For seven days, Darius Herold said nothing, and that silence frightened Ethan more than his threats.Inside Xavier Tech headquarters, no one had truly rested since the Arvellan Sea explosion. The explosion had lasted only seconds.The fear it created had lasted an entire week.Across Verdanis, schools conducted emergency drills. Families stocked food and water. Some people had already left major cities and moved toward rural regions.Nobody wanted to become the first victim of Darius Herold's next nuclear demonstration.Engineers slept beside keyboards. Officers drank coffee until their hands shook. The Aegis command floor glowed with maps, satellite paths, missile signatures, and red-marked zones across Herold territory.The command center no longer felt like the headquarters of a technology company.It felt like the nerve center of a nation preparing for survival.Every screen represented a potential disaster.Every alert could change millions of lives.Brigadier General Lorne stoo

Ethan stared at the three moving paths on the Aegis display, and for the first time that day, the room waited for him instead of the system.Arguments began to rise around him. One officer wanted all defenses moved toward the civilian corridor as that was the most vulnerable target. Another insisted Xavier Tech had to be protected because Project Aegis was being controlled from there. Brigadier General Lorne argued that if the Tribunal military headquarters fell, the whole command structure could collapse before sunrise.Ethan raised his hand, and the room fell silent once again.“No one makes a decision from fear,” he said. "I believe I will surely find a solution to this." He continued.Rachel looked up from the Aegis control station. “Master Ethan, the system is asking for priority rules. If we delay, it will keep running uncertain models.”“Move,” Ethan said quietly.Rachel froze for a second, then stood from the station. Ethan stepped into her place and placed both hands on the

The celebration died instantly.Darius had anticipated losses so he kept on launching nuclear missiles.The battle intensified.Nobody in the room could afford relief anymore.Every successful interception was immediately replaced by a new threat.The battle was becoming a war of endurance.The question was no longer whether Aegis could stop missiles.The question was whether Aegis could stop enough of them.Missiles climbed.Interceptors followed.The sky became a battlefield nobody could physically see.Hundreds of kilometers above the earth, machines were making life-and-death decisions in fractions of a second.Sensors tracked.Algorithms calculated.Interceptors accelerated.Entire engagements ended before ordinary people even knew they had begun.Every few seconds another explosion appeared on the tracking map.Aegis worked relentlessly, defense systems calculated trajectories, orbital platforms corrected firing solutions, interceptors destroyed target after target.Across Verda

The swarm of Drones finally reached interception range.Ethan stood perfectly still.Nobody in the command center was looking at anything except the countdown.Not the satellite feeds.Not the bomber reports.Not the dozens of alerts still arriving from across Verdanis.Everything had narrowed down to a single missile and a single city.Ten seconds.The drones surrounded the missile.Rachel leaned forward. “Come on,” she whispered.Serena folded her arms tightly across her chest. “Hit it.” She spoke as if the drones could listen to her.Lorne stared without blinking. “Please hit it.”Nobody cared about appearances anymore.For the first time since the war began, generals, engineers, and politicians all looked equally helpless.Nine.Eight.Seven.The missile accelerated.Six.Five.Four.The swarm struck.Thousands of drones converged simultaneously.Some impacted directly.Others detonated shaped charges.Others disrupted guidance and targeting systems.The missile vanished inside a

Darius Herold did not understand fear until the gunfire came close enough to shake dust from the ceiling.The lieutenant stood before him, still breathing hard, while the command center listened to the battle moving closer through the walls. Darius stared at him with disbelief burning in his eyes. “Can this command center still be defended?” he asked, his voice was low and dangerous.The lieutenant swallowed and forced himself to answer. “General, they came with greater force than we expected. The tribunal soldiers broke through with armored tanks, heavy infantry, and precision artillery. Our outer platforms are falling one after another.”Darius’s face twisted. “That is impossible. Our artillery should have crushed them before they reached the second ring.”“It did not, sir,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head. “Their tanks advanced in layers. Every time our platforms fired, their counterfire destroyed the position. We lost eastern defense first, then the northern barricades, then