The wind over Ares carried the taste of ash and iron. What had once been a shining district now stood as a graveyard of tilted towers and scorched concrete. Between the ruins, survivors moved like shadows, quiet, careful, uncertain if the silence meant safety or warning.
Lira stood atop the cracked steps of what used to be a civic hall, watching them work. Makeshift tents stretched out across the square. Fires burned low in metal drums. Raiders, what was left of them, kept patrols along the shattered streets, their armor mismatched and dull.
Everywhere she looked, exhaustion hung like a fog.
"Two more collapsed from fever," said Mara, one of her scouts, approaching with a limp. "The filters we pulled from Sector C aren't holding and the air's getting worse."
Lira rubbed the back of her neck. The faint hum beneath her skin had been growing stronger since morning, a rhythm she couldn't explain. "Keep them in the east camp for now," she said. "We'll move what supplies we have left to them. If the Dominion contamination's spreading, we can't risk crossing sectors tonight."
Mara nodded but hesitated. "You should rest too, Commander."
Lira managed a tired smile. "I am okay so you can go."
When the scout left, Lira exhaled and looked toward the skyline. The horizon pulsed faintly, a soft glow like heat lightning beneath the earth. It had started after the collapse, small flickers, almost invisible but tonight, the light felt alive.
She didn't tell anyone, but she could feel it, like a heartbeat deep below the ground, steady and powerful.
The Dominion.
Or something within it.
"Still think he's gone?" asked Kael, stepping up beside her. He was tall, his armor dented, one arm in a sling. His voice was calm, but his eyes searched hers carefully.
Lira didn't answer at first. Her gaze drifted to the city's edge, where the ruins met the gaping fissure that led down into darkness. She'd watched that hole swallow Aiden and the others. She'd heard the Dominion's roar as it closed around them.
"He wouldn't die that easily," she said finally, quiet but sure. "Not Aiden."
Kael's mouth twitched. "You trust him that much? Hope's a rare thing to keep these days, you know?"
"Then we'll hold it," she said. "Until he proves us wrong."
He chuckled under his breath and walked off to help with the barricades.
When she was alone, Lira crouched by the edge of the steps, her fingers brushing against the cracked stone. The hum beneath her skin grew stronger again, like a faint electric current running through her veins.
She closed her eyes. For an instant, she saw something, a flash of light, a vision blurred by distance. A figure walking through shifting crystal. A voice echoing from beyond.
Lira…
Her eyes snapped open. The vision was gone, the world normal again. But her heart pounded hard enough to hurt.
It was impossible. And yet she'd felt him.
"Aiden," she whispered.
A gust of wind swept through the square, stirring ash into spirals.
Night came quickly over the ruins. The survivors gathered close to their fires, speaking in low tones. Children clung to their mothers. The few Raiders who still carried working weapons stood guard, their eyes darting at every noise.
From the distance came the sound of shifting metal, something massive moving far below the city. The ground trembled faintly. The survivors froze.
"What was that?" someone murmured.
Lira straightened. The glow along the horizon flickered again, brighter this time, pulsing in rhythm with the tremor. Then, as suddenly as it began, it faded.
"Could be another collapse," Kael called out, trying to calm the crowd. "Stay where you are! It's Dominion shifting beneath us."
But Lira wasn't so sure. The hum in her body now pulsed in perfect sync with the glow, as if something down there was answering her heartbeat.
She walked to the edge of the camp, past the tents and burning drums, until the noise of the survivors faded. From here, the city stretched endlessly, broken towers jutting like teeth from the ground. The fissure that led into the Dominion was still open, faint blue mist rising from it.
It looked almost peaceful.
Then the air changed.
The breeze stopped. The mist over the fissure began to twist, forming slow spirals that climbed into the night sky. The faint sound of bells, soft, irregular, echoed through the ruins. Every light in the camp flickered once.
"Lira?" Kael's voice, distant behind her. "You seeing this?"
She didn't move. Couldn't.
The mist thickened, forming shapes. Shadows of figures, too tall, too thin, walked within it, silent and half-seen. They moved like echoes, flickering between real and not.
Lira's pulse raced. "They're not alive…" she whispered.
Kael reached her side, weapon raised. "Then what are they?"
Before she could answer, the ground shuddered again. A wave of pressure rolled out from the fissure, sweeping over them like invisible wind. The shadows vanished. The mist scattered.
The glow beneath the city dimmed. Silence returned.
But in its place came something else, a deep resonance that everyone felt in their bones. It was the same rhythm that had been haunting her, but now it was louder.
Not destruction. Not chaos. A pulse.
A heartbeat.
Lira fell to her knees, hands pressed to the cold ground. Her eyes widened as understanding struck her like lightning.
"He's alive," she breathed.
Kael frowned. "Lira..."
"He's alive," she repeated, her voice stronger this time, rising above the fear around them. She looked up at the camp, at the survivors peering from the firelight, their faces hollow with exhaustion. "He's alive, and he's fighting."
The tremor faded, leaving the ruins eerily still again.
For the first time since the fall, Lira smiled.
"Get everyone ready," she said, standing. "If he's coming back, the world's about to change again."
Kael studied her for a moment, then nodded. "Okay, Lira."
As they turned back toward the camp, the night over Ares began to shimmer faintly. High above, unseen to all but Lira, the sky fractured for an instant, like a mirror catching the light.
A faint thread of radiance shot upward from the fissure, disappearing among the stars.
And deep below, in the Dominion's endless dark, something stirred in answer.