Iron Surgeon did not move.

  He stood amid the wreckage like a statue carved from scrap, his mechanical limbs hanging slack, optics dimmed to a lifeless glow. The fall of his greatest creation had hollowed him out. What lay broken on the factory floor was not merely the Director stripped of power, but the end of a vision Iron Surgeon had shaped piece by piece.

  The factory itself seemed to mourn.

  Furnaces that once roared with relentless hunger now hummed faintly, their fires lowered to a dull glow. Conveyor belts lay twisted and silent. Overhead pipes leaked slowly, each drop echoing through the cavernous space like a clock counting down something already finished.

  The furnace that was polluting the sky was shut down and battle for the industrial land was over.

  Both the Director and Iron Surgeon were captured. Heavy suppression restraints were locked into place—signal dampeners, kinetic limiters, layered containment fields. Even reduced to flesh and bone, the Director was treated like a loaded weapon, not a man.

  Outside, smoke rolled lazily across the ruined skyline. The vast industrial district—once the beating heart of the nation’s production—stood broken, scarred, but reclaimed.

  Hours later, the cleaning teams arrived.

  They came in waves: armored transports grinding over debris, cranes unfolding like mechanical insects, drones buzzing through collapsed structures. Specialists sealed vents, neutralized toxins, and dismantled what remained of the furnace network. Markers were driven into the ground. Survey lines were drawn.

  Construction was set to begin.

  Rebuilding always followed destruction. Cold, efficient, indifferent.

  For Team 13, none of it mattered.

  This mission had taken nearly everything.

  They had started as a full unit—trained, disciplined, confident. Now, only fragments remained.

  Five members were gone completely.

  No stretcher.

  No recovery.

  No body to return.

  Absolutely crushed by rustwalkers. Just absence.

  The name was not spoken. Not yet. Saying it aloud would make it real in a way silence still resisted.

  Three of them barely survived, but only barely—each left with permanent damage. One lost his entire torso. Another lost both hands. The third’s upper body was completely burned.

  Others survived—but survival came at a price that time would never fully pay back.

  Kael sat near the edge of the checkpoint, shoulders slumped, spear resting against the barrier beside him. His left arm was bound tightly in layered bandages reinforced with stabilizers. Beneath the wrappings, the shoulder joint was crushed—bone fractured in multiple places, muscle torn beyond natural repair. Even with advanced treatment, the damage was permanent.

  The arm trembled slightly whenever he tried to move it.

  The second-strongest warrior of Team 13 now struggled to lift the weapon that had once felt like an extension of his will.

  A few meters away, Riven leaned against a fractured metal post, weight shifted awkwardly onto one leg. A rigid brace ran along his thigh, locking the limb in place where bone had shattered under a brutal impact. His breathing was shallow—not from exhaustion alone, but from internal injuries that healing could only stabilize, not erase.

  The swordsman’s movements were careful now. Measured. Each step calculated to avoid pain.

  Compared to others, Bran was the luckiest among them.

  He survived with no shattered bones or lost limbs—only deep scars burned into his skin.

  Nearly the entire team was gone.

  Only two had walked out unbroken.

  Veyor and Luken.

  And even that felt wrong.

  They sat together near the edge of the checkpoint, overlooking the industrial wasteland below. The sun hung low in the sky, bleeding orange and red across layers of smoke and cloud. Shadows stretched long across broken factories, turning twisted steel into jagged silhouettes.

  No one spoke.

  The silence wasn’t calm.

  It pressed down, heavy and suffocating, filled with everything no one dared to say.

  Veyor stared at his hands. Dried blood clung beneath his fingernails, dark against pale skin. Some of it was his. Much of it wasn’t. He had scrubbed earlier until his hands ached, but the stains remained—faint, stubborn reminders.

  Luken sat beside him, posture straight despite the bandages hidden beneath his uniform. His body had stabilized, but his mind hadn’t. He replayed every decision in his head, every order given, every moment hesitation might have changed something.

  He had led them here.

  He had watched them fall.

  Behind them, medics worked quietly. Supplies were packed. Equipment dismantled. Bodies covered. No one laughed. No one celebrated. Victory felt like an accusation rather than an achievement.

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  The checkpoint, once a temporary outpost, now felt too small for the weight it carried.

  Too exposed.

  Too quiet.

  Then footsteps approached.

  Measured.

  Unhurried.

  Certain.

  Luken didn’t turn immediately. He already knew who it was.

  General Noris walked toward them.

  His coat bore dust and ash from the battlefield. The ground seemed almost reluctant to echo his steps. He stopped a short distance away, gaze sweeping over what remained of Team 13—not as a commander counting survivors, but as someone acknowledging cost.

  No one saluted.

  No one spoke.

  The wind passed between them, carrying the smell of scorched metal and distant seawater from beyond the horizon.

  Noris stood there.

  And the silence tightened, waiting for what came next.

  General Noris stood before what remained of Team 13.

  The wind tugged at his coat, lifting its edges just enough to reveal the faint shimmer of containment fields still active around the checkpoint. The sky behind him was no longer burning red—it had settled into a dull, washed-out gray, as if even the sun was exhausted from witnessing too much.

  He surveyed them quietly.

  Not as numbers.

  Not as assets.

  As soldiers.

  “You fought well,” Noris said at last.

  His voice carried easily, calm and measured, yet it cut through the silence like a blade through cloth.

  “The task was simply too large for you to handle,” he continued. “There is no fault on your side.”

  No one answered.

  The words landed, but they didn’t ease anything. If anything, they made the weight heavier. Because if there was no fault—then this loss was simply the price of reality.

  “But,” Noris added, his tone shifting slightly, “you don’t have the luxury of sitting back and grieving. You all have to keep moving forward.”

  Luken abruptly pushed himself up from the broken wall they were sitting on, boots scraping against loose concrete.

  “My soldiers are dead, goddammit!” he shouted, his voice sharp with anger and grief. “And all you care about is moving forward?”

  For a moment, the wind was the only sound moving through the ruined street.

  Noris didn’t raise his voice.

  “Take your seat, Lieutenant,” he said calmly. “You shouldn’t lose your composure at times like this.”

  Beside him, Kael subtly grabbed a fold of Luken’s pant leg and tugged it once — a quiet signal.

  Sit.

  Luken’s breathing slowed as the weight of the moment settled over him. The anger in his face flickered into something closer to regret.

  He realized what he had just done.

  Without another word, he lowered himself back onto the cracked wall.

  Silence lingered.

  Then Noris spoke again.

  “A soldier isn’t given time to rest,” he said quietly. “Not when the world itself has started to move.”

  That got their attention.

  He turned slightly, gesturing toward the distant horizon, where the industrial skyline met the pale outline of the sea.

  “Nature has begun its response,” Noris said. “Entire continents are starting to sink.”

  The words hung there.

  “The tectonic plates are shifting at an accelerated rate,” he continued. “The epicenter is Spawn.”

  That name carried weight. Everyone there knew it. The island. The birthplace of the mutation surge. The exact location where the nuclear strike had torn open something that should never have been disturbed.

  “The mutation rate at Spawn is far beyond anything we’ve recorded elsewhere,” Noris said. “Animals. Beasts. Humans. The island itself is changing.”

  Veyor felt a cold pull in his chest.

  “Not only that,” Noris continued, his voice lowering, “mutated beings above a certain threshold—intelligent or otherwise—are being drawn there.”

  “Called,” Mira whispered.

  “Yes,” Noris replied. “Called.”

  The word carried something heavier than sound.

  Something old.

  Something that didn’t belong to this age.

  “As you already know,” Noris went on, “the faster a person bonds with a parasite, the stronger the resulting being becomes. In the hours immediately following the impact… before order, before understanding…”

  He paused.

  “Something was calling the early awakened. Drawing them toward Spawn.”

  “The Lostbonds and beasts you fought here?” Noris said. “They are the weakest of their kind.”

  That hit harder than any battlefield truth.

  “When creatures of extreme power gather at one point,” Noris continued, “it disrupts the planet’s balance. Landmass shifts. Oceans rise. Spawn is gaining ground.”

  He paused.

  “The rest of the continents are sinking.”

  Silence followed.

  Not disbelief.

  Understanding.

  “I know what I’m asking next is selfish,” Noris said. “But I must order you to begin operations along the eastern coastline. Evacuate civilians. Delay the collapse as much as possible.”

  Kael stood up.

  Pain shot through his damaged shoulder, but he didn’t care.

  “You wiped out thousands of Lostbonds in seconds,” he said, anger raw in his voice. “You move at the speed of light. Why don’t you clean this mess yourself?”

  He took a step forward.

  “Or did you just come here to flex your power on people who were already dying?”

  The words were sharp. Ugly. Honest.

  The air went tense.

  Noris did not react immediately.

  “Believe me,” he said at last, “I want this over , sooner than anyone else but I have some limitations.”

  Riven let out a bitter laugh.

  “Limitations?” he said. “What limits? You get tired? How cute.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t look like someone with limits.”

  Noris met his gaze directly.

  “In just half month,” he said, “four beings stronger than me have been recorded.”

  That wiped the smirk from Riven’s face.

  “Two of them clashed,” Noris continued. “Their conflict drowned an entire nation.”

  No one spoke.

  “If any of them detect my full signal,” Noris said quietly, “this country will cease to exist.”

  The meaning settled in.

  “So until we understand the threat,” Noris said, “we move silently.”

  He looked at them.

  “And I need your help.”

  No one argued.

  There was nothing left to argue with.

  “If there are no further questions,” Noris said, “I’ll take my leave.”

  Luken finally spoke.

  “So we go back to where we started?”

  Noris shook his head.

  “No. You go east. Toward the coast facing Spawn.”

  That was all.

  No explanation.

  No justification.

  And none was needed.

  They didn’t ask questions because they already knew the answer.

  Their path was set.

  Team restructuring happened quickly.

  Team 9 arrived shortly after—what remained of it.

  They had started with seventeen.

  Only three walked in.

  Quiet. Hollow. Alive.

  Combined with the survivors of Team 13, the new count stood at eight.

  Luken.

  Veyor.

  Kael.

  Riven.

  Bran.

  One remaining gunslinger.

  And the three from Team 9.

  Milo stepped forward.

  “We’ll join them,” he said.

  Aera nodded.

  Mira nodded.

  Voss nodded.

  Noris looked at them.

  “You all carry special mutations,” he said. “You’ll need to report to the kingdom first. Orders will come after.”

  Milo opened his mouth.

  Noris cut him off.

  “Of course,” he said calmly, “if you wish to act as a traitor, you’re free to do whatever you want.”

  The message was clear.

  By evening, everyone else had left the checkpoint.

  Only Team 13 remained.

  The fires burned low. The wind carried the sound of distant waves.

  By morning, they moved out.

  Time passed.

  Six months.

  Six months of coastal evacuations. Collapsing towns. Rising seas. Endless movement. Endless fights with lostbonds and wild beasts.

  Team 13 rescued more than ten thousand people.

  They learned how to move fast. How to choose who could be saved and who couldn’t.

  They stopped counting the dead.

  They grew quieter.

  Stronger.

  Heavier.

  Now, their journey was nearing its end.

  They were close to leaving the battleground.

  And none of them knew—

  A surprise waited.

  Something vast.

  Something watching.

  Something already aware of them.