CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
Day 15
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No alarms sounded. No horns of warning. Just the groaning walls of the Vault, the subtle creak of bent steel, and the occasional crackle of unstable Rift energy trying to restitch itself. Hours passed since Seraphim V-09 vanished, but the air refused to settle. It hung thick and cold, pressing against their skin like a living thing.
The Ashbinders gathered in a broken circle. No fire. No light. Just ragged breathing and the unspoken weight of what had just happened.
Jex was the first to break the silence, voice low and rough.
"Tell me someone else saw her bleeding."
Torren's eyes were dark, lips pressed thin. "She bled. Just... not the way we do."
Nira sat apart, the glow of her Grid casting strange shadows across her face. Her fingers moved in restless twitching, eyes scanning streams of data no one else could see. "I saw fear."
The word fell like a stone. More powerful than the violence, more real than the fight.
Senya's voice cut through the tension, sharp and steady. "Next time, she won't flinch. We need a plan. A strategy that breaks her."
Echo, leaning against a cracked pillar in the shadows, spoke softly but with conviction. "She hesitated because of something we don't understand. There's a fragment of her left — some spark of memory."
Silas rose slowly, his posture rigid. His hands trembled slightly, but his voice was iron. "Then we strike first. Not her. Not V-09. The Tribunal's entire network: their surveillance, supply lines, everything that keeps their grip tight."
Jex scoffed, rubbing the stinging wound on his forearm. "And with what? We're barely whole after that fight."
"Not yet," Silas replied calmly, "but we will be. Ephra Dusk isn't just a ruin — it's a bastion, a beacon. We make it the heart of resistance. We bleed the Tribunal dry."
Nira's eyes shone, reflecting shifting code. "It's more than surviving now. We don't just breathe — we beat. We forge our own pulse beneath the Rift's shadow."
Torren cracked his neck, the sound echoing in the silence. "Then we need defenses. Traps. Decoy signals. Noise. Anything to throw them off balance."
Echo smiled faintly, voice steady with grim humor. "And bait. Someone has to draw their fire."
The group looked at him.
"I volunteer."
A heavy silence fell. No one spoke, but no one objected.
---
By nightfall, the Ashbinders were a storm of motion.
Silas and Senya crawled through the ruined subway tunnels beneath Ephra Dusk, mapping the ancient arteries that could become their veins of movement and supply.
Nira immersed herself in code, building intricate noise loops and signal scramblers into the old relay towers. Her fingers danced like a pianist's, weaving digital camouflage into the Bastion's very bones.
Jex scavenged broken Rift cores, welding and wiring with fierce determination. He fashioned an unstable energy beacon — a lure for the Tribunal's hunters, a rallying flare for potential allies.
Torren found something unexpected: the shattered spine of a dormant Seraphim module on the outskirts of their domain.
"It's dead," he said, voice clipped, "but it still hums. If we plant it where they can see, we show them what happens to their gods."
Senya carried the shard herself. In the open, unhidden.
The moment it activated, the air crackled.
They didn't speak. They only felt it. A ripple of defiance that screamed through the Rift:
> "We survived. Now we choose the war."
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Far above, in the high chambers of the Tribunal, the signal reached Judicator Velae's command screen at midnight.
The broadcast was distorted — Rift-warped and broken — but unmistakable: Ephra Dusk ablaze in symbolic light, a fractured Seraphim unit, glyphs branded in the language of the Forge.
No voice. No demands. Just a message. A challenge.
Velae's eyes narrowed. She closed the feed with a steady hand and turned to the Tribunal heads assembled around her.
"Deploy."
A new symbol glowed on her console: EX-07 - Ascension Directive Pending.
And deep within the Rift's folds, another figure stirred, awakened by the call to arms.
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The battle had ended — but the war was only beginning.