The silence that followed the implosion of the harvest-cultist was not a true silence. It was a pressurized, humming void—a vacuum where sound went to die. Dimas slumped against the cracked bulkhead, his chest heaving. His right arm was a dead weight of charred, necrotic flesh, a stark contrast to the distant, rhythmic pulsing of the Ark’s engine deep beneath the earth."Dimas? You still breathing, kid?" Silas emerged from the shadows of the secondary tunnel, his rifle barrel still smoking. He stepped over the pile of white ash that had once been a divine vessel, his brow furrowed. "That thing… it just dissolved. It didn't fight back."Dimas stared at the pile of ash. "It didn't need to fight. It was a scout, Silas. A probe. The real one is already here."The air in the bunker shifted. The temperature plummeted, and the scent of ozone—sharp, metallic, and overwhelming—flooded the chamber. A tall, golden-clad figure materialized from the shadows, its form c

The air in the Ark’s lower hold was no longer sterile; it was thick, electric, and tasted faintly of copper—the smell of a storm contained in a bottle. Dimas flexed his right hand. The God-Steel, cool and dense, clung to his forearm like a second skin, its surface matte and non-reflective, hiding the necrotic rot that pulsed beneath."You look like a walking anvil," Silas said, his voice cutting through the hum of the cooling fans as he tossed a bandolier of kinetic charges toward Dimas. "And just as heavy, I bet."Dimas caught the bandolier, the weight shifting with a familiar, lethal balance. He tightened the straps across his chest. "I don’t need to be fast, Silas. I just need to be the thing they can’t break.""Irina isn't going to thank you for coming to play hero, you know," Silas grunted, checking the internal diagnostic of his rifle. "She’s probably already figured out a way to leverage that extraction unit into a bargaining chip.""She is