Chapter 10 — Part 3: The Long Blade
KrysKo's light dimmed under skin by degrees, a candle cupped and then palmed. He crossed to Kara on legs that confessed to lactic acid. She was sitting now, breath fast, rib wrapped with a band Jeremy's grandmother would have called acceptable if not elegant. Jax hovered, pretending the sling knot was complicated because it meant he got to keep a hand on a living friend.
"You with me?" KrysKo asked.
She smiled a little lopsided. "Define 'with.'" Then softer: "Yes."
"Good," Ronan said from above, rolling his neck until something in it decided to forgive him. "We leave."
Lira stood fully now, the pallor warming out of her face. The lantern she'd carried cast a clean circle on the floor. She picked up the badge she'd set down and slid it back into her coat as if returning a word to a sentence. "You can't hold this ground," she said. "He'll bring tools we don't have names for."
KrysKo nodded once. "We take what we came for." He knelt by the central dais and slid a hand under a collar of alloy older than his fear. A wafer came free, dark glass veined with copper, warm as a cheek. He didn't read it. He wrapped it, tucked it in the small-of-back pocket he'd learned was for terrible small things.
> [Mnemonic shard secured. Risk—carrying: moderate. Risk—leaving: catastrophic.] [Progress note: Vanguard Level 1 established. Next thresholds will require either blood or time. Pace yourself, KrysKo. Both are costly.]
"Jax," he said, "west shaft."
"Already in love," Jax replied, flicking three toggles and a twist. The wheel on the auxiliary door screamed, considered, and reconsidered. The door cracked grudgingly. Cool air reached them with old earth and the memory of water.
Ronan crouched. "On," he told Kara with the authority of a brother who wins arguments by carrying them. She slung an arm over his shoulders without ceremony. "It is an honor," he added, because some words are habit and some are sacraments.
She rested her forehead against the ridges at his nape. "Then I accept."
KrysKo paused only once on the way out. On a low shelf near the console, a paper photo slept under dust. He freed it. Three people in lab coats stood in front of a younger Vault, faces tired and certain. On the back, a human scrawl: We choose. —Rollins
He slid it under the scarf, above the heart.
They went into the shaft like a decision, three turns and a ladder and a near miss with a patrol that marched past on trained feet and did not look left because orders hadn't told them curiosity was allowed. The corridor thinned until Ronan had to turn his shoulders. KrysKo took rear and let the Lunari veil sheath him, his scent sliding to clean and forgettable, his glow tucked so deep he could have been a rumor.
"Stairs," Jax whispered, delighted. "He smells like stairs."
"Stairs are trustworthy," Kara murmured into Ronan's shoulder, meaning it as blessing.
They climbed out into trees that had learned survival the hard way. Night had remembered its stars. The ground was glass in places, black fused to green in slow swirls, a record that would never play again.
Ronan tasted the air. "No chase," he said. "Yet."
Jax did a full slow turn under the moon and told it, "Still alive," just to keep the habit.
Kara sagged against the busted rail of an old fence and closed her eyes as if that counted as sleep if you believed hard enough. Lira stood at the lip of the shattered hill and watched steam lift off the Vault's grave.
"It's not all gone," she said. "What it connected to is deeper. He'll dig. He'll find pieces."
"Then we move before he does," KrysKo said.
Lira glanced back. "You're going to need what I have. Rollins didn't just leave logs. He left a map that only opens when someone with his bloodline asks the door to be kind."
"Then you're with us," Jax said, too quickly, because families that almost die together habitually adopt.
She searched KrysKo's face. "You'll be hunted twice as hard."
"We already are," he said.
The wind shifted. Far below, the hillside that hid the Vault turned once in its sleep and settled, done with speaking for the night.
They burned the camp they'd used for a few hours—no trail, no evidence, no invitation. Jax unrolled a sling that a surgeon wouldn't love but a field would thank. Ronan shouldered weight without complaint. Kara walked on her own feet for six strides and then accepted help because wisdom wears boots.
KrysKo stayed last, looking down at the hole where a past had tried to become a future too fast. The light in him stirred; he folded it back with a breath.
> [Luminal Concealment—active. Scent profile—human neutral. Thermal—muted.] "You hide well, KrysKo," the warm voice said, pleased and sad. "That is both strength… and loneliness."
He watched the eastern horizon bruise with the idea of dawn. "We'll build a better kind of morning," he murmured.
> "You think this peace will last?" the voice asked, almost teasing.
"No," he said. "But it's enough to begin."
He turned into the trees. The silhouettes ahead of him resolved: Ronan first, a boundary you could trust; Kara at his shoulder, stubborn and upright; Jax bringing up the rear and looking back too often because someone had to; Lira new among them, lantern steady, badge pocketed, mouth fixed to futures. The night made a space and pretended it had always meant to.
Behind them, somewhere deep below, a radio on a dead chest crackled to a room without ears: "—Unit Twelve lost—unknown hostile—designation Vanguard—repeat, Vanguard—"
And high on a spire with tidy ledgers and cleaner knives, a man who let people call him patron leaned toward a surviving lens, touched two fingers to glass, and let patience crack it.
> [Vanguard Status — Level 1 stabilized.] [New abilities retained: Overdrive Field; Lunari Veil; Dual-Harmonic Blades—resonance 100%.] [Milestones queued: Level 12—Field Mastery; Level 15—Second Evolution; Level 18—Apex Surge. Pace with care.] "The light you carry is both torch and blade, KrysKo," the voice said, warm as old wood. "The world will decide which you become. You will decide who pays."
He didn't answer. He listened to Kara's breath even out against pain, to Ronan's weight find rhythm with the ground, to Jax flip a coin of moon between his fingers and catch it every time, to Lira whisper a name into the dark—Rollins—as if it were permission and apology both.
The forest spoke soft in a language of leaves.
They walked. The road back to silence was never empty. It only sounded like it if you didn't know what to hear.
Chapter 10 — Part 3: The Long Blade
Segment 1 of 3 (~1,500 words)
---
They made camp at the shoulder of the pass, where the world narrowed into stone ribs and the wind forgot its name. The night was too quiet even for insects. The kind of quiet that doesn't happen by accident.
Kara had fallen into a thin, shivering sleep against the rock wall, her coat wrapped tight, pulse high in her throat. Ronan and Jax lay near the edge of the old road, one keeping watch, one pretending not to. The stars overhead looked close enough to scrape your knuckles on.
KrysKo sat apart, where the cliff turned down into the dark. His body hummed low, the resonance beneath his skin steady but restless. The echo of the Vault still lived in him—the sound of the doors, the voice that had said welcome home, the memory of light moving like liquid through his veins.
> [VANGUARD STATUS: STABLE]
[ENERGY RESERVES: 82%]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: REST]
He didn't. He watched the valley instead, where fog was learning to walk upright. Every so often, something flashed pale below—heat ghosts or motion echoes—but the System's map stayed blank. The danger wasn't physical. It was memory finding new routes through his head.
> "You don't have to sit guard on ghosts, KrysKo," said the warm voice, soft and almost amused.
"They already know who you are."
"I don't know who I am," he said.
> "That's the point," the voice murmured. "Weapons are forged in uncertainty. People are born in it."
He didn't answer. His reflection in the edge of his own blade stared back—human enough to lie convincingly, alien enough to tell the truth without meaning to.
Behind him, something stirred. A whisper of leather on rock. Kara. She came barefoot, coat pulled around her, hair tangled from sleep. She didn't speak at first. Just sat down beside him, shoulders brushing but not quite touching.
"You look like you're waiting for someone," she said.
"I'm waiting for the noise to come back."
"Noise?"
"The kind the world makes when it's alive."
She followed his gaze into the fog. "Maybe it's tired."
"Maybe it's listening."
She smiled faintly. "You say things like that and then wonder why people stare."
"Do they?"
"All the time."
He turned his head. "Do you?"
"Only when you're not looking."
That earned a small exhale from him, almost—but not quite—a laugh. The first in a long time that didn't sound like it came from memory.
Kara folded her knees to her chest, chin resting on them. "Ronan thinks we should head east at first light. There's an old Drakari path through the canyons that leads to the University's lower river gate. It's supposed to be forgotten."
"Paths remember more than maps do," KrysKo said. "If we follow it, it will decide whether it wants us."
"You sound like him," she said, tilting her head toward the sleeping Drakari.
"Maybe he's right."
"Maybe you both are."
Silence folded over them again. Not heavy. Just present.
After a while she said, "When you opened that door in the Vault, the air changed. I could feel it in my teeth. What did you do?"
"I remembered how," he said.
"How what?"
"How to open things that were never meant to close."
Her eyes narrowed a little. "And it didn't scare you?"
"It did," he admitted. "It still does."
Kara nodded like she understood. "That's how you know it mattered."
> [SOCIAL VECTOR: KARA MYLES – cohesion increasing.]
[Trust Loop: stabilized.]
He ignored the text, though it felt good to have something in the world he didn't need to calculate.
The wind shifted. The fog below pulsed once with blue light—soft, distant, rhythmic, like a pulse. Ronan's head lifted, the scales along his neck whispering as they flexed.
"Company?" Jax murmured.
"Not yet," Ronan said. "But something remembers we're here."
---
They broke camp at dawn. The sky was copper and bruised, the kind of color you get when light argues with weather. Ronan led, Kara behind him, Jax mumbling diagnostics to his drone even though the drone had been dead for days. KrysKo brought up the rear.
The trail wound through cliffs so narrow that wind came only in single-file. Old symbols cut into the walls glowed faintly as they passed—Drakari runes for safe water, resting stone, and truth. Ronan traced them with reverent fingers.
"They still answer," he said. "The ground remembers better than people do."
Kara looked up at the carvings, half-sketched by moss and shadow. "What are they saying now?"
Ronan's eyes flickered. "They say the road is angry."
Jax sighed. "Fantastic."
An hour later, they found why. The path widened into a small amphitheater carved by wind and time. In its center stood a machine—half-buried, half-alive. Bronze ribs exposed, cables like veins, a single optic lens cracked but pulsing faintly.
Kara's breath hitched. "That's University make. Early war era."
"Still online," Jax said, crouching. "Barely."
> [SIGNAL DETECTED: TYPE — AUTONOMOUS FIELD UNIT (Designation: CENTURION Mk I)]
[Status: dormant / memory loop active.]
[Power Source: Architect tesserae hybrid.]
KrysKo stepped closer. The air hummed low in his teeth. The machine's lens twitched toward him.
> [Recognition Pattern Detected: PROTOTYPE CLASS — ACCEPTED.]
The voice that came from the Centurion was cracked metal and memory static. "Designation… Vanguard. Command chain incomplete. Awaiting directive."
Jax straightened fast. "It knows you."
KrysKo said nothing. The Centurion's head swiveled to follow his movement.
"Awaiting directive," it repeated. "Directive."
He could feel the System's hum sync with the thing's pulse. Two architectures trying to remember their shared ancestor.
> [LINK REQUEST: ESTABLISH SUBNET CONTROL?] [Warning: Potential data bleed.]
Kara stepped forward. "Wait. If you connect, it could override your—"
> "Do you trust yourself, KrysKo?" the warm voice asked gently, threading beneath her words.
"Then trust what you make."
He touched the Centurion's hull.
The world blinked.
---
For a second, he was standing somewhere else. A hangar full of machines that wore his face in pieces. Engineers shouting through glass. A woman's voice saying Prototype O'Ruadhraigh, disengage field test. His own voice answering Not until it learns to breathe.
Then the image shattered. He was back in the canyon. The Centurion's optic burned steady now, blue instead of red.
"Directive received," it said. "Protective mode engaged. Vanguard recognized."
Ronan stepped back, hand on his weapon. "Is it safe?"
KrysKo exhaled slowly. "It's… remembering."
The machine lowered its head slightly toward him, a gesture almost human. Then it powered down again, entering a posture that looked like rest.
Kara studied him. "You didn't tell it what to do."
"I didn't have to."
> [SYSTEM LOG: Field Unit Centurion—reactivated under Vanguard code.] [Trace memory recovered: Phase One Prototype trials confirmed.]
He turned away from the machine, but its reflection lingered in his mind—too close to what he had seen in the Vault, too close to himself.
Ronan's voice came quiet. "That thing looked at you like kin."
KrysKo didn't argue.
The wind picked up, carrying the smell of ozone and dust. Ahead, the canyon opened into a plain, long and flat, a scar left by rivers long gone.
"Time to move," Kara said. "Before it decides to wake again."
They walked. Behind them, the Centurion's optic flickered once, twice, then died.
---
> [Internal sync note: Vanguard Level 2 threshold proximity — 93% EXP reached.]
[Projected milestone: within next engagement.]
[Advisory: Evolution path divergence visible—Human Resonant / Machine Ascendant. Choice deferred.]
The voice—warm, deliberate—spoke again, this time without warning.
> "A blade can learn to cut softer, KrysKo. Or sharper. Both paths bleed. You will have to decide what kind of edge you wish to be."
He didn't answer.
He just walked into the wind, and the desert ahead glittered like broken memory.They crossed the plain at midday, when the heat lifted off the ground in slow sheets and distance turned uncertain. The world out there was made of mirages and silence. Every footprint filled itself again with dust before they could look back at it.
Jax walked ahead with his reader cradled like a fragile heart, muttering code and curses. Ronan ranged the perimeter, his silhouette cutting through the glare like a shadow that had decided to stay. Kara kept to KrysKo's side, her breath even, every movement precise, deliberate, the kind of patience you learn from tending to broken things.
KrysKo's internal hum never stopped. It had steadied since the Centurion — not louder, but deeper, as if something in him had dropped anchor in the unseen.
> [Vanguard Core Sync: 84%]
[Telemetry Stable]
[Cognitive Drift: within acceptable range]
He felt the change like a second rhythm beneath his ribs. The blades at his forearms pulsed with faint, sleeping light, bronze veins tracing new circuits along the lines of his pulse.
> "You feel the long blade growing," said the warm voice, quiet as the wind through wire.
"It isn't a weapon. It's direction. Every evolution points somewhere."
He stopped walking, letting the others move ahead a few paces. "Where does this one point?"
> "Toward the part of you that wants to protect. Toward what you'll hurt to keep that truth."
He looked down at his hands. "Then it points at everything."
> "It always did."
The voice fell silent again, folding itself back into the background hum.
The horizon shifted. Something shimmered there — a low band of metal half-buried in the plain, glinting in the distance like a promise.
"Old transit rail," Jax said, wiping sweat from his face. "Could be a relay line from the early Architect grids. Might be intact."
"Or a trap," Ronan said.
"Everything's a trap," Kara replied. "Only question is who built it."
They reached the ridge before dusk. The metal band wasn't a rail at all. It was a conduit — a wide, flat vein of alloy snaking across the ground and vanishing into a shallow cut in the rock. The cut opened into a passage, square-edged, humming faintly with low electric breath.
Jax crouched. "That's not natural."
"No," KrysKo said, already feeling the low pull in his spine. "It's a maintenance channel. Old University make — Architect hybrid."
Ronan looked at him sharply. "How do you know that?"
He didn't answer, because the System already had.
> [Recognition: confirmed. Subsurface structure identified: Echo Grid Extension 3B.]
[Access: granted.]
Kara stepped closer, voice low. "You're hearing it again, aren't you?"
He met her gaze. "It's hearing me."
They followed the conduit down. The air cooled immediately, dry and metallic. Light pulsed from panels buried in the walls, waking as they passed, each one flickering once like a heartbeat before going dark again. The tunnel sloped gently downward, opening into a narrow corridor that smelled of static and dust.
They moved slow. Every footstep echoed too long.
Then the hum changed.
KrysKo's head tilted. His pupils tightened. "Stop."
Ronan froze. Kara's hand went instinctively to her satchel.
> [ALERT: Motion ahead. Signatures: five, approaching.]
They came out of the dark the way professionals do — soundless, fast, confident in their advantage. Armor black as gunmetal. Masks with mirrored visors. The emblem on their shoulders: the same vulture sigil they had seen hanging from the University's spires.
"Hands visible," one said, rifle trained. "Identify."
Kara stepped forward, holding out her University credential. "Kara Myles. Medical division. Cohort Nine under sanctioned mission order—"
"Authorization revoked," the soldier interrupted. "You're under recall order."
Jax laughed once under his breath. "That's one way to say 'ambush.'"
KrysKo moved slightly, placing himself between Kara and the rifles. "Recall by whose authority?"
"The Vulture's," said the soldier. "By his word, the Prototype is to be returned."
The air thickened. The hum in KrysKo's bones deepened until it touched something old and awake.
"Then you'll have to take me," he said quietly.
> [Combat Mode: Active]
[Threat Assessment: Moderate–High]
The rifles lifted in perfect unison.
KrysKo stepped left, hands empty. "Don't," Kara said under her breath.
He didn't listen.
The first shot cracked the tunnel like thunder. KrysKo moved through it, the slug scraping light off the curve of his shoulder. He was already inside their formation before the echo finished.
He didn't draw the blades at first. He didn't need to. He moved through the tight space like a ripple through cloth — elbow to throat, knee to gut, step-sweep-hook. One man down.
The second soldier fired at point-blank range. KrysKo pivoted. The round hit the wall. He caught the rifle and drove it backward into its owner's visor. The mask shattered with a glassy shriek.
> [Hostiles: 5 → 3.]
Jax dropped to one knee, pistol in hand, firing into the flank. One of the soldiers went down hard, armor sparking.
"Right!" Ronan bellowed. The remaining two opened fire. Plasma bolts burned the air.
KrysKo turned, palms forward. The forearm blades hissed into being, bronze light alive. The plasma struck, and the resonance field flared. The energy folded backward, split, refracted down the corridor in two clean arcs.
It hit the shooters in their own shadows.
Silence. Smoke. The smell of ozone and blood.
> [Combat Ended. Hostiles neutralized.]
Kara was already kneeling beside the nearest downed soldier, checking vitals. "They're alive," she said. "For now."
"University soldiers," Jax muttered. "That's not a rogue squad. That's official."
Ronan dragged one of the bodies into the light. The armor plates bore a serial number that shimmered faintly under the dust. "Vulture Division," he said. "They were sent for you."
KrysKo knelt, brushing his thumb across the dead soldier's mask. His own reflection looked back — distorted, cracked, faintly smiling where he wasn't.
> [VANGUARD EXP: +100]
[LEVEL UP → 3]
[Attribute Bonus: STR +1, WIL +1]
> "You can't keep fighting their shadows, KrysKo," said the warm voice. "Soon you'll have to decide which part of you they're chasing — the man, or the myth they built."
He looked down at his hands, still trembling faintly with residual hum. "Maybe they don't know the difference."
> "Do you?"
He didn't answer.
Kara stood, wiping her hands on her coat. "We can't stay. If this was a recon unit, more will come."
Ronan nodded. "We move east. Find higher ground."
They climbed back into the dying light. The plain stretched out endless, wind sweeping the blood scent away.
Behind them, the bodies lay still. The vulture emblems on their armor caught the sunset and turned red.
KrysKo paused once at the top of the ridge. For a heartbeat, the light turned his shadow long across the ground, blade shapes stretching from his arms even though the weapons were sheathed.
Kara looked back at him. "You're bleeding," she said softly.
"I know."
"You could stop if you let it."
He shook his head. "The bleeding is how I remember I still can."
> [System Note: Pain Gating — manual override maintained.]
[Advisory: Neural load increasing. Emotional input: unresolved.]
The voice inside him was quieter now, more tired than wise.
> "Every blade learns the sound of its own wound. Don't mistake it for a song."
They kept walking until the light ran out.
---
They found shelter in a ravine where the wind couldn't reach. Kara built a small fire; Ronan cleaned the new burn across his forearm without comment. Jax tried to get the comms unit working, swearing softly when the static refused to resolve into signal.
KrysKo sat apart again, watching the stars creep back into the sky.
Kara approached, settling beside him with a tin cup of boiled water. "You're thinking too loud," she said.
He glanced at her. "Can you hear it?"
"Everyone can. You just hum differently."
He almost smiled. "Is that a compliment?"
"Maybe."
They sat in quiet for a while, the fire snapping between words.
"I think," she said eventually, "the University's afraid of you."
"I'm afraid of me," he said.
She nodded, accepting it like truth. "Good. Then you'll be careful."
He looked down at the firelight flickering across his hands — bronze skin alive with reflection. The glow from his veins answered faintly, as though agreeing with her.
> [VANGUARD PROTOCOL UPDATE — Phase Two pending.]
[Evolution Path split confirmed.]
[Next milestone: Vanguard Level 5 threshold reached at 1,400 EXP.]
The voice whispered again, low as memory.
> "Every path sharpens, KrysKo. The long blade is patient. But it always cuts toward the future."
He didn't know whether that was a promise or a warning.
He only knew they would walk again at dawn.
The fire died slow, collapsing in on itself until only the red core breathed. Ronan took the first watch, his silhouette half-statue, half-sentinel. Jax lay on his back near the wall, muttering through dreams made of static. Kara slept with her head pillowed on her pack, one hand still curved protectively over her satchel of vials.
KrysKo stayed awake, as he always did. Not out of duty—because the hum inside him refused stillness.
The desert wind slipped through the ravine and stirred the embers. Tiny sparks lifted and vanished like thoughts he didn't finish.
> [VANGUARD STATUS: ACTIVE / STABLE]
[Core Energy: 71 %]
[Cognitive Load: Low]
[Optional Task Detected — Internal Calibration Cycle]
He accepted.
The world dimmed to grayscale. Heat retreated from his skin; noise thinned until the only sound left was his pulse, steady as a drum deep underground. The System unfolded an architecture of light around him—lines of code hovering in the air, turning the ravine into a cathedral made of diagrams.
> "Breathe, KrysKo," said the warm voice. "Calibration isn't maintenance. It's confession."
He closed his eyes. The light pressed inward.
Inside him, the memory-map expanded: nodes for every movement, every impact, every choice. Some glowed bright; others dimmed to almost nothing. One pulsed irregularly—the girl's scream—the beginning of all this. Another beat slower, deeper—the moment in the Vault when he said Begin.
He touched neither. Instead he reached for the newest node—the battle in the tunnel, the Vulture's soldiers, the smell of plasma and blood. When his mind brushed it, the node opened and bled light.
He saw the corridor again, but slowed until the photons crawled. Every drop of blood became a mirror. In each reflection he saw himself—not as he was, but as he might become. One face purely human, weary, eyes kind. One made entirely of bronze and geometry. One neither—something balanced on the line between the two.
> [Decision Threshold Reached: Path Selection Preview]
HUMAN RESONANT PATH — Increased Empathic Response / Adaptive Healing.
MACHINE ASCENDANT PATH — Enhanced Processing / Tactical Autonomy.
Choice Deferred (Requirements Unmet).
He exhaled slowly. "Not yet," he whispered.
> "Not yet," the voice agreed. "But every act is a vote."
The architecture folded away, leaving only darkness and the quiet ache in his bones.
He opened his eyes to the ravine again. The fire was gone; dawn hadn't yet decided to arrive. He flexed his hands—felt the faint answering hum from the blades inside his forearms. Softer now. Listening.
Kara stirred, half-waking. "Are you still calibrating?" she murmured.
"It's finished."
"Did it hurt?"
"No," he said. "But it remembered."
She smiled faintly, eyes still closed. "You talk like a poet."
"I talk like a malfunction."
"Same thing," she whispered, and slept again.
---
By mid-morning they were moving. The ravine opened into a stretch of wind-carved stone where the light came in broken angles. Jax walked with a spring in his step; the promise of working comms always revived him. Ronan hummed low in his throat, an old Drakari work-song that made the air seem older still. Kara moved between them, steady now, color back in her cheeks.
KrysKo carried the weight he could not name.
At the top of the next rise, they found the skeleton of an observation tower leaning against the sky. Its ladder was rust and threat, but it still held. KrysKo climbed first. From the top, the world unrolled—a long valley cut by a pale thread of river leading east to the faint shimmer of walls. The University. Miles away, but real.
He felt Kara's hand on the rung below him. "Is that it?"
"Yes."
"Then we made it."
"Not yet," Ronan called from below. "Between sight and arrival lies trouble."
As if summoned, the air changed. A thin keening note wound through the wind—high, metallic, wrong. Jax's reader flared red.
"Contact—fast!" he shouted.
The sky split.
A shape knifed down through the light—a drone, sleek and black, wings serrated like broken glass. Not one of the University's; this was Vulture design, lean and hungry. It banked once, scanning. Its sensors locked instantly on the four heat signatures moving in the open.
> [ALERT: Hostile Drone / Class Predator Mk III]
[Engagement Range — Short. Payload — Kinetic Cluster.]
"Down!" Ronan roared.
The first volley tore the sand apart where they'd stood. KrysKo dropped, rolled, came up already moving. The drone banked for another pass. He could hear its engine shrieking through frequencies most ears couldn't register.
Kara crawled behind a rock outcrop. Jax fired upward, but the round bounced off harmlessly.
"It's got shield flares!" he yelled. "Can't crack it with—"
KrysKo was already gone.
He sprinted across open ground, body low, every stride throwing dust in twin spirals behind him. The world slowed again—the drone's shadow cutting across him like a blade. He jumped, higher than he should have been able to, the hum in his veins climbing to a roar.
> [Overdrive Field — Activated]
[Output +300 %. Duration 18 sec.]
He met the drone halfway up its arc.
The twin forearm blades unfolded mid-leap, locking into a single extended edge—the Long Blade, fused by magnetic resonance into one continuous curve. Bronze and white light spun together until they sang.
He struck.
The blade sheared through the drone's wing. Sparks erupted like a storm. He hit the ground hard, rolled, came up as the drone spiraled, trailing fire. It slammed into the ridge and burst open in a fountain of debris.
Silence chased the impact.
Kara peeked from behind cover, eyes wide. "You—You cut it in half."
Jax let out a breath that was half-laughter, half-prayer. "Remind me never to stand near you when you decide to stretch."
> [VANGUARD EXP +400]
[LEVEL UP → 5]
[Attributes Gained — STR +2 / AGI +2 / WIL +1]
[Skill Unlocked — Long Blade Form (I): Fused Resonance Strike]
KrysKo stood amid the wreckage, the fused weapon humming softly in his hands. The energy along its length faded until only bronze remained. He separated the halves again; they slid back under his skin with a whisper.
> "Now it knows its true length," the warm voice said.
"A blade this long cuts both ways—outward, and inward."
He looked down at the smoldering metal, the reflection of his face warped in its surface. "Then I'll learn which side I bleed from."
> "Good," said the voice. "That's how steel becomes something better."
---
They reached the edge of the valley by dusk. The University walls shimmered faintly through heat haze, pale towers rising from green like a mirage of hope. Lights flickered along its perimeter—too even, too alive. Guard posts. Civilization, still pretending it hadn't burned.
Ronan squinted. "You think they'll let us in?"
"They have to," Kara said. "They sent for us."
KrysKo's gaze stayed on the far walls. "Or for me."
The wind carried the smell of rain and electricity, the first hints of a storm rolling in from the west. Lightning flickered behind the mountains they'd left behind—blue veins crawling through black.
> [Mission Objective: Reach University Perimeter / Status: Active]
[Vanguard Level: 5 / Stabilized]
[Next Threshold — Level 10 / Environmental Sync Required]
The System