Gunfire stitched the night sky as Wei Lan drove her squad forward through the stroming dust which blinding their eye and choking their breath of Sector K-12. The intruders broke under her assault, scattering like shadows torn apart by dawnlights. Every motion of hers was sharp, decisive—a storm contained in human form body reaching its peak . Within minutes, the sector lay swept clean, bodies and broken weapons marking the path of her fury.
But victory was brittle.
A warning crackled over comms—breathless, fractured:
"Commander… explosives—Southern sector tranch !"
Shen Wei froze for half a heartbeat, her gaze snapping toward the horizon where an ancient sealed door of sector K-12 appear her site, its silver etchings faintly aglow beneath the storm. The realization hit like a hammer blow. The intruders hadn't come to hold territory; they had come to break history open.
She vaulted onto the command scaffolding, eyes scanning the fractured terrain. The glow of the door flickered, unstable, threads of light pulsing in irregular bursts. Beneath it—faint, almost hidden in the sand—clusters of devices blinked red in synchrony, a heartbeat counting down.
"They planted bomb on the door seal…" Shen Wei muttered, fury tightening in her chest.
"They mean to blast it open."
Her soldiers waited for her orders, tension strongly at high peak. Some turned their rifles toward the horizon, others back toward her—uncertain if they should advance, or fall back and brace.
"Evacuate non-combatants from Sector K-12 perimeter!" she commanded, voice slicing through the storm. "We cannot let that door fall—not like this."
Already, she was moving—down from the scaffolding, boots hammering against steel and sand, cutting a path toward the ancient gate. Her presence drew her troops behind her, a column of defiance against the widening threat.
But every second stretched longer, the blinking red lights below the seal counting out their verdict. And in that silence, in that terrible rhythm, Wei Lan understood the true weight of this battle: K-12 had been a diversion. Southern trench door was the real war.
Wei Lan reached the southern trench, the storm tearing at her cloak, sand hissing like knives across her visor. The bomb clusters pulsed beneath the Southern trench door, each blink a step closer to annihilation. The disarming unit wouldn't make it in time.
She exhaled, steady, and laid a palm against the silver-veined gate.
The cold surface thrummed against her skin, resonating with something buried deeper than technology. She had tested the theory only once in isolation, never in the field: It is first time for her to use bomb defusing technique which were taught during the training, in dampening wave she thought of it try. It could also lead to her death—or burning her inside out.
"Non-combat channeling mode," she whispered into her comms. "All units—pull back two hundred meters. This trench is mine."
The soldiers hesitated but obeyed. Alone, she knelt, pressing both hands to the sand. With the bomb tick time her heartbeat is also increasing her eye are focused of the wire of bomb. Raise her hand snapped the wire defuse the bomb.
For a moment, it worked.
Then the backlash hit.
Her vision fractured, edges of the world splintering into shards of white.
A lance of pain stabbed through her skull, blinding in its clarity. Her breathing turned ragged, chest seizing as though the very air had thickened into glass. Her body shook violently, every muscle screaming rebellion.
Symptom one: severe photophobia—her eyes recoiled even from the dim desert light, tears streaming as if each blink cut her open.
Symptom two: neural tremors—her hands quaked uncontrollably, muscles firing out of rhythm, the aftershock of forcing energy through channels not built to carry it.
The bombs went dark, smoldering in silence. Necrotic lines crawled across their shells like veins of ash.
Wei Lan staggered, collapsing to one knee, sweat and blood mixing on her lips. Around her, the trench glowed faintly with the afterimage of her power.
She had saved the door—barely. But her soldiers, rushing back toward her, saw the truth before she spoke it. Every victory demanded its toll, and this time, the toll was carved into her.
She collected all her strength stood up enter the door.
The trench opened into a hollowed corridor beyond the door, a place untouched by centuries. Wei Lan stepped inside, her boots stirring up dust older than kingdoms. The chamber was not built as a bunker—it was an archive, its walls etched with spiraling glyphs that caught the silver light like frozen rivers.
She ran her gloved hand along the markings, her soldier's discipline faltering for a moment as the architect in her recognized the geometry—angles designed not for strength, but resonance. Whoever had built this chamber had meant it to sing.
Then her HUD spiked.
A pulse beneath the floor—a dormant array awakening. She froze.
One step. That was all it had taken.
The trap came alive. Silver threads unfurled across the walls, forming a lattice of light that caged her in. The very air thickened, carrying the hum of something calculating, something watching
Her gaze caught the object at the center of the chamber: the pendant. Suspended in a crystalline frame, it glowed faintly like a heart caught between beats.
Her superior's words echoed back to her, carried through memory like a second voice layered over the moment:
> "The pendant belongs to the Central Council, General. Bring it back intact—or if compromise is certain, destroy it yourself."
The memory twisted with another echo—years earlier, in academy halls, tracing ancient blueprints of sealed gates. She had told herself, back then, that one day she'd mark her own name into history as more than a soldier: as the builder who preserved what was worth keeping.
Now she stood on that very threshold, history breathing around her, danger coiled at her feet.
The lattice brightened. A low chime filled the chamber. With each second, the walls inched closer, the trap pressing her toward a choice: seize the pendant for the Council, or end it here and now—sacrificing both her mission and herself to prevent its capture.
She drew a steady breath, sweat cutting lines down her faceplate. The weight of command bore down like the ceiling itself.
Her hand hovered, trembling, above the pendant.