The victory at Stone Corridor tasted of ash and ozone. While the soldiers below celebrated a hard-won triumph, Kaelan stood in the command cave, the after-image of the distant black rider seared into his mind. The silence from the eastern front that followed was more unnerving than the battle had been. The Tieron advance halted. No retaliatory strike, no new probing attacks. Just… stillness.It was the silence of a predator circling.Back in Argent, the mood was a fragile, brittle thing. Public morale soared with news of the "great victory in the east." But in the War Room, beneath the celebratory bulletins, the real data painted a grimmer picture. They had destroyed one legion, yes. But at a cost of nearly one-third of their own Eastern Army's frontline troops. The Tieron Empire had dozens more legions. The Federation did not."The Stabilizer project," Kaelan said, turning from the eastern map to face Eldric and Lira. "Status."Lira looked exhausted but alight with a fervent energy.

The northern winds screamed across the Frostmane Plateau like grieving spirits. Here, at the roof of the world, survival was a daily war against ice, hunger, and the monstrous, shaggy beasts that roamed the glaciers. The Frostmane orcs were not a numerous people, but they were tough as ironwood and possessed of a fierce, isolationist pride. Their loyalty to the Federation had always been the thinnest thread, a pact of mutual defense against the northern ice-trolls, sealed with a handshake and a shared cup of fermented goat's milk.It was this thread Marcus-Phi now sought to sever.Kaelan arrived not with the Third Legion in battle array, but ahead of them with a small caravan. His 'soldiers' were engineers from Argent, healers from the mountain clans, and a dozen sleds piled not with weapons, but with sacks of hardy northern grain, sealed barrels of medicinal salve, and prefabricated parts for wind-break shelters and geothermal taps.The Frostmane chieftain, Grimgar, met him at the ed

The run to the Stabilizer site was a journey through a landscape of broken systems. Kaelan and his squad passed through pockets of clear air where Federation soldiers were regrouping, and zones where the suppressor hum still reigned, turning platoons into confused, isolated knots. They spread the word as they went: Target the cables. Sabotage, not assault.By the time they crested the final ridge overlooking the Gilded Basin, the chosen site for the Stabilizer, a valley where the temporal bleed from the Anomaly was strongest, the situation was a mosaic of chaos and desperate effort.Below, the Stabilizer was a skeleton of ambition. Three concentric rings of Void-Steel, each larger than the last, lay partially assembled on the valley floor, connected by a spiderweb of scaffolding and resonant conduits. It looked like the chariot wheel of a god. At its center, a pit had been dug, descending towards the pulsating, non-light of the Temporal Anomaly itself.But the site was under siege. No

Three days later, the Council Chamber in Argent held not just the Federation's leadership, but the leaders of its soul. The air was thick with the scent of polish, anxiety, and the faint, ever-present hum of the distant Stabilizer, carried on the aetheric currents.Kaelan sat at the head of the long, ironwood table. To his right, Eldric, pale but composed, stacks of logistical reports before him. To his left, Roderick, back from the Stone Corridor, a fresh scar across his knuckles, his body humming with a restless energy that had nowhere to go.Down the table sat Grimgar of the Frostmane, a mountain of fur and taciturn strength. Next to him, Thora Ironthumb, Borg's daughter and newly confirmed leader of the Stoneback dwarves, her young face set in lines of grim determination that made her look decades older. Lira was there, her bandaged hands resting on the table, her eyes fixed on a schematic of the Stabilizer. And at the far end, a chair was conspicuously empty, a place symbolically

The rendezvous point was a place of stark, unnatural beauty, a small, nameless valley just south of the Silver River, where the northern grasslands met the creeping edge of the Crystallized Reach. Here, the crystal growth had not formed grand spires, but a field of waist-high, perfectly transparent quartz obelisks that hummed softly in the twilight. In the center of the field, a flat, circular plate of polished white crystal awaited them.Kaelan watched from a hidden ridge, his Environmental Awareness stretched taut. Beside him, Roderick shifted, his eyes on the five figures standing on the plate below: the infiltration team. They wore non-reflective grey and brown gear, stripped of insignia. Their leader was Jax, a wiry veteran of the northern scout corps who had a knack for getting in and out of places he shouldn't. With him were two other scouts, a dwarven lock-smith named Brecka, and Lira's best junior artificer, a nervous young woman named Elara who carried the data-siphon in a p