Arjun narrowed his eyes as he looked through the scope.

The battle raged on, fierce—blood hung in the air, limbs torn from bodies and flung across the snowy field, staining the fortress walls and ground below in splashes of red.

And yet... all of it moved slower to him.

Even the sound, when it finally reached, felt stretched—drawn out in unnatural echoes. Vibrations lingered longer than they should. But it had already been weeks. Maybe months.

This… this was his world now.

And he had adapted.

If there was one thing it had taught him—it was patience.

He remained still, breath calm, his aim fixed on the duel atop the fortress wall. Imani and the four-tailed beast moved within a brutal clash of force and speed.

Imani's steps were weighted, his form straining against the pressure of the Commander's domain. Slower. Heavy. But he made up for it with sheer force.

His shield was always where it had to be, and his warhammer—surrounded by crackling sparks—gained an eerie momentum mid-swing, accelerating just before impact. That sudden burst of speed caught the Xok'al off guard, and even its defenses trembled beneath the hammer's aftershock, a wave of force that numbed limbs and cracked bone. Imani pressed the opening, shifting the rhythm of the fight—until the Commander's EM force field bore down again.

Arjun shifted slightly, scope gliding. He spotted Wang not far off—already mid-stride.

A four-tail had locked onto him, but Wang moved like thunder—his Mech frame blurring through the fray, three-tails falling around him in streaks of motion and slashes of steel. He was easing the pressure on the defenders, one blow at a time.

The Commander tried to break off, to chase weaker targets, but Wang's armor flared with that same shock-coated gleam as Imani's warhammer. Speed surged through him. In a blink, he was there, cutting down anyone too slow to move. The Commander couldn't stop it. Couldn't follow. Just watched as his kind were carved down.

Arjun adjusted again, letting the scope sweep wider. He caught a glimpse of that serious lad with short hair, Maurice.

A three-tail's axe-shaped limb came down fast, and for a moment Arjun thought the lad's arm was gone. But the blade didn't cut deep—barely left a mark. Maurice didn't flinch. He countered cleanly, severing the creature's throat with one sharp swing of his machete.

Scattered among the melee, several Ajnal warriors were also holding their own against Commander-level threats.

That same spark-like glow Imani and Wang used shimmered faintly along their armor and weapons.

Was that the Ajnal's core technique? The one akin to their Azcoyatl's Sun Pulse?

His eye twitched remembering something.

Where was Ishaam?

He searched for a moment longer but didn't find the kid. Too weak to join the war, maybe. Well… perhaps that was for the best.

For Arjun, time crawled forward. But outside, only a few seconds had passed.

Then—he received the pulse. The one he'd been waiting for.

"You can start. Give Imani space with the first."

Finally. Lukas' order.

At least the EM pulses came through clean as he processed them—none of that sluggish drag regular sound carried.

Arjun exhaled, leaning his long-barrel sniper onto the frozen ground. His scope tightened on the first target.

He waited. Then waited more.

Now.

He activated a Sun Pulse variation—Chiara's adaptation of the skill made specifically for him. All his mental subnodes flared in sync, focusing into a single moment. The energy rippled down through the coils around the barrel.

The bullet left the chamber and passed through seven magnetic rings, each one compressing and accelerating the round. It completely shattered the sound barrier.

Even in his warped temporal perception, he barely saw the outcome.

The bullet punched clean through the Commander's skull.

It didn't stop there—tore through the thick fortress stone behind it.

The beast collapsed instantly.

Imani didn't seem that surprised. Just nodded once and kept going after the next.

Guess Lukas had communicated with him already.

"One more. Relocate to marked coordinates after."

Arjun processed the second pulse calmly and sent back confirmation.

He swept past the one Wang had pinned—the Xok'al likely already knew his rough position by now. They shared information quickly, so this one would be prepared for it.

In no mood for a shot to end in nothing but a kill, Arjun picked one at the far edge of the fort—a Commander battling a group of Ajnal, aiming to breach the mounted EM cannon.

The chaos around meant most only had moments to act, decisions made on instinct, reactions sharpened by desperation.

But Arjun?

He had time.

Time to track the arc of every twitch in that creature's stance, the flare of its pulse, the brief opening between slashes.

And time to let the coils around his barrel charge to full.

The pressure grew. The mind strain kicked in. Still… not yet.

He let it build further—his own version of patience stretched to its limit.

Then he fired with another Sun Pulse.

Another pulse of mental strain hit him, faint but sharp. The skill burned at the mind, even in brief use. But he bore it.

The bullet tore through the creature's chest—straight through the heart.

Without delay, he pulled the EM-cloaked and camouflage coat tight around his body and began to move, slipping from the snow-covered ridge toward the next 3D coordinate Lukas had sent him.

Meanwhile, atop a cave not far from the raging battle, hidden from sight, were two figures dressed in diplomatic Azcoyatl clothing.

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Lukas' eyes narrowed as he scanned the ongoing conflict—not with his eyes alone, but with the steady stream of EM pulses his mind emitted and received, each one coded, deciphered, and filed in less than a blink.

"Wang, intercept the Commander aiming for EM Cannon at B3."

A moment later—

"Imani, there's a Sun Bearer fighting a Commander at the coordinates I'm sending. Join him, then move toward the eastern narrow and reinforce the gate."

Another thread—another incoming ping, processed, weighed.

"Maurice, fall back. You're drawing too much aggro. A four-tail is heading your way. Follow the marked path I just sent and stay low until told otherwise."

His commands weren't constant. He gave them room to adapt. But still—holding the entire battle together, guiding their movements while shielding the Climbers' lives, was quite demanding.

Even with Chiara offloading key signals, distilling battlefield metrics into compressed bursts of priority updates, it stretched the limits. Her three minds ran in parallel, each managing a specific layer—enemy flow mapping, ally positioning, and command pulse buffering—feeding Lukas only what mattered, exactly when it mattered.

"I'm on point, Commander."

Ishaam?.

"Good. I need you to relay the following pulse to the fort's commander. Let him know it's from Chiara—the Azcoyatl High Priest sent as reinforcement."

"Understood, Commander."

Meanwhile, one of Chiara's minds stirred with curiosity.

"Why didn't I send it myself?"

Lukas shook his head. "If you send it, they'll register you as a nearby high-value combat asset. That makes you part of their tactical equation—someone they might request assistance from or reposition. Using Ishaam lets us control the tempo of the communication. We decide when you're seen, when you act, and how you enter. On our terms—not theirs."

Chiara nodded and said no more. Curious as she was, she would follow Lukas' judgment without hesitation… no matter what he asked for.

"Lukas, we are at the marked position."

Lukas nodded, gaze fixed on the sky. Mei's squad was already stationed aboard the cloaked platform hovering high above. He couldn't see them with the naked eye—no one could—but he didn't need to.

He built that platform himself after all.

He had every coordinate, altitude, and orientation of each member synced into his field map, their vitals and pulse signatures pulsing against the thread of his upper mind like clockwork.

"Good. Hold position and await my signal."

He pulsed another line across the network. "Jun, status?"

"We lost two buffers and with them fifty-six drones, but the rest are in place. Network integrity stable at 92%."

"Not bad," Lukas said casually. "Forget those metal scraps. Prioritise your safety and maintain stealth mode. Feedback comms minimal."

"Roger."

Lukas leaned back slightly, scanning the field like a conductor awaiting the final note of a grand composition. Death spun its symphony across the land, and he was only moments away from striking the last chord.

He gave out a few more pulses, short and precise. Each pinged off custom relays embedded in the terrain—some carved into jagged rock, others riding along false EM echoes disguised as battlefield clutter. Dozens of disposable cloaked clones had been deployed minutes earlier to plant those devices.

Then it came.

"Done."

Lukas smiled.

"Chiara?"

Not even a full second passed before his pulse field responded—Chiara's three minds processed the full resonance data, cross-referenced ambient wave interference, enemy frequency convergence, and biofield resistance decay in real-time.

She returned dozens of critical metrics with precision down to six decimal places.

He didn't even blink.

"Perfect."

Lukas snapped his fingers—just a reflex, a nod to some ancient drama show he used to watch.

"And God said," Lukas whispered, amused, as he sent the confirmation pulse. "Let there be light."

High above, Mei's Awakening flooded the sky with cascading resonance—a broad-spectrum EM bloom that fooled the Xok'al's harmonics through bands of frequency they couldn't perceive.

A fraction of a second later, Camila's pulse threaded through the net—her Awakening allowed her to generate and control EM pulses far from her, as if they had originated from her mind itself. She could bend EM signals already in the field, modifying Mei's waveforms even after they had left their point of origin.

That made her the fuse.

And Lukas?

He was the architect.

Each planted device—hidden beneath the snow, lodged in boulders, tucked behind broken barriers—triggered in perfect unison, discharging pulses in a syncopated, cascading pattern designed to pierce the Xok'al's mental defenses.

It wasn't brute force. It was resonance interference.

Neural inversion. Pattern jamming. Phase distortion layered on a spike of cascading overload—just enough to bypass their innate resistances, then burn them from the inside out.

The result?

Three seconds of nothing.

Then… silence.

Below four tails, every Xok'al in the battlefield dropped dead, gaze lost.

No explosion. No blood. Just… silence.

Lukas tilted his head, watching the aftermath roll in across the battlefield.

"Not bad for a test run."

The dozen or so Commander-class Xok'al left became agitated, shrieking in disarray as sudden silence blanketed the field. Surprise flickered across the Ajnal ranks—but only for an instant.

Then came the roar.

The Sun Bearers surged forward, radiant sparks flaring across their armor, blades arcing through the air, ganging up on the disoriented Commanders. The remaining Xok'al broke formation, some leaping off the cliffs and down the slopes in retreat.

But the Ajnal gave chase, hurling themselves from the fortress after them, feet crunching against fractured stone and ice-crusted rubble.

Below, the snowfield was no longer white—streaks of blackened slush and charred ash marred the surface, broken by heaps of motionless Xok'al.

Thousands of them, sprawled in unnatural poses. Some were frozen mid-lunge, mouths agape, limbs twisted as if caught in the act of charging. Others lay face-down or curled, their blank, lidless eyes staring skyward, empty of life.

The Ajnal's pulse-wreathed bodies leapt over the dead without pause, sparks bursting from their armor with every movement.

Their war cries echoed—raw, guttural, triumphant—filling the broken silence left in the wake of the psychic storm.

And yet…

Imani, Wang, and the others stood still atop the fortress walls. Calm. Silent.

Mei's squad atop the platform had already vanished, dashing far into the distance—no longer even on the battlefield.

Arjun held his breath through the scope, eyes scanning from his new position. But he didn't fire a single bullet.

None moved.

They all waited. All followed Lukas' order: Stand by.

The last three EM cannons rumbled to life, and from their mounted platforms, blinding bursts lit the air—ripping through those Xok'al that had not fled fast enough. Thunder cracked. Red and black sprayed like mist.

The Ajnal didn't flinch. They advanced.

But just as the tide seemed theirs—

"AHHHHH!!!"

A sharp, shrill scream.

A Sun Bearer collapsed, impaled clean through by a blade longer than his torso. His body twitched once, then split apart as another was decapitated mid-turn—his helmet and head cleaved together, thudding into the snow with a heavy thunk.

Three more fell in an instant. No one even saw what struck them.

The survivors turned, eyes wide with fear.

They ran.

But the ground beneath them bent.

A field pressed down—like the weight of a collapsing sky. Gravity twisted. Bones creaked. Feet froze mid-step. Some dropped, screaming, clawing at the earth as their limbs refused to obey.

Lukas' eyes narrowed as he locked onto the half-blurred figure.

So… it did appear after all.

The Warden… had arrived.

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