The Panzerreiter turned like a moving fortress, four legs gouging trenches into the ruined street as its twin cannons tracked targets faster than something that size had any right to.

  Rhys didn’t wait.

  “Going in!” he barked, already boosting forward.

  His Warden lunged, blade screaming as he slashed at the narrow seam between the turret and the base. Sparks burst like a shower of stars, the blade biting—but not deep enough. The Panzerreiter answered instantly, the turret rotating with a hydraulic snarl.

  Rhys fired his grapple at a nearby high-rise, the hook punching into concrete. He reeled hard, slingshotting himself sideways and planting his Warden against the building’s vertical face. Magnetic clamps bit in, holding him sideways, eye-level with the Panzerreiter’s turret.

  “How are we even supposed to kill this thing?!” Rhys shouted over comms.

  Below him, Tavian and Jax were already in motion—Tavian circling wide, disciplined and methodical, peppering the Panzerreiter’s sensors, while Jax darted in and out like he was daring it to hit him.

  Amélia streaked past Rhys in a blur of thrusters and grapples.

  “Mara showed me,” she said, calm despite the chaos. “Core’s sealed right under the turret. We have to crack it from the top.”

  “Copy that,” Rhys said. “Top it is.”

  Amélia fired first.

  A high-velocity round slammed into the top of the turret and detonated, metal plates warping outward. The Panzerreiter reacted immediately, turret snapping toward her as one of its main cannons boomed.

  “INCOMING—!” Tavian warned.

  Amélia cut thrust and dropped, the shell screaming past where she’d been a heartbeat earlier. The blast flattened a block behind her, shockwaves rippling through the air.

  “That thing’s mad now,” Jax laughed. “Good!”

  Before anyone could stop him, Elias landed hard on top of the Panzerreiter’s turret.

  There was a half-second of stunned silence.

  “…Elias?” Rhys said carefully.

  “I—THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN—” Elias yelled as the Panzerreiter lurched, his Warden sliding across the curved armor. “WHY IS IT MOVING SO MUCH—?!”

  Rhys burst out laughing. “You’re riding it!”

  Amélia couldn’t help it either. “Hold on tight!”

  “I HATE BOTH OF YOU,” Elias snapped, desperately trying to stabilize as the turret rotated beneath him.

  Jax swung in, hooked Elias with a clean grapple shot, and yanked him free just as the Panzerreiter’s secondary guns came alive. A storm of autocannon fire ripped through the air where Elias had been.

  “Next time,” Jax said cheerfully, “ask before you surf.”

  The Panzerreiter pivoted, secondary guns hammering toward Jax, Tavian, and Elias.

  “Split!” Tavian ordered.

  Rhys and Amélia didn’t waste the opening.

  They surged in together—Rhys dropping from the wall in a controlled dive, blade raised, Amélia boosting upward from below. Their strikes landed almost simultaneously, slamming into the top of the turret.

  Metal buckled.

  A shallow dent formed—small, but unmistakable.

  “Yes!” Rhys shouted. “That’s it—keep hitting that spot!”

  “On it!” Amélia replied, already repositioning.

  Jax, however, had other ideas.

  “Legs look softer!” he yelled, diving low.

  “Jax, don’t—” Tavian started.

  Too late.

  Jax came in fast, blade screaming as it carved through one of the Panzerreiter’s rear legs in a clean, brutal arc. The limb collapsed in a shower of sparks and molten metal.

  The Panzerreiter staggered, its massive frame tilting violently.

  “HA!” Jax whooped. “Did you see that—”

  The Panzerreiter fired.

  The shell didn’t hit Jax directly—but it didn’t need to.

  The explosion hit the street beside him, engulfing his Warden in fire and debris. Jax was thrown clear, slamming into the ground hard as warning alerts flooded his HUD.

  “—warnings, warnings—mobility impaired—” his system blared.

  “Jax!” Tavian shouted, already moving.

  “I’m good!” Jax coughed. “Okay—maybe not good, but alive!”

  Rhys swung back toward the Panzerreiter, adrenaline spiking.

  “It’s limping! That leg did something!”

  “And the turret’s damaged,” Amélia added. “One more good hit might crack it!”

  Elias steadied himself, voice tight but focused. “I’ll draw fire.”

  “You sure?” Rhys asked.

  “No,” Elias said. “But it’s better than watching.”

  Elias boosted forward, firing repeatedly at the Panzerreiter’s sensors. The massive machine turned toward him, cannons tracking.

  “NOW!” Rhys yelled.

  Rhys and Amélia charged in again—one from above, one from the side—blades and rounds slamming into the dented turret plate as the Panzerreiter roared and struggled to reorient.

  Metal screamed.

  Cracks spread.

  The Panzerreiter fired blindly, its movements growing erratic as its balance faltered.

  Tavian dragged Jax behind cover, glancing back at the fight.

  “End it,” he muttered. “Before it levels the whole block.”

  Rhys raised his blade for another strike, heart pounding.

  “One more,” he said. “Just—one more.”

  The Panzerreiter shuddered, its cannons glowing red-hot.

  And then—

  it roared again, refusing to fall.

  Amélia pushed too hard.

  Her thrusters flared as she cut across the Panzerreiter’s flank, lining up another strike on the fractured turret—but the machine anticipated her. One of its stabilizers snapped outward, clipping her mid-boost.

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  “Amélia—!” Elias shouted.

  Her Warden spun out of control and slammed into the pavement below with a bone-jarring crash. Concrete exploded outward. Warning glyphs flooded her HUD in angry red.

  HYDRAULIC FAILURE — LEFT ACTUATOR

  MOBILITY DEGRADED

  She groaned, forcing herself upright just as the Panzerreiter turned.

  Its massive blade-arm unfolded with a grinding shriek, locking into place. The machine leaned forward, shadow swallowing her, blade rising for a killing thrust.

  “MOVE!” Rhys roared.

  He didn’t think—he launched.

  Thrusters screamed as Rhys drove himself between Amélia and the Panzerreiter, his Warden’s blade coming up just in time. Steel met steel with a thunderclap that cracked the air itself.

  The impact rang through his frame, through his bones.

  They locked.

  Rhys pushed.

  Servos screamed in protest. His control inputs spiked past safe limits, warnings flashing, ignored. The Panzerreiter was impossibly strong—every inch it forced forward felt like being crushed by a collapsing building.

  “Rhys, break off!” Tavian yelled.

  “I—can’t!” Rhys gritted out.

  Then the Panzerreiter leaned closer.

  Its red optical sensor slid into alignment with his visor.

  The world narrowed to that single point of glowing crimson.

  Cold.

  Measuring.

  Watching.

  Rhys’ breath caught.

  For a heartbeat—just one—it didn’t feel like a machine looking at him.

  It felt like something alive.

  A predator recognizing another.

  Rhys froze.

  “RHYS!”

  Elias hit him hard from the side, grappling him mid-lock and yanking him free as Jax and Tavian swooped in, hauling Amélia out of danger. The Panzerreiter’s blade carved empty air where Rhys had been a moment earlier.

  They landed hard on a nearby rooftop, metallic legs skidding across shattered glass and tar.

  Amélia slumped against a ventilation unit, breathing hard.

  “Hydraulics are shot,” she said, forcing steadiness into her voice. “I can still fight—but it’s going to be… rough.”

  “That was too damn close,” Jax muttered. “You scared us.”

  Elias didn’t say anything. He just stared back at the street below.

  Rhys stepped forward slowly, his hands hanging at his sides.

  The Panzerreiter stood there.

  Not firing.

  Not advancing.

  Just… looking.

  Its red sensor fixed on the rooftop, locked directly onto him.

  Rhys felt it again—that crawling, sinking feeling in his chest.

  It wasn’t tracking targets.

  It was watching him.

  His thoughts went quiet. The battle noise faded into something distant and hollow.

  “…It knows,” Rhys said softly.

  “What?” Tavian asked.

  Rhys didn’t look away.

  “I don’t know how,” he said, voice low, unsettled. “But it’s not just reacting anymore.”

  The Panzerreiter tilted its head—just a fraction.

  Human.

  Too human.

  And for the first time since the fight began, Rhys felt something colder than fear.

  He felt recognized.

  The Panzerreiter fired.

  Rhys moved on instinct alone.

  The blast tore through the rooftop where he’d been standing, a white-hot bloom of fire and shrapnel swallowing the edge of the building. The shockwave hurled Elias, Tavian, Jax, and Amélia backward, skidding across concrete as alarms shrieked in their Wardens.

  “RHYS, WAIT—!” Elias shouted into the comm.

  Too late.

  Rhys vanished into the fireball.

  Smoke and flame rolled upward like a second sky collapsing.

  For half a second—nothing.

  Then a shape burst out of the inferno.

  Rhys came screaming down from above, thrusters flaring unevenly, blade already drawn. He didn’t answer Elias. He didn’t even hear him. Whatever fear had crept into his chest moments earlier, he crushed it down, buried it under motion and purpose.

  Focus.

  The Panzerreiter turned, turret grinding, tracking him—

  Rhys fired.

  His rifle barked in short, violent bursts, rounds sparking against armor plating as he angled his descent. Not to kill. To distract. To force movement. He landed hard on the Panzerreiter’s shoulder housing, boots magnetizing for half a heartbeat before the machine bucked violently.

  Rhys leapt again, flipping clear as the Panzerreiter slammed its blade-arm into its own shoulder, shearing off armor in a shower of molten fragments.

  “Too slow,” Rhys muttered through clenched teeth.

  The Panzerreiter responded with speed that defied its size.

  Its blade came around in a brutal horizontal arc.

  Rhys ducked under it, thrusters screaming as he slid across the ground, sparks ripping from his armor. He rolled, came up firing again—this time at point-blank range—hammering the seam beneath the turret.

  Metal screamed.

  The Panzerreiter staggered half a step.

  Not much.

  Enough.

  It lunged.

  The impact hit Rhys like a freight train. He was thrown through the shell of a burned-out storefront, crashing through walls, glass, and steel supports before skidding to a stop amid debris. His HUD flared red with impact warnings.

  Rhys coughed, blood filling his mouth.

  Then the shadow fell over him.

  The Panzerreiter tore the building apart, reaching in with its blade like a butcher’s hook.

  Rhys shot upward at the last second, thrusters blasting him through the collapsing roof. He twisted midair, landed on the Panzerreiter’s back, and ran.

  This was his style—close, aggressive, relentless. No circling. No waiting. He fought like he had no intention of surviving the long way.

  He slammed his blade down again and again into the turret housing, carving grooves, peeling armor back inch by inch. Each strike rang through his arms, reverberating through bone and nerve.

  The Panzerreiter bucked wildly, spinning its upper body, firing blind. Explosions tore chunks out of the city around them.

  Rhys jumped as a shell detonated beneath him, using the blast to propel himself higher. He landed on the turret itself, boots skidding, balance screaming.

  The red optical sensor snapped up toward him.

  That same cold, knowing stare.

  Rhys snarled and shoved it aside with the flat of his blade, firing his rifle directly into the exposed mechanisms beneath.

  The turret stuttered.

  Sparks erupted.

  The Panzerreiter roared—not in sound, but in vibration, in pressure, in the way the ground shuddered beneath it.

  Its blade-arm came straight up.

  Rhys couldn’t dodge in time.

  The blade punched through his side, tearing armor and flesh alike, lifting him clear off the machine. Pain exploded through him, white-hot and total.

  He screamed—and used it.

  Rhys grabbed the blade with one hand, locking his mag-clamps onto it, and fired his thrusters directly into the Panzerreiter’s face.

  They collided again, violently.

  The blade tore free from his side as Rhys landed hard against the turret housing, blood streaming on his face. He didn’t slow. He couldn’t afford to.

  He saw it now.

  Beneath the peeled armor. Beneath the fractured plating.

  A faint glow.

  The core.

  “Found you,” Rhys breathed.

  The Panzerreiter tried to shake him off, slamming itself backward into a collapsed tower. The impact crushed Rhys between metal and concrete, but he held on, driving his blade deeper, carving a widening wound.

  Armor split.

  The core was fully exposed now—pulsing, unstable, bright like a heart dragged into open air.

  The Panzerreiter thrashed, blade slamming down again, grazing Rhys’ shoulder, tearing half his plating away.

  Rhys staggered.

  Almost fell.

  Then he looked at the core—and everything else vanished.

  He hurled himself upward one last time.

  No hesitation.

  No retreat.

  He inverted midair, blade held straight down, thrusters screaming as he dived.

  Time slowed.

  The Panzerreiter’s sensor flared brighter, tracking him to the very end.

  Rhys met its gaze as he fell.

  Then he drove his blade into the core.

  The world went silent.

  Light erupted outward, swallowing the street in a blinding flash as the core collapsed inward on itself. The Panzerreiter froze—every system locking, every motion halting.

  Then it imploded.

  Metal folded. Energy vanished. The massive machine collapsed inward, falling like a dead god, crashing into the ruins below in a thunderous, final impact.

  Smoke rose.

  Fire crackled.

  And at the center of the wreckage—

  Rhys lay on one knee, blade planted in the ground, chest heaving, blood dripping from his nose.

  The Panzerreiter was dead.

  Above, on the rooftop, no one spoke.

  They just watched him stand alone in the ruins—small against the destruction, breathing hard, refusing to fall.

  Smoke still drifted through the broken street below, curling around the dead Panzerreiter like incense around a fallen idol. Its wrecked hull lay silent, finally harmless, finally still.

  On the rooftop, no one moved for a long second.

  Tavian was the first to breathe again. He let out a low whistle, helmet tilting as he watched Rhys straighten amid the wreckage.

  “…By the Saints,” he muttered. “He actually did it.”

  Jax didn’t say anything at first. His grip on the railing loosened, fingers trembling just a little, awe plain in the way his shoulders dropped. Then he barked out a laugh, sharp and disbelieving.

  “What a lunatic,” he said. “That absolute lunatic.”

  Elias leaned forward, eyes wide, heart still hammering in his chest. Relief hit him all at once, heavy enough to make his knees weak.

  “Rhys…” he whispered, half prayer, half laugh.

  Down below, Rhys ripped his blade free from the pavement and threw one arm up, staggering as he did. His voice crackled over the open comm, raw and breathless and alive.

  “DID YOU SEE THAT?” he shouted, laughing between gasps. “Told you it’d bleed if we hit it hard enough—!”

  Jax whooped, slamming a fist into the rooftop edge.

  “I’M NEVER DOUBTING YOU AGAIN!” he yelled back. “NEVER.”

  Elias finally laughed too, the sound shaky but real.

  “You’re impossible,” he said, smiling despite himself. “Absolutely impossible.”

  Tavian shook his head, amusement creeping into his voice.

  “Next time,” he called, “you warn us before you try to solo a walking fortress.”

  Rhys just laughed harder.

  And Amélia—

  Amélia didn’t speak.

  Inside her cockpit, warning lights still pulsed softly, hydraulics whining in protest with every small movement. Her body ached, her Warden barely holding together—but she barely noticed any of it.

  She watched Rhys down there in the ruins.

  The way he stood crooked but unbroken.

  The way he laughed like the world hadn’t almost swallowed him whole.

  The way he lived.

  A small smile touched her lips.

  It wasn’t loud like the others’. It wasn’t triumphant. It was soft, private—something warm blooming in her chest where fear had been moments ago. Relief. Pride. Something gentler, deeper.

  Tavian glanced over, catching it through her cockpit canopy.

  He nudged her Warden lightly with his own.

  “You okay?” he asked, quieter now.

  Amélia nodded once, eyes still on Rhys.

  “…Yeah,” she said softly. “I am.”

  Jax’s laughter echoed over comms again as Rhys struck a ridiculous victory pose below, nearly falling over in the process.

  Elias groaned.

  “He’s going to ride this for weeks.”

  Amélia laughed then—really laughed—warm and bright despite the damage, despite the smoke and the ruins. Tavian joined in, shaking his head, the tension finally draining from his shoulders.

  For just a moment, in the aftermath of fire and steel, they let themselves have it.