The storm howled against the compound as if the night itself had chosen sides. Rain hammered the steel, a furious rhythm echoing through the vast underground base. Elara stood alone before the glowing monitors, her silver-streaked hair catching the cold light of the screens.
The red markers crawled across the digital map — enemy units advancing from the northern sector. But one marker moved differently. Calm. Unhurried. As if the storm parted for them alone.
She magnified the feed. The camera strained against static, caught in the lightning flashes. A figure strode through the floodlit streets, rain running down a dark cloak. The hood slipped, and in that instant the world shattered.
Eyes. The same shape. The same piercing color she had seen once before, long ago — eyes that had stared up at her in the brief moment before the council tore everything away.
Her chest seized. The ash of her forgotten cigarette fell to the desk.
*No…*
But the storm did not lie.
Her child was alive.
"Boss?" Kain's voice broke into the silence as he pushed through the door, soaked from the storm. "The enemy is advancing. Do we deploy the perimeter squads?"
She did not answer. Her hand pressed against the screen as if she could reach through the glass and touch that face. Older now. Hardened. But blood recognized blood.
Kain stepped closer, his voice edged with urgency. "Boss—"
"Hold the line," she cut him off, her voice low and sharp as broken steel. "No one moves without my command."
Kain's jaw clenched, but he obeyed. He had seen her like this only once before — the night she buried her last weakness. And now it was back, dragging itself out of the grave.
Elara's eyes burned into the figure on the screen until another alert flared. A transmission request. Enemy signal. Scrambled but deliberate.
She accepted it. The monitors shifted, static resolving into a face she had prayed never to see again.
Councilor Varrek. The betrayer. The man whose gavel had sentenced her to exile, whose word had branded her *Phantom*. His face was older, crueler, but his smile was still poison.
"Elara," he said, voice smooth and venomous, "how long it has been."
Her fingers curled into fists. "You should have stayed buried."
His smile widened. "Oh, but the dead never rest, do they? Especially not *your dead.*"
He stepped aside, revealing the hooded figure standing behind him. Lightning illuminated the features. The same eyes. The same blood.
Elara's heart pounded, but she did not flinch.
"You see them, don't you?" Varrek taunted. "The life you thought lost. The life you were denied. And now, mine to command."
The hooded figure stood silent, rain dripping from their cloak. There was no recognition in their stare — only defiance.
Varrek leaned closer to the screen, his smile slicing through her composure. "Surrender your empire, Phantom Queen. Bend the knee, or I will break your bloodline before your very eyes."
The storm roared, rattling the compound as Elara's reflection glared back at her from the glass — pale, fierce, trembling with a fury that no mask could contain.
Her empire. Her war. Her legend. None of it mattered now.
Because the one thing she had buried had been unearthed — not as salvation, but as a weapon aimed at her heart.
Elara's lips curved into a cold, lethal smile. "Then let the storm decide who breaks first."
The monitors flickered, the transmission cut, and the thunder outside rose like the drums of war.
The Phantom Queen had been threatened.
But those who threatened her never lived long enough to savor the victory.