The war council convened in the shadow of the seminary’s fractured spire, where the Void’s influence had twisted the meadow into an eerie dreamscape. Golden light, thick as honey, slanted through cracks in the smog-choked heavens, casting long shadows that writhed like living things. The air hummed with static, carrying the tang of ozone and the faint, metallic whisper of the Dungeon’s heart pulsing deep below. Claire stood at the head of a splintered oak table, its surface scarred by centuries of rebel knives carving plans—and curses—into its grain. Maps of the Shattered Jaw lay strewn amid empty cartridge casings and chipped mugs of bitterroot tea, their edges fluttering in the wind like restless ghosts.

  “I’m leading the intercept,” Claire said, her voice cutting through the murmur of the crowd. She tightened the strap of her buckler, its surface pitted from a hundred skirmishes, and met Veyra’s milky gaze. “Elara’s strategy, my call.”

  Veyra stepped forward, her crow-feather cloak swallowing the fractured light. “You’re needed here,” she insisted, talon-like nails scraping the table. Behind her, the Apostates shifted, their bone-painted faces unreadable. “The Dungeon’s acclimatization trials begin at dusk. New recruits will need your authority to—”

  “The trials can wait,” Claire snapped, her rapier clattering against her thigh as she rounded the table. Somewhere in the meadow, a child’s laughter echoed—Lissa teaching refugees to weave star-grass crowns. “This isn’t just about springing traps. It’s about them—” she jabbed a finger westward, where the Hussars’ campfires smoldered on the horizon, “—seeing us bleed for something real. Not hiding in ruins.”

  Melissa shoved through the crowd, her wrench glinting in her white-knuckled grip. “Oh no. If you’re benching me, Boss, I’m—”

  Trent caught her arm, his calloused hand firm. “You’re staying.” His voice, usually drowned by Baruch’s growls, held a rare edge. “Baruch’s rigging the charges here. No arguments.”

  Melissa whirled on him, grease-streaked braids flying. “Since when do you give orders? Those charges are my designs—”

  “Since your drones got shredded last recon,” Baruch cut in, not looking up from the explosive schematic he was etching into the table with a combat knife. His beard bristled as he smirked. “Face it, Vorn. We need your brains on the Seminary’s expansion. Not your corpse in a ravine.”

  Melissa’s jaw twitched. She kicked a loose brick, sending it skittering into the void where the meadow’s edge crumbled into nothing. “Fuck. Fine.” She slumped against the table, glaring at the canyon map like it had personally betrayed her. “But if you fry the mana conduits again, I’m billing the Apostates for repairs.”

  Georg’s axe bit into the table with a splintering crack, silencing the room. “Hostages?” He leaned into the blade, his voice a graveled snarl. “They’re Hussars. You think they’ll break like her?” He jerked his chin at Elara, who stood motionless by the canyon map, her Void-scarred hands clasped behind her back. “She’s the exception. The rest?” He spat. “Brainwashed meat.”

  Elara didn’t flinch. Sunlight glinted off the silver streaks in her cropped hair as she turned. “I was Tier 6. These are Tier 3.” Her tone was clinical, as if dissecting a corpse. “Their loyalty’s a leash, not a collar. Cut it, and they’ll learn.”

  Lyla flipped her dagger, the blade catching the light as she perched on the remnants of a marble fountain. Its cherub statues lay in pieces at her boots, moss creeping over their sightless eyes. “Learning takes time we don’t have. One signal flare, and the Monarch knows the smog’s lifting here.”

  Roza snorted, her scarred face twisting. “We let the Void eat their sigils. Slow. Painful. But they’ll talk.”

  Veyra’s milky eyes rolled skyward. “The Apostates’ records warn of ‘echoes’—souls bound to the Monarch even in death. We risk his gaze every second they breathe.”

  Myrtle chuckled darkly, her rifle’s scope glinting as she reloaded. “Then don’t let ’em breathe. Simple.”

  Claire raised a hand. Silence fell like a guillotine. “We trap first. Then decide.” Her gaze swept the room, lingering on each face: Georg’s fury, Elara’s icy resolve, Lissa’s shadow peeking from the doorway. “Agreed?”

  Nods rippled through the crowd, reluctant and grim. Gonov adjusted his sniper scope, the lens flickering with Void-static. “Traps won’t hold Tier 3s forever. We need precision.”

  “Precision we’ve got.” Elara traced a rune on the map, her finger leaving a faint smolder in the parchment. The glyph pulsed like a heartbeat. “Shattered Jaw’s a bottleneck. Rockfalls here, razorwire snares here…” She tapped a narrow spur veining the canyon’s eastern flank. “…and this. A natural echo chamber. Their hymns will deafen them. Drown their own orders.”

  Lapen frowned, his arm slung protectively around Lissa’s shoulders. “Hymns?”

  “Coded battle chants,” Elara said flatly. “All Monarch forces are conditioned to respond. Scream the right verses, and they’ll march into fire.” She straightened, her shadow stretching long and jagged across the table. “It’ll be our last resort. But I doubt we’ll need it.”

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  Veyra stepped into Claire’s path as the council dispersed, her cloak reeking of grave soil and burnt sage. “Orris will lead the Apostates. You stay. The trials—”

  “The trials have waited five hundred years,” Claire snapped. Outside, the meadow’s false sunset painted the ruins in bloody hues. Somewhere, a rebel was humming an old lullaby—ashes, ashes, we all fall down. “They can wait three more days.”

  Veyra’s hiss followed her into the light. “Pride bleeds faster than any blade, Claire Lindberg.”

  Then Claire looked at Veyra straight in the eyes for a minute, and sighed, “Maybe you’re right. I’ve been leading operations all my life, it felt wrong to not be there, thank you.” Her voice was soft and had a tinge of vulnerability.

  Veyra smiled in an understanding way, warm. They both departed satisfied and with more to think about.

  The smog struck like a fist, a wall of greasy, particulate filth that seared Georg’s throat as if he’d swallowed lit coal. He doubled over, coughing until his ribs ached, his knuckles white around his axe. “Fuck—” he rasped, spitting black phlegm onto the cracked earth. “Forgot how this shit burns.” His eyes watered, memories flooding back—nights guarding the smog refineries as a conscript, the acid tang eating through his mask filters, Lara’s letters tucked against his chest, her ink smudged by his sweat.

  Elara smirked, her void-scarred skin shimmering faintly as the smog coiled harmlessly around her. She looked like a wraith carved from obsidian, untouchable. “Baptism perks,” she said, tossing him a rag soaked in bitterroot tincture. “Wrap it tight. Breathe shallow. And move. With better expertise with the Void, you’ll learn to breathe it without problems.”

  Behind them, Lapen adjusted the sling holding Lissa’s basket of void-moss, his face pale under the smog’s jaundiced haze. He squinted westward, where the Seminary’s cleansed sky was a shrinking bruise of blue. “smog-infested air’s… weird now,” he muttered, voice muffled by his scarf. “Like missing a tooth. You keep tonguing the gap.”

  Elara didn’t answer. She stalked ahead, her boots crunching through brittle lichen, Gonov trailing her like a shadow. The veteran scout moved soundlessly, his sniper’s coat blending into the ashen landscape. Every few minutes, he’d pause, press a palm to the ground, and murmur bearings only Elara seemed to understand.

  “Here,” she rasped at dawn, gesturing to a fissure in the rockface. “Shortcut. Two days saved.”

  The fissure was a wound in the earth, its walls glistening with oily residue. Lapen hesitated, eyeing the jagged edges. “You sure this isn’t a Monarch sinkhole?”

  Gonov’s laugh was a dry cough. “Only one way to find out, kid.”

  By midday, they emerged onto a ridge overlooking the Shattered Jaw. The canyon yawned below, its walls sheer and striated like rotten bone. Wind howled through the pass, carrying the reek of sulfur and the distant, metallic clang of the Hussars’ armor. Gonov crouched, his scope glinting. “There. Vanguard. Ten riders. Lumens.”

  Elara knelt beside him, her void-scarred fingers tracing the canyon’s spine on the map. “Perfect,” she murmured. “Set the charges here, here… and here.” She glanced at Lapen, who was gingerly unpacking Lissa’s void-moss. The moss pulsed faintly, its silver veins mirroring the girl’s own. “You. Distract them with that when I signal.”

  Lapen blanched. “Distract? These are Tier 3s—”

  “And you’re holding a basket of living Void,” Elara snapped. “Make it sing.”

  Claire paced the war room’s uneven flagstones, her buckler reflecting the hearth’s guttering flames. Lissa sat cross-legged by the fire, sketching a wildflower in the margins of a tactical map. The flower’s petals curled like grasping fingers, its stem threaded with the same silver veins that now webbed the girl’s hands.

  “Decentralized,” Claire muttered, more to herself than the room. “No gods. No kings. No servants.”

  Veyra stirred her tea, the herbs’ bitterness sharp in the damp air. “The Apostates tried replacing the Monarch’s altars with their own,” she said, her milky eye fixed on the fire. “Priests became gatekeepers. Libraries turned to pyres. They knew the path—communion, not conquest—but fear choked them.” She sipped, her voice softening. “Fear… and pride.”

  Melissa looked up from her hydroponic blueprint, her fingers stained with ink. “We build different. Schools. Clinics. No one serves—everyone learns.” She tapped the sketch—a vertical garden spiraling the seminary’s outer walls, its tiers fed by diverted aquifer streams. “Sunlight’s back. Rain’ll come. We just need seeds.”

  Roza snorted, oiling her sword with a rag reeking of animal fat. “And when the Monarch sends his Primes? Your gardens’ll make pretty kindling.”

  “Then we adapt.” Claire’s voice cracked like a whip. “But we don’t become him. No prisons. No quotas. No collars.”

  Myrtle leaned back in her chair, boots propped on the table. “Easy to say when you’re not scrubbing Void-vomit from the latrines.”

  Trent didn’t look up from the drone he was calibrating, its wings humming with unstable mana. “Start small. Water filters. Defense rotations. Let the systems…” He gestured vaguely, a screwdriver clenched in his teeth. “…breathe. We’ll figure it out.”

  Veyra set down her cup. “The Void gave us no blueprint. This chaos… is our order.”

  Lissa looked up, her eyes reflecting the hearth’s embers. “Devon said… ‘The means justify the ends.’”

  Claire’s hand drifted to her buckler, its surface etched with old rebel sigils. “He did.”

  Shattered Jaw Canyon

  The Hussars rode at dusk, their lumen-sticks casting jaundiced halos. Their hymns echoed through the canyon, harmonizing with the wind’s mournful wail:

  “Purge the filthy, purge the blight— Eternal Life to the Monarch!”

  Elara’s hand dropped.

  The first charge erupted in a geyser of rock and static, crushing two riders beneath a hail of shale. Void-runes flared along the canyon walls, their light leeching the color from the world. A Hussar screamed as his loyalty sigil dissolved, the flesh beneath bubbling like wax.

  “Now!” Elara barked.

  Lapen hurled Lissa’s basket into the fray. The void-moss bloomed, tendrils of silver light lashing the air. Horses reared, their riders clawing at eyes suddenly flooded with visions—rotted faces, whispered regrets, the Void’s hungering maw.

  Lyla rappelled down the canyon walls, daggers flashing. Reins severed. Throats opened. Georg’s axe found a Hussar’s chestplate, the impact reverberating up his arms like a bell toll. “Welcome to the Greylands, you fucks!” he roared, his voice raw.

  Elara watched, motionless, as Orris and the Apostates stepped forward. Their chants wove through the chaos, void-mana coiling into a maelstrom above the Hussars. The air thinned, smog peeling back to reveal a night sky riddled with stars.

  The Hussars collapsed, writhing as their sigils burned away. One, younger than the rest, clawed at his throat. “What—what did you do to us?!”

  Elara crouched, her scarred face unreadable. “Freed you,” she said softly. “Original plan was to leave your corpses for the ash-rats. Be grateful.”

  The boy stared at his shaking hands, now bare of the Monarch’s golden brands. “It… hurts.”

  “It’ll pass.” She stood, turning away. “Or it won’t. Either way, you’re alive.”

  Above, the stars blurred as the smog crept back, swallowing the light.