There was no time for a final council, no moment for a last, lingering doubt. The Whisper Locket's message had shattered their carefully constructed timeline. The opportunity was now—a perfect, unexpected window of vulnerability. To hesitate was to fail.
"Go!" Draven's command was a blade that cut through the keep's tense quiet. The controlled, methodical preparation of the past two days exploded into a surge of focused, high-speed action. Kara was a blur of motion, grabbing the pre-packed assault kits. Jaxon shouldered the shaped charges, his face a grim mask of determination. Rico and Leo, their eyes wide but filled with a burning resolve, armed themselves with scavenged swords.
They moved out under the cloak of a moonless night, a ghost unit swallowed by the darkness. This was not a cautious scout; it was a high-speed insertion, a surgical strike aimed at the heart of their enemy. Draven's mind was a maelstrom of recalibration, adjusting his multi-phase plan to fit the new, accelerated timetable.
They reached the rally point, a wooded ridge overlooking Voss's sprawling, torch-lit camp, in record time. The camp was a hive of activity, but it was focused on a large, open area near the command tent. Voss was indeed testing his "primary specimen." This was it. The point of no return.
Draven pulled up his interface, the Whisper Locket's icon glowing. He sent a single, coded symbol to his spy, Marcus. The signal. It meant: Unleash hell.
For a moment, nothing happened. The tension on the ridge was a physical thing, a held breath. Then, from the far side of the camp, came a sound—the splintering crack of heavy wood, followed by a chorus of enraged, terrified roars.
The tamers had acted. Marcus had kept his word.
The chaos was instantaneous and beautiful in its brutal efficiency. The sounds of panicked shouts, screaming men, and the rampage of a dozen freed beasts tore through the camp. Torches scattered as soldiers ran, their disciplined formations dissolving into a panicked mob. The internal sabotage was a success. Phase one was complete.
"That's our cue," Draven said, his voice a low, steady anchor in the chaos. "Jaxon, the wall. Kara, find your perch. Everyone else, on me."
They moved down the ridge like shadows. While the bulk of Voss's forces were drawn toward the rampage, the western palisade was, as Rico had promised, almost completely deserted. Jaxon placed the shaped charges against the wall, his movements precise and economical.
"Fire in the hole," he murmured, and triggered the detonator.
The explosion was not a loud, messy blast, but a controlled, muffled thump. A perfect, man-sized section of the wall simply fell inward, a clean, surgical breach. Phase two was a go.
They poured through the opening and into the heart of the storm. The camp was a nightmare of fire, blood, and confusion. Panicked soldiers were running in every direction, some fighting the rampaging beasts, others simply trying to escape. This was not a battle; it was a rout, and Draven's team was the scalpel cutting through the chaos.
Kael and the Rune-Hound were a whirlwind of fangs and claws, a two-headed wolf pack that tore through any pocket of resistance that got in their way. Jaxon was a human bulldozer, his massive shield scattering panicked soldiers like bowling pins, his axe clearing their path. Kara was a ghost in the flickering shadows, her Essence-Disruptor arrows silent, invisible questions that were answered with the full stop of a crumpling body. Rico and Leo, fighting with the desperate fury of men reclaiming their freedom, used their knowledge of the camp to guide them, pointing out the quickest, most direct path to their objective.
They reached the rift-spawn lab, a large, sinister-looking tent, its flaps sealed tight. Just as Marcus had promised, it was defended by a skeleton crew of only four guards, their attention fixed on the chaos outside. They never even saw Draven's team coming. The takedown was a silent, brutal ballet of efficiency.
They sliced through the tent flap and stepped inside. The chaos of the outside world was replaced by a strange, sterile silence. The air was cold, smelling of antiseptic and a strange, otherworldly energy. A few lesser rift-spawn were contained in glowing, energy-cages, their malformed bodies twitching and spasming. And at the center of the lab, chained to a large worktable covered in horrifying diagrams, was a man.
He was thin, with the pale, haunted look of a long-term prisoner, his spirit clearly broken. But his eyes, when they looked up at them, held a flicker of a brilliant, desperate intellect. This was the scholar, Elias.
"We're getting you out of here," Kara said, her voice a soft, reassuring sound in the sterile quiet.
As she moved to break his chains, a new voice, dripping with a cold, amused fury, echoed from the back of the tent.
"I think not," it said.
Malik Voss himself stepped from the shadows. He was a mountain of a man, clad in black, rune-etched armor, a massive, two-handed sword resting on his shoulder. And he was not alone. At his side was a hulking figure in dark, hooded robes, its face hidden in shadow, its hands crackling with a malevolent, purple energy. It was a summoner. An enemy summoner.
The variables had just shifted again. The simple extraction had just become a boss fight.