The Skathrith surges in answer, silver light crawling over my arms, spreading across my chest, climbing toward my throat. Hunger wakes beneath my skin, eager and absolute, ready to be unleashed on the horde advancing before us.
Three hundred Xal'rith warriors press forward in a rippling wall of limbs and obsidian flesh. Their formation flows like water, each body moving in synchronized rhythm with the others. Four arms per warrior. Hundreds of limbs creating patterns that speak of coordination far beyond simple pack instinct.
I am about to tear through them.
The silver light pulses brighter. The Skathrith's song rises to crescendo. My fingers curl into shapes that will become cutting edges. The mathematics arrange themselves with terrible clarity. Three hundred kills. Three hundred units added to the thread. Still nothing against the basin's vast emptiness, but more than I have gathered before. Enough to matter, if only barely.
Then I stop.
Kiran fire screams past me.
Raven Five opens up in perfect synchronization, five beams punching through alien bodies in the span of a single heartbeat. Obsidian flesh explodes into red vapor and burning meat. The air fills with heat and noise and the sharp, electric tang of discharge as crystal cores convert stored energy into coherent destruction.
I barely hear it.
My eyes are on Binah.
She stands just behind the firing line, swaying on her feet. Not wounded. Not weak. But unsteady in a way that makes something cold twist in my chest. She looks like a praying mantis caught between hunger and grief, her movements precise yet wrong, as though some internal rhythm has faltered.
Her white hair moves without wind. Her violet eyes stare at something I cannot see.
Then she turns toward me.
Black tears spill from her eyes.
Thicker than blood and shadow. Heavier. They trace slow paths down her milk-white cheeks, catching the scattered light from kiran discharge like oil on water. Each tear moves with deliberate weight, as though bearing substance beyond simple liquid.
The sight guts me.
The silver light sputters and dies along my limbs. The coating retreats like water running backward, flowing away from my fingers, my wrists, my forearms. The Skathrith's song recedes into dull ache somewhere far away, like a headache remembered rather than felt.
The world quiets.
The roar of weapons dulls to distant thunder. The screams blur into white noise. For a moment it feels as though the battlefield has slipped sideways, leaving me standing in a place between instants where sound follows different rules and time moves at altered speed.
I can almost hear Binah humming.
A sound without sound. A vibration that exists just behind my ears, curling through spaces in my skull that should not exist. A dead lullaby meant for things that will never wake again. Her lips do not move, but the melody winds through me all the same, carrying grief so vast and ancient that my mind refuses to properly measure it.
The black tears continue falling.
Each one strikes the metallic ground and vanishes without splash or stain, as though the surface drinks them eagerly. She does not blink. Does not wipe them away. Simply stands there weeping substances that should not exist while humming songs meant for the forever dead.
Behind her, Raven Five keeps firing.
Flint barks coordinates. Wren adjusts aim. Ash shields Stagger while the smaller boy reloads. Edge laughs, a sharp nervous sound cutting through the weapon discharge.
"Burn, you darkie!" His voice cracks with brittle humor. "Burn!"
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The words snap me back like struck wire.
I blink.
The noise rushes in all at once. Kiran fire punching through alien bodies. Shouted commands overlapping in practiced rhythm. The wet impacts of corpses hitting metal ground. Raven Five maintains firing discipline despite their fear, jokes spilling out between bursts, the kind of humor soldiers use to keep their hands steady when everything wants to shake apart.
Edge fires again, his beam catching a warrior mid-leap and reducing it to smoldering heap. He laughs, turning slightly to share the moment.
Then freezes.
I am staring at him, not angry or threatening.
Just looking.
His laughter falters. The kiran droops slightly in his grip before he corrects it, forcing the weapon back into proper firing position. His throat works. His eyes dart to Flint, then back to me.
"Uh." He swallows. "Guess that came out wrong."
Wren fires three quick bursts, each one finding target with practiced precision. "Edge needs his mouth rewired." His tone stays dry despite the chaos. "Perhaps the Apothecarium can arrange something permanent."
Ash mutters agreement, his massive frame interposing itself between incoming fire and Stagger's position. "Would improve squad morale significantly."
Stagger giggles despite himself, the sound high and nervous. "They would need to find it first."
The squad chuckles, tension bleeding off in familiar rhythms. Combat humor. Gallows jokes. The small releases of pressure that keep young soldiers functional when everything around them tries to break.
I do not look away from Edge.
He shifts his grip on the kiran. Forces a grin that does not reach his eyes. The expression pulls too wide, showing too many teeth, broadcasting discomfort he thinks he is hiding.
"If you are going to eat me," he says, warming to the bit now, needing the deflection more than the laugh, "I would prefer to be eaten rear end first."
A beat of silence cuts through even the weapon fire.
"What?" Stagger asks.
"Rear end first," Edge repeats, his voice gaining momentum as the joke takes shape. "Saw it once. Family trip out to our on World Estate. Big hunting preserve. Father took me to watch the predators feed." He fires again without looking, muscle memory guiding the beam into alien flesh. "They do not start with the face. There is an order to it. They go for the ass first, the meaty parts, work their way forward while the prey is still conscious. It is exciting, actually. Very methodical."
Groans ripple through the squad. Wren makes a disgusted sound. Ash shakes his head without breaking firing rhythm.
"That is deeply wrong," Flint says, but his lips twitch despite himself.
"I am just saying," Edge continues, "if it is going to happen anyway, I have preferences about the sequence. Rear end first means you get a few extra minutes to appreciate the experience before the important bits get eaten."
"Shut up, Edge," three voices say in unison.
Laughter follows. Brief but genuine. The kind that breaks tension without dissolving it entirely.
I smile.
Just a little, not because of the joke, because suddenly, finally, I understand.
My gaze slides past Edge.
Past the burning bodies scattered across metallic ground.
Past the advancing horde still pressing forward despite mounting casualties.
To their eyes.
Blue.
Not yellow.
Every Xal'rith I have encountered before possessed eyes of luminous yellow. Predatory and fierce, burning with intelligence and hunger. The two I killed earlier had yellow eyes that tracked my movements with calculation.
These warriors stare with blue.
Pale blue. Almost colorless. The shade of ice beneath winter starlight.
Dead blue.
The color drains meaning from their advance. What I mistook for synchronized hunting reveals itself as something else entirely. They do not hunt. They do not charge with the fury of defenders protecting sacred ground.
They march.
Puppets moved by strings I cannot see. Bodies controlled by will that does not originate in their obsidian skulls.
A cold clarity settles over me.
They are not afraid because they cannot be afraid. They do not hesitate because hesitation requires choice. They advance in perfect formation because something else pilots their limbs, uses their bodies, expends them like ammunition in a weapon I have not yet identified.
Someone is handling them.
Someone is out there watching us from the dark.
I look at Binah again.
She still weeps. The black tears still fall. Her humming continues, that dead lullaby cycling through frequencies that make my teeth ache and my vision blur at the edges.
She is crying because she can feel it.
The hand in the dark. The pressure behind the eyes. The wrongness stitched into their movements like thread through flesh. She perceives what I am only now beginning to understand through simple observation and deduction.
Three hundred monsters are nothing more than noise.
A curtain. A distraction.
Something is out there watching us.
"Optimate!" Flint's shout cuts through my realization. "They are flanking left!"
I force my attention back to immediate concerns.
The horde has split. Half continue their frontal advance while the other half flows around the village's twisted spires, moving to encircle our position. The maneuver executes with inhuman order, every warrior maintaining exact spacing and timing.
Raven Five adjusts formation automatically, Flint barking coordinates that spread them into broader coverage. Kiran fire intensifies, beams crisscrossing the clearing as they try to slow the flanking element.
I stand motionless amid chaos, kiran fire screaming past my shoulders, Xal'rith bodies hitting the ground in burning fragments, Raven Five fighting with desperate discipline against odds that worsen with every passing moment.
And I do nothing while Binah weeps black tears.
And somewhere in the shadows beyond the village, something studies me with cold intelligence, learning everything it can before the true fight begins.
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Nightbreak (Patreon-exclusive)
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Ablations (ongoing)