The Omniraith backup swarm didn't scream as it arrived.
Thousands of metallic wings glided silently across the mountain skies, peeling away from the three massive biomechanical carriers that had split open in the upper atmosphere.
The creatures—half-aircraft, half-organism—disgorged drones like a plague. No formation, no preamble, just relentless motion and number.
From Kaelin Vorr's forward position near Elora's southern ridge, he saw the sky darken.
"Eyes up!" he barked into his comm, staring as the swarm descended not toward their front lines—but over them.
The Omniraith weren't breaking through. They were flying over the shield perimeter—through the exposed middle flank of Elora's defenses, the unprotected zone between the ground-level trenches and the super-shield's upper curve.
"Backline breach!" Kaelin shouted. "They're bypassing the front!"
On his visor, dozens of red tracking glyphs swarmed toward the city's heart. They weren't even trying to engage the forward troops.
These were tactical drones—programmed for sabotage, disruption, and mass confusion. They'd found the soft underbelly.
Behind Kaelin, several Ashari sentries had already started pivoting turret angles upward. Elora's static defense systems weren't designed to hit that particular blind spot in real-time—most of their ground-based artillery focused outward, not up into that narrow vertical slip.
Above, the sentry turrets howled as they continued slashing through incoming air units, but it wasn't enough.
Kaelin watched helplessly as drone after drone dipped under the shield's lowerr arc and slipped in like wasps into a cracked hive.
"Too many," someone muttered beside him.
Then the sky lit up.
From the western hangar line, seven blinding streaks erupted into the air like shooting stars. They moved faster than anything Ashari-built Kaelin had ever seen—humanoid silhouettes forged in ash-gray alloy and blue-light cores. Laser trails burned through the sky behind them.
The ASCENDANT units had entered the fight.
ASC-1 through ASC-7 scattered into formation, each taking their assigned quadrant. Their movements weren't human—too sharp, too fluid—but they were unmistakably Ashari in style. Minimalist. Purposeful. Perfect.
Kaelin recognized ASC-3 immediately—one of the heavier models with dual shoulder cannons and kinetic boosters. It banked hard mid-air, locked onto a dozen drones breaching through the side gap, and let loose a twin-beam barrage that turned the attackers into slag before they could cross the ridge.
Just above them, ASC-4 rotated mid-flight, unfolded its arms into missile pods, and launched a spiral of micro-rockets into the swarm. The resulting explosions lit up the night like falling stars—drones caught in the blast spun out and collided into one another in a chain reaction of mechanical carnage.
ASC-6 and ASC-7 flew tight cover over Elora's reactor platforms, intercepting drones that had aimed straight for the power infrastructure.
The two units moved as one—blades humming from beneath their arms, slicing incoming drones like insects.
Kaelin's HUD pinged with incoming data from city command. The ASCENDANT protocols had activated autonomous repair mode—tiny spare-parts drones were launching from magnetic bays across the walls, trailing their ASC units like repair familiars.
One of the units—ASC-1—took a plasma hit mid-torso from a cluster bomb drone. The impact cracked its chest plate and sent it spinning—but not even a second passed before four repair drones snapped onto its frame, replaced burnt plating mid-air, and reignited its flight stabilizers.
The unit stopped mid-tumble, spun, and speared the attacking drone through its core with a hardlight javelin.
Kaelin watched it all with disbelief. The sky was a mess of fire and streaking metal, but the ASCENDANTs weren't just holding their ground. They were sweeping it clean.
Turrets re-synced their targeting to follow the ASC patterns. Coordination uplinks tightened. Elora's airspace, breached for just under three minutes, began to stabilize.
"ASC-3 to Vanguard Command," one of the units transmitted over encrypted comms. The voice was synthetic, clipped, but unmistakably Ashari. "Backline breach countered. Engaging mop-up protocol. Recommendation: reroute reserve turrets for inner perimeter defense."
Kaelin exhaled, the adrenaline cooling in his veins just slightly.
"Sol," he called into his comm, "they're holding the sky."
Commander Sol's voice came back flat and immediate. "Then keep the ground. No fallback. Not until we've repaid this storm in full."
Kaelin adjusted his rifle and turned toward the next line of trenches. Fires burned across the slope. Drone parts littered the rocks.
But above him, the night sky shimmered with streaks of blue and white, and between every Omniraith drone that crossed the shield's edge, an Ashari ghost waited.
They had come to rewrite the world.
Elora had ASCENDED.
And the city was not done fighting.
On the other side of the battlefield.
Micah, Marella, Sera Lin and the three ASCs moved like ghosts through the chaos.
Micah crouched low beneath a craggy outcrop, breath controlled, eyes locked on the drone sweep gliding past overhead. His cloak shimmered faintly—Ashari adaptive weave masking his thermal and magnetic presence. One wrong move, and they'd light up like a beacon.
Marella flanked him, her armor sleek and hydrodynamic even on dry land, blue energy pulsing softly along her forearms where her water-blasters were primed. She didn't breathe hard. She didn't flinch. She just waited, a predator in stillness, watching for a weak point.
Behind them, the three ASCENDANT prototypes—ASC-9, ASC-5, and ASC-2—stood guard. Their silhouettes shifted with the terrain, plating flexing with faint mechanical murmurs, arms configured in containment mode for silent assault. Their glowing eyes scanned every moving shadow across the dark valley.
And between them all, Sera Lin carried the Verdancy Seed like it was alive.
Its case was cradled to her back, sealed tight in a circular containment pod slung diagonally across her shoulder. But even through layers of bio-seal and alloy, Micah could sense it.
Verdancy pulsed like a second heartbeat.
"This ridge path ends in seventy meters," ASC-5 said, voice crisp but emotionless. "Intermittent drone patrols. Surface-level logic grid scanning every six-point-two seconds."
Marella nodded, crouching next to Micah. "We've got one blind spot—between scans. Time it, and we cross the open ground. No sound, no energy flare."
Micah pulled up the terrain readout on his forearm display. They'd emerged onto the outer edge of the Omniraith left flank—a slope of shattered stone and twisted metal overrun with enemy constructs. The drone forces were refocusing on Elora's front, but this section still buzzed with activity.
Every few seconds, a web of red targeting lasers swept across the surface—machine eyes looking for anything that didn't belong.
"Left valley lip runs into a crater," Micah said. "Shallow trench, possibly old mining collapse. That's our next cover. Then a broken pipe system. We move in stages."
Sera nodded once. "The soil is softer near the crater," she said, voice low. "Closer to what it needs."
Micah gave a grim nod. "Then we get you there."
The signal pinged: scan pulse incoming.
They flattened instantly—Micah draped his cloak over Sera, while Marella slunk into the slope's shadow. The ASCENDANTs melted into the stone, armor plating shifting into rock textures as they crouched silently.
The pulse passed overhead—a faint distortion in the air, like wind that wasn't wind. Then silence.
Micah lifted two fingers. "Go."
They ran.
It wasn't far, just thirty meters of exposed terrain—but with death hanging in every shadow, it felt like a kilometer.
Micah's boots kicked silent across gravel, every step measured. Marella moved like water, gliding from one boulder to the next. Behind them, the ASCENDANTs broke into synchronized formation, flanking Sera without a word.
They dove into the crater trench just as the next logic scan passed overhead.
"Contact," ASC-2 said. "Hostile drone approaching from above. Five seconds."
Micah swore. "Neutralize it."
ASC-2 turned, eyes glowing bright white. A thin needle of blue laser split the dark and impaled the descending drone through its core. It dropped, sparking, into the trench—silent and clean.
"Clear," ASC-2 confirmed.
Marella stood, checked her weapon's pressure gauge, and rotated the dial on her arm. "Moving to cover the pipe tunnel."
Micah checked their route—fifty meters to go. Then the open area. Then the soil.
He moved ahead, cloak flowing, his Hollow-enhanced senses stretching out past the real—searching for movement, for pulses of machine logic in the dark. There. He saw it.
"Drone nest ahead. They're clustering."
Sera's voice came softly, clear despite the chaos. "I can feel the roots under it. That's where it goes."
Micah hesitated. "Too much activity. They'll see you. We need a diversion."
Marella stepped up, rolled her shoulders. "Then let's make one."
She moved with deliberate pace out of the trench, raising her hands. The air shimmered. A high-pressure jet of water burst from her left gauntlet—slicing through two aerial drones mid-arc.
Then, she spun, fired her right cannon into the hillside—blasting a rockslide down onto a cluster of land-based units below.
Alarms blared in a synthetic screech as the Omniraith logic net registered a breach.
Micah didn't wait.
"Go! Now!"
ASC-5 and ASC-9 surged forward, one shielding Marella, the other engaging the incoming flank.
Their energy weapons opened up in controlled, silent bursts—laser spears and arc-blades cutting down advancing enemies.
Spare parts buzzed in the air, snapping onto damaged limbs as the ASCENDANTs self-repaired mid-battle.
Micah turned, grabbed Sera by the arm, and pulled her up onto the slope.
They ran.
Projectiles sliced past their heads—most intercepted by ASC-2, who remained on rear guard, its chassis bristling with defense glyphs and pulsing countermeasures.
At the top of the ridge, the soil shifted.
The area surrounding was ringed with wreckage—fallen walkers, broken Omniraith towers, twisted supports sticking up like bones. And in the center, a patch of untouched earth. Old. Ancient. Waiting.
Sera moved with reverence. She stepped into the area as Micah and Marella cleared a path.
Drones poured in from the sides—dozens, then hundreds. The ASCENDANTs dropped into a kill perimeter, weapons glowing hot.
Marella's suit bled steam as she unleashed a hurricane blast, knocking back two waves. Micah planted a short-range jamming spike, cutting off the Omniraith's local targeting sync for a split-second.
Just enough time.
Sera knelt, hands pressing into the soil.
The Verdancy case opened.
And beneath a sky of metal and fury, something ancient began to take root.