Ten Meters

  The hollow was barely wider than his shoulders.

  Third Person Perspective held him outside himself. His body hung in the churning passage like a puppet on strings of divine sense. The Lord's body radiated kill-waves up the chute.

  At this distance, there was no propagation delay. Caelanthir's movements and the hollow's response were the same event. Reacting meant perceiving a change, processing it, then moving. Too slow.

  Every hour in Zhao's simulator had been building toward this. Every failed attempt where the buzzer screamed and the red light flashed.

  Leo occupied the hollow the way a cork occupies water. His divine sense read the entire system as a single structure. When the structure shifted, Leo was already part of the shift. His body and the claw moved with the hollow because his awareness contained all three simultaneously.

  Caelanthir tried to flee.

  Stone Phantom Steps fired at maximum output. The Mountain Lord's spiritual body lurched sideways, dragging the hollow with him.

  Leo rode the movement with ease.

  His body shifted before Caelanthir finished committing to the direction. His Moonrider moved him two degrees left, then snapped back as the Lord reversed, then dropped half a meter as the hollow bucked upward.

  Each correction arrived at the exact moment it was needed. Earlier would have been premature. Later would have been death.

  His claw drew closer to the Lord.

  A crackling three-pronged mass of spiritual energy flew through a tube of shifting gravitational forces that wanted to smash it against the walls.

  Track the Lord. Maintain position. Guide the weapon.

  Outside the hollow, Faelindros detonated his plasma domain in a continuous burn, trying to rescue Caelanthir. Mirathiel's ink tendrils scrawled, rewriting scripts across the domain surface, but the Mountain's core held.

  Faelindros screamed something in Gothic that Leo's helmet didn't bother translating.

  Seven meters.

  Caelanthir's face filled Leo's divine sense. Ancient features twisted with terror. Eyes wide with the realization that cultivation meant nothing against a Qi Refiner.

  His hand shot out.

  The Lord abandoned technique, abandoned strategy, abandoned three centuries of discipline. His fingers closed around empty air, grasping for the weapon with raw desperation.

  Leo twitched his divine sense. The claw slid sideways. Caelanthir's fingers scraped across the outer prong and found nothing to hold. The crackling energy singed his palm and he recoiled.

  Caelanthir looked at Leo.

  "Please."

  The claw connected with Caelanthir's neck.

  One last heartbeat.

  Then Lord Caelanthir began his unprepared, unconsented, premature ascension.

  The Heavenly Tribulation Lightning tested the mettle of those who dared seek immortality, promising ascension to those worthy of facing it.

  But the divine infant within Caelanthir was a helpless newborn against such power. Untempered. Unready. Unable to withstand what was meant to forge gods from mortals.

  Caelanthir's body broke apart in flashes of light. His domain, the Mountain of Eight Trigrams, shuddered.

  Gravitational forces went chaotic. The careful geometry that had defined the domain dissolved into random, competing vectors. The two Cultist Lords who had been sheltering nearby found themselves in a blender of impossible physics.

  Leo navigated out.

  His divine sense mapped the collapsing geometry, finding the safe path through the chaos. He rushed through the hollow as fast as he could before it collapsed.

  Almost safe.

  A gravitational eddy caught his left side for half a heartbeat. The force yanked him sideways before he could compensate. His ribs compressed. Something inside shifted wrong.

  Then he was through, clearing the domain edge with his divine sense already tracking the next threat.

  Behind him, tens of thousands of flak cannons opened fire on Lord Faelindros and Lord Mirathiel. Without the Mountain Domain's protection, their own domains crumbled under the barrage.

  "Delta 1, Boston Command. Confirm splash three Novembers. I say again, three Novembers down."

  He was already escaping, following his tether back to his transport.

  "Flyer 7, Delta 1. Splash one November. Good hit." The woman's voice crackled through the comm.

  "Copy that, Delta 1." Leo's voice sounded strange in his own ears. Distant.

  "Flyer 7, Delta 2. Pretty sure that's a first for Qi Refining," the second voice cut in.

  "Team effort," Leo managed. "Good support."

  "Kid." Delta 4's voice was gruff. "Take the kill. You earned it. Drinks are on us when we get back to base."

  Leo mumbled something about being sixteen, but something was wrong.

  His hands were shaking. His fingers wouldn't close properly. When he looked down, he saw blood seeping from the joints of his gauntlets.

  Third Person Perspective had filtered out the pain. His body had been a piece on the board, an object to be moved rather than a vessel to be felt.

  "Delta 1 to Medical," the woman's voice cut through the static, suddenly sharp. "Scorpion Lead is showing blood. Repeat, Scorpion Lead is bleeding through his armor."

  "Copy, Delta 1. Medical standing by."

  The truck's deployment platform rose to meet him. Leo tried to step onto it and his legs buckled. He caught himself on the railing, leaving a bloody handprint on the metal.

  Dr. Reyes was there before he could fall. She guided him to the medical pod. Her eyes widened at the readouts.

  "Internal hemorrhaging. Left kidney lacerated, splenic rupture, three fractured ribs." She looked up at him, her expression grim. "Gravitational shear damage. You caught an eddy on the way out."

  Leo nodded. The movement sent spikes of pain through his chest. Third Person Perspective had filtered it out during the escape. Now every injury screamed for attention.

  "You shouldn't have been able to fly back," Dr. Reyes continued, already activating the healing formations. "Your body started shutting down the moment you cleared that domain."

  He had killed a Nascent Soul Lord. Or maybe three.

  On the tactical display, the battle continued. The comm channels buzzed with chatter. And somewhere in the chaos, Leo felt his callsign being repeated. Whispered from Flyer to Flyer. Passed between Scorpion operators. Shared across transport crews.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "Flyer 7. Splash three Novembers at Qi Refining. You believe that?"

  Leo closed his eyes and let the medical pod do its work. The pain was fading, replaced by the warm numbness of healing formations.

  ---

  In the cab, the internal comm crackled.

  "Flyer 7 is stable." Dr. Reyes's voice was clipped, professional. "Critical but stable. He'll need at least two days before I can consider clearing him for anything."

  The comm channel exploded.

  DeShawn's voice hit first. "FLYER SEVEN! FLYER SEVEN! THAT'S MY BOY! THAT'S MY FLYER!"

  Darnell's voice cut through a half second later. "Shawn! Shawn, did you see us shred the other two Novembers! We just shredded them!"

  "I SAW IT, DEE! I KILLED THEM WITH MY OWN HANDS!"

  "The flak ate them alive! Soon as Leo killed the Mountain, Faelindros and Mirathiel had nothing. Our guns just chewed through their domains like paper."

  "PAPER!" DeShawn repeated, and then he was laughing. "Dee, get Coach on the line. Get Coach Williams on the line right now."

  "Kid just soloed a Nascent Soul." Jimbo's voice cracked on the last word. He grabbed Matt by the shoulder and shook him. "Matt. Matthew. Leo just killed a Nascent Soul Lord."

  Matt had both hands pressed against the side window, staring out at the collapsing remnants of the Domains. Dust and debris rained across the wasteland where three overlapping spheres of divine power had hung moments ago.

  Tom sat in the navigator's seat with his hands on his knees. A grin spread across his face, wide and uncontrolled.

  "That's my roommate," Tom said to nobody in particular. Then he flipped open Instagram to post a story.

  ---

  "Leo, you awake?"

  Jimbo's voice came through the intercom in the medical bay.

  Leo shifted in the medical pod. "Yeah."

  "How you feeling?"

  Leo flexed his fingers. Tested his divine sense. His body was in pain, but Third Person Perspective could block that out.

  "I'm fine. Give me ten minutes and I can probably head back out."

  Dr. Reyes cut in "You are not going back out."

  "I feel fine."

  "You don't feel fine," Reyes corrected him. "You go back out there and another domain hits you, you're going to die. You're grounded until I say otherwise."

  The intercom crackled again.

  "So," Jimbo said. "Want a play by play instead?"

  Leo leaned back against the wall of the cot. "Yeah. Catch me up."

  "Alright, so the whole battlefield just flipped. You know how we spent all that time stretching the Cult's blobs out? Separating their Nascent Soul groups across the wasteland?"

  "Yeah."

  "They panicked after getting hit by the Scorpions. The whole line is collapsing inward. Every one of those Nascent Soul blobs is pulling back toward the Divine Child. Full retreat."

  Jimbo sent a picture to a screen in the medical pod. It was the tactical feed. The dozens of clustered Obsidian Cult blobs that had been spread into a thin line, all streamed backward to a single point.

  "Our Strike Element is still out there," Jimbo continued. "Nineteen of Earth's Nascent Souls, ten miles ahead of the Weeping Spires. They've been fighting the Divine Child's guard this whole time. Keeping the Divine Child pinned. That part worked."

  "Here's the problem. If all those retreating Cult groups finish pulling back and consolidate around the Divine Child, our nineteen Nascent Souls are going to be completely surrounded."

  "How long?"

  "Boston Command gave the Strike Element sixteen minutes before they have to pull out. So the convoys shifted tactics. The twenty thousand trucks spread out, slowed down. We're running harassment now. Drones are swarming the rear of the retreating groups, and the flak batteries are targeting any Nascent Soul that falls behind their blob's protective domain."

  "Several more enemy Nascent Souls confirmed dead. Stragglers who couldn't keep up during the retreat. And the Cult's transport barges are getting shredded. Wounded ships falling behind the Lords who are supposed to protect them."

  "So we're winning," Leo said.

  "And there's another problem." Jimbo's voice tightened. "See that eastern section of the map?"

  Leo looked. A dense cluster of green signatures sat east of the main engagement, spread across several miles of wasteland. Thousands of them.

  "That's the Eastern Element. Over two thousand transports. They were running parallel to the main convoy when the Cult started retreating." A pause. "The retreat path is cutting right across them."

  Another screenshot. Jimbo had circled the green cluster and drawn a red line through it. The retreating Cult blobs sweeping directly through the Eastern Element's position on their way back to the Divine Child.

  Tom's voice came through the intercom. "Team, prepare for rapid advance. Boston Command is ordering a push through the artillery coverage zone."

  A video feed replaced the screenshots. Jimbo switched him to the view outside.

  Matt cut in. "Through the coverage zone? The Weeping Spires will..."

  He didn't finish.

  Leo saw it on the feed before Tom said a word. Red streaks appeared across the amber sky, climbing from the horizon in long arcs. Dozens at first. Then more behind them. Then more behind those.

  "Weeping Spires are overloading their monuments," Tom said. His voice was strained. "Boston Command is tracking two hundred forty shells. Rapid fire pattern. Four minutes to first impact."

  Two hundred forty. Leo stared at the feed. The red trajectories filled the sky like rain falling upward, each one an obsidian shell meant to detonate across the convoy's path. The artillery was laying a curtain between the convoy and the retreating Cult. A wall of fire to cover the escape.

  Anything without a Nascent Soul domain that tried to push through would be annihilated.

  Leo gripped the edge of the cot. If the convoy stopped, the Cult would consolidate around the Divine Child. The Strike Element and Eastern Element would be surrounded. The whole engagement would collapse into a bloody disaster.

  "Boston Command is ordering all sections to maintain advance," Tom reported. There was a note of disbelief in his voice.

  They were pushing through.

  "All Patriot batteries, this is Boston Command. You are cleared hot. Engage targets within your areas of responsibility."

  Leo watched transports in his video feed begin to change.

  Panels dropped from the sides of containers. Hidden platforms folded outward. What had looked like standard containers split open to reveal launch rails packed with Patriot missiles. Across the entire convoy, nearly eight hundred transports shed their disguises at once.

  "What the hell," Matt whispered.

  White contrails rose from every direction. Leo watched the Patriot missiles climb from across the convoy, hundreds of streaks racing upward to meet the incoming barrage. Three interceptors per shell, each one fired and guided by Boston Command's networked targeting systems.

  The first wave of shells was still two minutes out when the Patriots missiles reached them.

  The horizon turned white. Detonations rolled across the sky in a chain, each one swallowing an obsidian shell before it could reach the ground. The feed flickered.

  Rolling thunder hit the convoy in waves, the sound arriving seconds after each flash. Shells that had been meant to annihilate thousands of transports scattered harmlessly across the upper atmosphere.

  More missiles rose. The second wave of Patriots climbed into the surviving shells. More detonations. The sky was a solid wall of fire from horizon to horizon.

  Fourteen shells made it through.

  The feed shook violently. Pillars of obsidian fire erupted across the convoy's northern sections, black columns punching into the sky. The shockwave hit their transport and the camera image blurred into static for two full seconds before snapping back.

  "Two hundred transports destroyed," Tom said. "Section 4 reporting heavy casualties."

  Leo watched the convoy keep moving. Twenty thousand trucks pushed forward through the smoke and debris of the fourteen impacts, grinding through the coverage zone that should have stopped them dead.

  The Cult retreat became a rout.

  On the tactical feed, Jimbo sent another screenshot. Red blobs fragmenting. The flak resistant domains that had been shielding the retreating Nascent Souls were faltering under the pressure.

  Leo could see the Scorpion teams on the display, small blue signatures darting into the gaps. Heavenly Tribulation claws tore through specific domains, and suddenly the Nascent Souls sheltering inside had nothing between them and the coordinated flak barrages.

  Red dots winked out across the map. Too many and too fast for centralized tracking. Tom stopped reading convoy-wide kill counts. The battle had broken into dozens of separate engagements, each battalion managing its own sector.

  But the Cult formations kept moving. Retreating with purpose. Every meter they gave up brought them closer to the Divine Child. Closer to mutual support.

  Jimbo sent another screenshot. He'd circled the Strike Element in blue. The circle was smaller than the last one Leo had seen. The nineteen American Nascent Souls who had pinned the Divine Child for the entire engagement were compressing into a defensive cluster.

  The red formations around them thickened with every passing minute as the retreating Cult forces converged.

  "Boston Command is ordering Strike Element to hold for nine more minutes," Tom reported. "Then disengage north. There's an encirclement forming. They need to create space."

  Nine minutes. Leo stared at the blue circle shrinking inside the red.

  Then Jimbo sent one more screenshot. The eastern flank. He hadn't drawn arrows on this one. He didn't need to.

  The two thousand transports of the Eastern Element sat in the middle of the map like a green island in a red sea. The retreating Cult formations flowed around them on both sides, domains pushing the transports inward, sealing the gap behind them. The Eastern Element couldn't punch through to rejoin the main convoy. Couldn't retreat. The closing noose was driving them in only one direction.

  Toward the Divine Child.

  Thirty-two thousand personnel. Pushed deeper into enemy lines by the same retreat the convoy had caused. Helpless inside a fist that was still tightening.

  "Boston Command to Flyer 7, requesting status."