Wave two was worse.
Not because the Vrakthar were stronger — they were roughly the same mix of Dust and Iron Realm equivalents. It was because there were more of them. Twenty soldiers poured through the widened breach, and this time they came organized — not a chaotic drop, but a tactical insertion. Two shield-bearers first, massive chitin-plated warriors carrying Essence-forged barricades that crackled with defensive energy. Then the assault troops behind them, using the shields as mobile cover.
They adapted. One engagement, and they already changed tactics.
Vrakthar aren't stupid. They just fight like they are because it usually works.
"Shield bearers!" Kael shouted. "Lyra, can you punch through?"
Lyra gathered lightning. A full charge — her strongest bolt, the kind that had blown target dummies apart in the ADI training sessions. She hurled it at the lead shield.
It splashed.
The Essence-forged barricade absorbed the lightning, redirected it through grounding channels, and dumped it harmlessly into the deck plating. The shield crackled. The shield-bearer didn't even flinch.
"No good!" Lyra snapped. "They're grounded. Lightning won't penetrate."
Grounded shields. Anti-lightning countermeasure.
They came prepared for her specifically.
Which means someone told them what Talents our defenders have.
Moren.
The shield wall advanced. Behind it, Vrakthar soldiers readied their blades. Close quarters. No room to maneuver. The corridor was twenty meters wide — plenty of space for a shield formation.
"Fall back?" Jax asked. For the first time, his grin was gone.
"No." Kael's mind was racing. The Throne was offering solutions — devour the shields, eat the Essence, shatter the barricades. But that would mean closing to contact range with twenty Vrakthar soldiers behind those shields.
There's another way.
"Sera," he said. "Can you fold the space under the shields? Not through them — under them. The deck plating."
Sera Lin blinked. Her eyes unfocused for a second — calculating, modeling, running spatial geometry in her head.
"I can compress the floor. Create a depression. Four-centimeter drop, maybe five. It'll last two seconds."
"Two seconds is enough. Lyra — when the shields tilt, hit the gap at the bottom. Not the shields. The feet."
Lyra's eyes widened. Understanding flashed. "The chitin's thinnest on the soles. They're not armored underneath."
"Nobody armors their feet."
"That's insane."
"Is it wrong?"
She looked at the advancing shield wall. Looked at Kael. Looked at the gap that would appear when the floor dropped.
"No. It's not wrong."
"Jax — the moment the shields go down, you and I hit them. Don't think. Don't aim. Just go."
Jax picked up a new pipe from the wall. This one was thicker.
"I really need to get a real weapon."
"After."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The shield wall was ten meters away. Eight. Six.
"Sera. NOW."
The floor folded.
Sera Lin's Spatial Talent compressed the deck plating beneath the shield bearers — a four-centimeter depression that appeared in an instant, as if the floor had suddenly decided to become a shallow bowl. The shield bearers stumbled. Not much. Four centimeters wasn't much.
But the shields tilted.
A gap — fifteen centimeters of open space between the bottom edge of the Essence-forged barricades and the deck plating.
Lyra dropped to one knee. Both hands flat on the floor. Lightning erupted — not into the air, but into the deck, channeled through metal plating that carried current like a highway carries traffic. The electricity raced across the floor, hit the depressed section where the shield bearers stood, and detonated upward through the thin chitin of their feet.
The scream was inhuman.
Both shield bearers collapsed. Their legs locked, muscles seizing, Essence-forged barricades clattering to the floor. The formation broke open.
"GO!"
Kael and Jax hit the gap.
What followed was the most brutal three minutes of Kael's life.
Twenty Vrakthar soldiers in a confined corridor. No room for technique. No room for strategy. Just violence — raw, close, personal. Fists and blades and the taste of blood and ozone.
Kael fought with everything Horen had taught him and some things Horen hadn't. The Throne devoured blades as fast as he could grab them — six, eight, ten weapons shattered in his hands, their Essence flooding into the void. Each shattered blade was a Hollow Mark — a hairline fracture on his soul. He could feel them accumulating. A web of cracks spreading across something that shouldn't be cracked.
Later. Deal with it later.
He hit a Vrakthar so hard it flew backward into two of its comrades. Iron Realm strength, full commitment. His knuckles split. He didn't care.
Phase Step — through a blade that would have taken his head off. Reform. Counter-strike. The alien dropped.
Lyra was everywhere. Lightning arced from her hands, her feet, her hair — she'd abandoned textbook technique entirely, improvising, adapting on the fly. Firing bolts around corners. Using the corridor walls as conductors. At one point she grabbed a Vrakthar's blade, channeled lightning through the metal, and fried the wielder from the inside out.
She's not hesitating.
She's not perfect.
She's better than perfect.
Jax was hurt. A blade had caught his left arm — a deep cut that exposed muscle. He didn't stop. He swung his pipe one-handed, Enhancement Talent screaming in his veins, and every hit landed with the desperate conviction of a kid who'd decided that dying was fine but quitting wasn't.
Sera Lin held the rear. Her Spatial Talent kept the corridor geometry impossible — enemies who charged straight found themselves turned sideways, their momentum redirected into walls. She was an architect of violence, reshaping the battlefield with invisible hands.
Three minutes.
When it ended, twenty Vrakthar were down. Some dead. Some unconscious. Some groaning in the alien equivalent of agony.
Team Seven stood in the wreckage.
Breathing. Bleeding. Alive.
"Jax, your arm—"
"It's fine."
"It's not fine, there's bone showing—"
"I said it's FINE. Is everyone else—" He looked around. Counted. Four. All standing. "Okay. Okay, we're okay."
The comms crackled. Torres's voice, rough with combat stress: "All teams, status report. Hostiles are breaching on multiple decks. Shields are holding at 40% but falling. Master Horen is engaging externally. Hold your positions. Repeat — hold your positions."
Kael leaned against the wall. His hands were shaking. Not from fear — from the Throne. It was full. Gorged on devoured Essence. Buzzing inside his skull like a hive of angry wasps. The Hollow Marks throbbed — seven new fractures on his soul, thin as spider silk but present. Permanent.
Seven marks. In one fight.
I can't keep doing this. The soul has limits. Even with the Throne, the soul has limits.
"Hey."
Lyra was beside him. Close. Her lightning had faded to sparks. Her face was spattered with something that wasn't blood — Vrakthar had dark blue circulatory fluid, and it was everywhere.
"You okay?" she asked.
My soul is cracking. The weapon inside me is getting hungrier. A traitor is running this ship. And I'm twelve years old.
"Yeah. Fine."
She looked at him the way she'd looked at him on the Void Windows — the look that said she could see through the lie but was choosing not to push.
"Your plan worked. The floor thing. That was good."
"Your improvisation was better. When did you learn to conduct lightning through enemy weapons?"
"About thirty seconds before I did it."
Despite everything — the blood, the pain, the seven new fractures in his soul — Kael smiled.
"You didn't hesitate."
She looked at her hands. Flexed them. The sparks danced.
"No," she said quietly. "I didn't."
There it is.
She found it. The thing beyond perfect technique. The thing that matters.
She found herself.
The moment lasted two seconds. Then the alarms screamed again, and the ceiling groaned, and wave three began.