The sky above Limani tis Adelphótitas was a bruised purple, swollen with the mana bleeding from Varrick's ritual. The air tasted of copper and ozone.
They couldn't stay at the theater. It was a tomb, and the dust of the collapsed stage was already settling on Roui's bloodied coat. They moved like ghosts through the Raimei-Gai, carrying their wounded. They didn't head for the safehouse—it was compromised. Instead, guided by a silent, limping Persya, they retreated to the only place left that the Guild wouldn't look.
An old Ningen shrine, buried deep within the tangled roots of a pre-Schism tree in the slums.
It was a ruin of rotting wood and moss-covered stone, forgotten by the city above. The roof was gone, leaving them open to the violet sky, but the walls were thick with ancient Recomposere wards that dampened their mana signatures.
They collapsed there. The adrenaline of the duel, the terror of the purge, it all bled away, leaving only a heavy, suffocating silence.
Isla knelt beside Roui. The noble was propped against the base of a stone statue—a headless depiction of Hangaku Gozen. His breathing was shallow. Isla didn't speak. Her hands glowed with a soft, persistent Hydro light as she knit the flesh of his side back together, flushing the Tenebrae poison from his veins. She looked older, her face streaked with grime, her eyes hard and dry. She wasn't just a healer anymore; she was the tether keeping him from the void.
Persya sat apart, near the entrance. He had stripped off the ruined remains of his piston-brace. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, the Sera-Vines withered and brown. He wasn't tending to it. He sat in the lotus position, eyes closed, forcing his internal furnace into a dormant cycle to conserve what little heat he had left. The orange glow in his veins pulsed slowly, a dying ember in the dark. He was mediating, not for peace, but for control. He was a weapon cooling down before the final strike.
Roui, stabilized by Isla but unable to stand, pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket. It was the back of a bounty poster. He smoothed it out on his knee. With a piece of charcoal, he began to write.
It was a letter to his father in New Earth. A letter to the man who had disowned him, who despised everything Roui had become. Roui wrote with a frantic, messy hand, pouring out the things he would never say to the man's face—that he had found a family, that he was dying for something real, that he was happy. He folded it carefully and tucked it into his tunic, next to the crushed flower. He knew he would never send it.
And then there was Aurora.
She sat on the altar stone, her legs dangling over the edge. She held her Battle Axe across her lap. She picked up a whetstone.
Schritch. Schritch. Schritch.
The sound was rhythmic, hypnotic, and terrifying. She didn't look at her squad. She watched the blade. The Kristal Biru veins in the steel were pulsing violently, syncing with her own rage. She sharpened the edge until it could split a hair, until it could cleave through Animus armor. She was hardening, calcifying her grief into a blade.
Alyia stood in the center of the ruin, staring up at the sky through the broken roof. Her glasses were gone, lost in the fight. Her amber eyes were wide, reflecting the sick light of the Spire.
"He isn't just recharging the seals," Alyia whispered, breaking the silence. Her voice was flat, terrified. "The mana-flow... it's reversing. He's drawing it in. Into himself."
"He wants to ascend," Persya rumbled, not opening his eyes. "He wants to become a God."
"He wants to prove he is worth more than they are," Roui rasped, wincing as Isla tightened a bandage. "To the Conclave. He thinks if he becomes the Animus, they won't erase him."
Aurora stopped sharpening. The silence that followed was deafening.
She hopped off the altar. The axe hit the stone floor with a heavy thud.
"We aren't Vanguards anymore," Aurora said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of a judicial sentence. She looked at the badge on her coat—the Orange Tier insignia. She ripped it off and threw it into the dirt.
"We aren't clearing a dungeon. We aren't fulfilling a contract."
She looked at them—her broken, beautiful, terrifying family.
"Varrick built a system that eats people. He turned our friends into fuel. He thinks we're just variables in an equation."
She held out her hand. It was stained with black ichor and her own blood.
"I don't want to arrest him. I want to break him. I want to shatter the whole damn thing."
Persya opened his eyes. He stood up, pain flashing across his face, and walked to her. He placed his good hand over hers.
"Revolution," he grunted.
Isla stood up, helping Roui to his feet. The noble leaned on her, but his eyes were clear. He placed his hand on top of Persya's. Isla added hers.
Alyia looked at the hands. "Probability of success: 0%," she said, stepping forward and adding her crystalline hand to the pile. "Acceptable."
They swore a blood oath in the ruin of the shrine. Not to the Guild. Not to the King. To each other.
They were Revolutionaries now.
Aurora looked up at the Spire, burning like a torch in the night.
"We have one shot," she said. "Varrick is at the Guild Hall, preparing the final ritual. The Animus Prime armor is active. He is a juggernaut of corrupted mana. We need to hit him before he finishes the ascension."
She looked at the debris scattered around the shrine—old offerings, rusted iron, and the salvage they had carried from the fight.
"How do we breach the Hall?"
"The Sky-Drop," Aurora decided, her voice cutting through the gloom of the shrine. She looked at the shattered roof where the violet light of the Spire bled through. "Varrick expects a siege. He expects us to crawl through the mud or batter down the doors. He doesn't expect us to fall on his head."
"Garrick," Roui breathed, wincing as he shifted his weight against the stone statue. "A Purple Tier delivery service. It's bold. It's suicidal. I love it."
Alyia knelt by the stolen Echo-Crystal, her fingers moving with frantic precision over the runes. The device hummed, a discordant sound against the silence of the ruins. "Frequency modulation required. The Guild channels are jammed with Varrick's propaganda. I must route the signal through the Iron-Heart private frequency."
She tapped the crystal. Static hissed, then cleared.
"Breaker," Aurora said, leaning over the device. "This is Aurora. We're cashing in the debt."
There was a long pause. The static crackled, sounding like distant rain. Then, a voice like grinding millstones answered.
"You're hard to kill, girl. I'll give you that. The city is burning. My squad is holding the line at the North Gate, but Varrick's constructs are pushing hard."
"We're going to cut the head off the snake," Aurora said. "But we need a lift. The Guild Hall roof. Ten minutes."
Another pause. "The anti-air wards are active. If I bring an airship that low, we'll be targeted by every Ionization turret in the district."
"Just get us over the target, Garrick," Persya rumbled, leaning into the conversation. "We'll handle the landing."
A grim chuckle echoed from the crystal. "Ten minutes. Don't make me regret this."
The link cut. The die was cast.
The silence returned, heavier than before. Ten minutes to live. Ten minutes to say the things that soldiers usually leave unsaid until it's too late.
Persya sat back against the mossy wall, his eyes closed. His left side was a ruin of torn fabric and withered Sera-Vines. The loss of the piston-arm had thrown his center of gravity off; he felt lopsided, incomplete. He was a wall with a breach.
He felt a presence beside him. He didn't open his eyes. "I am meditating, Alyia. My internal furnace requires calibration."
"Your furnace is running at 40% efficiency," Alyia's voice was soft, devoid of its usual metallic edge. She sat down next to him, not touching him, but close enough that he could feel the static charge radiating from her crystalline skin. "And your structural integrity is compromised. You are... unbalanced."
Persya opened one bioluminescent eye. The sniper was looking at his missing arm, her expression unreadable behind her cracked glasses.
"I can still swing a sword," he grunted.
"With reduced torque," she corrected. She reached out, her hand hovering over his remaining pauldron. "Logic dictates that a compromised unit should be retired for repairs. But... my calculations indicate that without you, the squad's survival probability drops to zero."
She hesitated, then did something illogical. She reached into her belt and pulled out a small, heavy object wrapped in oilcloth. She unwrapped it to reveal a counterweight—a dense block of Mithragnite and lead she must have scavenged from the foundry.
"I... calculated the mass differential," Alyia whispered, looking away. "If you attach this to your belt on the left side, it will compensate for the missing limb's weight. It will restore your rotational equilibrium. You won't stumble."
Persya stared at the weight. It was a small thing. A piece of scrap. But it was a testament that she had been watching him, calculating his pain, and solving it.
He took the weight. His slate-grey fingers brushed her crystalline ones.
"Thank you, Eyes," he said, his voice rough. He clipped the weight to his belt. He stood up, testing the balance. He didn't stumble. "It works."
"Of course it works," Alyia said, adjusting her glasses to hide the flush on her cheeks. "It is math."
"It's better than math," Persya murmured, resting his hand on her head for a brief second. "It's partnership."
Across the shrine, near the headless statue of Hangaku Gozen, Roui watched them with a tired smile. He held the letter to his father in his hand, the paper crinkling under his grip. He shoved it deep into his tunic as Aurora approached.
She didn't have her axe. She looked smaller without it, stripped of the Warlord's mantle, leaving only the woman who carried the weight of the world. She sat on the statue's plinth beside him, her boots scuffing the dirt.
"You look terrible," she said softly.
"I aim for 'rugged disarray'," Roui countered, though his voice lacked its usual projection. He leaned his head back against the stone. "It's very fashionable in the slums this season."
Aurora didn't laugh. She reached out, taking his hand. Her grip was calloused, strong, and trembling slightly.
"You don't have to do this, Roui," she whispered. "You're hurt. You can stay. Garrick can extract you."
"And miss the grand finale?" Roui squeezed her hand. "I think not. Besides, who would catch you when you inevitably jump off something too high?"
"I'm serious," Aurora said, her blue eyes searching his face. "This isn't a contract. There's no gold at the end of this. Just Varrick and a lot of pain."
"I never cared about the gold, Aurora," Roui said, his thumb tracing the back of her hand. "And I certainly didn't join the Vanguard for the glory."
He looked at her—the dirt on her cheek, the fierce set of her jaw, the fear she hid so well.
"My father... he taught me that value is determined by lineage. By purity. By what you are." Roui shook his head. "He was wrong. Value is what you choose. I choose this. I choose the mud, and the blood, and the bad odds."
He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers.
"I choose you," he whispered. "The blade needs its setting, remember? I'm not going anywhere."
Aurora closed her eyes, letting out a breath she seemed to have been holding since the Gnashfang Caverns. She leaned into him, drawing strength from his warmth.
"Okay," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "Okay. But if you die, I'm going to be very angry."
"I wouldn't dream of it," Roui smiled.
A deep, thrumming vibration shook the dust from the shrine's rafters. A shadow fell over the ruins, blocking out the violet sky.
"Ride's here," Persya announced, drawing his sword.
They emerged from the shrine to see a Guild Airship hovering low over the slums. It wasn't a sleek courier vessel; it was a heavy Iron-Heart troop transport, its hull reinforced with Kayaçelik plating, its engines roaring with the power of Aethelstone cores.
A rope ladder dropped.
"Move!" Aurora commanded, the Warlord returning instantly.
They climbed. The wind whipped at them as the ship ascended, leaving the ruins of Raimei-Gai behind. They rose through the smog layer, breaking into the clear, cold air of the upper atmosphere.
Garrick stood on the deck, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at the battered squad—Persya with his counterweight, Roui leaning on his glaive, Isla pale but determined, Alyia checking her wand, and Aurora with her axe burning blue.
"You look like hell," Garrick grunted.
"We've been there," Aurora said, walking to the edge of the deck. "It's overrated."
Below them, the city of Limani tis Adelphótitas was a map of light and fire. The riots were spreading. But in the center, the Guild Hall shone like a beacon of corruption. The roof was a flat expanse of marble, guarded by Lumen-Constructs and Aero-Signifers.
"We're over the drop zone," Garrick shouted over the wind. "I can hold position for thirty seconds before the wards lock onto us. You have to go. Now."
Aurora looked at her squad. They stood at the edge of the open bay doors, the wind tearing at their clothes.
This was it. No more plans. No more stealth. Just gravity and violence.
"For the Iron-Will," Persya growled.
"For the Ningen," Isla whispered.
"For the variables," Alyia stated.
"For the hell of it," Roui grinned, though his hand shook.
"For Elysium," Aurora screamed.
She stepped off the edge.
The squad followed, plunging into the night, falling toward the roof of the world to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all.