Miles away from the dropship, the smoking remains of the raided hunting village sat in an eerie, reverent silence.
Anya, a seasoned Grounder general, walked her horse through the muddy perimeter, her sharp eyes scanning the destruction. Beside her rode Lincoln, his stoic expression masking a deep, churning confusion. They had seen the smoke from the ridge and rode in expecting to find a massacre.
Instead, they found survival.
The village elders and the terrified mothers were gathered around the scorched earth where the hazmat-suited Mountain Men had been magically incinerated. The villagers were whispering in hushed, awe-struck Trigedasleng. They weren't talking about the Sky People as invaders anymore. They were pointing to the sky and murmuring a new title.
The Great Protector.
Lincoln dismounted, walking over to inspect the snapped necks of the Reapers lying in the dirt. There were no weapon marks. No spear wounds. Just brutal, invisible force. He stood up, looking at Anya with a deeply unsettled expression.
"This is the sorcerer's work," Lincoln said quietly, ensuring the villagers couldn't hear his uncertainty. "But why would the people from the sky bleed for us?"
Anya stared at the scorched earth, her tactical mind racing as a massive, paradigm-shifting realization clicked into place.
For generations, the Grounder equation had been absolute: Advanced Technology equals The Mountain Men. The clans had vehemently rejected firearms, machinery, and pre-war tech because the only people who used those things were the demons in hazmat suits who came to kidnap their children and harvest their blood. When the dropship fell, bringing fire and metal from the stars, the Grounders naturally assumed the Sky People were just another extension of that same technological evil.
"Because they are not of the Mountain," Anya spoke up, her voice cutting through the quiet murmurs of the village. She looked at Lincoln, a fierce glimmer of clarity in her eyes. "We saw their metal ship and thought them the same. But the Mountain does not burn its own. The Sorcerer killed them to protect our blood."
Anya gripped the reins of her horse and vaulted smoothly into the saddle. The board had just completely changed, and the stakes were suddenly much higher than a simple border dispute.
"I ride for the Commander," Anya declared, adjusting the sword strapped to her back. "A power like this... only she can decide our next path."
Lincoln quickly mounted his own horse, looking at his general with a sudden, desperate flicker of hope. He had been watching the Sky People for days, sketching them, hoping they weren't just another enemy.
"Do we offer them peace?" Lincoln questioned.
Anya looked back at the dead Reapers, then up at the sky. A hardened warrior all her life, she rarely allowed herself to hope, but the scorched hazmat suits in the dirt offered an unprecedented opportunity.
"If this Sorcerer stands with us," Anya answered, her voice hardening with absolute resolve, "we can finally break the Mountain."
Lincoln nodded firmly. With a sharp kick to their horses' flanks, the two Grounder warriors tore out of the village, riding hard toward the capital to deliver the news to their Commander.
They rode with the absolute conviction that peace was finally within their grasp. A united front against Mount Weather could change the fate of everyone on the ground.
But communication on Earth was incredibly slow, and the woods were vast and fractured.
What neither Anya nor Lincoln knew as they galloped toward the capital was that the gears of war were already turning. The rogue Grounder factions and the scouts currently surrounding the dropship hadn't seen the Sorcerer save the village. They only knew that the invaders from the sky had just armed themselves with thunderous weapons.
Before Anya could ever reach the Commander to halt the bloodshed, the Sky People's camp was going to face two brutal, consecutive attacks from the Grounders in the woods. The fragile chance for peace was about to be drowned in blood.
The Dropship
Inside the dim, cramped lower level of the dropship, progress was finally being made. With Aleksander's technical guidance and Raven's sheer mechanical brilliance, they had managed to wire the salvaged transponder parts into the primary console. They were days away from establishing a live video feed with the Ark.
Outside the dropship, however, progress was a little less structured.
Monty and Jasper had been tasked with stripping the remaining thruster casings for usable scrap. Instead, they had started tinkering with the highly volatile chemical ignition powder left inside the thruster caps.
"I'm telling you, it's just basic chemistry," Monty said, carefully packing the powder into a hollowed-out metal tube. "If we cap the pressure right, we can make a localized explosive."
"Or," Jasper grinned, holding up a spark-striker, "we make a really cool firework."
Before Monty could stop him, Jasper struck the flint. A stray spark caught the edge of the packed powder.
FSSSHHH-THWUMP.
The makeshift tube violently ripped itself out of Monty's hands. A blinding streak of red chemical fire shot vertically into the air, screaming over the camp walls and exploding high above the tree canopy in a massive, glowing red cloud of smoke and light.
Jasper froze, staring up at the brightly illuminated sky. All the blood drained from his face. "Oh, no. Please tell me no one saw that. Aleksander is literally going to murder us."
Inside the dropship, Aleksander paused his work on the console. He closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose as his empathy caught the massive spike of panic right outside the doors.
"Idiots," Aleksander muttered under his breath.
He turned on his heel and marched down the ramp. Bellamy, who had been cleaning his rifle by the fire pit, saw the flare and immediately took off running toward the boys. Clarke, Octavia, Wells, and Murphy were right on his heels.
By the time the inner circle reached the perimeter, Jasper and Monty were frantically trying to stomp out the scorched grass.
"What the hell did you two just do?" Bellamy barked, gripping his rifle.
"It was an accident!" Jasper stammered, shrinking back as Aleksander stepped through the group, his dark eyes fixed on the remaining thruster powder.
Aleksander didn't yell. He didn't have to. The sheer, freezing disappointment radiating from him was enough to make both boys want to sink into the dirt.
"A flare of that magnitude can be seen for miles," Aleksander stated, his voice dangerously quiet. "You just painted a glowing red target on our exact coordinates for every hostile force in the sector."
"We're sorry," Monty apologized quickly, kicking dirt over the smoldering casing. "It won't happen again."
Aleksander let out a slow, measured breath. He knew punishing them wouldn't change the tactical reality they were now facing. The board had just shifted.
He turned to Bellamy. "Gather everyone who passed the vetting process for the rifles. Get them armed, and post them at the walls immediately. We just gave up our stealth advantage. Be ready."
Bellamy gave a sharp nod. "You heard him! Move out!"
Western Ridges
Miles away, riding hard toward the Grounder capital, Anya pulled her horse to a halt. Lincoln stopped beside her.
Above the distant treeline to the east, a bright, unnatural red light was bleeding into the sky.
Lincoln frowned, his hand instinctively resting on the hilt of his sword. "A signal from the Sky People."
Anya watched the red smoke dissipate into the clouds. A few days ago, she would have sent a war party to hunt down the source of the fire. But the scorched remains of the Mountain Men and the sheer, terrifying power of the Sorcerer had changed her entire perspective. A flare was just a light in the sky—it wasn't a threat.
"Let it burn," Anya said firmly, kicking her horse back into a gallop. "It doesn't change our mission. We ride for the Commander."
Anya's faction wasn't the only one who saw the sky catch fire.
Far to the east, beyond the dense woods, the terrain drastically changed. The trees gave way to massive, sweeping flatlands of tall, razor-sharp grass and hardened earth stretching as far as the eye could see. These were the Great Plains. And they belonged to the Plains Riders—the Ingranronakru, or the Kalkru.
Decades ago, their founder, Kaelen the First, ventured deep into the untamed plains and discovered a herd of massive, wasteland-hardened horses. But the herd was led by a terrifying anomaly: a singular Alpha stallion with a duplicated front skeletal structure. It had six legs. The mutation made the beast impossibly fast, immune to tripping in the treacherous, hidden ravines of the plains, and capable of striking with the kinetic force of a battering ram.
Kaelen broke the beast, and the herd followed. He used his new cavalry to conquer the plains, establishing a law that would govern his people forever: Only the High Chief of the Kalkru may ride the Hex-Strider.
To sit upon the rare, six-legged horse—a recessive gene that only popped up once or twice a generation—was to declare yourself the absolute ruler of the plains. It was their version of the Commander's Flame.
The current High Chief had three children, each representing the brutal reality of their culture:
Varo, the True Heir. The second son. A tactical genius who rode a massive, scarred four-legged warhorse. He didn't need a mutated beast to win the loyalty of the army. He was pragmatic, brilliant, and respected even by the Woods Clan Commander as a grounded, dangerous rival.
Zura, the Brute. The eldest daughter. A towering, terrifying woman who fought with a two-handed war-hammer forged from a pre-war engine block. She was Varo's vanguard and executioner, fiercely loyal to her younger brother.
Khal, the Rebel. The eldest son.
Khal was physically dominant and deeply arrogant. When the newest Hex-Strider foal was born, it was notoriously violent, killing two handlers. Khal stepped into the pen and brutally beat the beast into submission, claiming it through fear. He rode it out to the tribe, fully expecting his father to crown him the heir.
Instead, his father praised him, but chose the tactical Varo as his successor.
Furious and humiliated at being passed over, Khal took his fifty most loyal warriors, stole the Hex-Strider, and attempted a violent coup. He failed. Varo's superior tactics crushed the rebellion, chasing his older brother out of the heartland.
Now, Khal and his fifty loyalists were exiled, pushed to the very western edge of the plains bordering the woods. Khal sat atop his massive, six-legged warhorse, staring out over the scrubland. He had the mount of a King, but he lacked the army to take back his throne from Varo.
He needed an equalizer. He needed weapons, power, or technology that Varo couldn't counter.
Suddenly, the dark sky above the western woods erupted in a blinding flash of red chemical fire.
Khal's Hex-Strider stomped its four front hooves restlessly, letting out a low, guttural snort. Khal pulled back on the heavy leather reins, his dark eyes reflecting the fading red light of the flare.
A cruel, ambitious smile slowly spread across the exiled prince's face. Word had already traveled across the plains that a metal ship had fallen from the stars and crashed in those woods.
"Mount up!" Khal roared to his fifty heavily armed, leather-clad loyalists. He drew a heavy, curved scimitars from his back, pointing the blade directly at the fading red smoke. "The Sky People are signaling. Whatever power they hold inside that metal ship... it belongs to us now. That is our equalizer!"
With a terrifying war cry, the fifty Plains Riders spurred their massive, bone-fed warhorses forward, following the thundering, six-legged stride of their exiled prince straight toward the dropship.