Evening came quietly to the Grand Frontlines.
There was barely a horizon visible from within the fortress—but with a subtle shift in tempo that only a place like this could possess. Engine hums lowered by a fraction, the vibration beneath the floor plates easing into a steadier rhythm. Corridor traffic thinned, footfalls no longer overlapping in urgent layers. Officers moved with less haste, their strides no longer clipped by immediate commands but guided instead by ingrained routine.
The fortress did not sleep.
It simply changed posture.
Cadet Corps 28 was summoned shortly after the final rotation bell.
No fanfare followed the call. No announcement echoed through the barracks. Just a directive rune blooming to life on Captain Renia's wrist console—soft blue, pulsing twice—followed by a single sentence spoken aloud, calm and precise.
"To the Monitoring Center."
That alone was enough to still us.
The Monitoring Center wasn't a place cadets were casually invited to. It wasn't a training hall, nor a command deck meant for observation tours. It was a nerve cluster—one among many—but this one fed directly into research, long-range surveillance, and Axiom fluctuation analysis. The kind of place where wars were not fought, but decided. Where choices were made quietly, documented meticulously… and then paid for months later in blood.
None of us spoke as we fell into line behind Captain Renia.
Even the usual murmurs—jokes, muttered complaints, the sound of armor adjusting—were absent. Instinct told us this was not a space for noise.
We followed her through layered security corridors deep within the fortress. Each checkpoint felt more restrictive than the last. Physical barriers slid aside with hydraulic precision while spell-locked seals shimmered and dissolved into motes of light. Runes scanned our Axiom signatures as we passed, lingering just long enough to feel invasive. Metal apertures adjusted minutely to our proximity, tightening or relaxing as if the fortress itself were breathing us in.
The Grand Frontlines did not merely recognize us.
It measured us.
When the final doors opened, sound hit first.
Not noise.
Activity.
Low voices overlapped in controlled chaos. The soft chime of updating magic projectors rang out in irregular intervals. A constant hum filled the chamber—stabilized Axiom conduits cycling power through unseen channels, the lifeblood of the base flowing beneath every surface.
Researchers in slate-gray coats moved briskly between consoles, their eyes flicking between layered data streams and floating glyphs. Some argued in hushed tones, fingers stabbing at projections mid-air. Others scribbled notes by hand—actual chalk and stylus—when the data became too volatile to trust to enchantment alone. Officers stood in tight clusters around tactical tables, sleeves rolled back, hands tracing projected lines of advance, retreat, and collapse.
And at the center of it all—
A map.
A massive Axiom hologram, suspended in midair, spanning nearly the entire height of the chamber. Its scale alone was overwhelming, the projection so detailed that individual ridgelines, rivers, and fortress outlines were visible if one looked closely enough.
The territory of Assembia.
Green-lit regions marked the lands under Mythril's control—dense, interconnected, fortified by overlapping defensive lines. Red-lit territories sprawled outward beyond them, corrupted by the Blight like a living infection, uneven and aggressive, edges constantly shifting as if alive. Yellow-lit zones flickered along the borders—unstable, fluctuating—territories contested, under purification, or in the slow, costly process of reclamation.
The colors pulsed faintly, responding to real-time data.
It was beautiful.
And horrifying.
"This way," Captain Renia said quietly, guiding us toward the outer ring of the chamber. "You're free to observe. Do not interfere."
Her tone made it clear this was not a suggestion.
We dispersed instinctively, each of us drawn to different aspects of the room. Some of my squadmates drifted toward casualty projections, their expressions tightening as numbers scrolled upward and stabilized. Others stared at purification decay curves, whispering to one another as they tried to interpret what they were seeing. A few stood frozen before the map itself, heads tilted back, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the war laid bare.
I stayed where I was.
Because I felt him before I saw him.
"You look like you're trying to memorize the whole world in one glance."
General Ignis stepped into place beside me.
His iron-clad armor seemed almost subdued here, its usual severity softened by the ambient glow of the chamber. The yellow of his hair—tied back neatly—caught stray light from the projections, while his posture remained relaxed in that dangerous way only veterans possessed. His eyes, sharp and reflective, carried the weight of too many campaigns, too many losses.
"How is it, kid?" he asked. "This is the military prowess of the Empire."
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.
"It's… wildly impressive," I answered honestly.
He huffed once—a short breath that might have been a laugh in another life.
"Impressive," he echoed. "Yes. Necessary, too."
His gaze lifted toward the map, lingering on the red-lit territories longer than the rest.
"But don't mistake this for dominance."
I turned slightly toward him, attention sharpening.
"This war," he continued, voice lowered so only I could hear, "is not one we can win."
The words struck harder than any shouted command or battlefield explosion.
"We defend," Ignis said. "We contain. We reclaim when we can. But the Blight?" His jaw tightened, metal creaking softly. "That thing doesn't care about victory conditions."
He looked at me then.
"It just eats."
The room seemed colder.
I nodded slowly, the truth of it already etched into my bones.
"I know, sir."
He studied me for a moment longer, as if weighing something unspoken, then gestured toward the map with two fingers.
"Then listen carefully."
—
The Blight.
A word that meant many things, depending on who spoke it.
To soldiers, it was an enemy.
To civilians, a nightmare given form.
To scholars—
A catastrophe without precedent.
"It began two hundred forty-three years ago," Ignis said, "with something we now call The First Lie."
I had heard the name before. Everyone had. It was spoken in classrooms, whispered in taverns, etched into forbidden research texts.
But hearing it here—inside the Monitoring Center, beneath a living map of the world—gave it weight.
"No confirmed origin," Ignis continued. "No responsible party. Theories range from divine retribution to runaway Axiom logic. Research is ongoing."
He paused.
"Dangerous research."
One of the nearby projections responded to his words, shifting shape.
A model of the world—Ehianara—rotated slowly in the air.
"Before this era," Ignis said, "humanity thrived. Technology advanced alongside Axiom manipulation. Cities grew. Nations clashed."
War.
Peace.
War again.
"Each cycle larger than the last," he said. "Each 'victory' sowing the seeds for something worse."
Then—
The projection changed.
A single point of light appeared on the globe.
The equator.
"On a single night," Ignis said quietly, "the sky answered."
The light flared violently.
"Witnesses described it as a glow—focused, precise. Like a star being driven into the world."
The First Lie.
"The impact point—still under investigation—became the epicenter. Some call it the Rupture. Others…" His lips pressed thin. "'The Apocalypse' from the old scriptures."
The globe darkened.
"Within hours," he said, "a quarter of humanity was gone."
My breath caught painfully in my chest.
"Not killed," Ignis corrected. "Drained."
The projection zoomed inward, silhouettes dissolving into nothingness.
"Axiom extraction on a scale we didn't think possible. Life—human, animal, plant—stripped down to emptiness."
The Blight was born.
"It didn't explode outward," he said. "It spread. Slowly. Patiently."
Red veins crawled across the projection like creeping rot.
"It devours Axiom. Living or inert, it makes no distinction. Corrupts organisms, rewrites their internal logic. Livestock became shambling vessels of nothingness. Humans—" His voice hardened. "Humans lost everything that made them human."
The silhouettes twisted.
Bodies remained. Corrupted. Rotting. Moving
"They don't think," Ignis said. "They propagate. Infect. Populate."
A wave.
Not an army.
"After the First Lie rewrote reality itself," he continued. "Rifts formed. Pocket dimensions tore open. Places where logic broke and monsters spawned endlessly."
Dungeons.
My chest tightened, memories clawing upward.
"Yet, reality adapted," Ignis said. "Or rather—humanity did."
Purification Magic was constructed.
A new projection bloomed—blue-white glyphs overlaying red corruption, pressing it back inch by inch.
"A reverse construct," he explained. "Where the Blight feeds on Axiom, purification drains it. Starves the corruption. Pushes it back."
"But it can't save the living," I murmured.
Ignis nodded once.
"Once corrupted, there's no return. Only termination."
The words felt heavier spoken aloud here, surrounded by proof.
"But soil," he went on, "water, land—those can be reclaimed. Slowly. Painfully."
That was how Bastions were born.
Great cities turned fortresses.
Humanity clustering around what little ground could be held.
Armies formed.
Not to conquer—
But to survive.
I stared at the map again.
Green. Yellow. Red.
Human will, reduced to color.
"Everything you see here," Ignis said, sweeping his hand toward the chamber, "exists to delay the inevitable."
I turned toward him.
"Delay?"
He met my gaze evenly.
"Yes."
The honesty in his eyes was terrifying.
"Kid," he said quietly, "the Blight doesn't need to win. Time is on its side."
Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating.
Then—
He turned fully toward me.
"And that brings me to the question I need answered."
His voice lowered further, cutting through the hum of the room.
"You know what the Blight does," Ignis said. "You've seen what it takes. You understand what must be done."
He searched my face.
"If one day," he said carefully, "someone dear to you was corrupted…"
My heart skipped violently.
"…would you finish them off?"
The map glowed behind us.
Red pulsed softly.
I couldn't speak.
Images rose unbidden.
Faces.
Voices.
Warmth.
Yna's eyes meeting mine in formation.
Tairi's grin.
The Cadet Corps 28 Members—my friends and Captain Renia's steady presence.
The world suddenly felt impossibly thin, like glass stretched too far.
"I—" My throat tightened. I forced the word out. "I don't know, sir."
Ignis didn't push.
He nodded once.
"That's the right answer," he said. "For now."
He placed a heavy hand on my shoulder—not crushing, but grounding.
"Remember this feeling," he said. "Because this war doesn't just test your strength."
He leaned closer, voice barely above a breath.
"It tests what you're willing to become."
Then he stepped away, leaving me alone with the map.
The question lingered.
I stared at the red zones.
At the green.
At the thin, fragile yellow bleeding between them.
Kill.
Or be killed.
Protect.
Or lose everything.
This world did not allow innocence.
Only choices.
And consequences.
As the lights dimmed slightly and the projections shifted into night-cycle analysis, I felt something settle deep in my chest.
Not fear.
Not resolve.
Something colder.
More patient.
The sky had once been rewritten by a lie.
And now—
Every answer demanded blood.
The silence returned.
But this time—
It felt permanent.