The air in Sector Blackwood did not just smell of ozone anymore; it tasted like pennies and wet ash.
Captain Bartholomew's C-Rank sapphire Gem was no longer humming with its usual pristine, clinical cadence. It was spitting jagged, irregular sparks against his scorched chest harness, its internal cooling matrix struggling to vent the immense heat of his depleted Magic Power (155). Around him, the remnants of Defensive Line Delta were completely disintegrating.
The enemy's Resonance Mortars had found their rhythm. The high-pitched, vibrating whistle had escalated into a continuous, deafening chord that rattled the fillings in Bartholomew's teeth and turned the gray mud beneath his boots into a frantic, dancing slurry.
"Captain!"
Major Sterling's voice barely cut through the sonic chaos. The local commander was dragging himself through a collapsed trench section fifty yards back, his uniform shredded, his face a mask of blood and clay. "The primary reserve line just snapped! The frequency is cascading through the network! The whole valley shield is going to invert!"
Bartholomew didn't look back. His mind was caught in a terrifying, vice-like grip. The sight of the shimmering violet feedback lines running along the trench walls had triggered something buried deep within the dark reservoir of his past-life memories: The 1921 Catastrophe of the Somme Monoliths.
It wasn't a logistical oversight he was remembering; it was a total, unmitigated magical apocalypse. He remembered the precise signature of a localized Aetheric implosion that swallowed three full infantry regiments in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing behind but fused glass and silent, empty armor.
[CRITICAL SYSTEM WARNING: TOTAL RESONANCE SYNC DETECTED. ALLIED SHIELD NETWORK EFFICIENCY: 4%. CASUALTY PREDICTION: 100% WITHIN SECTOR.]
[TRAUMA LEVEL: MAXIMUM. EVOLUTIONARY THRESHOLD INITIATED.]
The inverse amplitude, his mind shrieked, the memory of 1921 clawing at his skull, threatening to tear his consciousness apart. To kill a singing frequency, you don't use a shield. You have to match the scream. You have to break the throat of the machine.
"Sterling!" Bartholomew roared, his voice cracking as he slammed his boots into the vibrating mud. "Order the men to sever their Gem connections! Disconnect everything! Now!"
"If we disconnect, the artillery will shred us!" Sterling screamed back.
"If you don't disconnect, you will turn into ash before the shells even land!"
Bartholomew didn't wait for an answer. He knew the primitive 1912 fluid metal plates couldn't hold an advanced stabilization rune. But he wasn't trying to stabilize the system anymore. He was going to overload it. He was going to use his own body as a raw, unfiltered lightning rod, dragging the entire valley's discordant resonance into his own system.
He sprinted toward the Primary Sector Relay—a massive, iron-reinforced obelisk humming with a blinding, unstable violet light at the center of the command trench. The metal plates were already warping, groaning under the immense pressure of the enemy's frequency attack.
His Endurance (135) was the only thing keeping him upright as the physical feedback of the air began to rupture the blood vessels in his eyes. His vision turned a horrific, bleeding crimson.
I need the B-Rank threshold, he thought, a feral, desperate rage finally overtaking the lingering remnants of his sanity. Vance wanted a field trauma. Let him watch this.
With a guttural scream that was entirely swallowed by the singing air, Bartholomew threw his arms wide and slammed his bare chest directly against the white-hot, vibrating iron face of the master relay.
The Feedback
The impact didn't feel like a shock; it felt like his veins were being filled with liquid fire and crushed glass.
The sapphire C-Rank Gem on his harness shattered down the middle, a jagged crack splitting the core as the entire energy grid of Sector Blackwood found its new, human ground loop. The raw, unfiltered resonance of the enemy's mortars poured straight through the iron obelisk and into Bartholomew's nervous system.
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD. DAMAGE REGISTERED. ENDURANCE BUFFER AT 12%... 8%... 3%...]
[WARNING: MAGIC POWER STABILITY CRITICAL. INTEGRITY FAILURE IN PROGRESS.]
Through the blinding veil of agony, the 1921 memory solidified into perfect, lethal clarity. He saw the geometry of the counter-resonance. It wasn't a defensive rune; it was an aggressive, destructive Aetheric Shockwave Matrix.
He didn't use a field knife. He didn't use an array tool. Bartholomew bit through his own lower lip, using the sudden, sharp spike of physical pain to anchor his fracturing mind, and began to forcefully channel his remaining MP straight into the iron obelisk, forcing the energy to mimic the exact, jagged frequency of his own screaming nervous system.
The violet light of the relay suddenly turned a dark, bruised black.
The air stopped singing. For one fraction of a second, the entire valley fell into an absolute, unnatural silence as the two opposing frequencies perfectly canceled each other out.
Then came the snap.
The Zero Point
The kinetic and magical feedback of the cancellation didn't expand outward; it imploded inward, directly toward the primary relay.
Major Sterling, watching from forty yards away, saw Captain Bartholomew's silhouette engulfed in a sudden, blinding sphere of negative black light. The iron obelisk violently buckled, twisting like wax before shattering into a thousand jagged, metallic shards.
The ground beneath the primary command trench simply vanished, collapsing into a thirty-foot-deep crater of fused, smoking gray glass.
When the dust and the acrid smoke finally settled over Sector Blackwood, the singing mortars were silent. The enemy's frequency attack had been completely broken, the forward batteries ruined by the massive, inverse feedback loop Bartholomew had hurled back down their lines.
But the price had been absolute.
At the bottom of the smoking, glass-lined crater, there was no sapphire blue light. There was no rhythmic hum of a C-Rank Mage. There was only a jagged mound of scorched timber, collapsed earth, and the shattered, blackened remains of an AIC officer's harness, half-buried under a ton of cooling, gray slag.
The trenches of Line Delta were completely quiet. The wind howled through the canyon, carrying the scent of burnt copper and dead ash over the empty crater.