The Crownhold operative had been watching Bright fight Galan for three minutes, tracking patterns, identifying vulnerabilities, waiting for an optimal moment.

His orders were clear: eliminate Estovia Armand and destroy the evidence she carried. Everything else—Academy candidates, Covenant specialists, political optics—was secondary to completing that mission.

But the Academy candidates are defending her, he'd reasoned. Can't reach Estovia while they're coordinated and alert.

So remove the coordination. Kill their leader. Create chaos.

Bright Morgan was the lynchpin. The talent whose spatial foresight tracked everything, whose tactical commands kept the group functioning despite overwhelming odds.

Kill him, and the rest collapse.

The operative moved with professional subtlety, his approach masked by the larger battle's chaos, his blade positioned for a strike to the kidney that would disable his opponent before the killing—it was efficient, quiet, leaving Bright bleeding out while seeming like a random combat casualty.

He closed the distance. Five meters. Three. One.

His strike angle was perfect. The timing was optimal. Bright fully engaged with Galan, his attention divided, his defenses focused forward.

The operative struck—

—and Bright's spatial foresight screamed.

The blade that should have pierced Bright's kidney met extended steel instead, Bright's weapon having repositioned with impossible speed, blocking the backstab while simultaneously maintaining guard against Galan's frontal assault.

"Really?" Bright's voice carried more exhaustion than surprise. "You couldn't even wait until the Covenant was dead before betraying the temporary alliance?"

The operative didn't respond. Just attacked again, committing fully now that subtlety had failed.

Galan recognized the opportunity immediately. "Appreciated!" he called to the Crownhold assassin, his curved blade pressing Bright's defense from opposite angle.

Now Bright faced threats from both sides—Galan in front, the operative behind, both Initiate-level combatants, both coordinating to overwhelm his spatial foresight's defensive capabilities.

This is bad, Bright assessed with crystal clarity. Can't defend two directions simultaneously. Spatial foresight shows possibilities but my enhanced body can only execute one response at a time.

Need support. Need—

"Duncan!" Bright called, already knowing his friend would understand.

Duncan was there instantly, his Bone Guard forming a barrier between Bright and the backstabbing operative, giving Bright a fractional breathing room to focus on Galan.

"Traitor!" Duncan spat at the Crownhold assassin. "We were cooperating against—"

"My orders supersede cooperation," the operative interrupted, his blade already seeking weak points in Duncan's defense. "Nothing personal. Just the mission priority."

The temporary alliance shattered completely.

The other three Crownhold operatives, seeing their leader openly attack Academy candidates, made rapid calculations about whether continuing the charade served their interests.

Two decided *lyes—attacking Academy candidates created more chaos, more opportunities to complete their actual mission of killing Estovia.

One decided no—this was too explicit, too undeniable, would create witness testimony that couldn't be politically managed.

The medical bay's battle fractured into multiple simultaneous engagements, alliances dissolving, everyone fighting everyone, coordination collapsing into pure survival chaos.

-----

The second female Covenant specialist—the one who wasn't the acid spitter—had been engaged by two Crownhold operatives for the past several minutes.

She was good. Initiate-rank with blade techniques that suggested formal training rather than desperate self-teaching. Her core was Phase Shift—ability to make her body briefly intangible, letting attacks pass through her while she remained capable of striking back.

An expensive core. A rare one. The kind the Covenant reserved for specialists they expected to survive high-risk operations.

She'd been contained by the two operatives—not defeated, but prevented from affecting the larger battle, stuck in a defensive pattern that kept her occupied.

Then the lead operative betrayed the Academy candidates.

The two operatives engaging the Phase Shift specialist immediately repositioned—one moving to support their leader's attack on Bright, the other shifting to target Estovia directly.

The Phase Shift woman was suddenly free.

Her intangibility flickered as she scanned the medical bay, identifying targets, prioritizing threats, selecting who to kill first now that her containment had collapsed.

Her eyes found kora.

The Academy candidate was positioned near the medical bay's periphery, throwing knives depleting, her stance showing exhaustion and stress, clearly trying to remain unnoticed while still supporting the larger fight.

hmmm… a ranged attacker, the Phase Shift woman assessed. Vulnerable in close combat. Isolated from her group's coordination. Perfect target.

She moved.

Transitioning from stationary to a full sprint with her Phase Shift active, her body flickering between solid and intangible, making her approach almost impossible to track or intercept.

Kora saw her coming too late—her combat instincts registering a threat only when the Phase Shift woman was already within lethal range.

Shit—

Kora's hands moved automatically, muscle memory taking over, her throwing knives coming up in defensive pattern that might create enough separation to—

The Phase Shift woman's blade lashed out.

It was not aimed at Kora's body and certainly wasn't a killing strike.

It was aimed at her hands—the extended limbs preparing for a throwing motion, the vulnerable appendages that made Kora slightly dangerous.

The blade connected with surgical precision.

Kora's right hand—thumb through middle finger—flew into the air, severed completely at the knuckles, blood spraying in arterial fountain.

Her left hand—index and middle finger—followed microsecond later, the Phase Shift woman's follow-up strike removing the digits with brutal efficiency.

Everything changed in that millisecond.

Kora's scream was immediate, visceral, the kind of sound that came from pain so overwhelming it bypassed conscious thought.

Her throwing knives clattered to the floor, useless without fingers to grip them, without hands to execute the techniques she'd trained for years.

She staggered backward, her remaining hand fragments clutching instinctively at stumps that pumped blood with each panicked heartbeat.

My hands, her mind repeated uselessly.

My hands my hands my hands—

The Phase Shift woman pressed her advantage, blade rising for a killing strike now that Kora was a disabled, defenseless, easy prey.

——

Thank you to everyone who's been reading, supporting, and sticking with this story. Every comment, like, and bit of encouragement genuinely means more to me than you know.

I also wanted to let you know that I may be a bit busy in the coming weeks due to upcoming exams, so updates might slow down temporarily. I'll do my best to balance things, and I appreciate your patience and understanding during this period.

Once things settle, I'll be back with the same energy and focus as always. Thank you again for being here.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.