Morning arrived faster than anyone expected.

  There was no gradual easing into it, no sense of rest or renewal.

  The light simply appeared, cold and pale, cutting through the remaining darkness as if the night had been removed rather than ended. Floodlights shut off one by one, replaced by a sky that looked indifferent to what had happened beneath it.

  Orders followed immediately.

  Survivors—now soldiers by necessity—were instructed to assemble. Tables were laid out in long rows, stacked with weapons of all kinds. Firearms. Blades. Spears. Makeshift tools reinforced with metal and polymer. There were no lectures, no explanations.

  Only one instruction.

  Choose what you can survive with.

  Some reached for what felt familiar. Others picked weapons they had never held before, trusting instinct over training. There was no judgment, only urgency. This was not an armory built for elegance or specialization—it was built for necessity.

  Veyor stood still for a moment, watching others make their choices.

  He did not trust his body yet. Whatever had changed inside him, he did not understand it well enough to rely on raw strength or speed. His hands remembered calculations, not close combat. Distance felt safer.

  He chose an automatic rifle.

  The weight was familiar enough. The balance acceptable. His fingers settled naturally around the grip, muscle memory guiding him more than confidence. He checked the magazine twice, then once more, as if repetition could compensate for uncertainty.

  Lines began forming.

  Teams were assigned quickly, numbers ranging from ten to fifteen members each. No one was asked for preferences. Compatibility was determined by observation, not discussion. Faces hardened as people realized this was not training.

  This was deployment.

  General Noris led them personally.

  The march toward the city of Calrs was silent. Burned-out vehicles lined the roads. Windows stared back empty and broken. The city itself loomed ahead, intact enough to feel deceptive, ruined enough to feel hostile.

  Before any team could be sent onward, Calrs had to be cleared.

  Not of enemies.

  Of what remained.

  The unconscious human beasts.

  The Lostbonds.

  Lostbonds looked like humans that had been forced into the wrong shape. Limbs were uneven, joints bent unnaturally, and skin showed patches of hardened growth mixed with exposed flesh.

  They were still there—scattered through buildings, alleys, collapsed structures. Once human. No longer anything that could be reasoned with. They did not patrol. They did not defend territory intelligently.

  They waited.

  A high-frequency signal was activated.

  The sound was sharp, unnatural, cutting through the city like a blade. It wasn’t loud in the conventional sense, but it carried. It vibrated through bone, through nerves, through whatever remained inside the Lostbonds that responded to stimulus.

  The effect was immediate.

  Screams erupted from within the city.

  Not human screams—raw, broken sounds pulled from damaged throats. Shapes began pouring out of doorways, windows, and ruins. They moved with no coordination, no formation—only direction.

  Toward the sound.

  Toward the soldiers.

  They ran like they could smell blood.

  Some were fast.

  Too fast.

  Lean forms moved with frightening agility, leaping over debris, scaling obstacles without hesitation. Their movements were efficient, stripped of hesitation or fear. Watching them felt wrong, like witnessing something that shouldn’t be capable of such speed.

  Others were massive.

  Bloated bodies dragged forward, swollen with unstable growth. Their steps were slow, uneven, but relentless. Every movement shook the ground beneath them. They did not rush.

  They advanced.

  “Be careful what you wish to become in this life,” Noris said, his voice barely cutting through the chaos. “If you don’t choose, you end up becoming something else.”

  No one noticed.

  Except Veyor—whose eyes stayed fixed on Noris, catching every word.

  Breath caught in several soldiers’ throats.

  This was the moment it became real.

  This was not training.

  Not suppression.

  Not crowd control.

  These were not humans.

  These were not things that would retreat when injured, or hesitate when threatened. Pain did not register the same way. Fear did not function at all.

  For a brief moment, no one fired. The soldiers simply stared.

  These weren’t enemies that could be understood or negotiated with—these were humans twisted into something that mocked the shape of life itself.

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  Some soldiers felt their stomachs tighten, others felt their hands tremble around their weapons despite years of discipline. The way the Lostbonds moved—too fast, too wrong—scraped against instinct, triggering a primal fear meant for predators, not people.

  A few swallowed hard, forcing down the urge to vomit. Others felt their minds hesitate, struggling to reconcile the memory of cities and neighbours with the creatures now sprinting toward them.

  This wasn’t the fear of death. It was the fear of realizing the world they knew was already gone.

  Many of them just shot themselves , they refused to accept the reality and made the easy exit possible.

  Some soldiers gathered courage, courage enough to step-up in the battle.

  Shots rang out.

  Bullets tore into the front ranks of Lostbonds. Flesh split. Limbs shattered. Bodies fell—and then kept moving. Those struck did not slow down. Some seemed to accelerate, their movements growing more erratic, more aggressive.

  Ammo wasn’t discouraging them.

  It was provoking them.

  Panic spread quickly.

  Lines faltered. Some soldiers stepped back instinctively. Others froze, firing wildly without aim. The Lostbonds closed the distance faster than expected.

  Then Noris’s voice cut through everything.

  “Ranged team—ready!”

  The command was sharp. Absolute.

  “Shoot!”

  The order snapped the soldiers back into discipline. Fire became controlled. Bursts replaced panic. Targets were prioritized. Limbs were disabled instead of center mass. Coordination returned, but the Lostbonds kept coming.

  They were too close.

  Too many.

  A sudden pressure filled the air.

  The air around Noris warped, pressure building without heat or warning.

  Lungs seized as space thickened, bones groaned under a force that hadn’t arrived yet.

  Then it hit. An invisible surge tore outward, slamming into the Lostbonds and crushing them down mid-motion, joints snapping, bodies driven into the ground as if daylight itself had turned into a crushing weight.

  They stopped.

  Mid-step.

  Mid-leap.

  Mid-charge.

  Bodies froze in place, stunned, suspended in unnatural stillness.

  The silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire.

  Noris lowered his hand slowly.

  “You never let them get this close to long-range fighters,” he said coldly. “Ever.”

  “Long range—heads and swollen tissue only. Close combat, break the spine. Don’t waste a second.”

  Then he added, casually:

  “Those who bring me the most heads today will be joining my team.”

  The effect was immediate.

  Fear twisted into focus.

  This wasn’t just survival anymore. It was opportunity. A chance to earn something beyond obedience. A reason to push forward instead of retreat.

  Confidence returned—not hope, but purpose.

  Close-range fighters moved up.

  They advanced in coordinated waves, keeping distance from the long-range units. Blades flashed. Spears struck with precision. Lostbonds were pulled down, decapitated, dismantled.

  One figure stood out.

  Bare-handed.

  He moved like an unstoppable force, tearing through Lostbonds with brute efficiency. His strikes were direct, brutal. He did not dodge unless necessary. He did not retreat.

  He advanced.

  Punching the hole through their stomach and pulling out their spine in one clean motion—leaving the body to collapse as if its strings had been cut.

  General Noris turned slightly.

  “Who is that ferocious ?” he asked Lieutenant Luken Greyholt.

  “Sir,” Luken replied, watching the carnage, “his name is Eldric.”

  “You didn’t issue him a weapon?”

  “He didn’t take one, sir.”

  Noris watched Eldric for several seconds.

  “I want him on my team.”

  The battle continued.

  Lostbond numbers dwindled. Bodies piled. The sound of gunfire mixed with tearing flesh and broken stone. Noris moved constantly, guiding, correcting, teaching in real time. A command here. A reposition there.

  Mistakes were corrected immediately.

  Those who adapted were noted.

  Those who hesitated were not.

  Eventually, the Lostbonds stopped coming.

  The last few were eliminated without ceremony.

  Smoke drifted through the open ground. The city stood silent again, littered with what remained of its former inhabitants.

  The whole wave was cleared.

  After the final Lostbond fell, the battlefield did not immediately relax.

  Smoke lingered low over the ground. The smell of burned flesh, ruptured growths, and gunpowder mixed into something thick and unpleasant.

  Soldiers stood where they were, weapons still raised, breathing hard. No one celebrated.

  Victory felt provisional—something that could be taken back if they let their guard down even for a moment.

  General Noris wasted no time.

  Performance was recorded, not praised.

  Officers moved through the field, speaking quietly into devices, marking names, gestures, reactions. It was not just about how many Lostbonds someone had killed, but how they had done it. Who followed orders under pressure. Who adapted. Who froze and recovered fast enough to matter.

  Teams were reshuffled accordingly.

  The original formations dissolved. People were pulled from lines and reassigned without explanation. Some groups grew larger—twenty, sometimes twenty-five members—stacked with enough numbers to compensate for inconsistency.

  Not all teams were equal.

  General Noris’s team was the smallest.

  Five members.

  Three close-range fighters and two gunslingers. No excess. No redundancy. Every member had proven they could operate under pressure without breaking formation or hesitation. They stood slightly apart now, silent, aware that being chosen did not mean safety—it meant expectation.

  The rest of the teams watched them with mixed expressions. Some with envy. Some with relief that they were not among them.

  Veyor stood near the back of his reassigned group.

  Out of 235 people who had gone through the evaluation, his score ranked near the bottom. His physical output had been unimpressive. His endurance average. His reflexes acceptable but unremarkable.

  What saved him was precision.

  His aim had been steady. Calm. Controlled. While others fired wildly under pressure, he had conserved ammunition, adjusted angles, and targeted structural weak points. It was not flashy, but it was reliable.

  Because of that, he was placed under Lieutenant Luken Greyholt.

  Thirteen members total.

  Balanced. Mixed. Strong enough to function independently, but not considered elite. A team designed to survive—not dominate.

  Assignments were handed out quickly.

  Each team received a path to follow. A zone to clear. A task to complete. No speeches. No encouragement. Just coordinates and objectives.

  The assumption was simple: if you needed motivation beyond survival, you were already a liability.

  As teams began organizing to depart, movement caught the attention of the forward scouts.

  A small group emerged from the far edge of the city.

  Not Lostbonds.

  Something else.

  Warnings were relayed immediately. Soldiers raised weapons instinctively, tension snapping back into the air.

  Veyor felt his shoulders tighten as he followed the line of sight.

  General Noris stepped forward calmly.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, voice steady.

  “Watch this.”

  Below the cloud cover, space distorted.

  The sky tightened above them. Clouds drew inward instead of drifting apart, compressing as if something unseen was pulling the sky together. Tiny points of brightness crowded beneath the cloud cover, packing into a dense, suspended mass.

  The air grew crushingly heavy, lungs straining, as an unstable sphere of energy formed overhead—silent, waiting, and wrong., its boundary sharp and unnatural. The size of it was unmistakable: roughly the radius of an Olympic swimming pool, suspended just long enough to be noticed.

  Danger radiated from it.

  The ground beneath vibrated faintly. Loose debris rattled. Soldiers instinctively stepped back, even those who had seen Noris fight before.

  Veyor’s breath caught.

  The shape.

  The scale.

  It mirrored something burned into his memory.

  The blast that killed his mother.

  The moment his world had ended.

  Pain surged through his skull—sharp, immediate, overwhelming.

  His vision blurred.

  The edges of the scene warped as if reality itself had been pulled sideways. For a split second, he was no longer standing in Calrs.

  He was back there.

  Fire.

  Light.

  Pressure.

  His mother’s face.

  His body moved before his mind could stop it.

  Veyor lunged.

  He tackled Noris from the side with everything he had, arms wrapping around the general’s torso, driving them both down and away from the forming mass. The motion disrupted the concentration holding the energy together.

  The formation collapsed.

  The pressure vanished instantly.

  Silence followed—thick and absolute.

  For half a second, no one moved.

  The most dangerous man on the field lay on the ground—tackled by someone who had barely qualified for combat duty.

  Then someone gasped.

  “Oh boy, He’s dead.” Lieutenant Luken muttered, staring in disbelief.