Kheran Ridge loomed above the valley like the jagged back of a buried beast. From its crags and shadowed ravines, the night bled slowly into dawn, washing the land in grey and ash.
Commander Helda crouched behind a slate of stone, peering through her nightscope. Her elite squads had begun their descent—black shapes sliding along cliff faces, vaulting over ancient roots, moving like ink in water.
Silent. Invisible. Deadly.
They made no sound as they breached the first outpost—no gunfire, no screams. Just stillness, followed by the dull thump of bodies hitting earth. They burned comms, shattered maps, scattered ash where food stores used to be. Not a single trace left behind.
Helda moved with her unit, her breath slow, heart steady. The precision of the strike fed her. This was not Otunba's clumsy warfare. This was her kind of violence—surgical, perfect.
But an unease lingered. A hair's breadth off. A rhythm she couldn't name.
She checked the timer on her wrist. Fourteen minutes until second wave.
Then the ridge groaned.
---
It began with birds. A flock burst from the trees ahead, flapping wild and scattered. A second later, a mine—old and crude, but devastating—detonated behind Squad Three. Earth screamed. Men vanished into the air.
The ambush hit like a second sky falling. Arrows, knives, smoke bombs crafted from local powders. Then, freedom fighters emerged from the trees—faces painted in ash, weapons carved from scavenged steel. These weren't villagers with pitchforks. These were ghosts of their own.
Helda's voice snapped across the comms. "Form fallback arc—north ridge! Regroup—regroup!"
But the trap had layers.
Rhea's unit struck from the south, pushing them toward Mora's line. Devon's snipers pinned the flanks, forcing them into a funnel. Kael's heavy fighters closed it shut.
From atop the ridge, Asa watched it all unfold, his coat flapping in the morning wind.
---
Inside the Greenland camp, Gad stood at the logistics station as panic began to ripple.
"We lost contact with Helda's second unit!" a technician cried.
Gad leaned in calmly. "Signal interference from Kheran's minerals. They'll reestablish soon."
Behind him, officers scrambled for answers, but the response was delayed—as he intended. The code he embedded in the drone update logs had looped communications to a false signal tower he built weeks ago.
Every second counted.
He moved quickly, unnoticed in the confusion, adjusting the next drone's coordinates—broadcasting false movement data toward the eastern canyons. When Greenland sent reinforcements there, they'd find only fog and thorns.
He paused, just briefly, to stare at the burning ridge on one of the surveillance monitors. Somewhere in that fire, his father stood.
Hold the line, he thought. I've done all I can.
---
At the ridge, Helda's squad fell back to a narrow cave, bloodied but not broken. Her visor was cracked, her shoulder burned, but her voice never shook.
"They were waiting," she whispered. "They knew."
She stared down the ridge, where Asa now approached with three of his lieutenants, unarmed but surefooted.
"Tell Odo," Asa shouted across the ridge, "that we don't fear ghosts. We are the fire that remains when conquest burns out."
Helda gritted her teeth. "Pull out. This isn't over."
As they vanished into the cliffside mist, Asa watched them go with a solemn gaze.
"They'll come again," Kael muttered.
"They always do," Asa replied. "But so will we."