The order was given. The plan, as there was one, was initiated. Amelia, the Reluctant General, now confronted the first, most immediate fruit of her new role: the wounded. They were not plague victims, but victims of violence. Their weapons of injury were bullets and shrapnel, and their victims were the very men she had just put in harm's way.The Ash-Spires field hospital, once the Grey Breath clinic, was now a trauma bay. The air, once thick with the aroma of herbal extract and disease, was now a metallic blend of sweat, blood, and gunpowder. The sounds were no longer hacking coughs, but the guttural cries of men and women trying not to scream.Amelia surged into the melee, Sophia trailing behind. The first was a young woman from Milltown, Anya's second-in-command. A ricochet had torn open her thigh, severing the femoral artery. Two volunteers were applying futile, clumsy pressure, arms and hands bloody to the elbow. The woman's pale face was her only color, her gasps shallow pants.

Deep beneath the ruined city, in a nuclear-hardened bunker, the last vestiges of rightful authority were destroying themselves. In the Council Chamber, the recycled air was filled with expensive coffee stench, desperation kept hidden, and stale air. The formal table, a relic of a finer age, was scarred with hurried reckless marks of military tacticians. The women and men who sat around it were the ghosts of a dead regime—working ministers, highest generals, and a few corporate titans whose wealth had bought them a spot within this final refuge.In the center holographic display of the table, one figure whirled: Amelia Reed. She was alternately the serene "Guardian," fingers glowing as she healed a child. The second, the "Witch of the Obelisk," she looms above the blood-soaked remains of the Ash-Spires uprising. The third was the most inflammatory of all: a freeze frame from a bootlegged video, in which she touches a soldier's mutilated chest, the flesh reweaving itself in a flash of w

The universe had shut out by the contact of chill flesh and the hollow quiet where a heartbeat should have been. Amelia knelt in the wreckage, Sophia's lifeless form clasped against her own, the bitter recall of her friend's last, acid-cold comment burning on her conscience. The bunker politics, the Obelisk black ledger, the rebellion master plan—it all vaporized into nothingness in the face of cold, final reality: death.Kincaid, bleeding from a cut shrapnel on her cheek, finally struggled to Amelia's side. She didn't utter hollow words of condolence. She placed a firm hand on Amelia's shoulder, keeping it there, a soldier's gesture of shared burden. "We have to move, Amelia. They'll keep coming."Amelia didn't even look up. "Let them.".That isn't a choice you get to make," Kincaid answered, her tone strangled with urgency. "You're not actually grieving a friend. You're giving orders. And your people are going to be dealing with something far worse than assassins.".The words barely

The Sanctuary Field had been a defensive miracle, a challenge to Amelia's grit. Grit, however, would not suffice to win a war. Morale, while bolstered by the manifestation of defensive prowess, was a fragile thing, subject at all times to assaults by starvation, fatigue, and freezing dread of the next attack. The population believed in the Guardian, but the world she saved them from was a terrible, incomprehensible killing machine.Ethan knew that. He had witnessed the Plague Army disintegrate and the Miracle Field rise, his journalist's soul stirring with a mix of awe and profound unease. Amelia was transcending humanness, becoming a force of nature responding to ever more imminent threats. Yet the public still didn't comprehend. They were witnessing symptoms—the assaults, the plagues, the tyranny—but not the ailment. And a patient who doesn't understand his sickness cannot be a full and active partner in his own cure.He'd spent weeks building his case, a mosaic of truth assembled f

Rain pounded the Tin Quarter in a dirty, incessant drizzle that turned the grey earth into a thick, sticky mud. Inside the clinic—a converted machine shed with walls covered in salvaged tin and tarpaulin—the air was thick with herbs, antiseptic, and the low, constant vibration of pain. Amelia moved between the cots, her footsteps economical, her face a mask of seething calm. But beneath the calm, a weary fear had taken root. The Council's enforcers were closing in. Their presence was a vice-like squeeze on the outer districts, and the safe houses were draining, one by one. It was Elara who kept the fear in check.The girl—just sixteen, with bright, keen eyes and hands accustomed to stitching a wound together as neatly as a surgeon—was Amelia's support. They had met six months before, scrounging for what was left in the ruins of a chemist's shop, a gaunt ghost with an insatiable desire to find out what the various shattered bottles contained. Amelia had gazed into her eyes and recogni