The Ashari Council Chamber had this weird, suffocating feeling to it—not from dust or smoke, but from all that controlled tension hanging in the air. The place was massive, with a domed ceiling that stretched way up above them, carved right into the heart of Elora's mountain.
Everything was clean lines and no-nonsense design, the kind of sterile functionality the Ashari were known for. Holographic maps flickered across the curved walls, showing battlefronts, energy readings, and that awful rust-colored blight where the Omniraith had spread their poison across the world. This was command central, where the Apex Circle and Divisional Councils tried to hold their mountain network—and their shaky alliance—together.
The council members sat in their tiered rows, wearing those carefully neutral expressions that passed for emotion among the Ashari. General Ryss Alon and Councilor Veyla Marr were front and center, as usual. The whole place hummed with machinery, like the mountain itself had a mechanical heartbeat. Even the writing carved into the walls looked like circuit boards. Everything here screamed efficiency and survival—nothing wasted, nothing soft.
But they weren't meeting alone today. Their allies had risked everything to get here, and it showed. The Myrvane delegates looked completely out of place on their designated platform, sealed up in those dark, moisture-heavy suits they needed to survive outside their deep ocean home.
Captain Marella Seaborn stood ramrod straight with her team flanking her, every movement precise and calculated—classic Myrvane discipline.
Across from them stood the Thornkin representative, Sera Lin. She carried herself with this quiet strength that seemed to come from somewhere deep, like old tree roots. Just being near her, you could almost smell damp earth and growing things—such a sharp contrast to the sterile chamber air.
When she spoke, her voice had this musical quality, like wind moving through leaves, full of forest imagery and natural rhythms.
Micah, Lio, and Kaelin had made it back from the Myrvane depths too. Micah felt that familiar weight settling on his shoulders—responsibility mixed with the constant, gnawing fear of becoming something like the Omniraith.
His Thornkin vial had gone quiet against his chest, no longer pulsing, but it reminded him of his connection to the forest and that strange signal he'd encountered down in the Hollow.
Lio stood beside him, still the young tech genius, his idealism bumping up against Ashari cold logic as usual. Kaelin hung back a bit, his whole posture radiating impatience and this barely contained need to do something, anything.
They had three urgent problems to tackle, and the first one was breathing down their necks: the Omniraith Core Nexus was moving.
General Alon jumped right in, his voice crisp and no-nonsense. "The Myrvane have confirmed it—Core Nexus is mobilizing. This changes everything. We need to adapt our defenses now."
Marella spoke through her suit's filters, her voice carrying that measured weight the Myrvane were known for. "The currents are troubled," she said, using one of their metaphors for danger. "Our scouts are reporting disturbances deeper than we've ever seen. The harvesting continues." She looked directly at the Ashari council, and there was accusation in her tone. "If you'd warned us sooner, we might still have Sentinel Pod 3."
That hit the council like a slap. You could feel the tension ripple through the room. The Ashari had always been suspicious of outsiders—old wounds and skepticism about anything that wasn't purely technological.
Dr. Eland Voss, Micah's mentor and one of their top engineers, leaned forward. People saw him as overly cautious, but nobody questioned his expertise. "Micah, Lio—you came back with some interesting information about this energy signature, this 'Hollow,' and how it connects to..." He gestured at the holographic displays now showing schematics of that prototype they'd pulled from the Omniraith forge. "These hybrid artifacts."
Micah stepped forward, feeling the weight of everything they hadn't told people yet. "Captain Marella's right," he said, trying to balance Ashari pragmatism with the kind of honesty the Myrvane seemed to value. "We ran into complications during our mission to the Thornkin. The Omniraith interference was worse than we expected—it scrambled our communication channels." He paused, picking his words carefully, the same way he had when talking to Marella before.
He looked at her, then at Sera. "The Thornkin Forest is dying, Captain," he said directly to Marella, holding up a simple vial of Thornkin sap that Sera had given him. It glowed softly—a symbol of the forest's pain and the connection between their peoples. "And the corruption we found led us somewhere beneath the roots. A place called the Hollow."
Lio couldn't contain his excitement. "The Hollow isn't just some underground cave. It's an ancient network—not purely mechanical, not purely organic, but both somehow." He pulled up a scan on a nearby display. "The signal coming from it was unlike anything in our databases. Complex, structured almost like consciousness. And it seemed specifically designed to counter whatever the Core Nexus is planning."
Dr. Voss nodded slowly, his eyes going distant as he processed this. "Rewriting existence," he murmured, finally putting words to what they all suspected was the Omniraith's real goal. "Not conquest—transformation. Converting all life into data, into code." He looked at Micah. "And this signal identified you specifically. Called you 'steelborn.'"
The word just hung there, strange and unsettling. Micah felt that familiar unease creep up his spine—the fear that this connection to the Hollow, this whole "steelborn" thing, might be exactly what he was afraid of: the first step toward becoming like the Omniraith.
Kaelin made a sound of disgust. "Legends and whispers," he muttered. "Rewriting existence—what about the hydroforms? What about the real strategic threat from the Core Nexus?" He wanted action, concrete solutions, military planning based on the actual losses the Myrvane had suffered. "We need to secure the depths, eliminate the hydroforms, prepare for a direct assault."
Sera Lin's voice cut through Kaelin's bluntness like a gentle blade. "The forest feels the wound deeply. This isn't just damage—it's violation, a forcing of something unnatural." She looked at the projection of the hybrid artifact. "These artifacts, the Core Nexus—they're poisoning everything. The currents, the air, the roots. The harmony is broken."
The chamber felt like it might explode from all the tension. Here they were, bound together by necessity against the Omniraith, but fractured by suspicion and completely different priorities. Ashari logic kept crashing into Thornkin nature-focus and Myrvane methodical secrecy.
Then Marella dropped the third bomb. Her gaze swept across everyone in the chamber, her visor giving nothing away. "There's something else we need to discuss," she said, her voice flat and cold. "The Omniraith knew we were coming to Sentinel Pod 3. They were waiting.
They took exactly what they wanted—the blueprints from the vault." Her voice dropped, carrying a chilling certainty. "This traitor could be Ashari. Could be Thornkin. Could be Myrvane. But they're here, in this room."
The accusation hit like a physical blow. Micah felt his stomach clench. Betrayal from within—it was one of his worst fears, echoing old traumas.
He'd already questioned Lio about that unauthorized back channel, and the possibility of someone in Ashari leadership being compromised had been eating at him. Now the paranoia was thick enough to cut.
One of the council members slammed a control rune, and the holographic displays vanished, replaced by a solid wall of projected silence. The chamber plunged into tense quiet, broken only by the low hum of the city and the muffled sounds of people breathing through their suits. Eyes darted everywhere—suddenly everyone was suspicious of everyone else.
But Dr. Voss stayed calm through it all. He looked from Marella to Sera, then to the council, and finally settled his gaze on Micah. When he spoke, his voice was steady, cutting through the tension like a knife—but carrying an implication that made everyone's blood run cold.
"Then let's start with an even harder truth," Voss said quietly. "What if the traitor doesn't even know they're compromised?"
The words settled into the sudden silence like stones dropping into deep water. The implications were terrifying—not just betrayal, but unwilling corruption.
And for Micah, already wrestling with the mysteries of the Hollow, the hybrid artifacts, and his own "steelborn" nature, the question hit him with chilling personal weight.