The sounds of battle on the inner side of the wall were deafening: the hissing screech of psi-blades slicing through chitin, the shrieks of Zerglings, and the hum of particle cannons completely muffled their movements.
Tychus signaled with his hand, and the strike team broke into a sprint.
The three Zealots with their backs turned were hacking the last Zergling down beneath their blades, not yet having time to turn and check behind them.
The west gate of the temple was a massive stone door, currently half-open, casting a eerie blue light from within.
The strike team filed in one by one. After the last Raider entered, he quickly pulled the door shut and sealed the seams with portable quick-hardening gel, temporarily blocking out external noise and potential tracking.
The interior space of the temple was grand and ancient.
Star-chart patterns were carved into the towering vault of the ceiling, and the walls were covered in uninterpretable Xel'Naga inscriptions.
A faint scent of ozone and an indescribable pulsation of energy permeated the air.
The main passage led straight toward the central hall, which was the source of the blue-white light.
"Initiate psionic interference device," Valerie signaled. A Team A operative retrieved a cylindrical device from an equipment case and skillfully deployed it on the floor of the corridor.
The device emitted a low hum upon activation, lighting up with a ring of pale purple aura on its surface. The aura expanded outward, enveloping an area of dozens of meters around it.
"Interference field established; operational duration: twenty-eight minutes," the operative reported, his voice coming through the synthesizer flat and unruffled.
"Move," Tychus said without delay, leading the team as they dashed toward the central hall.
The scale of the hall was even grander than observed from the outside.
The circular space spanned over fifty meters in diameter. At its center stood a raised crystal platform, above which hovered a Xel'Naga artifact fragment—similar to the first fragment found on Mar Sara, though slightly different in shape.
The fragment rotated slowly, its radiating blue-white light illuminating the entire hall and casting the ancient bas-reliefs on the walls into vivid life.
There were no other living creatures in the hall, nor any obvious defensive structures—only the fragment itself and a series of intricate crystal arrays on the platform beneath it.
"Team A, check the platform," Valerie ordered. "Everyone else, cover the exits."
Two Team A operatives moved forward rapidly, using portable scanners to inspect the energy fields around the crystal platform and the fragment.
A few seconds later, one of them looked up and reported concisely via synthesized voice: "The platform is an energy stabilization device maintaining the fragment's levitation state. No traps or self-destruct mechanisms detected. The fragment can be taken directly, but it is recommended to disrupt the platform's power supply first to avoid energy backlash."
"Execute," Valerie nodded.
The Team A operative manipulated his equipment and inserted a probe into an interface on the side of the platform.
After a brief crackle of electric current, the light of the crystal array dimmed. The levitating artifact fragment shuddered slightly, stopped spinning, and slowly descended.
Valerie stepped forward, catching the falling fragment with a specialized energy-dampening container.
The force field on the container's interior walls stabilized the fragment in the center, completely isolating energy radiation to the outside.
"Fragment recovered," Valerie confirmed.
"Mission complete, fall back," Tychus ordered without hesitation.
The strike team backtracked rapidly along their original route. As they passed through the corridor, they retrieved the still-operating psionic interference device. Upon reaching the west gate, Team A operatives quickly cleared the quick-hardening gel from the door seams. Tychus cracked the door open a sliver to scout outside.
The battle on the inner side of the wall seemed to have shifted further outward; no Protoss or Zerg units were visible for the moment. The roar from the main battlefield in the distance continued unabated.
"Back the way we came, move," Tychus took the lead, rushing out of the temple with the strike team close behind.
Following their entry route, they moved swiftly through the outer perimeter of the temple, vaulted back over the stone wall, and entered the dense forest. The entire process had gone smoother than expected—they had encountered no Protoss and had not been spotted by the Swarm. The dropship was still waiting at the designated LZ, its engines idling on standby.
However, just as the strike team was about to reach the dropship's touchdown point, disaster struck without warning.
The clouds above the forest suddenly caved inward and spun, forming a violent vortex. Immediately after, a massive shadow tore through the center of the vortex, descending slowly with a low-frequency sense of oppression that made the air tremble. That was no ordinary drop-sac or Void Ray—it was a Leviathan, a living flagship of the Swarm.
Its towering, mountain-like body blocked out the daylight. Its thick chitinous carapace gleamed with a slick, sinister luster under the thin sunlight, while countless thick tentacles wriggled slowly along its sides, churning the air currents.
Beneath it, a fleshy drop-sac—insignificant compared to the flagship yet still massive—detached from the main body. Wrapped in scorching air and biological slime, it plummeted like a meteor toward the clearing near the strike team in the forest.
The drop-sac slammed violently into the ground, its shockwave sending the forest trees rustling and shivering. The sac burst open with a dull tearing sound, scattering viscous organic matter everywhere. A single figure stepped steadily out from the swirling steam and debris.
The Queen of Blades, Sarah Kerrigan, had descended in person.
Her gaze pierced through the forest cover and distance, locking accurately onto the evacuating strike team, her focus landing on the container in Valerie's hands that radiated a faint containment glow. Then, without stopping, that gaze shifted to the strike team—as if penetrating the dropship's armor and the vast distance to the Hyperion—and landed directly on a single person.
In that exact instant, Raynor felt a cold, sharp, and unmistakably familiar tendril of consciousness brush gently yet forcefully across his mind. There were no words, only a crystal-clear psionic pulse laden with complex meaning—like a greeting across life, death, and factions, carrying a touch of mockery and remembrance.
When the imagery captured by the dropship's external cameras was transmitted back to the bridge along with this psionic contact, Raynor's breath instantly hitched, his body locking as stiff as iron.
That was Sarah. She who had once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and who had fallen into the abyss because of him; she who was once a human Ghost, and was now the embodiment of the Swarm's will. She had not only noticed their actions, but had chosen this exact manner to declare her arrival and her gaze.
This "greeting" from his former lover brought no warmth whatsoever—only a marrow-deep chill and a heavy warning.
Kerrigan's personal arrival on Monlyth and her direct demonstration of power to him meant the Swarm was determined to claim this place, and that their recent actions had been exposed entirely under her eyes.
"Full speed evacuation!!" Raynor's order burst forth, his voice carrying a rare edge of tightness. "Get out of there now!"
The dropship's engines roared as it climbed at full throttle.
On the ground, Kerrigan did not pursue. She merely stood quietly beside the wreckage of the drop-sac, gazing upward. The subtle, indecipherable curve at the corner of her mouth seemed to deepen slightly before her figure was swallowed by the closing shadows of the forest.
The strike team returned safely to the Hyperion, and the artifact fragment was successfully recovered.
Yet no one on the bridge felt a sense of relief.
Raynor stood silently in front of the main screen. The final frame frozen on the display was that quiet forest, while echoing in his mind was that bone-chilling yet intensely familiar psionic ripple.
The gaze of the Queen of Blades had truly fallen upon them. And Sarah Kerrigan's attention had always heralded an impending storm.