The woman who stumbled through Verdwood's gates called herself Serra.
She arrived in the late afternoon, looking like she'd been dragged through half the continent. She was exhausted, her clothes were torn, and she collapsed in a half-faint, her story spilling out in a desperate, practiced-sounding rush. She was a cult defector, she claimed, with intelligence so vital it couldn't wait. The gate guards, now trained to see threats everywhere, brought her straight to the council chamber.
She stood before us, swaying, a picture of desperate conviction. "The timeline has moved up," she said, her voice shaking, but loud enough for all to hear. "The cult... they know about your alliance-building. They know about Riverholt. They're accelerating the Harvest. They're attacking in ten days. Not two weeks. Ten days."
The room went cold. Ten days. It wasn't just a compressed timeline; it was an impossible one.
"How do you have this information?" Elder Stoneheart asked, his voice a low, skeptical rumble.
"I was part of the operational planning team," Serra explained, her eyes wide, scanning our faces. "The same unit as Mira. When I heard... when I knew... she had defected, that she was here... I couldn't... I had to warn you."
At the mention of her name, Mira, who had been standing at the back of the chamber, went utterly still. It wasn't just a stiffening. It was a complete, absolute cessation of movement. Her hand, which had been resting on her belt, slowly, almost imperceptibly, drifted to the hilt of the stiletto hidden there.
"You know her?" I asked, my voice low, speaking directly to Mira.
"Yes," Mira said. Her voice was flat, devoid of all emotion. "We worked together. We were operational partners for three years."
"Then you can vouch for her?" Elder Ironwood pressed, seeing a crack in the story.
"I can verify that she is a high-level cult operative," Mira responded, her eyes locked on Serra, who was now staring back. "Whether she's... defecting..."
Serra turned, her face a mask of what looked like betrayed grief. "You really did it, Mira. You threw it all away. Everything we worked for. Everything we believed in." It was a calculated, personal strike.
"I changed my mind about what I believed," Mira said, her voice dangerously calm. "Serra. If this is real, I'll be the first to help you integrate. But if this is a game..."
"It's not a game!" Serra cried, her voice breaking. "I saw what you saw! I saw them!" Her gaze snapped to me, to Torren and Zara, who were also present. "I saw the network... kids learning to be human, not... not weapons. I want that. I want to stop being what they made me."
The words were perfect. The emotion seemed genuine, raw, and convincing. But Mira's hand never left her weapon. She wasn't convinced. And if Mira wasn't, I wasn't.
"We will provide... provisional sanctuary," Elder Stoneheart decided, his voice heavy. "Under constant supervision. If this intelligence proves true, we will discuss permanent asylum."
Serra was taken to secure housing—a polite term for a guarded, monitored room. Mira, predictably, volunteered to be her primary contact. "Familiarity," she'd argued, "will help assess her authenticity."
I pulled Mira aside the moment the council session broke. The hallway was empty.
"You don't trust her," I said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Mira said, her face pale. "Ren, you don't understand. Serra wasn't just an operative. She was a... a true believer. The philosophy... she lived it. The idea that she'd defect, just from... from 'observing' us from a distance?" She shook her head, her eyes dark. "It doesn't fit. It's wrong."
"Then what is she doing here? Why warn us?"
"I don't know," Mira said, and that scared me more than anything. "She's either had a genuine, life-altering crisis of faith... or she's the most dangerous person to ever walk through that gate. If this is an infiltration, she's not just here to spy. She's here to do something... decisive."
The next two days were a quiet, suffocating kind of torture. Serra was the perfect defector. She was too perfect.
She provided detailed intelligence on cult movements—small things, troop rotations, supply cache locations—that our own scouts, when dispatched, verified as accurate. She sat in on defensive planning sessions, offering tactical insights that were genuinely, terrifyingly useful. She'd point to a map and say, "Your defensive line on the ridge is good, but a cult strike team won't come from the front. They'll use the eastern draw; it's a blind spot. You should move your reserves here." And she'd be right.
She expressed all the right emotions. She was remorseful. She was grateful. She was, to everyone else, a godsend.
But Mira watched her, and her suspicion only hardened.
"She's performing," Mira whispered to me and Lysara in the library, late on the second night. "It's a role. She's practiced it. Real defectors are a mess. They're angry. They're terrified. They have nightmares. They're inconsistent. Serra... Serra is consistent. She's giving us exactly what we want to see, just enough to earn our trust."
"What's her objective?" Lysara asked, her mind all sharp, analytical angles. "If she's not a real defector, this is a high-risk operation."
"If I wanted to send an infiltrator here," Mira said, her voice a low, cold thread, "I'd send Serra. If I wanted to find the network's weaknesses, I'd send Serra. And if I... if I wanted to assassinate the 'First Anchor'..." She looked at me. "I'd send Serra. She's been watching you, Ren. How you move. Who you talk to. Your patterns. This isn't just intelligence gathering. This is pre-operative surveillance."
A cold dread settled in my stomach. "Then I'm the target."
We increased my security, but it felt pointless. How do you defend against a threat that's already inside your house, a threat that everyone else sees as a friend?
On the third day, Serra made her request.
"I want to observe the training," she said to me in the common room. "The... the resonance. I need to understand how you teach it. How you... how you teach integration. It's... it's the part I still don't understand. It's the part that made me leave."
It was a perfectly reasonable request. It was also, we all knew, the one thing she must be here to see. To refuse her would be to show our hand, to alert her that we knew.
"Fine," I said, my voice tight, despite Mira's almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Supervised observation. From the platform. No participation."
The training yard was tense. Serra stood on the observation platform, with Mira at her side, ostensibly explaining the process but in reality, acting as her personal guard.
Down below, the six of us—me, Torren, Zara, Elara, and the two strongest children we'd rescued from Ironrest—formed the circle. We'd been practicing the six-way resonance, building our endurance, our trust. This was the pinnacle of our power.
"Ready?" I asked. Five nervous nods. "Connect."
The connection formed. The familiar, overwhelming rush of the collective consciousness clicked into place. The six of us became one. I felt Torren's stubborn focus, Zara's fierce protectiveness, Elara's tightly-controlled fear, the Ironrest kids' tentative, fragile hope. Our shadows merged, our integration levels equalized, and the single, unified entity that was us settled into a stable, humming state of awareness.
And then Serra moved.
It was faster than thought. Faster than any human should be able to move.
One instant, she was standing next to Mira, asking a question. The next, her hand had snapped out, not in a punch, but in a precise, two-fingered strike to the nerve cluster in Mira's neck. Mira crumpled, instantly disabled, her body going limp.
Before Mira's body had even hit the floor, Serra had a new object in her hand—a black, jagged crystal. A void-corruption catalyst, a crystallized, lethal poison to any convergence-marked.
She threw it, an underhand, pitcher-fast motion, aimed directly at my chest.
The collective consciousness saved me. Six minds, one network. We didn't have to "react." We were. The unified shadow-construct, our merged power, simply moved. It formed a solid, dark shield in front of me.
The catalyst shattered against it, exploding in a spray of purple, acrid smoke that hissed, smelling of static and ozone. The void energy, so lethal to one of us, was absorbed and dispersed harmlessly by the power of all of us.
But Serra was a professional. She knew the catalyst might fail.
She was already moving, a shadow-steel blade in her other hand, leaping from the platform, a twenty-foot drop. She was timing her attack for our most vulnerable moment—the second after a major defensive act, the moment we were still processing the attack, the moment our resonance was most strained.
She landed in a crouch and charged, her blade aimed not at my chest, but at my throat.
She wasn't going to be stopped.
"Hold the connection!" I screamed, the thought roaring through our shared mind. "Don't break! Coordinate! Now!"
Elara's shadow reacted first, a black spear lashing out from our collective, trying to intercept. But Serra was too fast. She dodged, batting the shadow aside, her eyes locked on me, her purpose absolute.
She was five feet away. She was going to make it.
And then Mira, who should have been paralyzed, who should have been down, launched herself off the platform.
It wasn't a graceful leap. It was a desperate, messy, flying tackle. She had clearly been faking the extent of her paralysis, waiting for her moment. She slammed into Serra from the side.
Serra hadn't anticipated it. She stumbled, her killing lunge diverted. But her blade... her blade was still moving.
It found Mira's torso.
There was a wet, solid thunk. A sound that cut through the entire yard.
Mira's momentum stopped, her eyes wide with shock. But as she fell, she grabbed Serra's weapon arm, her grip a death-lock.
"Now!" Mira gasped, her voice already wet with blood. "While I have her! Do it!"
The collective resonance, our unified mind, acted. We didn't hesitate. Six shadows, from six different directions, slammed into Serra at once. It wasn't a "wrapping." It was a crushing. Solid, unyielding constructs of pure, integrated shadow pinned her arms, her legs, her head, slamming her to the ground, immobilizing her instantly.
Only then, when the guards were swarming, did we break the connection. We all collapsed to our knees, gasping, the psychic backlash staggering.
I scrambled to Mira. She had crumpled to the ground, the blade still buried deep in her side. Blood was... everywhere. A dark, fast-moving pool.
"Healer!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Get Miren! Get Miren now!"
I pressed my hands against the wound, a useless, desperate gesture.
Mira's hand found mine, her grip weak, her fingers cold. "Told you," she coughed, a spray of red on her lips. "She... she was trouble."
"Don't talk," I choked out, tears blurring my vision. "Save your strength. Miren's coming."
"Important," she insisted, her gaze locking on mine. "Serra... her timeline. The ten days... that part... that part might be true. They're... they're accelerating..."
"We'll handle it," I promised, my voice breaking. "You just... you just stay alive. You hear me? Stay alive."
Miren arrived, her bag already open, her face a mask of grim professionalism. "Move," she commanded. She was assessing, applying void-dampeners, stitching, her hands a blur. "The blade missed her heart. Missed the lung. But... the blood loss... the next twenty-four hours are critical."
Serra said nothing.
She sat in the darkest holding cell, the one reinforced with void-dampening iron, and just... stared. No defiant speeches. No cult philosophy. Just... silence.
Elder Stoneheart and Master Dren interrogated her for an hour. Threats. Bargains. Nothing.
Finally, I asked to speak with her. Alone. The council, after a furious debate, agreed. On one condition: I was on the other side of the reinforced bars.
I sat on the cold stone floor, looking at her through the barrier. "Why?" I asked.
She was quiet for a long time. Then, she spoke, her voice flat. "Because you are the First Anchor. The symbol. Remove you, and the network collapses. The children... they scatter. They fall to the cult, or they're hunted down. The Harvest succeeds."
"That's the strategy," I said. "I'm asking about you. Why did you care?"
"Because I believe in it," she said. "I believe in what they're building. Evolution. A new humanity. You... you're teaching children to suppress their nature. To fight who they are. You're holding humanity back."
It was the same speech. The same indoctrination. But her eyes... her eyes were dead.
"Do you really believe that?" I asked, my voice soft. "Or is that just what you've been repeating for so long you can't tell the difference?"
Her gaze flickered. Just a fraction of a second. A tiny, hairline crack in the mask. "I... I believed it," she whispered. Past tense. "But... watching you... watching the resonance... seeing those kids... together... so... stable... it raised... questions."
"Then why attack?" I pressed, leaning forward.
"Because... because questioning the doctrine doesn't excuse failing the mission," she said, the words sounding recited. Programmed. "The cult invests years in us. When you are given an objective... you complete it. Or... or your entire life, your entire training... it was a waste."
"So this was a suicide mission," I realized, the cold truth of it hitting me. "You knew you wouldn't get out."
"My survival was... irrelevant," she said.
The emptiness... the pure, hollow nothingness in her voice... it was more terrifying than the cult's army. She wasn't a fanatic. She was a tool, so thoroughly programmed she'd kill herself just to "not waste the investment."
"Mira almost died," I said, my voice hard. "She threw herself in front of your blade. Your partner. Three years, you said. Did that... did that mean anything to you?"
For the first time, her composure cracked. Her face crumpled. A single tear cut a line through the dirt on her cheek. "Mira... Mira betrayed us. She... she chose you. She chose... this... weakness... over our truth."
"She chose to believe we could be human," I corrected. "She chose compassion. You call it weakness. I call it... strength. The kind of strength your cult is terrified of."
I stood up to leave. I was done. But I had to know. "The timeline," I said. "Was that part of the lie? Or was it real?"
She hesitated. Her gaze dropped to her hands. She was a broken tool, her entire purpose shattered. She had nothing left. "Ten days," she whispered. "That part... that part was true. They know about the alliance. They're accelerating. They want to strike before you're coordinated."
"Thank you," I said.
She looked up, her expression one of pure confusion. "Why... why thank me? I tried to kill you."
"And you just gave me the intel that might save us all," I said. "Maybe... maybe Mira was right about you, too. Maybe you're not as committed as you think."
Mira woke up that evening. She was pale, groggy, and in a world of pain, but she was alive.
"Did I... get her?" were her first, slurred words.
"You saved my life, Mira," I said, my voice thick. "Serra's in the cell. The assassination failed."
"Good," she breathed, relaxing. "The... the timeline?"
"Confirmed," I said, my face grim. "Ten days. Until the Harvest."
She processed that, her eyes closing. "Not enough time. The alliance... it's not ready. They'll... they'll hit us all... divided..."
"We'll work with what we have," I said.
The emergency council session was a firestorm. Ten days. The number hung in the air like a death sentence.
"We focus on what we can defend," Ironwood argued, his voice pragmatic, not cruel. "Verdwood. Riverholt. The settlements we have confirmed pacts with. We save who we can save. We cannot... we cannot... try to save the entire continent. That is suicide. We will spread ourselves so thin, we all die."
He was right. From a strategic standpoint, he was 100% correct.
"So we just... we just let them?" I countered, my voice rising. "We let the cult 'Harvest' dozens of kids, kids like Torren, like Zara... because it's not 'strategically viable' to help them?"
"Yes!" Ironwood roared, slamming his fist on the table. "That is exactly what I am saying! That is what leadership is! Making the impossible choice! You cannot save everyone, Ren! And if you try... you will save no one!"
He was right. And I was right. We were both... right. It was an impossible, unwinnable argument.
"There's a third option," Lysara said, her voice quiet, but cutting through the rage.
We all turned to her. She was standing by the map, her face pale, but her eyes bright with a cold, terrifying, analytical fire.
"We can't defend everyone, correct," she said. "And we can't abandon everyone, correct. The Harvest is a coordinated assault. That is its strength. That means... it has a center. A command structure. Multiple strike teams, all moving on a single timetable, which means they are all being directed from one, or maybe two, centralized command locations."
She looked at Master Dren. "You don't win by building a hundred tiny walls. You win... by cutting the head off the snake."
The room was silent.
"That's... that's an offensive operation," Dren said, his voice awed. "We... we've only been planning for defense."
"And defense will get us killed, piecemeal," Lysara said. "But a pre-emptive strike... if we can identify their command infrastructure... if we can decapitate their leadership right before the Harvest begins... we shatter their coordination. The assault... it still happens... but it's isolated. Confused. Settlements will face individual raids, not an overwhelming, synchronized war. We... we might actually stand a chance."
"It's insane," Ironwood whispered.
"It's war," Dren countered, his eyes gleaming.
"How?" Stoneheart asked. "How do we even find these 'command centers'?"
I looked toward the cells. "We have two high-level cult defectors. Mira. And Serra. Between them... I bet they know exactly where the cult's head is."
The council debated for hours. The risk... it was astronomical. It meant taking our best, our only, assets—the children—and sending them into the heart of the enemy's territory. It was... it was a suicide mission.
The vote was five to four. The offensive was approved.
That night, there were nine of us on the rooftop. Me, Kaela, Lysara. Torren, Zara, Elara. The three kids from Ironrest, who were finally starting to look more like people and less like ghosts.
"So," Torren said, his voice small, "we're... we're attacking them?"
"It's necessary," Zara said, her voice hard. "Defense doesn't win. We have to hit them."
"We'll be outnumbered," Elara said, her voice the cold water of reality. "We'll be in their territory. They'll... they'll be waiting for us."
"We'll be together," I said, looking at each of them. "Nine of us. Operating as one. We have the collective resonance. That's... that's a power they don't understand."
"They have their own marked," Mira said. She'd dragged herself up here, against Miren's direct orders, her side tightly bound. "At least a dozen that I knew of. Trained... indoctrinated... they'll be guarding those centers. We won't be the only 'magic' on the field."
It was a sobering, terrifying thought.
Ten days. In ten days, I was going to lead a team of nine children—traumatized, half-trained, and scared—on a pre-emptive strike against the most powerful cult on the continent, to try and stop an apocalypse.
Takeshi had failed three kids.
I was now responsible for saving them all.
"We do this," I said, my voice quiet, but leaving no room for doubt. "We prove that our way... integration, connection, trust... is stronge