The map flickered in and out over the stone-smooth floor—three-dimensional, rendered in ghostlight blue from Warden Pike's extended display unit. It hovered like a heartbeat, pulsing in time with the humming walls of the Omniraith city that surrounded them.
Micah knelt close, eyes locked on the shifting contours. "Here," he said, pointing to the northwest quadrant of the drone-generated layout. "No automated transport paths. Minimal traffic. But this structure—" he circled the glowing core-like building, "—it's drawing the highest power signature we've seen yet."
Tern Vale confirmed with a flick through his wrist pad. "Output spikes every ninety seconds. Could be geothermal taps… or a fusion core. Either way, it's how this place breathes."
Nyra Tal folded her arms. "So we take its breath away."
Kaelin nodded once, jaw tense. "We came too far to walk out empty-handed. Hitting that structure buys us time, slows down their production. It may even force them to expose more of their infrastructure."
Sera Lin looked uneasy. "And how do we do it without alerting the entire city?"
Micah stood. "We don't get seen."
He reached into his pack and pulled out a series of compact modules—hexagonal, shimmer-plated, cold to the touch.
"Cloak packs," he said. "Ashari stealth tech, optimized for these environments. Lio upgraded them with some tricks pulled from the Hollow spectrums."
Tern took his with a low whistle. "Got anti-trace pulses baked in. Smart. These'll keep us off the grid for about thirty minutes each, then cooldown kicks in."
Kaelin clipped his to his belt. "Then we move fast."
Warden Pike remained silent at the back, monitoring motion signatures. ASC-4 Blitzfire hovered near the wall, chassis adapting color to match the alloyed plating—its internal systems synced with Micah's command matrix.
Micah paced to the edge of the chamber, narrowing his eyes as he peered out toward the shaft that led to the lower platform. "We go in teams of three. Formation silence. Minimal light. No energy discharges unless fired upon."
Syrran cracked his knuckles. "What if they see us?"
Kaelin replied before Micah could. "Make the shot count."
The silence that followed was more than agreement—it was commitment. Everyone knew the danger. No one flinched.
Liera Vossel emerged from the shadows above, her bow already secured across her back. "No movement in the southern corridor. Drone patrol passed, but I tagged their cycles. We've got a seven-minute window before the next one rolls through."
"Then we start now," Micah said. "Warden, Blitzfire—deploy field sync."
Both Ascendants gave quiet confirmation pulses. Holographic threads extended briefly, syncing the entire team's movement and heat signatures for coordinated cloaking activation.
Micah pressed his thumb against the activation rune on his cloak. It shimmered, twisted light around his figure, and he vanished into a visual blur.
One by one, the others followed. Sera, Kaelin, Tern, Nyra, Varn, Syrran, Harka, and Liera.
Nine ghosts.
Two machines.
The Ghostline team moved like mist, threading through the metallic arteries of a city that was never meant to be seen from the inside. Conveyor arms twitched in the shadows above them. Massive limbs of half-constructed machines hung like forgotten gods from the ceilings. No alarms. No drones. Just that deep, ever-present thrum of energy.
They slipped down a vertical shaft, aided by mag clamps and repulsor rungs. It was old—maybe even pre-Omniraith tech—left over from a civilization that had been erased.
At the bottom, they regrouped in a vent shaft overlooking the power compound. Through slatted panels, they could see it now: a massive structure of interwoven conduits and plasma channels, pulsing like veins through an industrial heart. Giant cooling towers hissed vapor into the air, and transportation drones came and went like clockwork.
"That's our target," Tern whispered.
Sera frowned. "It doesn't look like it can be taken down from the outside."
"Because it can't," Tern replied. "We'll have to get inside. Disable regulators, overload the containment matrix. With the right push, we trigger a chain reaction without needing heavy explosives."
Varn Roath shifted his weight beside Kaelin. "You better be sure about your push."
Micah looked down at the map one last time, then closed it.
"We go in quiet. We leave loud."
He glanced across his team, seeing nothing but faint outlines—shimmered shadows of allies shaped by trust.
Kaelin gave the order. "Sync all movement to Cloak Pattern Two. We hit the trench line and move up through their blind zones."
Warden Pike deployed a new mapping beacon, syncing the updated infiltration plan to everyone's HUDs. Blitzfire moved up, ready to spearhead the charge if detection occurred.
They crouched at the edge of the trench, gazing at a city designed without mercy.
And then, the Ghostline advanced—nine silhouettes swallowed by steel and silence, walking the razor's edge between sabotage and suicide.
They had no reinforcements. No contact with Elora. No promises they'd come back.
But they had a purpose.
And as the forge-hum of the enemy's core throbbed louder beneath their boots, that was enough.
The Ghostline team moved through the Omniraith city's arterial corridors with their Ashari cloaks shimmering faintly around their bodies. What light existed came from strips of pulsing circuitry lining the walls, running in long uninterrupted lines that seemed to guide the whole city's rhythm—like veins glowing with machine blood.
Micah led the group, every step calculated, eyes alert. His instincts were on edge, not because of what he could see, but because of what he couldn't. This city—this underground giant—was too alive. It wasn't just functioning. It was breathing.
Behind him, Varn Roath marveled at the layout, whispering, "It's like walking through a ribcage. One big metallic beast."
Tern Vale nodded, eyes flicking to the energy conduits snaking overhead. "Not just built. Grown. The design curves, the micro-symmetry—it's too organic. This wasn't laid down by blueprints. It was guided like evolution."
Liera Vossel tapped her comm lightly. "Two drones passed within ten meters. No alert." She paused, then added, "We're ghosts."
Kaelin Vorr, farther back with Warden Pike holding the rear, murmured, "Let's keep it that way."
Harka Slen gave a silent nod, his cloaked outline flickering slightly as he adjusted pace to flank Micah. Beside him, Blitzfire floated just inches above the floor, scanning forward with micro-pulses so faint not even the walls could hear.
They passed through wide tunnels with vast, branching architecture—walkways suspended over chasms where conveyor systems hauled unidentifiable equipment between glass towers. Not war machines. Not entirely. Some carried capsules that looked like gestation tanks. Others bore segmented limbs, spliced nerves, cores too large for standard drones.
Micah clenched his jaw. "They're not just maintaining themselves. They're upgrading."
Syrran Drehl scoffed. "Then it's good we're about to switch off their power."
Tern grinned wryly. "Let's just hope we're pulling the right plug."
A near-miss came at a corridor split—four Omniraith scouts swept past like predatory birds, sensors combing the air. The team froze, every heartbeat slowed, not daring to breathe. Micah held a clenched fist at chest height—his signal to stay still.
The drones passed.
Sera Lin exhaled softly. "Ashari cloaks... I take back every smug thing I ever said about technology."
Nyra Tal offered the faintest nod. "They may just save our lives yet."
Soon, the corridor began sloping downward again—barely noticeable, but constant. The walls grew darker, denser. After fifteen more minutes, the space widened into an atrium—and there it was.
A vast energy distribution nexus.
It pulsed like a heart. Towering above them stood a fusion hub laced with copper-and-crystal conduits branching outward like arteries. The hum in the air was heavier here. You could feel the pressure, the vibration—not just underfoot, but inside your chest.
"Jackpot," Tern breathed.
Micah stepped to the railing overlooking the hub. "This is it. The brainstem of the city. If we sever it, the body convulses."
Varn looked down at the crisscrossing powerlines. "How do we keep it from taking the mountain with it?"
Tern dropped his kit and cracked it open. "Displacement charge. Tuned to destabilize power routes without triggering a full meltdown. It'll short out their flow, burn their backups, and drop half this place into the dark." He looked up, grinning. "Surgical sabotage."
"Deploy it," Kaelin said. "We don't get a second shot."
Nyra and Blitzfire scouted nearby choke points while Warden Pike deployed static dampeners around the perimeter. Liera posted up on a high ledge, arrow nocked, eyes scanning the entrance corridors.
As Tern worked, Sera stepped beside Micah. "You okay?"
He didn't answer right away. The sight of this vast, humming heart—feeding every machine, every drone, every monstrosity down here—stirred something in him. "We've seen what they build. But this…" He looked over his shoulder. "This feels like a seed. Like they're preparing to grow something bigger."
"Which is why we cut it now," she said. "Before it sprouts."
Tern gave a thumbs-up. "Bomb's planted. Ready to prime."
Kaelin stepped forward. "We don't detonate yet. Not until we're back in position. No sense waking the hornet nest early."
Micah nodded. "Good. But this proves something."
"Proves what?" Varn asked.
Micah turned toward the map Pike had generated. The node they stood in wasn't the Core Nexus. That much was clear.
"They've built cities. Factories. Infrastructure," he said. "But the Core… the true Core... it's deeper. Better hidden."
"And darker," Harka said softly.
Micah turned to the team. "We keep going. But now we're not just hunting. We're hurting them. This will echo."
As the team prepared to exfiltrate, Kaelin tapped the detonation primer and set the timer: two hours. Enough time to get clear—or die trying.
The last line of the chapter hangs in the air like a blade:
> "Let's shut the lights out."
And the bomb began to hum.