Life without Eren wasn’t quiet; it was simply louder in a different frequency. With him gone, the immense, grounding gravity of his presence lifted, and we all had to expand to fill the vacuum. I trained not only because I wanted to grow, but also because I had to hold the roof up.

  Bastion hummed along, a well-oiled machine of mana and steel. I spent my mornings in the dungeon — “The Whispering Barrow,” my Sanctum’s expanded, little corner of Silverwood Reach. Grover, my tree-Anima, had grown denser, his silver bark now hard as titan-steel, his roots drinking from the enriched mana we pumped into the soil. We fought construct echoes, spectral wolves, and occasional randomized Tier 5 beasts the dungeon threw at us to test my new [Sovereign’s Perception].

  I’d control arrows mid-flight with mana. I’d anchor enemies in a sensory loop where they kept running into the same tree for minutes, their confusion palpable.

  “Again,” I’d tell Grover, wiping sweat from my brow, barely feeling any ache in my Tier 5 Body. “Faster. Make the branches invisible this time.”

  In the afternoons, I visited Silverwood Reach. The once-bustling outpost was quiet now. Most of the citizens had moved to Bastion under the safety of the Aegis shield. Only the hardiest hunting parties remained — men and women addicted to the quiet danger of the wilds and the lack of competition for beasts and resources.

  Marcus and Lena met me at the old tavern, which was now mostly a storage depot.

  “We should just torch it,” Marcus grumbled, polishing his shield which now glowed with a faint, verdant hum. He looked tired. Peak Tier 3 was a hard plateau, and without having a wealth of resources, he was hitting a wall. “Abandon it completely. Move the rest of the hunters behind the wall.”

  “They won’t go,” Lena countered, spinning her dagger on the table. “They like the open air. And the lack of competition for elite mobs. Plus, Bastion is getting… domestic.”

  “Domestic is safe,” I said, sipping stale ale. “It also means Vayne can’t pick us off one by one.”

  Before the argument could heat up, my wrist comms unit chirped.

  “Jeeves,” I answered.

  “Mistress Anna,” the Anima’s voice was crisp but layered with urgency. “Priority alert from the North-West. The Noren Settlement.”

  “Freja?” I asked, standing up. “What is it? An attack?”

  “Unconfirmed. But they requested support. They are reporting… anomalies.”

  I looked at Marcus. “We’re moving.”

  Using the portal network we had set up, we jumped from Silverwood Nexus directly to Noren’s receiver pad.

  The settlement of Noren has evolved into a thunderstorm. Literally. The geography surrounding the settlement was dominated by massive, jagged spires of magnetic rock that attracted perpetual lightning. The locals harnessed it. The entire city hummed with static electricity and smelled of rain on hot stone.

  Three were waiting for me in the War Hall. Freja, the leader of Noren, looked like a Valkyrie who had walked out of a storm cloud. Six feet tall, blonde hair braided with copper wire, eyes that literally sparked blue when she blinked.

  She wielded a new hammer — [Mjolnir’s Echo] — that she claimed channeled the literal voice of thunder.

  Beside her stood Bjorn, a man so wide he blocked out the sun. His red beard was a wildfire, and he carried twin axes that dripped with a red, angry aura. A High Tier 4 berserker type.

  And Astrid. Slim, dark-haired, with a smile that never quite reached her eyes. She leaned against a wall, spinning a coin that vanished and reappeared in different pockets. A master of deception and a rogue archetype, also high Tier 4.

  “You came fast,” Freja said, her voice crackling with tension.

  “You called,” I replied. “What’s the situation?”

  Astrid flicked her wrist, and a holographic map shimmered into existence — projected not by tech, but by illusion magic.

  “Nexus Delta-5,” Astrid pointed to a Kyorian outpost five hundred miles east. “Normally, it’s a barebones open city. A Small garrison. Yesterday? It went dark. Not silent. Dark. My scrying eyes can’t see anything. It’s like a hole in the world opened up.”

  “Shadow-Weavers?” I asked.

  “Worse,” Astrid grimaced. “I felt… hunger. And I felt heavy souls arriving. Five distinct signatures. They didn’t arrive by ship or portal. They simply materialized.”

  “Five?” I narrowed my eyes. “Tier?”

  “Muddy,” she admitted. “But they felt dense. And… wrong. Cold.”

  “A kill team,” Bjorn growled, hefting an axe. “Let them come. My axes are thirsty.”

  “We need to prepare,” Freja said. “If they hit us… our shields are still Tier 5 lightning-grids. Eren’s lion-man wanted to upgrade it but he has not had the time. If they bring siege weapons…”

  “We hold,” I said. “Eren is training. He needs focus. We handle this. We’re not helpless.”

  I summoned Jeeves via link. “Jeeves, can you spare support?”

  “I can dispatch a squad of the new Fire-Golems. And tactical oversight. However, Nyx is still on her mission and Rexxar went out hunting.”

  “Send them, please. And let Lucas know what is going on.”

  The next 24 hours were a fever dream of fortification. We overloaded the lightning grids. Bjorn dug pits filled with magnetized spikes. Astrid wove layers of illusion over the city gates, making the entrance look like a solid cliff face.

  We waited. The air grew heavy, pregnant with the metallic taste of impending violence.

  Then, on the second day at dawn, the sky didn’t lighten. It darkened.

  A shadow fell over Noren. Not a cloud. A massive, floating geometric shape — a pyramid of black stone — descended from the storm clouds. It absorbed the lightning that struck it, growing brighter with captured power.

  It didn’t fire lasers. It pulsed.

  A wave of black sound hit the city.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The Tier 5 lightning shield didn’t just fail; it shattered. The magnetic pylons exploded in showers of sparks. The illusion over the gate dissolved instantly.

  “Shield is already down!” Freja screamed, raising her hammer as the first bolt of red lightning arched from the pyramid. “Incoming!”

  They dropped from the pyramid. Five figures.

  They didn’t land. They drifted down like smoke. They were humanoid, but pale as bone, dressed in armor that seemed woven from shadows and dried blood. Their faces were featureless masks of obsidian.

  “That was fast,” Astrid hissed, her face paling. “They are all at least Tier 5. But that should not be enough to... How did they break the shield and destroy the backup contingencies so quickly…”

  “I will buy us time, get those shields back up!” Bjorn roared, and charged.

  His charge was a thing of terrifying beauty. He leaped thirty feet into the air, axes glowing red with [Blood-Rage], aiming to split the lead Ghost in half.

  The air screamed around his swing.

  The enemy didn’t dodge. It phased. Bjorn passed straight through the smoky form. The Ghost solidified instantly behind him and plunged a black dagger into his kidney.

  Bjorn roared in pain, spinning with supernatural speed, his back-swing catching the Ghost in the ribs — or where ribs should be. The axe bit deep, but there was no blood, only black ichor.

  The Ghost laughed — a sound like dry leaves rustling — and vanished into a shadow, reappearing ten feet away.

  Chaos erupted.

  Freja summoned a lightning storm. “Get the people out, evacuate anyone below Tier 4 now!” she commanded. Bolts as thick as tree trunks slammed into the plaza. The Ghosts danced between the bolts, immune to electricity, weaving spells of shadow-bind that sought to strangle us. One Ghost caught a bolt of lightning on a shield of darkness and redirected it into a tower, blowing it apart.

  I took the center while commanding Grover to help Bjorn. [Final Word] sang in my hands.

  I aimed at the leader — a tall Ghost wielding a scythe made of void-energy that drank the light around it.

  “You stay put!” I screamed, channeling [Sovereign’s Edict: Anchor]. His will fought back, his Domain flaring around him, but I immediately took advantage and used my Mythic skill.

  [Sovereign’s Ultimatum] could be used in many ways I learned. I could, for example, determine that Freja’s next hit will annihilate the Ghost, even though her Tier was much lower, since the skill was based on my own Spirit. I took advantage of him underestimating her attack, only to be completely overwhelmed by it bypassing all of his defenses.

  At the same time, I shot an arrow that was enforced with Decision. The arrow hit the air above him. The conceptual weight slammed down. The Ghost froze, his phase-shift locking mid-transition.

  Freja capitalized instantly. “Stormbringer!” she shrieked, leaping from a balcony. She slammed her weapon into the frozen Ghost. The impact vaporized his upper torso in a flash of blinding blue light.

  The leader was down.

  But the other four were tearing us apart.

  Astrid was duel-wielding daggers against a Ghost that split into three mirror images. She was fast, her illusions confusing him for a moment, swapping places with her own decoys. But the Ghost had a form of true sight. He ignored her clones and slashed her across the chest with a shadow-whip. The whip burned through her armor like acid. She went down, screaming, bleeding into darkness.

  Bjorn was fighting two at once with Grover distracting from underneath the ground, vines forcing them into phasing. He was a whirlwind of steel, but they were slicing him apart by a thousand cuts. He roared, going fully Berserk, his skin turning iron-grey. He grabbed one Ghost by the throat and crushed its windpipe with a sickening crunch, but the Ghost vanished into echoing laughter.

  The third Ghost — a caster floating above — hit him with a mana lance projectile from behind. The black beam punched a clean hole through his chest, exiting his sternum.

  Bjorn fell, axes clattering to the stone. He didn’t rise.

  “Bjorn!” Freja screamed, the distraction fatal.

  The fourth Ghost — a stealth specialist — materialized directly above her from the smoke of the explosion. He drove a spike through her shoulder, pinning her to the ground.

  Noren was burning. The automated golems Jeeves sent were piles of rubble, dismantled by needles of shadow-magic barraging down from their Pyramid-ship.

  It was just me and Grover. And three Ghosts.

  The Fourth — regenerating slowly from mist — joined them.

  They circled me. Four Tier 5 Assassins against us. Grover tried to give me space to escape but was distracted by two Ghosts when another beam shot from their ship, dissipating him into my Soul.

  I fired. My arrows took heads, pierced hearts. I used my Domain’s Decision to force one arrow to hit a critical spot with higher probability. One Ghost dissolved screaming as the arrow detonated a spatial charge inside his core. He seemed out of the fight temporarily.

  But I was tired. My mana was draining. And they were relentless. They attacked in perfect sync — one high, one low, one from the shadows.

  A blade caught my leg, hamstrung. Another grazed my cheek, blinding me in one eye with blood.

  I backed up against the fountain in the square. I looked at the bodies of my friends. Bjorn, dead. Astrid, still. Freja, unconscious and bleeding out.

  Noren was gone. People were screaming as the Pyramid’s beams began to pull them into the sky.

  Failure. Bitter, acrid failure tasted like copper in my mouth. We weren’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I had arrogantly assumed Tier 5 made me unstoppable. But again, it wasn’t enough.

  “Arrogance,” I whispered to myself. “It’s always never enough.”

  The ghosts closed in. One of them raised his scythe for the final blow.

  I closed my eyes.

  I reached deep into my soul. Past the fear. Past the exhaustion. Past the pride.

  I grabbed the silver thread that bound my existence to the timeline. My soul ability had evolved. The maximum time I could turn back was now six hours.

  [Rewind].

  “Six hours,” I commanded, my voice cracking with the strain.

  The world shattered. The pain vanished. The burning city un-burned. The smoke flowed back into the fires, the fires back into the bombs, the bombs back into the ship.

  The universe lurched violently.

  I gasped, sucking in air like a drowning victim.

  I was standing in the war room of Noren.

  Freja was alive, pacing by the map. Bjorn was sharpening his axe, laughing at a joke Astrid told. The sun was shining through the windows. The smell of rain was fresh, not tainted with smoke.

  It was night time. Six hours ago.

  The memory of their deaths crashed into me like a physical blow. I stumbled, grabbing the table for support, my hands trembling slightly.

  “Anna?” Freja asked, turning from the map, concern flashing in her storm-blue eyes. “You okay? You went pale. Is it from the portal?”

  “I wasn’t enough,” I whispered, staring at them. My voice was hollow. “Again.”

  “What?” Bjorn stopped sharpening, the scraping sound ceasing abruptly. “What are you saying, lass?”

  I looked at Freja. “The attack. It’s not just a probe. It’s an Extermination Squad. Five Tier 5 Elites. Ghost-phase shifters. A pyramid ship. We lose, Freja. I don’t know who they were or how they were able to bypass all our defenses and intelligence but they were strong. And they had a stronger weapon, maybe Tier 7? I wasn’t sure.”

  The room went silent. They didn’t know my power. But they knew I was serious.

  “What do we do?” Astrid asked, her voice small, the coin she was playing with clattering to the floor.

  I had been arrogant. I thought we could handle the world without him. I thought we needed to prove our independence to justify our strength.

  I was wrong. Independence is a luxury of the living.

  “You need to break it,” I said, looking at Freja. “We underestimated them. They have a weapon we can’t counter. And if we fight them alone… there is no tomorrow.”

  I signaled to the coin on Freja.

  “Do it,” I ordered, my voice hardening. “Now.”

  Freja held the coin. She looked at me, saw the terror and the certainty in my eyes. She didn’t argue. She didn’t ask for details. She trusted me then, and closed her fist, crushing the coin.

  A pulse of pure, golden mana rippled out from her hand, vanishing into the ether. A silent scream for help across the stars.

  “Now,” I said, drawing [Final Word], my eyes hard and cold. “We prepare, and we buy him time. Jeeves.”

  “Yes ma’am?” His reply came immediately from my comm-unit.

  “Try to get a hold of Rexxar. Tell him we have an army for him to take care of.”