NPC for Hire-[Gamelit|Simulation|Multi-genre]

The line went dead. Fen's heart dropped like a stone.

Desmond's voice snapped across the comms, taut and commanding. "I said repeat that. Sparks and circuits—what is going on?"

Another burst of static clawed through the channel. Then—

"We are under attack!"

A sudden flare ripped across the horizon, bleeding through the clouds like a wound in the sky. It burned far beyond the battlefield, in the direction of the Flying Bastion

Desmond's tone hardened, iron cutting through the chaos. "Report!"

The comms surged with noise: steel on steel, weapons firing, the panicked shouts of soldiers swallowed in the din of battle.

"Sir, comms were jammed—we just retook the center and cleared the interference. The crystal opened fire on us fifteen minutes ago! Oh, sparks—"

An explosion ripped through the feed, static swallowing the voice. The line came back in a storm of noise—shouting, weapons fire, the crack of walls breaking apart.

Desmond barked, "Report! Who took the comms center? Is this a coup?"

"No, sir—outside force! They're not flying any standards, no colors at all. All black, moving like shadows!" The soldier's voice was ragged, breaking. "They hit while the crystal was still firing—it was a distraction, they slipped in under the chaos. We can't stop them—"

Desmond froze. "The crystal opened fire? What do you mean—"

The line went dead, static its only report

Fen's blood ran cold. His gaze snapped skyward, searching the horizon until he caught a glimpse of it: the crystal, vast and unblinking, its faceted body glinting faintly miles away. For a moment he thought he was imagining it, but no—the thing had moved. Like a glacier drifting across the map, it must have been sliding north since the first clash at the bridge, creeping slow enough that no one noticed until now.

Across the short distance, Desmond was already sprinting toward them, waving, shouting over the chaos.

"Fen! Seraph! Did you hear that? The base—it's under attack!"

"Desmond," Fen said, voice low, "why didn't you say the crystal could move?"

"It can't," Desmond snapped back, his certainty cracking. "It hasn't. Not once in all the games." He looked pale, eyes fixed on the distant gleam. "What in the old code is going on? Fen, this isn't part of the games. Something is seriously wrong."

Fen's heart pounded, his fingers already reaching for the saddle as he swung himself up behind Seraph, who had already mounted, reins in hand, ready to move.

Desmond shouted up at them as he finally reached Petrie. "You both need to go now. They must be making a play for Fisck—I should have been paying more attention. He was due to arrive by now."

"What?!" Fen and Seraph—in unison, disbelieving—snapped their gazes toward Desmond.

"Due to arrive?" Fen barked. "You said he'd meet us once the battle was underway. Where is he?"

Desmond's face tightened, his words tumbling out in a rush. "The Bastion—I mean, I guess… sparks, he was supposed to—" He caught himself, breath sharp. "I told you he stayed behind. What I didn't tell you was that he said he had some business. A deal to broker—something he claimed would end the war faster than our assault. He swore he'd be here as soon as it was finished. By now he should have joined us, but… nothing. I thought he was just delayed."

Fen froze, the realization striking hard. "Sparks—I thought he was on a different transport when we came in. Figured he'd been dropped on another flank, not sitting on the sparking Bastion." His jaw clenched. "We should have seen this coming. I thought the mole in your agency was feeding intel to the assault force here. The fighting was brutal, but it never felt like they knew the exact moment we'd strike."

Desmond went still, the weight of Fen's words sinking in.

Fen's voice was sharp now, steady with grim purpose. "Whoever's leaking information didn't send it here. They stayed behind—with Fisck."

Desmond's eyes widened. "No… it can't be. His personal guard, and a few generals. They're the only ones still with him."

Seraph yanked the reins, Petrie shifting beneath them, wings rustling in agitation. "So either his inner circle's compromised, or Fisck walked straight into it blind."

Fen's laugh was short and bitter. "Knowing him? Probably both."

Desmond shook his head, guilt clouding his features. "I don't know. He didn't give me details—just told me to focus on this assault in case his plans fell through. I thought… it wasn't my place to question him." His voice faltered, the admission raw. "I didn't even consider—"

Fen exhaled sharply. "Well, there's nothing to it now." He adjusted his grip on the saddle, locking eyes with Desmond. "It's time to go pull our magnanimous employer out of the fire."

He steadied himself, tightening his grip on Seraph's shoulder. "Send the Legacy's escort with us. Get as many troops loaded back into the transports as fast as possible, and anyone left—get them onto the Legacy. Tell everyone to follow and make the best speed they can. We'll see what we can do to salvage this, but we're going to need backup as quickly as you can manage."

Seraph reined Petrie hard, digging her heels into his side. Petrie's wings snapped open, and with a powerful downbeat, they launched skyward—the battlefield shrinking beneath them.

The Legacy and its escorts were still circling back after their bombing run. Below, Desmond's voice rang across the comms, driving the scattered troops into a mad scramble for the transports. Within minutes, the faster eagle riders had caught up to Petrie, and together they turned north, flying straight toward disaster.

The flight was tense. What had taken the assault force nearly two hours with lumbering transports, Fen and Seraph cut in barely thirty minutes—flying light, pushing hard. Every moment clawed at Fen's nerves. Whatever had happened at the Bastion was already well underway. By the time they arrived, it might all be over.

Ahead, the sky slowly shifted. The silhouettes of the Flying Bastion and the crystal grew larger until they loomed in the distance, and beneath them, the glow of war.

The fortress burned against the crimson horizon. Its slate-gray walls gleamed dully in the dying light, shields flickering like glass on the verge of shattering. The runes carved into its foundation pulsed weakly, like a faltering heartbeat. Black smoke poured from shattered spires, twisting skyward. Whole slabs of stone and steel, ripped from the structure, had fallen into the fields below—jagged wreckage jutting like the ribs of a dying beast.

Still, the Bastion hung stubbornly in the sky—massive, wounded, but defiant—its once-proud silhouette bleeding into the clouds.

Fen's gaze shifted to the crystal, hanging off to the right but still squarely between their flight path and the Bastion beyond. If he drew a line from where he sat to the fortress, the crystal would cut across it—not directly in his way, but close enough that its looming presence could not be ignored.

Its facets caught the fading light and fractured it into cold, unnatural hues. The runes etched deep into its surface pulsed with a steady rhythm, unrelenting, more like hunger than power.

His stomach knotted. He'd always hated the thing, some instinct in him recoiling every time it entered his sight. He should have trusted that instinct. He should have asked what it could truly do. Now he had no answers—only the nightmare unfolding before him.

The crystal flared again. Blue and violet arcs of raw energy tore free, streaking across the sky. They slammed into the Bastion's failing shields—and in places, straight into the exposed walls—detonating with thunderous force. Whole sections of masonry and steel shrieked as they sheared away. The fortress staggered in the air but held—for now.

Fen's breath caught. Judging by the damage, it wouldn't hold much longer.

"Looks worse than I imagined," Seraph muttered, voice just loud enough to carry over the wind.

Fen nodded grimly. "Still in one piece. For now."

They were five, maybe ten minutes out at full speed when the private channel on the communicator Sarge had given them crackled to life—static first, then his voice pushing through, tense and ragged.

"Fen. Seraph. You reading me?"

Fen tapped the receiver. "We've got you, Sarge. What's going on?"

"I don't have long," Sarge hissed. "The Net's gone crazy. Someone's hacked the feeds—broadcasting the Division War live. Every sector, every channel. It's everywhere. And they're not just showing the battles clean—they're cutting it into a story. I just saw the footage from the bridge—ghosts clawing out of the ground, soldiers dragged under, shadows swallowing the canyon. Fen, if I didn't know you, I'd think you were evil after that display."

Fen's gut dropped. The Division Wars being broadcast meant nothing to him—he'd never cared for the secrecy or the mystique players chased. But to see it streaming live across the Net, cut into a story with him at the center? That was different. That was personal.

And worse, the feeds weren't neutral. They were carving him into a narrative: the escape from the tutorial, the bridge, the cavern of souls. Every fight spun the same way—him painted as a dangerous anomaly, a madman loosed on the Synth.

Fen's jaw tightened. Was it the Spyders pulling the strings? Or the Overseers, finding new ways to break him? He couldn't tell—and that uncertainty made his blood run colder than either answer.

Seraph cursed under her breath, Petrie banking hard to avoid a rogue updraft. "Who?"

"I've been digging since you first mentioned them," Sarge said, voice taut. "Rumors, scraps of data, half-buried threads. From what I've pieced together… this feels like the Spyders. The timing, the precision—it matches their kind of play."

The line crackled, silence heavy on the channel. When he spoke again, Fen could hear the strain bleeding through.

"They found me. My signal. I've been scrubbing constantly, burning traces, but they're good—damn good. They're working through the bug Seraph planted in Fisck's terminal, backtracking my route. If a tracer breaches my firewalls, they'll be able to nail down my physical location—the warehouse. If it gets that close, I'm pulling out. Permanently."

Fen's jaw clenched. That meant ghosting entirely. No trail, no contact. Would Sarge just leave them like that?

"But before that happens—you need to hear this." His voice steadied, cold and sharp despite the chaos in the background. "It's not just the broadcast. I dug deeper into the data from Fisck's terminal. His system had recent communications—encrypted, sloppy, but clear enough. He was reaching out to someone. Spyders… maybe worse. A shadow group I couldn't trace."

Fen's blood iced over.

"I don't think the deal went the way he wanted," Sarge continued. "Whatever he promised them, he triggered this instead. The attack, the crystal going crazy—all of it. They turned on him."

Silence stretched, only the roar of wind filling Fen's ears as Petrie beat his wings against the sky.

Sarge's voice steadied, though the strain was still there. "And speaking of the crystal, Fen… something's off. Every node I probe—it doesn't just push back. It feels… wrong. Like it's waiting."

Fen swallowed hard, knuckles white on the grips at his saddle. "You think the Spyders are controlling it?"

"I don't know," Sarge admitted. "But the way it's reacting? It's not just code anymore." His next words landed heavy. "This isn't just about the game, Fen. They're inside the Net. Using the Synth's own rules. Bending the system itself."

A beat of silence passed.

"I don't know what the endgame is," Sarge continued, his voice low. "But it's bigger than us. Much bigger."

Fen stared at the horizon. Even with their hurried flight, it had only been forty minutes since they'd left the battlefield at the bridge. Still, the fortress burned in the distance, and the crystal pulsed like a heart about to burst. He feared they were already too late.

The channel crackled again—faint, but Sarge wasn't finished.

"Hang tight. There's… more. I found something—about you."

Fen stiffened, his chest tightening. "Sarge…?"

"Just keep flying," Sarge rasped. "You're gonna want to hear this."

The line stayed quiet for a beat too long. When Sarge's voice came back, it was lower, strained—not from pain, but from hesitation, like each word cost him to say.

"Fen… There's something else. I wasn't going to tell you this—not like this. But if they breach me, you deserve to know. The data I pulled off Fisck's terminal… it wasn't just battle plans. There were old files, Fen. Buried deep—so deep I almost missed them."

The wind howled past Fen's ears, but everything else faded to silence.

"I found records… player archives. Decommissioned IDs, death logs—one name kept showing up. Johnathan McLeod Barrett."

Fen's breath caught. The name felt… familiar.

"According to the files… he was a real player. Hardcore. A cheater, a skimmer. Got in deep with the wrong people. The kind of guy the SynthNet hated—and the kind the Overseers made an example of. If you'd been softcore, they would have revoked your access, maybe locked you out. But because you were hardcore, instead of a clean reset, they did something worse."

Fen closed his eyes for a second, the name echoing in his head like a ghost he couldn't place.

"I dug deeper. Pulled the old holos," Sarge continued, his voice ragged. "Fen… it's you. Not kinda you—exactly you. Same face, same voice. No player skin, no cosmetic filters. Just you."

"That's not possible," Fen choked out. "I—I am an NPC. I've been on for… I'm just—"

"I don't know how," Sarge cut him off, voice raw. "But someone hated you enough to keep chasing. And it makes sense now—it was probably the Spyders. It would explain why they showed up at the tutorial zone after the glitch, why they've been hunting you ever since. You must have burned them, bad. Pissed them off so much they couldn't let it go. When what looks like the Overseers stepped in—when they buried you—the Spyders followed you through death into another life."

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Fen's stomach twisted. His mind recoiled, fighting the words. Not blank, but flinching—memories snapping back like doors slammed in his face. The tutorial planet. The missions. The cycles with Seraph. Faces he could name, places he'd been, but all of it only went back so far. Only back to after.

Sarge's voice dropped lower, almost apologetic. "The tutorial, the assignments, even the earliest memory you can pull—they're all after they killed you, Fen. I'm sorry. I know this is a lot. This life you're living… it isn't your first one. It isn't your original one."

Fen's throat tightened, knuckles white on the saddle grip.

"There was one more word in the data," Sarge whispered. "It kept popping up, over and over. 'Exiled.'"

The wind howled past as Fen's world spun. His mind flashed, unbidden, to Siren whispering the same word in the dark. Exiled.

"Why?" Fen rasped. "Why would they do that?"

"I don't know," Sarge admitted. "But the files make one thing clear—they killed Johnathan Barrett. They killed you. But they couldn't erase you. So they buried you instead. Rewrote you."

A beat.

"They turned you into an NPC."

The words hit like a blade—deep, cold, final. Not just into Fen, but through the air, through everything. For a moment, even the wind seemed to die.

Sarge's voice came through, low, strained. "Fen… if it happened to you, it could happen to anyone. For code's sake, it could already be happening. Old code… maybe you were just the first."

Fen's grip locked on the saddle, his chest tight, breath shallow. His mind reeled, recoiling from the thought. If the Spyders had hated him enough to kill him, and the Overseers had stepped in to bury what was left—then what stopped them from doing it again? Not just to him, but to anyone. If they could rewrite one player, then no life in the Synth was truly safe. No self was untouchable.

Seraph's voice broke the silence, soft but steady. "Fen… listen to me. This doesn't change anything. You're still you. Whatever came before, whatever name was in those files—that isn't what matters. This life, right here, with me? With us? That's who you are."

Her laugh was brittle, wet at the edges. "You're still a pain in the ass… but you're my pain in the ass."

Her words pressed against the storm tearing through him, but the dread still clawed deep. The truth was stark: the Spyders had ended him, but it was the Overseers who had made something new out of what remained. And if both forces were willing to cross that line, then identity itself was fragile. A mask. A script waiting to be overwritten.

The implication sat like stone in his gut: if they could unmake him, they could unmake anyone.

The channel crackled—static bleeding through—but Sarge's voice still pushed its way in, strained and low.
"Whatever happens, Fen… don't trust anyone. Especially not the code. They're twisting it—rewriting lines that should be hardcoded, bending limits that were supposed to be absolute. The rules of the Synth aren't rules anymore."

A faint noise bled in on his end—alarms flaring in the distance, the thrum of a system under siege.

Sarge's tone softened, the bravado slipping. "I'll find you after this. We'll figure it out—together. You and Seraph… you two stay alive, you hear me?"

The words lodged in Fen's chest, heavy and raw.

On the other end, Sarge hissed, voice cracking with static. "…They're breaking through. If they get past my firewalls, they'll trace me here."

The alarms on his end shrieked louder.

"Damn it—I gotta pull back. Stay sharp, kid. Don't let them decide who you are."

The comm flared with one last burst of static—then went silent.

Fen stared ahead, throat tight, fists clenched white around the saddle. The fortress loomed larger by the second—dragging him toward a past he didn't remember, and a future he wasn't sure he could survive.

Seraph glanced back at him, her eyes searching his face. "Fen… are you—"

"I'm fine," he cut her off, sharper than he meant. His voice caught, and he forced a breath, teeth grinding as he reined it in. "We don't have time for this right now. Eyes forward."

She held his gaze, the ache in her eyes clear, but after a beat she gave a reluctant nod. "Alright… but after."

Fen nodded once, jaw tight, staring ahead—because looking at her any longer might crack something he didn't have the strength to hold together. His mind was a storm: Johnathan McLeod Barrett. Exiled. The words echoed, pounding against him with every beat of Petrie's wings. He wanted to suppress them. He couldn't. They were all he could think about, drowning out everything else.

For a few heartbeats, the only sound was the wind screaming past them—then hell opened up.

The crystal flared.

Light—sharp and predatory—split the sky. Blinding beams of arcane energy burst from its facets, arcing wide, carving through the air like blades. The first squad of flyers vanished in an instant—one second alive, the next reduced to drifting ash and falling steel.

Fen flinched, adrenaline finally drowning out the storm of thoughts in his head. Familiar instincts took hold—his body primed to fight, to move, to do. But there was nothing. He wasn't the one flying, and the crystal was too vast, too untouchable to strike. The beams fired indiscriminately, lancing through the air at them and every other flyer in range. Anything in the sky was prey.

For the first time, he felt it—helplessness. Not just the lack of control, but the whole situation pressing down on him. His body screamed for action, for some clever strike or desperate gambit. Instead, there was nothing. No spell to cast. No angle to exploit. Nothing but to hold on, to survive, to reach the fortress before it was gone.

Seraph flew, Petrie diving and weaving in a desperate dance of mount and rider moving as one to stay alive.

All Fen could do was cling to the saddle, fingers aching against the leather, his mind reeling from Sarge's revelation, from the name Johnathan McLeod Barrett, from the word Exiled.

He hated it. Hated that he couldn't fight this. Couldn't shield himself from it. Couldn't even scream.

Around them, the sky tore itself apart. Shards of glowing crystal erupted from the monolith like shrapnel, raining down alongside the sweeping arcane beams. Each fragment cut razor-fast, sharp enough to punch through steel. Whole squadrons were caught in the crossfire—some simply erased in blinding bursts, others shredded mid-air, their riders and mounts tumbling from the sky like broken toys.

Desmond's voice crackled through the comms, hoarse and ragged. "The closer we get—the harder it'll be for that thing to lock on. Last dash past the crystal. Circle it tight. Hug the edges—it won't be able to track as cleanly."

The order was barely out before the surviving flyers angled hard, banking low and fast. The Bastion loomed ahead, but the crystal still hung between them and the fortress, its vast form drifting, repositioned like some nightmare glacier. To reach the stronghold, they had to skim the monster's reach.

It wasn't formation anymore. It was chaos—mounts scattering, racing in desperate arcs, every rider fighting to stay alive. Fen felt every heartbeat of it in his bones, every scream that cut short too fast. And still, all he could do was cling to the saddle and trust Seraph. Trust Petrie.

The fortress was close now, its defenses sparking awake. Towers spat arcs of wild energy, lashing out at anything in the sky—friend or foe, it didn't matter.

"Seraph!" Fen barked, but she was already moving—Petrie cutting low, skimming beneath a streak of lightning that turned the air white.

"I see it!" she growled. Her hands were steady, her voice iron.

The survivors pushed on, what was left of their force peeling free of the crystal's reach at last—a ragged, battered wave crashing toward the fortress walls.

One by one, they crested the high towers, dodging desperate fire until they dropped into the courtyard's heart—a once-lush botanical garden, now a blackened ruin of shattered glass and scorched vines.

Fen staggered as he hit the ground, legs trembling, chest tight, heart still hammering against his ribs. His gaze swept the courtyard, frantic, counting. Out of the two dozen flyers who had made the dash with them, only twelve remained. A handful of scouts, a few pairs on mounts, maybe fifteen or twenty bodies total. Barely half of the thirty-five or forty that had begun the approach.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking. His breath came sharp, shallow. The world pressed in, edges blurring. Too close. Everything was too close. His body wanted to fold, to give way, even as his mind screamed at him to stand.

Then—he felt it.

A pulse. Not from outside, but inside.

Over the past few days, the resonance had shifted. At first it came like a glitch, unbidden and wild. Then, as he leaned into it, it began to answer—rising to his aid in moments of need. Soon it had started to feel like harmony, something he could control, something he might even begin to understand.

But this… this was different. The feeling crawled inside him, climbing through him uninvited, scraping with raw dissonance.

It wasn't unity.

It was discord.

A jarring, ragged sound tore beneath reality itself—semitones grinding, scraping together, as if the code holding him together was fraying at the edges.

Then he saw why his anxiety had spiked, why this twisted surge had woken inside him. The Bastion's defenses were firing. Automated turrets had turned inward, locking onto his own battered forces. And in the shadows of the ramparts, figures in black moved with precision, their presence radiating command. The stronghold was compromised.

The nearest turret swung toward them. Fen braced—then it glitched, stuttered, and froze.

Black tendrils lashed from his core—not the golden light he'd felt with Auri, but a warped echo of it. Twisted. Distorted. It felt like the glitch that had ripped loose back in the training yard, and again in the refinery—raw, unstable, clawing at the edges of reality. The same resonance that had nearly torn him apart the first time, frantic and unshaped, now spilling out of him once more.

The first tendril struck. The nearest turret's casing flickered—reality peeling back, lines of code and glowing runes unraveling like frayed thread. It dissolved into static, the sound warped and guttural, collapsing into fractured pixels like a dying star.

And with the strike came the visions. Other versions of him flared into existence, each one hurling tendrils in a different direction—branching futures clawing for dominance. Every one of them violent. Every one ending in ruin. In one, Seraph was caught in the blast, her body tearing apart where the turret had stood. Fen blinked hard, forcing that path closed, and the real strike landed clean—only steel collapsing, not her.

Another turret swung toward them. More versions of him rose—one shredding the machine, another raking through his own men, a third cutting Seraph down. They fractured and bled into one another until he forced the right line, locking it into place. The tendril whipped true, unraveling the turret into smoke and sparks.

A third locked on. More shadows of him split from his form, each lashing out with tendrils. Some felled the machine. Some killed his allies. Some left only ruin. He forced himself into the line that spared them, teeth gritted, heart hammering, eyes burning.

Then another. And another. Tendrils lashed one after the next, black arcs cracking through the air until one by one the defenses glitched, staggered, and shredded themselves into nothing. But every strike brought more phantoms of him, more ruinous outcomes. Every path ended in death—except the ones he clawed and dragged himself toward.

Silence fell.

For a heartbeat, Fen stood at the center of it all, dark energy curling off him, the echoes of that warped resonance vibrating through the courtyard. The turrets were gone. The skies were—briefly—clear. But the visions still burned in his mind. Other versions of him still lingered at the edges, all the ways he could have failed, all the ways he could have killed them.

Fen exhaled, the energy bleeding off him, curling back into the shadows. And when he turned—he didn't find fear in himself. He found it in Seraph's eyes.

From the look on her face, she had seen it too. Not the power she'd glimpsed before, golden and harmonic, but this twisted inversion of it. Something foreboding clung to the air around him, a pressure that made the space itself feel anxious, unstable. And she knew—he could see it—that it horrified her.

Wide-eyed. Silent. Like she'd just seen someone she didn't recognize.

Fen's jaw clenched. He tore his gaze from her and what was in her eyes—fear, not of the battle, but of him—and forced his voice steady.
"Come on," he said coldly. "We have to move."

Seraph just nodded, silent. The horror in her eyes hadn't faded—it had only hardened into something colder. Resignation. And beneath it, concern.

Fen didn't care. Couldn't. He had something to do now. Something he understood. The panic clawing at him eased under the weight of action. This—danger, motion, the sharp focus of survival—this felt familiar. Safe, in its own way. They pushed forward, weaving through the smoldering wreckage of the courtyard. Fires still burned in pockets, bodies—friend and foe alike—strewn like discarded tools across the scorched garden.

Through the smoke, Desmond appeared, favoring his side, blood trailing down his arm. But he was standing. Barking orders. He was trying to pull together what was left of the strike force.

Seraph's head snapped toward him, relief breaking through her worry. "Desmond—how did you get here so fast? You're hurt!"

"I organized the troops onto the transports, then commandeered one of the pegasi teams and followed," he rasped, grimacing. "They're a lot faster unhitched and was able to catch up to you and the scouts. I caught a shard of shrapnel cresting the walls, but I'll live."

Fen knew exactly how fast those mounts could move. They could pull a full transport faster than most ships. Loosed, they were unmatched for raw speed across the skies. Desmond must have pushed his mount to the edge to catch them.

"There's good news," Desmond added, and there was a flicker of relief in his tone. "Fisck's still alive. He pinged me just before the comms cut. He's holed up in the command center—situation control and internal defenses are up but failing. His personal guard bought him time, but they're all gone now. He says the intruders are close to breaking through the doors."

"The ping came through?" Seraph asked sharply.

"Yeah. Must be the jamming—it's still up, but short-range comms are bleeding through. Are either of you hurt?"

Fen exhaled, tension pulling tighter instead of looser. Fisck was alive. For the moment.

Fen didn't get a chance to answer. The courtyard's uneasy quiet shattered.

Another man shouted—then choked—before being dragged down, blades flashing quick and merciless. The bodies fell without a sound, as though the air itself was swallowing it.

Fen's stomach dropped. Five dead already—in moments. Their force was too small to take losses like this.

Shapes bled in and out of the shadows. At first glance they looked like wraiths—flowing bodies of smoke and steel, half-there, half-nightmare. Not just stealth gear. Warped stealth rigs. Transmuted into something worse—operators twisted into predators that seemed more shadow than man, slipping from victim to victim before the eye could even track them.

"Demons!" someone screamed.

"No!" Fen bellowed, his voice cracking across the courtyard. "They're not demons—they're men in rigs! Transmuted magitech, that's all! They'll die like anything else if you pin them down. Fight in pairs, cover each other's backs!"

A few heads snapped toward him—eyes wide, panicked—but the words landed. Instinct took over. The survivors shifted back-to-back, blades raised, forming desperate little knots of resistance.

Fen spun toward Desmond, teeth clenched. "Reinforcements?"

Desmond's face was grim. "Main transports are still twenty, thirty minutes out. Officers' escorts might make it sooner—but for now, it's just us."

The shadows surged. So did Fen.

With a snap of his cloak, he vanished—Veil of Night dragging him into the dark.

He reappeared in the shifting firelight shadows, sword already cutting through the air. The first wraith-figure barely turned before Fen's blade carved down from shoulder to hip. Smoke-like flesh tore apart on the strike, unraveling in the firelight as black tendrils snapped outward along the arc of his swing.

He didn't stop. Couldn't. Each strike was a release—the violence bleeding off the fear and panic crushing his chest. Every kill bought him another breath, another heartbeat of clarity.

The battlefield clicked into focus. The assassins were using the shadows themselves to leap, bending the dim into a weapon. It reminded him of the dwarf's brute force, of anomalies surging through broken code—only sharper, quicker, more predatory. They were a different kind of nightmare.

One blurred mid-leap. Fen was faster. His sword lashed out, void-forged steel screaming as it caught the shadow mid-fade.

Dark tendrils whipped from his back—more this time, half a dozen at once, trailing him like hunting dogs. They weren't his to command. They answered something deeper—the discord thrumming beneath his skin, reacting to every spike of fear, every pulse of rage.

They moved with him—through him—matching the pull in his chest, sharpening his intent into one thought: the next kill.

Ahead, two shadows peeled away, slipping through wreckage, angling for Desmond.

Don't trust the code. Don't let them decide who you are.

Sarge's words ripped through his mind like fire, feeding the violence, driving him forward.

The tendrils struck before Fen's blade could. They lashed out, coiling around the assassins as they lunged. The men writhed, half-vanishing in their rigs before unraveling into frayed code, torn apart mid-step.

Fen roared, pressing the attack. He flowed through them like a predator loosed, his blade cutting arcs of steel while tendrils snapped outward, shredding shadows before they could land their blows. They weren't demons. They weren't ghosts. They were men in rigs, and he tore through them without hesitation.

Ten, twelve—he couldn't tell. Most of the force was already down, broken bodies in black littering the courtyard. A few had fallen to Seraph's relentless strikes, others to Desmond's men fighting back-to-back. But the lion's share—the wreckage of the enemy—was Fen's.

Another figure flickered at his flank, a blur in the shadows, blade raised. Fen's mind, lost in the haze of dissonance, marked it as just another enemy. His tendrils whipped toward it, hunger driving them straight for the kill.

"FEN!" Seraph's scream cut through the fog like a blade.

His eyes snapped wide, the illusion breaking. He yanked himself back, every nerve recoiling as the tendrils froze—bare inches from Desmond's throat.

The courtyard fell silent. What remained of their troops—barely a dozen—stared at him. Not with relief. With fear. The assassins were dead. The battle was theirs. But the survivors looked at him like he was something just as dangerous.

Fen's chest heaved, blade still raised, tendrils flickering at the edge of sight. Then Seraph was there. Quiet, steady. She stepped close, her hand finding his shoulder. Slowly, firmly, she pressed down, lowering his sword.

Desmond's eyes widened—shock flashing across his face—but only for a moment. He caught himself, straightened, and met Fen's gaze. For a heartbeat, the look said everything: I saw. I know. I'm letting it pass. One war broken man recognizing another, and choosing to move forward.

Then Desmond turned to the others, his voice ragged but steady. "That was twenty infiltrators. A big strike team. If they could sneak that many in under the chaos, it means the rest of their force isn't large. A handful more, maybe."

He turned back, eyes hard, landing on Fen. "But they'll be hunting. So we hunt first."

Fen nodded once, a grim smile tugging at his mouth.

And together, they pushed deeper into the fortress, toward the command center.