When the rain falling from the open sky can melt the paint right off your armored plating in a matter of seconds, you know Mother Nature decided to join the war on the wrong side and brought her own caustic tools to ruin everyone's night. Asher crouched low behind a rusted, bullet scarred shipping container, pulling the heavy rubber hood of his tactical cloak tighter over his head as a vicious gust of wind whipped stinging drops of acid rain across the vast, dark loading courtyard. The storm was loud enough to drown out the sound of their heavy boots splashing in the toxic puddles, but it also cut visibility down to barely ten feet, turning the entire industrial landscape into a murky gray blur where danger could hide just an arm length away. Around him, three members of the strike team melted effortlessly into the deep shadows of Voss's forward operating base, their assault rifles held tight against their chests with safety switches flicked off and fingers resting lightly on the tr

The blast of energy came from nowhere. It erupted from the steel panels with a deafening crack that shook the air right out of Asher’s lungs and left his ears ringing like struck bells. Thick pillars of humming electricity shot upward from the floor in a perfect, blinding circle, locking together overhead with a sound like tearing metal. The barrier sealed with a final, resonant snap, forming an unbreakable cage of pure, searing light. Asher hit the transparent wall with his shoulder on pure instinct. A brutal shockwave threw him backward onto the concrete before he could even register the impact. His teeth clacked together. The taste of copper flooded his mouth. “Asher!” Jaren’s voice cracked across the room. He lunged forward with his rifle already raised, finger tightening on the trigger, ready to pour rounds into the glowing barrier. The electric current bit into the soles of his boots the instant he crossed the threshold of the circle’s outer edge. Blue arcs crawled up h

Miles above in the open air, the ground beneath the valley shuddered violently, throwing up a massive cloud of gray dust and smoke as the enemy installation erased itself from the map in one final, deafening roar. The shockwave rolled outward in concentric rings, rattling the reinforced windows of the upper sector headquarters and sending loose debris skittering across the concrete floors. Down inside the temporary medical wing, the steady beep of a heart monitor cut sharply through the heavy silence of the sterile room. Asher lay flat on the narrow metal cot, his skin pale and clammy, his chest wrapped tightly in thick white bandages that soaked through with sweat every time he took a shallow, careful breath. The air smelled of antiseptic, scorched metal, and the faint metallic tang of blood that no amount of scrubbing could fully erase. “Open your eyes, you stubborn bastard,” Jaren said, standing right beside the bed with a cup of cold water in his hand as he watched the monitor

The armored transport ground to a violent halt at the very edge of the ridge, its heavy engine coughing thick black smoke into the sulfur-smelling air. The vehicle’s tracks had chewed through ash and cracked basalt for the last forty kilometers, and now the chassis shuddered as if the ground itself rejected its presence. Asher threw open the side door and dropped heavily onto the jagged volcanic rock, his boots sliding a few inches in the ash before catching his balance. Pain flared through the empty space where his core once burned, but he locked it down and forced his spine straight. Right in front of them, stretching across the massive basin of the forbidden central crater, the laws of physics had completely dissolved into pure nightmare fuel. The air itself felt wrong thicker, charged, tasting of ozone and scorched stone. Violet dust hung in lazy spirals that refused to settle. And below, the crater floor had become something out of a fever dream. “Look at the rocks,” Jaren

The beast fired. A searing beam of violet energy erupted from its mouth, racing across the gap straight toward them with blinding speed. The light carried the same hungry distortion that surrounded the distant core space itself seemed to fold and collapse along the beam’s path. “Now!” Asher roared, diving to the left while Jaren and Vane scattered in opposite directions. The plasma beam melted the solid rock where they had stood a moment before into glowing liquid slag. Hot droplets of molten stone hissed as they rained down onto the floating debris, filling the air with a choking smell of sulfur and burned dust. The slab beneath them shuddered from the thermal shock, tilting several degrees toward the violet abyss. Asher rolled over onto his back, coughing violently as the shockwave of the blast tossed his rifle into the endless purple abyss below. The weapon spun away in slow, dreamlike arcs, vanishing into the distortion. Pain flared through the empty space in his chest where th