Wind howled in agony as Team 13 stood along the serrated edge of Zone 28. War flags billowed along the corrupted skies. Dimensional rifts slithered across the horizon like festering wounds, bleeding twisted energies into reality.
This was no longer training. This was war.
Lucifer tied his black uniform. Soldiers drafted behind him, lines of the Dark Unification Army deploying. Blood, ozone, and something far worse. Something not of this world fell upon the air.
"Zone 28 breach in fewer than fifteen minutes," Neron stated, eyes closed, measuring the interval by some otherworldly intuition.
Velra snorted, clicking her fingers to buff her spatial rings. "Time enough to kill or be killed."
Mira leaned against her staff. "Stay close. If one of you dies, I'll necromance your corpse to punish the next idiot to follow."
Lucifer smiled, eyes distant. He could feel it. The Rift was stirring. His hundred skeletal knights, archers and mages stood behind them, stiff as statues carved in grief.
Then the sky screamed.
A scarlet tear ripped across the field of battle. The veil of dimensions burst like wet canvas. Through it flowed the enemy: wraiths clad in rusty plate, shadowbeasts with lava-burning eyes, floating bone constructs that spoke ancient tongues.
"Contact! Squad 13, shoot!"
Velra vanished, reappearing in mid-air as a spatial blade cut an oncoming beast in twain. Blood and shadow mist sprayed as she sliced through the void-spawn cleanly.
Neron raised his hand. Time moved at a crawl. Spells and arrows remained in mid-air as he indicated a group of constructs running towards him.
"Three seconds delay! Lucifer, now!"
Lucifer bellowed.
A wave of skeletal archers unleashed barrages of bone-headed arrows loaded with soul poison. The constructs stumbled, caught in the dragging pace of time, their cores exploding under the lethal fire.
From her flank, Mira summoned spectral vines. They contorted and cracked, draining life from whatever they touched. A wraith shrieked as it was destroyed.
Zarien, Ruler of Death's Magus, summoned a spear of darkened fire. He impaled three charging creatures, a savage grin distorting his face.
"You're not so bad, necro-boy," he growled begrudgingly. "Not as useless as I thought."
Lucifer gave a smile. "Great praise from a man who washes in the ash of a cadaver."
Despite the conflict, their structure was not broken.
Syrelle's minion, Velra, pinned down enemy squads with her spatial freezes. Neron measured timing and openings like a chess grandmaster. Mira offered mid-line presence and healing bursts. Zarien cut through frontline enemies, leaving behind burning craters. And Lucifer? He held it all together—calling in reinforcements, revivifying fallen undead, and orchestrating attacks like a conductor of death.
Hours ticked by. Cries became the background.
When it at last came to an end, Zone 28 was a horizon of smoldering ruins and spastic bodies. Of the eighteen units deployed, only ten made it back in working order.
Team 13 huddled on the edge of a shattered ridge, winded and bruised.
"Remind me." Mira panted, disentangling her hair from a clotted blood mat, "why we enlisted with this insane army."
Lucifer chuckled weakly. "To take over the world, of course?
Velra leaned back, looking out over the shattered sky. "It's becoming worthwhile."
Zarien snorted, but didn't argue. Instead, he tossed Lucifer a can. For once, he didn't see him as a rival.
Blood had forged the union. Team 13 had survived the Crimson March.
But the Rift remained wide open.
And the real war had just begun.