The sky above the Alliance camp was dark with drifting ash, but beneath the clouds the world glowed faintly blue from the energy fields set around the perimeter. Soldiers moved between tents in tense silence. Engineers whispered over broken radios. Stormguard children huddled close to their instructors, waiting for the next order. No one spoke loudly; the air felt like a string pulled too tight, ready to snap.Jayden walked slowly through the center path with his armor dimmed to avoid disturbing the troops. His wings of light were folded back, flickering now and then from exhaustion. Aira walked beside him, her steps unsteady, her form slightly transparent around the edges as though the night wind might pass through her. Behind them, Yui and the other Stormguard followed in a small group, whispering carefully among themselves.“Jayden,” Aira said softly, “they are scared. They feel the Queen’s presence every time she speaks through the sky. I feel it too. It pulls at me like a ch

The stars over the battlefield were no longer quiet. They pulsed in slow waves, turning from silver to pale blue and then to burning white, like the sky itself was a great, glowing heartbeat. Every soldier in the Alliance fleet watched the heavens with tense faces, waiting for the next sign of danger. And when it came, it came without warning.The fifth Heir tower unfolded in orbit like a great iron flower, its petals stretching across the night. The structure was not like the others. It did not rise from land or ocean. It formed directly above Earth, forged from starlight and metal data. Thick rings of machinery spun slowly around it, humming with a cold and powerful rhythm. Lightning crawled across its surface in perfect circles. Every rotation sent pulses of red energy down toward the planet, spreading panic across the screens of every station and control room.Inside the Alliance command ship, the alarms screamed.“Mira, power spikes are rising again!” an officer shouted. “The

Night settled over the Alliance command base like a heavy blanket, dark and cold, as if the world itself was preparing for something that might never be undone. The wind carried the faint hum of broken towers in the distance. Machines blinked quietly in the corners of the tents. Soldiers whispered about the three-day deadline the Queen had given. Everyone felt the weight of it, like a hand closing around the heart of the world.Inside the largest engineering hangar, bright lights glowed over a sprawling machine that looked too delicate and too dangerous to exist. It was shaped like a heart carved from crystal and metal, suspended by a dozen cables and surrounded by swirling rings of data-light. The machine pulsed with soft red and gold lines, faint and unstable, almost as if it were breathing.This was Mira’s creation. This was the Heartline Engine.Mira stood in front of it with her hands on the railing, her eyes dim with exhaustion but burning with determination. Her lab coat w

The sun had barely risen when the final day of the truce arrived, and even though the world was quiet on the surface, the silence felt thin and fragile, like a sheet of glass waiting for the smallest touch to break. Jayden stood on the ridge overlooking the broken plains where human soldiers and Heir beings had spent three days walking around each other like cautious ghosts. Now the air itself seemed to tremble because everyone knew the same truth: the peace was ending, and the real war was about to begin.Zara came to stand beside him, her crimson armor humming softly as she watched the horizon. “It feels wrong,” she said in a low voice, “to breathe like this and pretend it is peace when we all know the storm is already here.”Jayden nodded even though his chest felt tight. “Peace is never wrong,” he said, speaking gently, “but sometimes peace comes with a countdown.” He looked up into the sky, where faint ripples of color shimmered around the edges of clouds. “And the last number

The moon was silent when the Alliance fleet touched down on its gray and endless surface. The silence was strange, almost heavy, as if the airless world carried the weight of all the memories that had been poured into it by countless voices. Dust rose in slow drifting clouds as landing gears pressed into the ancient soil, and every soldier who stepped out felt the strangeness of standing on a battlefield that had never known life at all.In the distance, stretching across the horizon like a field from a dream, stood the Queen’s fortress, a landscape shaped entirely from glass roses. Each flower shimmered with soft inner light, their petals reflecting the stars like tiny curved mirrors. As the soldiers approached, they could hear a faint humming coming from the roses, a sound so gentle and strange that it made their hearts tremble. It felt like someone whispering forgotten names, like someone breathing a song without words.Zara stood beside Jayden as they walked toward the glass