Ares trembled before dawn.
The storms that had hung for days over the city began to change. What had once been crimson lightning now bled into white, pure and blinding. Every strike lingered too long, burning holes in the sky. Raiders stationed along the wall squinted through the glow, unsure if what they were seeing was lightning or something trying to take shape inside it.
From her vantage point on the central spire, Lira watched the light crawl across the horizon like a living thing. It didn't fade between flashes anymore. It stayed. Pulsing. Breathing.
"Status on outer sectors?" she called, her voice sharp against the storm's hum.
"Fractures forming along the west perimeter," her second-in-command reported through the comm-crystal. "They're not static, moving, like veins."
Lira turned toward the west. Even from this height she could see it now: cracks in the air itself, glowing with the same pale light that had erupted during the last surge. Dust and debris floated upward around them instead of falling, drawn into their glow.
She closed her hand over the crystal at her wrist. "Pull everyone back from the perimeter. I want a containment line at Gatepoint Seven."
"Yes, Captain."
The wind picked up, carrying with it a low hum that resonated through the steel of the deck. It wasn't thunder. It was something deeper, vibrating through her bones. For a moment it sounded almost like a voice, trying to remember how to speak.
Beneath the world, the Dominion stirred in answer.
Aiden had walked for hours or perhaps seconds; time had little meaning here. The corridor of light had become a tunnel of mirrored stone, reflecting countless versions of himself. In each reflection, something had changed: a wound that wasn't his, eyes of silver instead of green, scars that glowed faintly. He didn't look at them long.
He could feel the Dominion's heartbeat now. It echoed through every surface, a slow, deep rhythm that made the ground pulse beneath his boots. He was moving closer to the source, the place the shard-woman had called the First Light.
At the edge of his awareness, the air quivered. A ripple passed through the corridor, and for a moment he saw flashes of the surface world, Ares' skyline buried under lightning, Lira's silhouette framed in light. Then it was gone.
He stopped walking. "You're connected," he whispered to the Dominion. "You're reaching for them."
The hum around him deepened in tone, as though acknowledging him.
He thought of the woman's last words: It only takes what it is given.
"What happens," he asked softly, "when it decides to take everything?"
The corridor didn't answer. It just kept breathing.
On the surface, containment had failed.
By mid-morning, half the western sector had vanished under a veil of white light. The air warped within it, refracting the ruined buildings like reflections on rippling water. Raiders sent to investigate came back with burns that glowed faintly, as if the light had marked them.
Lira moved among the wounded herself, her expression unreadable. "Quarantine the injured. No contact without shield seals," she ordered.
One of the medics hesitated. "Captain, the light, it doesn't burn like heat. It's inside them. They're hearing… something."
Lira knelt beside one of the injured, a young Raider, his armor fused to his arm. His eyes were wide and distant.
"What are you hearing?" she asked.
The man's lips parted. A single word escaped, barely a whisper. "Calling…"
Then he convulsed, his body arching before going limp. The mark on his arm flared once and then faded. The hum in the air surged.
Lira stood slowly. "Evacuate the sector. Now."
As she turned away, the ground split. A fracture line ran straight through the city, glowing so bright that the shadows turned transparent. The Dominion's light was pushing through, no longer content to stay buried.
She looked toward the center of Ares, the buried Gate where Aiden had vanished. The glow there was steady now, no longer pulsing. Like an eye open and watching.
"Aiden," she whispered, "what have you done?"
Deep below, Aiden reached the end of the mirrored tunnel.
The floor widened into a circular platform suspended over an abyss of light. No walls, no ceiling, only the endless glow stretching into the void. In the center stood a single structure: a crystalline sphere half-buried in the floor, its surface cracked and webbed with faint luminescence.
He approached slowly. The hum here was louder, almost a chant. Each vibration pulled at his mind, drawing images he didn't want, faces from the visions he had seen, now flickering in the glow beneath the sphere. The creators, the child, the woman,all trapped in that radiance.
Aiden placed his hand on the sphere.
The surface rippled. Light poured up his arm, not painful but consuming, seeping into every nerve. His breath caught. The Dominion's voice filled him, not as words, but as understanding.
He saw the moment of its birth again, only clearer. The architects channeling all their essence into the crystal core, hoping to preserve their world. But something had gone wrong. The core had not stopped time, it had erased meaning. Their memories had decayed into loops. The Dominion wasn't protecting their legacy. It was protecting their mistake.
And now it was trying to heal itself by absorbing everything that still lived above.
Aiden pulled his hand away, gasping. The glow dimmed, and the hum quieted. But the mark on his arm burned brighter than ever.
He looked up toward the unseen ceiling, toward the world of Ares.
"If you're calling," he whispered, "then I'll answer. But not the way you expect."
The light flickered, uncertain, as if the Dominion itself were listening.
Above, Lira stood at the command balcony as the storm broke open completely.
Columns of light shot upward from the fractures, twisting into the clouds. The air thrummed with power. For the first time in days, she could see beyond the storm, straight up into the void where stars should have been. They flickered, dimming one by one.
Her comm-crystal flared. "Captain," a voice shouted over the static. "It's the Dominion, it's reaching for the core again!"
Lira's gaze fixed on the faint glow at the city's heart. "Then we cut it off."
"But..."
"Now!"
She turned to the control array and pressed her palm against the seal. Energy surged from the fortress, firing a lance of blue light into the core. The ground shook. The Dominion's glow faltered for an instant.
Far below, Aiden felt it too, a wound in the light, a brief break in the Dominion's pulse.
He smiled faintly. "Good," he said. "Hold on, Lira."
Then he stepped toward the heart of the sphere as it cracked open, flooding the chamber with unbearable radiance.
The First Light was waking.