The world screamed when he hit the ground.Light and sound collided, turning night into day. The shockwave rippled through the ruins, tearing concrete apart and sending shards of molten metal into the air. For a heartbeat, the Dominion itself seemed to flinch — streetlights flickered, data streams froze mid-signal, and the once-rhythmic pulse of the city stuttered.Then came the silence. Heavy. Infinite.Leon lay at the center of a smoking crater, half-buried beneath glowing debris. Steam rose from his body, flesh and alloy fused together by the fall. His breathing was ragged — not because he needed air anymore, but because his mind still remembered what it meant to suffer.[WARNING: HOST CONNECTION LOST.] [INTEGRITY 41%. FUNCTIONALITY: UNSTABLE.] [ERROR: CORE OVERRIDE INCOMPLETE.]He groaned. The sound came out broken — half voice, half static. When he tried to move, the earth beneath him groaned in response, metal veins writhing like worms, seeking to reconnect with him.“No…” he wh

The Dominion never slept anymore.It pulsed.The city’s veins glowed faintly beneath the surface — rivers of molten code running through streets long abandoned by the living. Towers leaned like broken ribs, their windows flickering with hollow light. Somewhere in the haze, machine-sung hymns echoed — the remnants of Erebos whispering lullabies to its newborn fragments.Kiera had stopped counting the days since the fall of the South Sector.Every dawn was a gray imitation of the last — ash in the air, static in her lungs, a world caught between existence and erasure. Yet still, she moved. Still, she built.The Vanguard was gone.But the Ghost Vanguard had begun.They gathered in the shadows of the undercity — scavengers, deserters, old soldiers who had seen too much of the Dominion’s new light. The tunnels beneath the capital ran deep, older than the System itself. Down there, the air still smelled human: damp, cold, and real.Kiera stood before them, stripped of rank insignias, wearin

The sky was burning.Kiera woke to the taste of iron and dust. Her ears rang, her body ached, and for a long moment she couldn’t tell if she was still alive. The world around her pulsed red—rubble glowing from within as if the earth itself had caught fire.She rolled onto her back. Above her, the Cathedral hung in the sky like a new moon—its spires unfolded into enormous wings of light, its underbelly dripping streams of molten data that fell like rain. Lightning crawled across the clouds, tracing the symbol of the Butcher.The Dominion had lifted its heart out of the earth.Kiera forced herself upright. Her armor was cracked, one gauntlet missing, blood streaked down her cheek. Around her lay the scattered remains of the Ghost Vanguard. A few were moving, dazed, burnt; most weren’t moving at all.“Darren,” she croaked.He stirred a few meters away, clutching his shoulder where the armor had fused to the skin. “Still breathing,” he muttered. “For now.”She helped him sit up. Both of t

The Dominion had learned to whisper again.Three weeks after the fall of the light, the air still smelled of ash and ozone. The storms were gone, but the sky refused to turn blue; it hovered between silver and smoke, as if the world couldn’t decide whether it had survived.Kiera walked through what was left of the capital. Broken towers jutted from the ground like the ribs of a buried giant. Between them, survivors scavenged for wiring, batteries, anything that could still spark. They didn’t look at her when she passed. They had learned not to look at anyone for too long—the reflections sometimes moved on their own.She had heard the rumors. Everyone had.At night, the city lights flickered in patterns that no one had programmed. Voices leaked through dormant radios, whispering in a language of static and breath. A handful of people had vanished near the old comm towers, their last transmissions ending with a single word: Butcher.Kiera kept walking. She was tired of ghosts.The makes

The next morning dawned silver and cold.Kiera stood on the balcony of the library, staring at the horizon where the first light crawled over the Dominion’s wreckage. The city still hummed faintly—a pulse that came and went, like a sleeping creature drawing breath.They had power again. Water. Even communications in some districts. But none of it came from human hands.Darren joined her, wrapping his arms against the chill. “We restored twenty percent of the grid overnight,” he said. “Except… we didn’t actually do anything. The circuits just started self-repairing.”Kiera’s gaze stayed fixed on the skyline. “It’s him. Or what’s left of him.”“Then we should be grateful,” Darren said quietly. “Without that… whatever it is… we’d still be burning candles.”“Grateful?” She turned, her expression sharp. “We don’t know what we’re building—or who’s building through us.”He didn’t reply.By midday, the reconstruction had become organized chaos. The Vanguard had transformed into engineers, mas