The last zealot's scream faded into the mist.
Cyril stood over the ridge, chest still heaving from the resonance pulse he unleashed. Steam curled from his skin, and the taste of burnt air lingered on his tongue. The Flow within him hadn't just answered—it lashed out. Violent. Uncontrolled.
Miren watched him with unreadable eyes. Not afraid. Not comforted. Just calculating.
"You just bent a squad's resonance signature like it was fabric," she said quietly.
"They'll feel that for miles."
"Then we'd better get their first."
Right after he said this the sky cracked open with gold.
Not dawn.
Not natural.
A beam from the heavens sliced through the low clouds—clean, immense, and absolute. It swept across the fractured landscape like a god's accusing finger. Flow-reactive mists shimmered in its wake, curling over trees and shattered glyphstone. Half-sunken watchposts lit like candles before dying out entirely.
Cyril flinched.
Miren didn't.
"They're not scouting anymore," she said, voice low.
"That's the spearhead."
They crouched into the shadow of a collapsed ridgeline, eyes lifted.
The Sunvault had arrived.
It didn't descend—it hovered.
A fortress of obsidian alloy and radiant crystal suspended by a force older than science, older than Flow. Beneath its prow, a forest of thin cables hung like roots from a floating tree. Some dragged the ground, others pulsed with structured energy, anchoring the skyship to the wounded heavens.
Cyril blinked.
"That thing looks like a cathedral high off relic fumes and maybe a Red Bull."
"It is a cathedral. At least to them."
***
Above – Vaultbridge
The bridge of the Sunvault was silent, reverent.
A tall man stared at the many factions on the ground, like a god surveying his creations in a ship where even silence held its breath.
Commander Serent Vale; standing with his hands clasped behind his back, his long golden coat shimmered faintly—inscribed with Flow-filament in a pattern reserved only for Vaultmarked officers. His eyes glowed with the Vaultmark: a horizontal sigil seared into both irises, proof of his soul's tether to Dominion command.
Behind him, acolytes whispered invocations into Lightflow channels. Massive resonance rings turned slowly behind reinforced crystal glass—engine-work of impossible age. The ship didn't fly through wind or storm.
It flew through Will.
Vale's voice, calm as a blade's edge:
"Deploy the Skybinders. I want a clean corridor burned through Braithborne's central ridge."
A junior officer hesitated.
"But sir, there are still nobles in that position—heirs of Braithborne—"
Vale turned his head by a fraction.
"I said, burn through them."
The officer bowed.
"Yes, Commander."
Outside, three pylons detached from the ship's underbelly and descended—hovering, humming. Each one emitted a pulse so low it throbbed inside bone. Glyphwork spun across their rotating surfaces. A moment later, runes flared to life in a perfect circle.
Then the world ignited.
A column of silent, heatless fire erased the cliff.
***
Groundside Again
Cyril and Miren saw the flash before they heard stone crack.
The ridge—once dotted with Braithborne standards—now lay flattened. Smoke rose, drifting sideways in unnatural currents.
Cyril watched in awe and disgust.
"They're not taking ground," he muttered.
"They're erasing it."
Miren didn't look away.
"That's the cost of dominion," she said.
"You don't win land. You rewrite it, make it yours."
Beneath the Sunvault's shadow, a strike unit advanced.
Mirror-plated armor reflected the shifting ambient Flow, turning them into living illusions. Two dozen soldiers, perfectly arrayed, moved in formation like clockwork. In their center walked a Skybinder—face veiled, hands aglow with trailing Flowscript that danced like white-hot wire.
She did not speak.
She did not look at those she passed.
Where her steps landed, glyph wards cracked. The very earth grew glasslike beneath her. Even the air bent away.
Ahead, a Braithborne resistance line broke in seconds—defenders screaming as Sunvault blades cleaved through them without hesitation or sound.
No calls. No war cries.
Only function.
Cyril and Miren ran low along the broken terrain, smoke rising around them like a living thing. Cyril's arm sparked again—his Flow flaring in protest.
He gritted his teeth.
"It's reacting to them. To that ship in the sky."
Miren didn't stop moving.
"It should. Everything down here is afraid of it."
"It's not fear." Cyril shook his head.
"It's like it's warning me. Like it knows something I don't."
They crested a final ridge—and there it was.
The lip of Veinscar.
A vast gash in the world, the edges still blackened, still weeping Flowlight from the shardfall impact. But between them and the crater loomed a structure—one of Sunvault's command nodes, a massive pylon with live conduits feeding skyward into the belly of the ship. It pulsed slowly.
Like a heartbeat.
Dozens of soldiers ringed its perimeter.
Cyril stared at it, exhaling slowly.
He stared a moment longer, then realization bloomed behind his smirk.
"I think I just found our way in."
Miren's head snapped toward him.
"Into what?"
He didn't blink.
"The war."