The transport was a sleek, armored VTOL, a testament to Tempest's technological prowess. As it soared east, the vibrant, fortified chaos of Mumbai gave way to the sprawling, patchwork green of the countryside, which then slowly bled into a landscape of muted, weary colors. From a thousand feet in the air, the Bihar sector looked less like it had been shattered and more like it was simply… exhausted. The scars here weren't the jagged tears of plasma fire or the craters of orbital strikes; they were the slow, deep wounds of neglect—fields choked by a tenacious, wiry scrub, towns whose skeletons were being patiently picked clean by the elements, rivers running thick with the silt of collapsed banks.
The air that hit Veer as he disembarked at the designated landing zone was a physical presence. It was heavy and hot, saturated with the scent of dry red soil, flowering weeds, and the faint, ever-present undertone of woodsmoke and decay. It was the smell of a land that had surrendered.
The Tempest outpost was a grim, functional compound built around the shell of a pre-Fall blockhouse. Its walls were a patchwork of original concrete, salvaged metal plating, and earth packed hard by geokinetic ability. It was a place that prioritized utility over appearance, a stark contrast to the imposing majesty of Tempest's central fortress.
Commander Bhola was waiting for him. The man was stocky, built like a bulldog, with a face leathered by sun and wind and a permanent squint that seemed to judge the very light of day. His hands, when he offered a perfunctory one, were calloused and rough, the hands of a man who worked the earth, not one who wielded a weapon. His Tier 2 geokinesis was likely the only thing that kept the outpost's walls standing and its latrines dug.
"Prince Roy," Bhola greeted, his voice a dry rasp that sounded like stones grinding together. He didn't salute. "Welcome to the granary. We don't get many of your… caliber out here." The pause before 'caliber' was deliberate, laden with a cynicism that was years in the making.
Veer bit back the sharp retort that sprang to his lips. This is it, he thought, the 'real world' Jiya was so eager for me to see. "I'm here about the missing people, Commander. Not for a tour," he said, his tone flat.
Bhola's lips thinned into a line that might have been a smile on a less weary face. He simply nodded and turned, leading Veer inside without another word. The commander's office was a spartan, dusty room, its walls lined with peeling physical maps marked with a forest of grim, red X's. A single, battery-powered lamp cast a pallid glow over a desk littered with supply manifests and damage reports.
"Thirteen," Bhola said, slumping into his creaking chair. "In the last four months. A healer who could stitch a wound shut and stave off gangrene. A boy who could conjure a light bright enough to read by or scare off the night-prowlers. A woman who could sense aquifers and tell you if water was safe to drink. Useful people. The kind we can't afford to lose. The kind that keeps a community from tipping over the edge."
"How are they being taken?" Veer asked, trying to apply the brutal logic of his own experience to this quiet tragedy. "From their homes? In the night? Were there signs of a fight?"
Bhola let out a short, humorless bark of laughter. "Sometimes from their beds. Sometimes they just walked out toward the old ruins for a day's scavenging and never walked back. No broken doors. No scorch marks from a struggle. No monster spoor. It's like the earth just opened up and swallowed them whole." He spat into a rusting dustbin near his desk, the gesture one of pure, helpless frustration. "We've looked. Or at least, we did at the start. But we don't have the fuel for aerial recon, the personnel for search parties, or the energy to spare. We're too busy just trying to keep the rest from starving or despairing."
The man's resignation was a thick, smothering blanket in the small room. Veer felt his own simmering frustration begin to curdle into something else—a grim, uncomfortable understanding. This was the grinding reality of the apocalypse that Tempest's high walls and powerful Awakened shielded him from. It wasn't about glory or epic battles; it was about the slow, inexorable drain of hope, the quiet, desperate arithmetic of survival.
"You fight for the future, Roy," Bhola said, his tired eyes boring into Veer's with an unnerving intensity. "You look at those fancy maps and you see battle lines and strategic assets. We fight for the next meal. We look at the soil and the sky and pray for rain. These people who vanish?" He gestured vaguely at the maps on the wall. "The world's already forgotten them. They were ghosts long before they disappeared. So I'll ask you, since you're here… why haven't you?"
The question hung in the dusty air between them, a direct and brutal challenge to Veer's entire sense of purpose, to the very core of his resentment. It was the first, solid chip in the wall he had built around himself, and it left behind a cold, hollow feeling of shame. He had no answer.