The Corelight Vault had never felt this dead.
Emergency lights kept sputtering overhead, smoke leaked from busted vents, but the silence—God, the silence wrapped around everything like a chokehold. Everyone was there: commanders, diplomats, all huddled around that central holo-table with its cracked surface throwing weak red light across the battlefield.
Chunks of debris still littered the floor from when everything shook last time, and you couldn't escape that smell—burnt metal mixed with old blood.
General Ryss Alon planted herself at the table's head, armor blackened, both hands pressed down hard on either side of the display.
When she spoke, her voice stayed level, but each word felt like getting punched.
"Nine hundred and forty-three are gone," she said.
Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.
"Ashari, Thornkin, Myrvane. Soldiers, yeah, but also engineers. Regular people. Kids."
The holo-table kept pulsing. Red dots spread across the map—every single one a life that just... ended.
Councilor Veyla Marr, who never lost her cool, leaned forward looking like she'd seen a ghost.
"What about the Ascendants?" she managed.
Ryss's jaw went tight. "Down. Guardian, Solarblade, Fission Lance—all went dark at once."
Sera Lin from the Thornkin shifted across from her. She stood there stiff as a board, blood still soaking the bottom of her cloak, arm wrapped up tight with some torn green banner she'd used to stop the bleeding.
"You promised us the vault was sacred," she said. "Locked up tight. Protected. You swore Omnikill couldn't get near it."
"The vault wasn't broken into," Ryss said. "Someone opened it."
The room felt like it dropped twenty degrees.
Commander Veirr from the Myrvane let out this slow breath that whistled through his mask. Every word came out sharp and careful.
"Inside job," he said. "The kind that has a name attached."
Behind them, the chamber doors groaned open.
Micah limped in, coat ripped to hell and covered in soot. His left arm hung in a bloody sling. That multi-tool of his, all scorched and bent, just dangled from his hip like it was already dead.
Everyone stopped talking.
Ryss didn't even glance up. "Scout Satya. Running late."
"Wasn't trying to be on time," Micah said, voice scratched raw.
He dragged himself to the holo-table's edge and just stared at those red dots for what felt like forever.
Then: "Omnikill didn't break anything. Someone let him walk right in."
Every head snapped toward him.
"The scanner recognized him. Those artifact locks were already cycling before he even got to the chamber."
Micah looked around the room. When nobody said anything, he laid it out plain.
"Dr. Eland Voss opened the vault."
People started gasping. Then yelling.
Councilor Veyla shot to her feet. "That can't be right."
"He's making it up," someone muttered.
"No," Micah said, louder this time. "I watched it happen. Lio saw it too. Voss just stood there while Omnikill grabbed the relics. Hit that final scanner himself."
Sera Lin made this sound—half scream, half growl.
"You let someone with poison in his heart guard the gates," she spat. "Told us your people were clean, your security was bulletproof!"
She grabbed this jagged piece of broken console and launched it across the room. It smashed into the wall, sparks flying everywhere.
Ryss didn't even blink. "Why?"
Micah shook his head. "Lost his wife, blamed us for it. Said his heart went cold after that. Everything else was just... math to him."
Commander Veirr crossed his arms. "One of your top minds just sold us out. How do we know others won't do the same?"
Nyra Tal had been standing quiet by the door this whole time. Finally stepped forward.
"I want everything. Voss's files, his lab, his messages—anything he ever touched."
Micah opened his palm. A little projection flickered up—Voss's last message.
"If you're hearing this, I let both of you down. But sometimes broken math still adds up to something true."
Gone as fast as it came.
Councilor Veyla turned away. "He held my daughter when she was born," she whispered. "Named her himself."
Sera pointed at the map. "Thornkin stay, but only if you show us everything. No more secrets. No more locked doors."
Commander Veirr nodded. "And if you can't protect your own legacy from falling into the wrong hands, we'll protect ours—without you."
Micah's eyes locked onto that pulsing signal from Omnikill's escape route. His voice dropped low but stayed steady.
"Then we hunt them down. Voss, Omnikill—we take back what's ours."
Ryss's hand clenched into a fist. "Time to start digging. Whatever he buried, it's buried deep."
The war room went quiet again.
But peaceful? Not even close.
Ash fell like snow over Elora's ruined fields.
Where that proud shield wall used to stand, now there were just burned pylons and twisted metal barriers.
Smoke hung thick in the air, heavy with grief, broken up only by the occasional spark from busted circuits or the sound of wounded metal groaning.
The fighting had stopped hours ago, but nothing felt over. Just quieter.
And in that quiet, the grief finally had room to breathe.
Lio drifted through the wreckage like he wasn't really there—invisible, or maybe people just couldn't bear to look at him.
His clothes hung loose, torn and covered in soot. His eyes looked empty. Around him, soldiers picked through bodies, calling out names, looking for dog tags. None of them would meet his eyes.
He walked past the crater where the Ascendants had gone down—Guardian, Solarblade, Fission Lance—nothing left but empty armor shells, dark and cold like monuments to the dead.
He dropped to his knees beside the blackened hole. Pressed his fingers against the scorched earth.
"You were the only thing that made me think twice," Voss had said.
Lio's voice barely made a sound: "Then why didn't you?"
Behind him, some Ashari trooper swore as his drone scanner went haywire. Sparks shot out. Lio didn't even flinch. Just got up and kept walking.
The dead didn't shock him anymore.
Up on higher ground, Kaelin Vorr stood at what was left of a command post, looking out over the same fields.
The shield array was running at maybe half-power, and engineers crawled all over the pylons with their toolkits and magnetic lifts.
Sparks kept shooting up as they rewired circuits and got the turret rings back in line.
Kaelin lifted his wrist comm. "Need a status check on the east perimeter turrets."
Static crackled back: "Unit 4's up and running. Unit 7's cycling through. Unit 3's still dead."
"By sunset, I want 3 back online. If they come back tonight, I want Elora ready to bite."
He cut the connection.
Below him, this aide—kid couldn't be more than twenty, face streaked black with soot—looked up and asked, "Sir... are we even still a city?"
Kaelin paused.
He looked down the slope toward the medical tents. Toward the flickering lights of a city hanging on by a thread.
"Not yet," he said. "But we're not a cemetery either."
Just past the northern slope, under what was left of a burned-out Thornkin root-grove, Captain Marella lay completely still.
Her body was wrapped up tight in bandages and medical foam.
They'd peeled her exosuit off in pieces—stacked it nearby like armor from some fallen knight. Monitors beeped softly beside her, readings dancing between yellow and red.
Myrvane and Thornkin medics moved around her fast, whispering about neural patterns and brain activity.
"She kept barking orders with a crushed lung," one muttered. "Held that line even after she went down. Didn't think she was still breathing."
Another one adjusted the neural brace along her spine and shook his head. "She lives, morale lives with her."
Outside the tent, dozens more lay there—groaning, bleeding, or just silent.
And beyond all of them, people kept working to stay alive.
Out on the scorched plain, search and rescue teams picked through collapsed buildings and smashed bunkers.
Mixed crews of Ashari, Myrvane, and Thornkin worked without talking—faces drawn tight, eyes bloodshot.
Little drones floated overhead, scanning for heartbeats and trapped survivors.
One suddenly beeped. A ping—buried way down deep.
A Thornkin scout yelled out, "Over here! Under the root-channel!"
They dug like their lives depended on it. Dirt and chunks of concrete flew until someone's fingers found armor.
A woman, still breathing, one eye burned blind. Her hands clutched a broken comm unit like it was some kind of good luck charm.
"She was saying Voss's name," a medic said quietly. "Begging him not to abandon her."
Nobody answered back. Just the wind, moving through what was left.
Close by, the medical tents were overflowing.
Healers worked nonstop, shouted orders, passed equipment back and forth, slapped on root-seal, stim-gel, coolant.
Some Myrvane soldier thrashed around as they sealed his arm with synthetic bone wrap.
Civilians huddled in corners crying—burned, broken, holding onto kids or gripping hands that had gone cold.
"Need morphic stents over here! And coolant—Christ, he's seizing!"
A Thornkin healer knelt beside this collapsed Ashari boy, whispering some prayer while vines wrapped around his wounds to stop the bleeding. Her voice shook, but her hands stayed steady.
Outside, a soldier dropped a helmet—his brother's. He screamed into the dirt.
Still, the work went on.
Even further out, across the flatlands covered in wreckage, clean-up teams moved carefully between busted drone carcasses.
Every step was measured. One Omniraith drone twitched when they poked it. Weapons came up—false alarm.
Some Ashari grunt lost it and kicked the thing until the metal caved in.
He dropped to his knees, hands covering his face.
"We should melt them down," someone muttered. "Make shields from their bones."
Nobody found that funny.
Underground, lit only by flickering lanterns and backup power, the investigation team went down into the tunnel Omnikill had come from.
Dust clogged their lungs. The deeper they went, the weirder it felt.
The walls were carved too perfectly. Symbols lined the stone—etched with precision, glowing faintly.
"This wasn't a break-in," one analyst whispered. "It was a hallway."
A younger officer touched those strange markings. "He wanted us to follow him."
The lead investigator didn't say anything.
As the sun started sinking in that ash-gray sky, the shelters opened up.
From under the city and way out in the outer bunkers, civilians came out slowly—blinking, careful, not sure if the world above still belonged to them.
Mothers carried kids. Old folks leaned on younger shoulders. A few carried makeshift weapons, just in case.
At the inner wall's edge, a boy looked up at that smoke-filled sky and asked, "Is it safe now?"
Nobody answered.
Above it all, Lio stood by himself, watching people return to whatever was left.
He saw healers patching up wounds that would never really heal. Saw engineers rebuilding what had just been destroyed. Saw the Alliance scraping itself back together—not because they'd won, but because they had to.
He saw a Thornkin woman carrying her daughter through the rubble, her arm bloody, her eyes hollow—but still moving forward.
His hands clenched into fists.
Without saying another word, he turned away from the bluff—and headed toward what was left of Voss's lab.
"If the future gets built from ash," he thought, "then let me be the fire that does it right this time."
Behind him, Elora breathed out smoke and silence.
But the city's heart kept beating.
Not yet ready to stop.