The null-field didn't lift; it shattered.
One moment, Adara was fighting the terrifying silence, her will the only thing holding her own mind together as she watched her Talons fray at the edges of their being. The next, a wave of pure, screaming life tore through the void. It was a soundless roar of untamed growth and crackling lightning, a chaotic symphony that smashed into Beelzebub's sterile logic with the force of a supernova.
The null-field collapsed like broken glass.
But the damage was done.
Around her, her soldiers were on their knees, gasping. Some were weeping uncontrollably, the sudden return of their emotional connection overwhelming them. Others were catatonic, staring into the middle distance, their spirits scarred by the enforced isolation. The unit was intact, but its soul was wounded.
And in the center of it all, holding a trembling young Malakim whose light flickered erratically, was Ashai. His hands glowed with a steady, gold-green light, but his face was pale, his breathing ragged. Mending the tears in their spirits was taking everything he had.
"We need to move," Adara ordered, her voice hoarse. "Now. Before they regroup."
They stumbled from the Shifting Plains, a broken unit shadowed by a victory that felt like a defeat. The journey back was a silent, painful procession. Ashai moved from soldier to soldier, his gentle touch the only thing keeping some of them from unraveling completely. Adara watched him, her own shoulder—the one he had healed—thrumming with a residual warmth. Her cynical mantra, that sentiment was a weakness, felt hollow now. His compassion was the only thing holding her command together.
They were met not by a cheering garrison, but by a single, grim-faced Malakim messenger.
"Commander Adara," the messenger said, his eyes avoiding the haunted looks of her troops. "Lord Michael requests your presence. And the healer, Ashai. Immediately."
There was no praise. No debrief. Only a summons that felt like a verdict.
---
They were led not to a gleaming hall in the Aethel, but to a hidden command post deep in the roots of the wilds. The air here was different—charged with purpose, not bureaucracy.
Michael stood before them, his presence a bastion of grim resolve. He took in their condition with a single, sweeping glance that missed nothing: the trauma in the Talons' eyes, the exhaustion in Ashai's posture, the defiant set of Adara's jaw.
"Beelzebub's weapon," Michael stated, no question in his tone. "It attacked your bonds."
"It tried," Adara replied, her voice flat. "We're still here."
"Because of a counter-measure you couldn't have orchestrated," Michael said, his gaze shifting to Ashai. "A storm of wild energy. A calculated dissonance. It was... unorthodox."
Ashai looked up, weary but clear-eyed. "It was necessary."
"I know," Michael said. "I ordered it."
The revelation hung in the air. The high command had acted? But not with legions. With something else.
"You were the test," Michael continued, his voice low. "The proof that their way—the way of pure logic, of counting souls as variables—is failing. Beelzebub's gluttony can consume any predictable strategy. But it cannot stomach chaos. It cannot comprehend a resilience that comes not from perfection, but from faith. From connection."
He looked at Adara, then at Ashai, and finally at the rest of the battered but unbroken Talons.
"The war is changing. And so am I. They have their weapons. We will have ours." He gestured to the others waiting in the glade—Cassiel, Phenex, Zadkiel, Ya'ara, Ari. "You are not just soldiers anymore. You are the proof of a new way to fight. You are the hammer they never saw coming."
The jump is now closed. The scars of the battle are shown, the survival explained, and the reason for their summons to Michael's council is made clear. This sets the stage perfectly for the war council of the new