Lucas leaned back in his chair, a slow, almost thoughtful sigh escaping his lips. He ran a hand over his face, not in panic, but with the weary resignation of a man whose long-expected bill had finally come due.

"Well," he said, his voice surprisingly even. "The other shoe finally dropped."

A grin, sharp and fierce, spread across Anna's face. "Good," she said, pushing off the console she'd been leaning on. Her posture shifted from relaxed to ready in a single fluid motion. "I was getting tired of pretending to like them anyway. The suspense was killing me. So, what's the plan? Do we send them a polite 'no,' or a more… percussive version?"

"I vote for the second one," Eliza chimed in from her own console, her fingers already flying across its surface. A holographic schematic of a complex-looking device shimmered above her hand. "I've designed a long-range communication jammer that piggybacks on a kinetic impact slug. It sends a message of pure, unadulterated static. Very on-brand for us 'rebels', I think. A message that says 'we're not listening' both literally and figuratively."

"As cathartic as that would be," I said, a faint smile on my own face, "the pretense is officially over. We all knew this was coming. Vayne's ego wouldn't let our 'quarantine' stand forever. She was letting the pot simmer, hoping we'd boil over. Now she's decided to turn up the heat."

I stood and walked over to the main strategic display, a holographic map of Bastion and its surrounding territories. "The good news is, we have a plan for this. We've had a plan for months. We just need to put the pieces on the board."

Lucas nodded, his focus sharp and clear, the commander taking over. He swiveled in his chair to face us. "Alright. Let's walk through it. The Lockdown Curtain is a go. I'll handle the official reply myself. Keep it short, polite, and completely non-negotiable." He looked at me, a flicker of defiance in his eyes. "I'll be sure to cite our 'sovereign territory' and its immediate security needs. Let's see how her office digests that. In the morning, I'll address the city. Full lockdown, gates sealed, translocation pads only open to Silverwood and Noren for now. Our people deserve to know what's happening. No lies, no half-truths. We tell them we've made our choice to be free, and now the Empire is going to test that choice."

"What about the hunting and scouting parties?" Silas interjected, stepping out from the corner, his personal Weather Orb casting his face in a perpetually dramatic shadow. "They'll be our most vulnerable assets."

"Already designed," Eliza said without looking up. "Every sanctioned party will carry an emergency beacon keyed directly to my workshop. If they trigger it, the system automatically calculates their coordinates and pre-spools a portal sequence. We can have a response team on their location in under ten seconds, as long as they are within Bastion's extended Domain." Her face was grim, but a spark of pride was evident in her voice. "They can't be everywhere at once. We can."

"My scouts have standing orders for this scenario," Silas added, his tone low and professional. "The moment your message goes out, they'll go dark, scrub their tracks, and pull back within the twenty-kilometer radius. We'll be blind beyond that, but we won't give Vayne's trackers any threads to pull. I'll re-task a few of my best to observe our immediate airspace. An attack won't materialize out of thin air; they'll need a transport."

"Then it's settled," I said, completing the circle of preparation. "You handle the city, Silas secures the perimeter, Eliza manages the tech. Jeeves, you will assist Eliza with the system diagnostics and power recalibration. The Aegis Line needs to be ready for my power infusion." I looked around at my team, my friends. There was no fear in this room. Only a grim, focused resolve. We weren't cornered animals reacting to a threat. We were a well-oiled machine, activating a protocol we had designed and perfected for this exact moment.

Later that night, I stood at the heart of Bastion's defense system. The chamber of the Heartstone was a quiet sanctuary, a sphere of polished granite deep beneath the city. I placed my hands on its cool, smooth surface, feeling the thrum of life from the city above — the quiet energy of thousands of people sleeping peacefully, unknowingly entrusting their lives to us. I repaid that trust with a flood of power.

My Tier 6 mana, a deep, placid river of starlight and darkness, flowed from my palms into the Heartstone. It wasn't a violent infusion, but a deep, resonant merging. The crystal, which normally pulsed with a steady amber light, went supernova, erupting in an incandescent, pure white that bleached all color from the chamber. I felt the power grid of the entire city awaken, not just as a defensive shield, but as a unified, living system. Power conduits beneath the streets, forged from Aethestium ore, glowed with an internal light. The kinetic pylons at the walls hummed with a new, deeper resonance.

Outside, the main defensive shield, the Aegis, which usually shimmered as a faint, golden dome, solidified for a breathtaking moment into a dome of what looked like solid, crystalline diamond before vanishing completely from the visible spectrum. It was still there, stronger than ever, a barrier that would need to be broken on a metaphysical level, not just with brute force. We were ready.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The next few days passed in a state of tense, focused preparation. Communications from the outside world ceased. Our rejection had been met with a deafening silence. The town was a hive of quiet activity, every citizen taking the lockdown with a grim, defiant seriousness. There was no panic. Just a quiet sharpening of tools and a hardening of resolve.

With the walls secure, I knew my most important task was to become stronger. The fight, when it came, would fall on me. My personal power was the ultimate trump card. And so, I turned my attention back to the Ashen Gauntlet.

My evolution into Tier 6 has granted me the advantage of a new level. The new floor, the Forge of Potential, was a place that defied sanity. Islands of unformed, shimmering matter drifted in a silver void, and the silence was so profound it felt like a physical pressure. The floor's guardian, the Conceptual Weaver, awaited me there. A battle that was like wrestling with a nightmare. In our first real battle since my Glimpse, it didn't throw a punch; it tried to convince the floor beneath me that the concept of 'solidity' was a temporary suggestion. It tried to persuade my manifested blade that 'sharpness' was a fleeting, pointless endeavor. I had to impose my will on every single aspect of my own existence, reaffirming my truth against its constant, eroding pressure. The fight left me more mentally drained than any physical brawl ever could.

But with each victory, I claimed its core: a [Heart of Stabilized Chaos], a pulsating, crystalline orb containing a perfect paradox — a point of absolute stability at the center of infinite possibility. I took one to Leoric. His crystalline form vibrated with a glee I had never seen.

"Master Eren," his voice was a chorus of resonant chimes, "this is a foundational component! An anchor for reality itself! With this... I… I can make a Mythic item. A true one."

An idea, born of equal parts strategy and love, instantly took root. "A bow," I said, my voice firm. "For Anna."

Leoric paused. "An excellent choice. It seems to have an affinity for 'Decision'… this Heart could anchor that concept into every shot. Each arrow would not be a projectile, but a final, irrevocable judgment."

"She needs to be safe," I said. "This weapon... it needs to be a guarantee. What else do you need?"

"More of these," Leoric stated, gesturing to the Heart. "And several strands of [Fatespun Silver], found on the Chrono-wyrms on the same floor."

My mission was clear. For the next few weeks, my life became a focused, singular purpose. Every week, I plunged into the Ashen Gauntlet. The Chrono-wyrms were serpentine creatures made of flickering afterimages and temporal echoes. Hunting them was a frantic, dizzying affair. I had to use my Gaze not just to see them, but to perceive the shimmering threads of their possible futures, striking at the one single moment where their physical form was truly present. It was a brutal, nauseating process, but by the end of it, I had a bundle of silvery, almost translucent threads that seemed to exist in multiple places at once. Then, it was back to the Weaver, again and again, each silent, deadly chess match earning me another priceless Heart.

At the end of the week, exhausted but triumphant, I laid a dozen shimmering Hearts and the bundle of Fatespun Silver before Leoric. Watching him work was like watching a composer write a symphony. He didn't use hammers or tongs. He wove strands of pure, golden light from his own form, manipulating the materials on an atomic level. He unspooled the Fatespun Silver, each thread a captured moment in time, and wove them into a bow stave carved from a branch of Grover, Anna's own Anima, which pulsed with a gentle, living light. He then took the Hearts, and with a focused application of will, broke their paradox, melting them down into a liquid essence of pure, unwavering reality. He poured this essence into the bow's core, and a profound sense of finality settled into the weapon, a conceptual weight that made the air around it heavy.

When he was finished, he presented it to me. It was beautiful, a graceful recurve bow of silver-white wood, inscribed with glowing runes that seemed to shift and change, never resolving into a single pattern. It hummed with a power that felt both ancient and deeply personal to my sister.

[Final Word] (Mythic Bow)

A wave of profound relief washed over me. While a weapon could become a crutch for my sister, guaranteeing her safety and ensuring her quick growth is too good to give up, for now.

It was in that perfect, satisfied moment that Jeeves' voice cut through the silence of the workshop. It was calm, as always, but it held a new, chilling undertone that I had never heard before.

"Master Eren. Apologies for the intrusion," Jeeves said. "Silas' forward observers, positioned at the edge of the northern borders, have sent a priority-one alert."

My heart, which had been light with triumph, suddenly felt cold. "What is it, Jeeves?"

"They have a visual on an inbound craft," he replied. "I am patching their optical feed to your private display now."

A new holographic display shimmered into existence beside the bow. It showed a live feed from a high-altitude, camouflaged position, looking down on the desolate gray plains. A single, matte-black transport was streaking across the landscape, flying low and fast, its form knife-edged and aggressive. It hugged the ground, its engines leaving no heat trail, a predator slipping through the wilderness.

"The craft is of unknown class but confirmed Kyorian design," Jeeves continued, his voice a cold stream of data as the black shape grew larger on the display. "It is broadcasting a repeating, encrypted, high-level Vanguard callsign, while also jamming any identifying attempts."

"Its destination?" I asked, my voice low.

"Its trajectory is a direct, unwavering intercept course for Bastion's coordinates," Jeeves confirmed. "Based on its current velocity and flight path, I calculate its estimated time of arrival at the barrier wall is twelve hours."

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