The sun was dying over Elora, and there wasn't a damn thing peaceful about it. From up on the outer walls and watch towers, even from the war room balcony, you could see it bleeding across the sky—this angry wound of light pushing through all that smoke hanging in the air.
Everything looked burnt orange and deep red, like the whole world was on fire. Beautiful in its own brutal way, just like this harsh mountain country the Ashari called home.
The wind never stopped howling up here, reminding everyone just how cold and unforgiving this place could be.
That massive shield dome protecting Elora caught what was left of the daylight, bending it like some giant piece of glass stretched over the mountain. Elora herself sat tucked into the mountainside, most of her hidden deep underground—a masterpiece of engineering that seemed to grow right out of the rock.
Tonight, this fortress of steel and stone was locked down tight for war.
Out there in the mist-covered valley, you could see them. The Omniraith swarm moved like a dark wall, shifting and flowing like some mechanical ocean that just kept coming. These things didn't see organic life as something to coexist with—no, to them, everything alive was just mess that needed cleaning up, chaos that had to be turned into their cold, perfect order.
They didn't just want to conquer. They wanted to consume everything, turn it all into fuel for their war machine. Hell, they wanted to rewrite reality itself, turn the whole world into nothing but code.
Micah Satya stood on one of the outer platforms, staring west at the nightmare spreading across the horizon.
Something was stirring inside Micah, and it wasn't good. The Hollow was pulsing again—not talking like it had when he'd been deep under the Thornkin forest, but breathing through him somehow.
It didn't feel like fear exactly. It felt like something that was always going to happen, no matter what.
That strange energy connected to the Hollow signal, and that word the thing had whispered in the depths—"steelborn"—it all echoed inside him now. Made him wonder if the Omniraith weren't just coming for Elora. Maybe they were coming for him. And maybe they had good reason to.
The thought of becoming like them—cold, mechanical, empty of everything that made him human—that scared the hell out of him. But the fear didn't paralyze him. Instead, it gave him something to fight for: hope, redemption, maybe even a shot at a better future. His mind drifted to what was coming.
The Ashari ground troops were already in position, sorted by sector, all wearing that adaptive exo-armor. Commander Sol had been clear about their mission: "Your job isn't to win... Your job is to survive. Until dawn."
Inside Elora, everyone waited in the quiet. Lights dimmed. Nobody could fire yet—the shield worked both ways.
Miles away in the Railgun control bunker, Commander Sol was running through final checks. Energy readings kept climbing. The whole mountain hummed with the sound of power flowing through underground conduits, like the place was alive and breathing.
Sol's focus never wavered. On the outside, he looked like every other Ashari leader—stoic, practical, keeping his emotions locked down tight. But inside, he was thinking about his daughter, evacuated hours ago. He knew his job wasn't just about efficiency and survival. It was about protecting his people.
Sol's voice stayed steady when he spoke, carrying that typical Ashari tone—precise, direct, no wasted words. He'd been the one to deliver the updated readings about the Core Nexus, confirming it was mobilizing.
That changed everything. The pressure was enormous, but they had to trust in Ashari ingenuity, Myrvane strength, and Thornkin magic. This alliance might be fragile, but it was all they had, and they were going to fight as one.
The last bit of sun slipped behind the peaks. The sky went from fire-gold to the color of dark steel. The super shield glowed brighter, a beacon cutting through the growing darkness.
Then, on the ridgeline, the first shadow appeared. The Titan-class spider walker rose into view, easily as tall as a mountain. Its legs threw sparks every time they hit stone. Its belly glowed with the heat of a furnace. Weapon arrays, drone pods, and emitters covered every inch of the thing. Behind it, waves of drone swarms crawled up the mountain like a black tide washing over everything.
The enemy had arrived.
The sun was down. The war was beginning.
The real night was just getting started.
Deep beneath Elora's mountain fortress, the defense levels hummed with barely contained energy. Every engine purred, every conduit thrummed—the mountain itself seemed to be holding its breath.
he air tasted of ozone and recycled coolness, thick enough to make your lungs work for it.
Five thousand Ashari ground troops waited in the shadows. Their exo-armor caught what little light there was, all grays and blacks—nothing flashy, everything built to keep you alive in the wasteland above. Magnetic rifles hung ready across shoulders, anti-drone nets stacked in neat piles, glyph-enhanced grenades clipped within easy reach. These weren't parade soldiers. They were the ones who'd hold the line when everything went to hell.
Commander Sol's words still echoed in their heads from the briefing hours ago: **"Your job isn't to win. Your job is to survive. Until dawn." Grim? Sure. But that was the Ashari way—face the ugly truth head-on and work with what you've got.
Red emergency lighting bathed the corridors, turning the massive staging bays into something out of a fever dream. Power conservation, they called it.
The troops' breath came out in small puffs that vanished almost as quickly—the only proof that living, breathing people waited in all that mechanical silence.
Somewhere in the depths of the fortress, Lio Venn was looking over data streams, watching numbers that told him how close they were to complete disaster. The kid's optimism had been taking a beating lately, ground down by too much reality and not enough hope. He understood the tech, though—every wire and circuit that kept Elora's massive shield dome humming above them.
Down in frontline, Kaelin Vorr stood among the siege walkers, jaw tight with frustration. "I don't like how still they are," he muttered, staring out at the valley where the Omniraith swarm waited like a held breath.
Lio's voice drifted over the comm, analytical as always: "That's what predators do before they strike. They hold." The Omniraith didn't see them as people—just chaos that needed organizing, organic messiness that had to be cleaned up and converted into something more... orderly.
They wanted to rewrite the world in code and call it improvement.
Minutes crawled by thick as syrup. The only sounds were Elora's mechanical heartbeat and the occasional mountain wind finding its way through cracks in the stone.
Some families huddled in the deeper levels, evacuated hours ago. Some are sent into their last stronghold 50 miles from Elora. Engineers said prayers to whatever gods listened to people who worked with reactors.
Then it happened.
Miles away on the ridgeline, something massive rose into view. The Titan-class spider walker's belly glowed like a forge, hot enough to melt stone.
The plasma beam came without warning—a red line of pure destruction that crossed the distance in a heartbeat and slammed into their shield.
From outside, maybe it looked almost peaceful. Just light bending weird, like looking through water.
Inside Elora, the whole mountain screamed.
Not a tremor or a shake—a full-body convulsion that went right through rock and steel and bone. Ceiling stones cracked and fell.
Lights stuttered and died, plunging whole sections into darkness. In the older parts of the fortress, entire rooms collapsed with sounds like the world ending.
The troops grabbed whatever they could find to stay upright, armor clanking against vibrating walls. Micah stumbled on his platform, vision blurring as he caught himself on the railing.
Deep below, people cried out and held each other tight. An Ashari mother pulled her son close and whispered fiercely: "The mountain doesn't fall. We built it that way."
Then, as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped. Dust settled. Emergency systems kicked back in with their familiar hum, though it sounded strained now, like an old man trying to catch his breath.
The shield held. Barely.
Everyone waited for the next hit—the one that would punch through and let the real nightmare begin. The first shot had been fired.
The war was here.