Then a red tracer struck it from beyond the deadzone.
The las-bolt burned across its surface, and the scale answered.
It flared crimson.
The pull became a scream.
The scale accelerated violently, cutting through the air like a fired round.
Above,
The Psyker twisted mid-fall, reached for the oncoming force.
The scale slammed beneath his boots with bone-rattling force, its field snapping into alignment as he rode the surge, knees bending to absorb the impact.
Air detonated outward in a concussive ring.
Ash and debris were ripped skyward.
Kochav shot forward, momentum reclaimed, laughter torn from his throat as the battlefield realigned beneath him.
Behind him, the anchored scale shrieked—its localized field flaring brighter.
—
"How far are they?" Reyvis asked, his eye still pressed to the monocular.
—
"Nine kilometers, Commissar." An officer manning scanner reported.
—
Reyvis didn't look away.
One anchor.
One Kilometer.
A rhythm.
His lips curled faintly.
"A pattern," he said quietly.
"They're laying ground."
He straightened and turned toward the auspex station.
"Mark the last emplacement."
A pause.
"Project their next kilometer."
The officer hesitated only a fraction of a second before nodding.
Reyvis's voice hardened.
"Firing solutions—at their projections."
"Break their pattern."
—
Shadowgaze landed on her next scale.
Behind her, the battlefield bore its scars—eight craters gouged into the earth where the first volley had struck, and two anchors burned into place.
One Kochav's.
One hers.
Parallel.
A kilometer marked.
The field between them stabilized, pressure equalizing just enough for motion without collapse.
The Spire resisted, its electromagnetic roar folding inward around the paired dead zones—but it could not seal them.
Shadowgaze felt the corridor form.
Thin and violent.
But usable.
—
Artillery screamed again.
She tilted her head, already looking where the next shells would fall.
They weren't firing at her.
They were firing ahead.
Clever.
She adjusted her glide, the scale angling beneath her boots as the electromagnetic pressure thickened—
and she pushed forward anyway.
Green lightning crawled from her hand into the scale.
The response was immediate.
The field seized the charge and ran with it, the scale screaming as it accelerated, hurling her forward in a violent surge—straight into the path of the incoming shells, interposing herself between the barrage and the anchor points.
Her eyes tracked through the smoke.
Eight shells.
She only needed to stop four.
Shadowgaze dropped into a crouch, one hand gripping the front edge of the scale, the other roaming free beside her—
BOOM!
A shockwave detonated from her open palm, the air folding inward before erupting outward.
The blast hurled her and the scale skyward.
She twisted mid-flight.
With a sharp pull, she wrenched the scale horizontal.
BOOOM!
Another shockwave rang out—shorter, sharper.
The scale tore away from her grasp, ripped forward by the field, while she was thrown clear in the opposite direction, momentum violently divided.
The scale and the shells met.
The detonation came as a blinding flash—white, absolute—followed by a concussive roar that swallowed the battlefield whole.
Shadowgaze snarled through clenched teeth as the cost tore at her mind.
One hand flew to her temple, fingers digging in as psychic backlash rippled through her skull.
Her other arm moved on instinct.
It rolled beside her, fingers stabbing downward—then snapped hard to the left.
The reserve scale answered.
The one that had been snaking inexorably toward the Spire veered off course, dragged screaming through the electromagnetic pressure.
It collided with the remaining shells and detonated in a second violent bloom, tearing them apart mid-air and sparing the anchor points from annihilation.
—
Reyvis' eyes focused on the Aeldari.
He watched her body flip backward through the smoke—and land cleanly on another scale.
His brows tightened.
Two kilometers out.
Too fast.
The scale hadn't been glowing. No charge, no external impulse.
Which meant the acceleration hadn't come from beyond the dead zone.
Slowly, deliberately, his gaze drifted—not to her—but to the space between the anchors.
Understanding settled in.
Then his brows tightened, faint and sharp.
—
"Thanks for the save!" Kochav shouted from the fading edge of the second blast, boots skidding as he landed and drove his second anchor into the earth.
—
"Do your job properly, fool," Shadowgaze replied—her voice swallowed by distance and static, never quite reaching him.
—
Four anchors planted, threading the dead zone with intent—
a pattern, a structure slowly asserting itself.
"Time to move," Helsin said.
He stood at the mouth of the cavern where stone gave way to ash and ruin, the dead zone yawning before him like a wound that refused to close.
Behind him, the force gathered.
Five thousand strong.
Beastmen stamped hooves against stone, horns lowered as they adjusted crude armor and gripped weapons worn smooth by use.
Kroot crouched and shifted with restless energy, quills twitching as they watched the distant Spire, tasting the air for threats yet unseen.
Felinids moved in near silence along the edges, eyes reflecting the pale glow of the anchors far ahead.
Vraskariin scales were brought forward—slabs of iridescent black and oil-sheen blue, fixed at careful forty-five-degree tilts and slotted into carted containers.
No banners were raised.
No war cries given.
Only the low murmur of breath, metal, and resolve.
Far ahead, two distant figures still danced amid thunder and fire—green lightning and warp-touched force carving order out of chaos, one anchor at a time.
Helsin watched them for a long moment.
Then he lifted his hand.
"Go," he said quietly.
And five thousand lives marched forward—
into a battlefield that no longer belonged to the enemy alone.
—
"An Inquisitor," Reyvis murmured.
The monocular tracked the advancing mass between the first pair of anchors, then shifted—steady, deliberate—until it fixed upon a lone figure moving with them.
Clad in gold.
A high gorget masking half her face.
"A Sister of Silence," Reyvis continued, recognition settling in his tone.
"Ordo Malleus."
His lips thinned in calculation.
Then a sharp hiss cut through the command chamber.
An officer in black stepped inside—his uniform a stark contrast to the ivory-clad personnel that filled the Spire. He moved with rigid precision, every line of his posture disciplined.
"Commissar," he reported, voice firm, authoritative.
"The drill-head has reached the inner core layer."
—
Reyvis did not look away from the display.
"Understood, Executor," he replied calmly.
"Prepare the drill for bit-switch."
—
A second officer entered, this one in white.
"Commissar. All troops are ready for deployment."
—
"Good," Reyvis said.
"Hold position. Await EM field degradation."
The officer hesitated only a fraction of a second, then nodded, saluted, and withdrew.
—
"EM degradation?" the Executor echoed.
His hand rested deliberately on the hilt of his chainsword as he stepped closer.
"You are aware High Command forbids any halt or suspension of the harvest," he said, tone edged but controlled.
—
Reyvis' eyes flicked briefly to the weapon—then returned to the man's gaze, utterly unbothered.
"I am not disrupting the harvest," he said evenly.
"The drill must be recalled to change its head."
"That will take no less than five minutes."
He turned slightly, gesturing toward the auspex display where patterns of movement crawled across the dead zone.
"I am merely using that interval," Reyvis continued,
"to eradicate vermin."
His lips curved faintly.
"Executor Nikolya."
—
Nikolya stepped closer, his grip tightening on the hilt of his chainsword.
His eyes never left Reyvis.
"As long as your objective does not interfere with mine," he said, voice low and measured,
"which carries higher priority."
He did not wait for a response.
Turning on his heel, Nikolya left the command chamber, the hiss of the doors sealing behind him.
—
"Power-hungry fool," Reyvis muttered.
He turned away from the sealed doors and stepped back out onto the balcony,
the thunder of artillery fires rolling beneath his boots.
His hand rested briefly on the vox unit at his chest before he brought it up to his face.
"Begin phase adjustment," he ordered calmly.
"Withdraw the drill-head to surface depth.
Prepare for bit exchange."
—
A pause.
Static hissed across the vox.
"Drill-head ascending," came the reply.
"Core pressure stabilizing. Exchange procedures commencing."
Reyvis didn't look away from the dead zone.
He watched the space between the anchors—felt it, more than saw it—waiting for the moment the field thinned—
"Now," he said.
The vox flared to life as he snapped orders in rapid succession.
"Artillery, resume bombardment—full spread."
"Phalanx, advance elements deploy."
"Armor, stand by to exploit breaches."
The Spire shook as Earthshakers spoke again, their thunder rolling out in disciplined fury.
Black arcs climbed into the sky once more.
Then the air fell silent.
Not quiet—absent.
The ground truly became dead.
A heartbeat earlier, Kochav had been moving forward, closing on his fourth kilometer mark.
Then the scale simply stopped.
No impact.
No warning.
Momentum was stolen outright.
The field collapsed beneath his boots.
The scale pitched downward and hit the ground like weight returning all at once, dust and stone erupting as it struck.
Kochav was flung clear.
He rolled once, boots skidding, and came up on his feet beside the fallen scale, breath sharp in his chest.
He turned sharply to the left.
Shadowgaze had stopped as well—frozen mid-glide, her scale hovering inches above the ground, inert.
Kochav's gaze then swept the field.
The reserve scales that had been drifting toward the Spire were dead too, lying where momentum had abandoned them, their fields silent.
His eyes locked onto the Spire ahead.
"…They stopped drilling," he muttered.
—
Before them, the Spire's gate parted like a wound forced wide.
From within, an army poured forth.
Xarcarion voidmen—the Obsidian Phalanx—marched first, ranks locked in perfect alignment, armor drinking in the ash-choked light.
Their formation never broke as they crossed the threshold, discipline made manifest.
Then the war machines followed.
Leman Russes rumbled out in crushing lines, earth trembling beneath their treads.
Hydra platforms rolled in behind them, barrels already elevating, tracking invisible threats in the sky.
Rogal Dorns emerged last—broad, brutal silhouettes that turned the Spire's shadow into something heavier, darker.
Infantry, armor, guns—layer upon layer.
All of it bled together at distance, resolving into a single advancing shape.
A silhouette of death.
—
Kochav sighed, his gaze drifting up to the sky.
Artillery shells stitched black arcs overhead, too many now to count.
A thin, broken laugh tore out of him—too sharp to be humor.
He dragged the scale upright and drove it into the ground before him, the plate screaming as it bit deep.
Then he sat, back resting against the cold plate, eyes half-lidded as the thunder rolled closer.
He slowed his breathing.
Once.
Twice.
It was the only way to keep his mind from tearing itself apart.
The shells passed over him, screaming onward toward the forces just entering the field.
Kochav reacted on instinct.
He snapped his hand upward.
His reserve scale tore free from the ground, electricity crawling across its surface as he hurled it skyward.
BOOOM!
It detonated mid-air—
A violent bloom of light and force ripping several shells apart before they could descend.
But more followed.
Dozens.
Then scores.
The sky remained full.
What he had done—against the sheer weight of fire rolling in.
It was nothing more than a single drop of rain striking a wildfire.
—
To his far left.
Shadowgaze glanced at him from behind her own upright scale, its black plate angled to drink in shrapnel and force.
Her ranger long rifle spoke again and again, each report sharp and precise, rounds threading through smoke and chaos to carve holes in the advancing mass.
Amid the firepower raining down around them,
Kochav still tried—helplessly—to bend the course of the artillery.
"Pathetic," Shadowgaze whispered to herself.
Her rifle never stopped.
"So much for trusting your comrades," she said without looking at him.
"What are you trying to achieve?"
Another shot cracked.
A distant figure folded and vanished into the smoke.
"If you want change," she continued evenly,
"eyes forward."
—
Kochav gritted his teeth, forcing the field to hold as shells screamed overhead.
"They'll die if I don't," he snapped.
—
Shadowgaze finally turned her head.
Her eyes were cold—calculating—angry not at him, but at the math of the battlefield.
"They will die anyway," she said.
"Unless we end the source."
The words landed heavier than any shell.
—
Kochav went still.
Slowly, he turned away from the sky and toward the land itself.
He drew in a breath that tasted of ash and copper.
"Fuck."
He stepped out from cover and began walking toward the enemy lines.
His shield screamed under the strain, every impact ringing through his bones as las-fire and shrapnel hammered against it.
—
"Great," Shadowgaze snapped, fury cutting through her composure.
"Have you finally lost your mind?"
Kochav didn't answer.
He kept walking.
He stopped a hundred meters ahead of her.
Slowly, deliberately,
he raised one hand and pointed at the ground before him.
His eyes burned—orange and blue, colors that did not belong together.
BOOM.
BOOM.
BOOM.
Psychic force hammered down in brutal succession.
The earth detonated, dirt and sand hurled skyward as the ground collapsed inward on itself.
When the dust thinned,
Kochav was gone.
Shadowgaze stared at the empty space for a heartbeat longer than necessary.
"…This," she muttered, voice tight,
"is why I hate humans."
She exhaled slowly, her eyes glowed emerald as she forced her focus.
The battlefield slowed, or her world quickened.
She reached inward—not toward the Warp, but toward the lattice of choices unfolding ahead of her.
The ones that ended in annihilation.
The ones that ended in hesitation.
She chose neither.
Emerald light bled from her into the rifle, wraithbone veins along its length shimmering as the weapon aligned—not with the target, but with the moment.
BOOM.
The shot cracked once.
It crossed the distance with impossible precision, threading gaps no auspex could chart.
Pop.
A command officer's head vanished.
The round ricocheted—deflected by armor, redirected by fate—
Pop.
Another fell.
Not in a line.
But a sequence.
The projectile struck the exposed ring beneath a Leman Russ' turret at the exact instant its stabilizers compensated for recoil.
Creak!
Metal failed.
The turret slewed sideways and discharged wildly—
BOOM!
The shell tore into the Rogal Dorn advancing ahead of it.
Armor ruptured.
Ammunition cooked off.
Men and iron vanished together, swallowed by fire in the space of a heartbeat.
Shadowgaze did not linger on the destruction.
She repeated the sequence.
Once.
Then again.
Each shot demanded more—more alignment, more restraint, more precision than the last.
The lattice resisted her touch now, probabilities stiffening as the enemy adapted.
By the third shot, her vision trembled.
By the fifth, her breath came sharp and ragged beneath her helm.
She forced two more shots through clenched teeth, emerald light stuttering along the rifle's spine as sweat burned into her eyes—
BOOM!
A flak round from a Hydra detonated just short of her cover.
The blast ripped the scale plate loose and hurled Shadowgaze backward, sending her tumbling into a shallow crater.
She hit hard.
Dust flooded her lungs as she coughed, blood flecking her breath.
For a heartbeat, the world rang hollow.
Rage cut through the haze.
She seized the fallen scale with a snarl and threw.
Psychic force slammed into it, ripping it skyward as she dropped to one knee and braced her rifle against her thigh.
PEW!
She fired.
PEW! PEW! PEW!
Again.
Again.
Each round struck true, emerald light flaring as wraithbone and field resonance fed back into the scale. Lightning crawled across its surface, screaming under the strain as it accelerated faster—then faster still.
KOOOOM!
The scale became a line of annihilation.
It tore through the packed ranks below, carving a straight, brutal corridor before slamming into the Hydra.
White light swallowed everything.
When the shockwave passed, troops staggered blindly, screams breaking into panic where formation had been.
Shadowgaze collapsed back against the crater wall, staring up at the ash-choked sky, every breath a fight as exhaustion clawed at her limbs.
But the corridor still held.
She let her head roll to the side.
The world was upside down—blurred shapes moving through smoke and fire.
Allies ran where they could, breaking formation, diving into craters, dragging the wounded with them as shells walked the ground behind them.
Some stumbled.
Some did not get back up.
They weren't advancing.
They were surviving.
—
Then,
something moved at the edge of her vision.
Two shapes—too fast, too low—cutting through the smoke and fire behind her.
Shadowgaze frowned, trying to focus.
Her vision lagged, refused to resolve them into anything sensible.
They weren't armored.
They weren't running.
They flowed—vanishing into craters, reappearing closer, impossibly closer, each time she blinked.
For a moment, she couldn't tell what they were.
Then she felt it.
Not through sight—but through the battlefield itself.
Shadowgaze let out a short, breathless laugh.
"Ha—"
It caught, turned rough in her throat.
"Ha ha ha."
Of course.
The carrion always came once the bodies began to pile.
—
The ground trembled.
Smoke and dust cloud ahead, but its eyes could see what was behind.
An opportunity. A hunting ground.
Heat had bloomed ahead—engines screaming, flesh packed tight around metal that bled noise and lightning.
The air tasted thick with propellant, scorched soil, and fear-sweat.
Good.
The thing settled into the crater and observed.
Stillness was not waiting.
Stillness was listening.
Metal felt wrong now. Power coursed through it like exposed veins, every machine broadcasting itself in pulses and pressure.
They were loud.
Blind.
Unaware of how visible they had become.
Something moved behind.
But The thing did not turn.
The other thing was already there.
Pressure shifted.
Heat spiked.
Footfalls came in a rhythm too even, too confident—prey that did not yet know it was being hunted.
The thing burst forward.
The leap was short.
Violent.
It struck the rear of the machine and clung—not to armor, but to the places where strain gathered. Where heat leaked. Where flesh clustered to keep the metal alive.
A hatch opened—ripped opened.
Claws were already inside.
Sound sharpened—
then ended.
The thing did not linger.
It took what mattered—warm, useful—and dropped away before the machine finished dying.
Behind it, something heavy burned.
Ahead, something heavier still had not noticed.
The thing turned its head, not to see, but to feel.
More heat.
More noise.
More bodies.
The hunt had begun and The thing felt the order before it heard it.
A tightening.
A realignment.
Crimson lines shifted ahead—core infantry locking formation, red-marked armor clustering around sources of heat and command-pulse.
Vox traffic thickened, sharp and repetitive, patterns trying to impose meaning on noise.
Too late.
The thing moved low, slipping through dead ground as Crimson elements surged forward—rifles raised, ranks closing, discipline hardening into something brittle.
They did not see it pass beneath them.
The thing climbed instead.
Not up.
In.
A Crimson Zamrad anchor pulsed ahead—twenty bodies moving as one, their commander signal burning steady and bright. Too bright.
The wrong kind of certainty.
The thing struck where the signal converged.
Armor parted.
Sound spiked.
Then fractured.
The Commander's pulse vanished.
The Zamrad faltered.
Only a fraction of a second.
The other thing was already there.
Pressure flared along the flank—Verdigris recon attempting to redeploy, green-marked units breaking pattern as something moved through their blind zones faster than doctrine allowed.
Shots rang out.
They hit nothing.
"—enemies breached the ranks—"
The thing tore free and dropped into the shadow of a Tremolite support rig, its power core roaring with heat and vibration.
"Fire support at the back! Back—back!"
Hands—human hands—scrambled to turn weapons never meant to face inward.
Wrong.
The rig went silent.
"This is Crimson Zamrad Nine. Our commander is down, repeat—commander is—"
Farther back, an Ivory-marked node brightened—command attempting to reassert cohesion.
Orders layered.
Authority snapped downward, forcing alignment through sheer will.
"Hold your ground! Crimson units, reform! Reform—"
The thing felt the structure stiffen.
Then crack.
Crimson units ran where they should have held.
Signals overlapped.
Commands contradicted.
"Xenos monsters—!"
Fire lashed through smoke that answered with claws.
The thing paused only long enough to taste the field.
More heat to the right.
More noise behind.
The only sound the prey heard was the clicking of beaks.
The thing cared nothing for colors.
All bodies bled.
All insides tasted the same.
Crack—fwoom!
The ground beneath them split apart.
Stone sheared. Dirt collapsed inward.
Heat bled up from below as the earth gave way in a violent surge.
The thing climbed over the fallen debris with ease, claws finding purchase where footing should not have existed.
Dust billowed.
Then settled.
A figure emerged from the rupture, coughing hard as ash and grit tore from his lungs.
"Cough—cough!"
He straightened, arm hanging wrong, eyes glowing faintly through the haze as he took in the scene before him.
The thing regarded the figure with irritated recognition.
The figure squinted.
"Holy Terra," he rasped.
Then, after a beat—
"You two look scary as hell."
"Told you," Kochav added, stepping out of the crater,
boots crunching over broken stone as his eyes swept the carnage.
"It was a great idea."
He glanced between the bodies, the shattered rigs, the smoking silhouettes where order had died.
"Having fun?" he asked.
—
"Your timing is unexpected, Monke'igh," the thing replied, dropping down to meet him.
It landed lightly amid the wreckage, talons flexing as its twin beaks clicked in unison.
"But your humor is," it continued, head tilting,
"as always, disappointing."
—
"Well," Kochav said lightly, pointing past them toward the Spire,
"were you expecting that?"
The two Kroots stiffened as one.
Spines along their backs flared, quills rising in instinctive alarm as something vast and wrong rippled through the air.
BOOOOM!
A thunderous tremor rolled out from the Spire, the ground heaving as dust and charged debris were hurled skyward.
Electricity screamed.
Every machine within range died in unison—engines choking, weapon systems locking mid-cycle.
Auspex displays spasmed, flooded with impossible returns—
then shattered violently into dead glass and sparks.
The dead zone convulsed.
Space itself seemed to tear as containment failed, fields collapsing inward with a soundless violence that made the air ache.
The last four kilometers surrounding the Spire imploded—
not into silence,
but into storm.
An electromagnetic maelstrom bloomed outward, lightning crawling through ash and ruin as the battlefield was swallowed whole.
—
Reyvis stood on the balcony, unmoving, as the battlefield revealed itself.
The anchor sites were gone—craters burned deep into the earth where dead zones had once been threaded with intent.
Between them, his enemy's forces lay shattered, bodies and wreckage strewn in chaotic arcs where order had briefly failed.
Almost annihilated.
He adjusted the monocular, bringing the rest of the field into focus.
His own forces.
What remained of them.
The five minutes had elapsed.
Twenty thousand Xarcarions lay dead or broken across the plain—armor gutted, formations erased, command chains severed in the storm,
an acceptable loss, given the variables.
He lowered the monocular.
And turned from the railing, utterly untroubled.
Within the Spire, the reserves waited.
Three times the number.
—
The storm settled.
Shadowgaze lay where she had fallen, back against shattered stone, the sky above her a churning smear of ash and lightning.
Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths. Every muscle screamed in protest.
Boots crunched nearby.
She didn't turn her head.
A presence knelt beside her—close enough that the pressure in her skull eased, just slightly.
The screaming static at the edge of her senses dulled, retreating like a tide drawn back by an unseen force.
Mira.
Hand—steady, grounded—closed around Shadowgaze's arm.
Another set of boots stepped beside them.
Helsin, his face streaked with dust and blood that was not all his own.
"You're alive." he said quietly.
—
"So are you."
Shadowgaze gritted her teeth and tried to pulled herself up but failed.
Mira hauled her upright, slow and deliberate, easing her back against a slab of broken armor that still radiated heat.
The storm pressed in from every direction—but around her, it thinned, its edge blunted by the Null's silent gravity.
Around them, the survivors gathered in loose knots.
Wounded abhumans and Xenos binding one another without words.
Weapons dragged from the fallen and passed hand to hand.
No one raised their voice.
The Spire dominated the horizon.
Its silhouette was unchanged—vast, arrogant, untouched—lightning crawling along its surface as the electromagnetic storm crowned it in wrath.
Helsin stared at it for a long moment.
"They think they've broken us," he said.
Mira did not look away from the Spire.
She simply tightened her grip on Shadowgaze's arm.
Shadowgaze felt it—grounding, absolute.
"They're wrong," Helsin continued.
—
Shadowgaze exhaled slowly, feeling the storm grind against her senses—and fail to fully claim her.
"Not all our cards are on the table yet," she said.
And the war continued.