The command tent at Forge Front wasn't a tent at all. It was a fortress of composite alloy and beastbone, with tusk-pierced supports and blood-etched war banners fluttering beneath arc-scorched metal plating. Inside, the air was thick with tension and the scent of oil and blood. The holo-table in the center glowed a deep red, pulsing slowly like a heartbeat.
Kaelren stood beside Aelvara Zavrekh, her mask gleaming pale gold beneath the tent's low light. Her tails were gone—spectral now—but her presence pressed on the room like a vice. Beside her stood War Commander Zorakh Vann, his monstrous frame armored in black voidsteel trimmed with crimson, arms crossed like iron beams.
Across from them, a Synth adjusted the long array of implants on his neck, fingers drumming over a gauntlet screen. His voice modulator clicked softly as he turned.
"Nice of the Ashwalkers to join us," he said without looking up.
Kaelren didn't reply. But the Ashwalker to his right did — a broad-shouldered Gene Warrior named Tark Voll, hair tied in a ragged topknot and muscle-corded arms folded over his chest.
"Funny. Didn't realize we needed babysitters who spent more time calibrating their fingers than sharpening their knives."
The Synth leader looked up slowly. His face was smooth, synthetic skin stretched over a carbon-steel skull. A strip of blinking lights ran down the side of his head, pulsing in time with his thoughts. His eye implants clicked as they focused.
"And I didn't realize we still lost Gene Warriors in ruins because they couldn't tell the difference between a relic panel and a pulse trap." His tone was dry, precise. "It's cute. You think you're immune to disintegration. You're not."
"Enough," Zorakh Vann said, his voice a depth-charge. The air stilled. "This isn't a blood pit. It's a joint op. Act like it."
Silence.
The war commander turned toward the table. Aelvara stepped forward, pressing one fingertip to the interface. A three-dimensional projection rose — terrain scans of the southern ridge, stitched together from Ashwalker recon drones and Synth satellites.
Ruined spires emerged from beneath collapsed rock, shattered monoliths laced with unnatural glyphs. The style wasn't beast or modern. It was older. Sharper. Civilization without signature. The image shifted, revealing internal schematics — winding corridors, mechanical bulkheads, still-sealed chambers.
"This," Aelvara began, her voice calm and commanding, "was discovered three days ago after the pushback. A collapsed valley exposed a subterranean complex nearly 2 miles wide. Multiple entrances. Mixed architecture — pre-collapse design, with active power cores."
The Synth leader tapped into the feed. "Old tech. Very old. We've already detected radiation bursts and shifting energy signatures. This ruin predates even the Syndicate's records."
"Which is why you're going in," Zorakh said flatly. "Two Ashwalkers. Two Techmancers. Your job is simple. Explore. Secure. Recover anything with tactical or structural value. Especially weapon systems. Anything we can reverse-engineer might help stabilize the Front."
Kaelren nodded once.
Aelvara continued. "Expect traps. Expect corrupted AI or constructs. But more than that—expect instability. The southern ridge was too quiet. Something below is disrupting long-range scans."
The Synth leader added, "We're assigning Weylen Strix and Nira-3 as our Techmancers. Strix specializes in ancient interface decoding. Nira's a neural-weave infiltrator. Both are vetted for hostile ruins."
Zorakh turned to the warriors. "Tark. Kaelren. You'll provide protection. Lethal, immediate, and overwhelming. Don't play hero. Keep them alive. If this place holds tech we can use, it could shift the war."
Tark cracked his neck. "Long as they don't trip over their own wires."
Strix smirked. "Long as you don't punch the wrong panel."
Zorakh didn't speak again. He didn't need to.
The image flickered off.
Aelvara looked at Kaelren as the others began preparations. Her lavender eyes narrowed behind the mask, voice quiet.
"Let's see what you do in a place that doesn't bleed."
Kaelren didn't blink. "If it can die, I'll kill it. If it can't, I'll learn how."
And then he turned, walking outside main command.
The troop carrier groaned beneath them — a skeletal beast of alloy and bone, its internal lights casting harsh shadows across armored walls and exposed veins of power tubing. The floor vibrated with a dull, rhythmic hum as they sped along the ravine's edge toward the dig site.
Kaelren sat silently near the rear, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the slit window across from him. Beside him, Tark Voll leaned forward, elbows on knees, chewing a piece of dried marrow bark like it owed him blood.
Across the carrier's hull, two figures stood in stark contrast.
Weylen Strix was thin and tall, nearly gaunt, with cybernetic plating fused directly to the side of his skull. A thin visor masked his eyes, data streaming across the display as he muttered to himself in tongues only machines would understand. He wore a high-collared coat etched with micro-filament glyphs, the sleeves rolled up to expose skeletal arms braced with tactile converters and micro-injection ports.
Beside him sat Nira-3 — not her real name, just her designation. Compact, elegant, and unnervingly still, she had silver-threaded skin and jet-black braids woven with data-thread cables. Her eyes were pale white, no pupils, with subtle blue flickers every time she blinked. Unlike Strix, she didn't fidget or scan. She watched. Quietly.
Tark glanced between them, then grunted. "So these are the 'geniuses' we're risking our necks for."
Strix didn't even look up. "You're not risking your neck. You're escorting a critical operation."
Tark snorted. "Critical, huh. I've seen 'critical' teams walk into ruins and come out as puddles. If you techmancers are so clever, why not send someone stronger than us? Say, a high stage Third Realm war squad?"
Strix lifted his visor slowly. "They tried."
That made Tark pause.
Kaelren shifted slightly. "Explain."
Nira-3 finally spoke — her voice soft, harmonic, but layered with eerie precision.
"The first unit sent in had two stage 8 body control realm gene refinmeners and a stage 7 realm 3 tech-augmentator . They didn't make it past the first corridor."
Tark raised an eyebrow. "Wait—what? Why?"
Strix answered. "The ruin's security protocols are tiered. Low-level teams don't trigger the deeper defense systems. But when power levels spike past a certain threshold… everything wakes up. Turrets. Null fields. Quantum anchors. The whole ruin locks down and turns lethal."
"We estimate it was built with a failsafe to prevent powerful entities from scavenging its contents," Nira-3 added. "A deterrent. A gravekeeper system keyed to threat potential."
Kaelren nodded once. "So we're bait."
Strix smirked. "You're scalpel strikes. Just sharp enough to cut, not enough to bleed the system awake. This team's strength shouldn't wake up the stronger defense programs."
Tark growled low in his throat. "And if something does wake up?"
Strix tilted his head. "Then you kill it. Before we die."
The conversation fell into silence after that.
Outside the narrow windows, the ravine deepened, and the terrain changed. Rocks turned blacker, slick with mineral oil runoff. Strange formations jutted from the ground like broken bones. The air grew heavy, the sky above dimming unnaturally — as if the sun itself hesitated to shine on what lay ahead.
Kaelren rose as the carrier began to slow.
Tark followed, cracking his neck. "Hope you two are faster with those buttons than you are with your comebacks."
Strix chuckled. "Hope you're faster with your fists than your thoughts."
The carrier hissed to a halt. Hydraulic doors groaned open.
Before them stretched the mouth of a buried ruin — a jagged tear in the mountainside, half-swallowed by collapsed earth and choked with vines that shouldn't have grown in stone.
The wind howled as if warning them back.
Kaelren stepped off first.
Tark followed.
The techmancers came last — eyes bright, scanners ready.
The ancient world waited.
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