Soulforged: The Fusion Talent

Bright's danger sense had been screaming for hours, but the moment it shifted from warning to immediate threat, he was already moving.

His eyes snapped open in the darkness of his Academy candidate quarters. Around him, the building was quiet—too quiet, the kind of silence that preceded violence.

"Everyone up!" Bright's voice cut through the stillness with command authority he'd earned through survival. "Now! We're under attack!"

Duncan emerged from his room instantly, Bone Guard already forming across his arms. Mara followed seconds later, dual blades in hand, her expression sharp with combat readiness.

The other candidates stumbled out more slowly—some confused, some disbelieving, all trying to process the sudden shift from celebration to crisis.

"What are you talking about?" Jackson demanded. "The alarms haven't even—"

Then they rang.

Emergency klaxons erupted across Vester, their harsh tones shattering any remaining doubt.

"Told you," Bright said flatly, his spatial foresight already mapping the building's exits, calculating optimal escape routes. "Multiple threats are converging. We need to move now before we're trapped."

"The convoy—" Ellarine started.

Here's a cleaned, novel-ready rewrite that tightens the tactical flow, sharpens Bright's voice, and smooths the transitions while keeping your intent and tone intact:

"It's irrelevant if we're dead. We have to split up. It would reduce target concentration and improve our chances of survival."

Bright's tactical mind was already several steps ahead of his words. The decision crystallized even as he spoke. Staying together made them a single, vulnerable mass; familiarity and cohesion would keep them alive longer.

Ellarine moved without hesitation, gathering Bolt, Marcus, and the Kadesh and Crownhold candidates. Their destination was obvious—the officer compound. If Rowan was still breathing, he would have established defensive positions there by now.

That was where the line would form.

They nodded, already organizing theirselves into her group with swift efficiency.

The rest—Duncan, Mara, Bessia, Kora, Silas—stayed with Bright. Their route angled toward the logistics center.

If the infrastructure had been struck, that was where the bleeding would be worst. Supply hubs drew chaos like a magnet—panicked civilians, clerks, quartermasters, half-trained auxiliaries suddenly forced into combat zones they were never meant to see. The logistics department housed the highest concentration of non-fighters and barely combat-ready personnel in the outpost.

Which meant two things.

It was where help was needed most.

And where death would come fastest.

"We're headed for central, this is bullocks ," one of the Crownhold soldiers protested. "We're supposed to stay protected, not engage in—"

"You want to hide in this building that can possibly become a target at any point in time? Be my guest." Bright was already moving toward the exit. "Anyone who wants to join me and break some cultist bones, follow."

Duncan fell in beside him without question. Mara too. Bessia grabbed her medical supplies—combat instinct overriding any previous protocols. Kora hesitated, fear and duty warring in her expression, then joined with quiet determination.

Silas flickered into more solid presence. "Let get the show on the road shall we," he said simply.

They split into two groups and burst into Vester's chaos.

-----

The northeastern sector was dark.

Not the artificial night of dimmed soul-force lamps, but absolute darkness—the kind that came when infrastructure failed completely and the Never-Ending Night pressed in without resistance.

"Lamps are down," Bessia observed, her enhanced senses straining to compensate for her lost vision. "Sabotage, probably."

"Definitely." Bright's spatial foresight blazed in his mind, replacing sight with something more comprehensive. Within his sphere of influence—approximately thirty meters in all directions—he could sense movement, position, trajectory. Could map terrain and threats with crystalline clarity that darkness couldn't compromise.

"Stay within ten meters of me," he commanded. "I can see through this. You can't."

They moved through darkness that would have paralyzed normal soldiers, Bright's foresight guiding them past obstacles, around collapsed structures, through alleys where Covenant agents lurked.

The first ambush came from a side street—three fanatics with blades and religious conviction, emerging from shadows to attack what they assumed were blind, vulnerable targets.

They learned otherwise immediately.

Bright's spatial foresight had mapped them before they moved, predicted their attack vectors, and calculated optimal counters.

His extended blade met the first agent's strike with perfect timing, redirecting momentum and opening the fanatic's guard. Duncan's follow-up crushed the agent's skull with Bone Guard, although defensive enhancing his strength.

The second agent went for Mara—or tried to. Her dual blades were already moving, her recent training letting her fight effectively with human combatants even in darkness by following air displacements. She carved through the agent's defenses with brutal efficiency, her blades finding throat and heart in rapid succession.

The third tried to flee. Silas materialized behind him—his Sense Fade making him invisible even to allies until he chose otherwise—and delivered a killing strike so quick the agent died still running.

"Covenant forces," Bright confirmed unnecessarily. "Multiple cells are active. This isn't random—it's always some bougie coordinated assault with this guys."

They continued moving, engaging and eliminating fanatics with systematic efficiency.

And it was easy.

Almost disturbingly easy.

These Academy candidates had been trained in human-to-human combat—not just anti-Crawler tactics, but the brutal realities of fighting other soldiers. Vester's Trial system, however dark its purpose, had honed them against human opponents with tactical intelligence and adaptive strategies.

The Covenant agents were committed, fearless, driven by religious conviction.

But they were also mostly laborers and support staff. Embedded agents who'd learned basic combat but lacked the systematic training that separated soldiers from civilians with weapons.

Against Initiates trained specifically for this kind of engagement? They were outmatched.

"This is too easy," Mara said after their fourth encounter left three more fanatics dead. "Something's wrong. These agents should be better trained if this is a major assault."

"They're cannon fodder," Duncan realized. "First wave designed to create chaos and draw response forces. The real threats are probably targeting specific objectives while we're busy with these."

Bright's danger sense agreed—the screaming warnings weren't focused on the fanatics they were killing. The real threats were elsewhere, doing something far more dangerous while soldiers fought decoys.

"Let's keep moving then," he ordered. "The logistics center. If the infrastructure's been sabotaged, that's where we'll find—"

His spatial foresight registered massive movement beneath them.

"Down!" Bright shouted, spatial awareness giving him microseconds of warning.

The ground erupted.

Not a crack or fissure. A full breach—ten meters of street surface collapsing as something enormous forced its way upward from subterranean tunnels.

Ants poured through the opening like water from a broken dam.

Worker variants, soldier variants, all driven by hive-mind coordination and insatiable hunger.

"Contact!" Duncan bellowed, Bone Guard reinforcing as the first soldier ant charged. "Crawlers! Fucking crawlers!"

The fight transformed instantly from easy human targets to desperate survival against creatures designed to kill.

-----

Bright's spatial foresight was perfectly designed for this.

Where Silas's Sense Fade removed him from reality's perception, Bright's awareness mapped reality with mechanical precision. Every ant within thirty meters and beyond registered as distinct threat signature—position, velocity, attack vector, all processed simultaneously.

Darkness didn't matter. The ants' natural advantages in low-light conditions meant nothing against perception that didn't rely on photons.

Silas, on the other hand, realized his Fade wouldn't work on them—they tracked by chemical signatures and vibration—so he stayed visible and shifted to coordination instead.

Silas flickered into full presence, understanding immediately. His Sense Fade talent—so effective against humans who relied on visual memory—was a tad useless against insects that operated on entirely different sensory frameworks.

It was almost poetic. The talent that made him invisible to humans made him just another target to creatures that didn't use sight and mentals as primary perception.

"Duncan, anchor position! Bessia, stay central—we'll bring the wounded to you! Mara, Kora—flank them, target their legs and joints!"

They fought with coordination born from shared survival, each Academy candidate leveraging their capabilities against creatures that should have overwhelmed them.

Duncan's Bone Guard held against mandibles that could shear steel, his defensive talent creating mobile fortification that protected weaker members.

Mara's dual blades found weak points with precision—joints, sensory organs, vulnerable thorax sections where chitin was thinner.

Kora's throwing knives were less effective against armored targets, but she adapted quickly, using them to distract and create openings rather than seeking kill shots.

And Bright—Bright moved through the chaos like a conductor directing lethal orchestra, his spatial foresight showing him everything.

He saw the ant circling behind Bessia before it committed to attack. Called the warning. Duncan pivoted and caught it on his guard.

He saw the worker variant trying to flank Mara's blind spot. Extended his blade to four-meter reach and bisected it mid-charge.

He saw the soldier ant attempting coordinated pincer movement with two others. Predicted their convergence point and positioned himself to disrupt their formation before it completed.

Fighting blind should have been impossible.

With spatial foresight, it was almost trivial.

"They're everywhere!" Kora shouted, voice tight with controlled panic. "How many are there?"

"Dozens in our immediate vicinity," Bright responded, his perception mapping ant movements throughout the sector. "Hundreds throughout the outpost. This isn't a random emergence—this is a full colony in our door steps."

They fought their way forward, ant corpses piling in their wake as they pushed toward the logistics center through chaos that should have killed them—or at least left them wounded.

And somehow, impossibly, they survived.