The first Panzerreiter came through the Ironford main gate like a moving bunker, its mass blotting out the light behind it. The gate’s twisted metal groaned as the machine forced its way through, piston-legs slamming into the street hard enough to fracture the pavement. A second followed. Then a third.

  Behind them, the Scherbe poured in.

  They didn’t charge mindlessly. They deployed.

  Explosions rippled through the avenue as Schreitpanzer artillery units embedded in the Panzerreiters’ shoulders fired, shells slamming into UF Wardens mid-stride. One Warden vanished in a bloom of fire, its pilot screaming over the comms before static swallowed him whole. Another was hurled sideways, armor peeling open as it crashed through a storefront.

  Callen’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and controlled. “ALL UNITS, DO NOT BUNCH UP!”

  Callen’s Warden surged forward, hooks firing into the side of a reinforced office block. He reeled himself in, landed hard, and immediately launched again, blade flashing. A Scherbe lost its head mid-step, the body collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut. Callen didn’t slow—he fired, rolled, vanished behind concrete as return fire chewed the air where he’d been a second earlier.

  “BUILDINGS ARE YOUR FRIENDS,” Callen barked. “THEY ARE COVER. DON'T RELY ON THE WARDEN'S ARMOR.”

  Soren was already moving.

  His Warden scaled the side of a residential tower in three bounding steps, magnetic grips biting into steel and concrete. He vaulted onto the rooftop, dropped to one knee, and deployed his rifle. The weapon hummed as electromagnetic coils charged.

  THOOM.

  The round punched through three Scherbe in a line, detonating against a Panzerreiter’s frontal plating in a storm of sparks and molten metal. Soren adjusted calmly, firing again, sweeping the street with disciplined bursts.

  Below, the Schreitpanzer advanced in formation.

  Scherbe formed wedges around the Panzerreiters, using their bulk as mobile cover. When UF Wardens fired, the Panzerreiters absorbed the worst of it—then the Scherbe fanned out, flanking, suppressing, forcing the UF back step by step. Orders rang out from Schreitpanzer units in clipped, mechanical cadence, perfectly timed with their movements.

  Rhys felt his chest tighten.

  He, Amélia, and Elias ducked behind a half-collapsed transit hub as plasma rounds tore chunks out of the street. Elias’s hands were shaking on the controls.

  Rhys’s breath came fast. Too fast.

  Don’t freeze.

  He glanced down at his reflection in the cracked glass of the Warden’s HUD—the white UF uniform, scuffed already, stained with dust and ash.

  You wore this to prove something.

  His hands steadied.

  “I’m not a coward,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone else. “Not anymore.”

  He opened the squad channel. “Hey—hey, look at me. We move together, okay? Like training. Just louder.”

  Amélia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Elias nodded once, jaw clenched.

  “CADETS!” Callen’s voice roared back in. “MOVE OUT. SUPPORT SQUADS THREE AND FOUR. DO NOT ENGAGE PanzerreiterS DIRECTLY.”

  Rhys swallowed, then straightened.

  “NOW!” Callen shouted.

  They broke from cover, sprinting low as the battle raged around them—Wardens leaping, buildings burning, Panzerreiters advancing like gods of war.

  Amélia was already airborne.

  Her Warden launched off the edge of a rooftop like a blade thrown by the city itself, engine screaming as the grapple system fired again and again—thunk, thunk, thunk—steel hooks biting into concrete, glass, rebar. She didn’t slow. She flowed. Each pull was perfectly timed, each release instinctive, her Warden arcing between buildings in long, violent curves.

  She hit a Scherbe mid-leap.

  The impact folded the machine inward as her Warden’s blade carved through its torso, sparks and black fluid exploding outward. She didn’t even look back. Another grapple fired, yanking her upward as she spun, slicing a second Scherbe clean across the neck while upside down. To the others, it looked impossible—reckless.

  To Amélia, it was rhythm.

  Below her, Rhys followed.

  Less graceful. More desperate.

  His Warden stumbled as he launched after her, boots scraping the edge of a rooftop before the grapples caught. The sudden pull yanked him forward, nearly tearing the controls from his hands.

  “Shit—!” Rhys yelled as he swung wide, barely clearing a communications tower.

  Two weeks.

  That’s all he had.

  But two weeks was enough to hold on.

  A Scherbe surged into view, its upper turret swiveling toward him. Rhys didn’t think—he fired his hook straight into its shoulder plating and reeled in hard.

  The Scherbe reacted instantly.

  Its mass shifted, legs digging in, and instead of being pulled to it, Rhys was redirected. His Warden whipped sideways—

  “WAIT—!” Rhys shouted—

  —and slammed into the side of a tower.

  The impact rattled his teeth. The Warden’s magnetic suspension screamed, compressing to its limit as the force dispersed through the structure instead of snapping him in half. Concrete shattered around him, dust filling the air.

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  Rhys coughed, heart pounding.

  Move.

  The Scherbe turned, turret glowing.

  Rhys raised his arm and fired.

  The shot took the turret clean off, the weapon spiraling away in flames. Before the machine could compensate, Rhys pushed his thrusters, dove straight down—

  —and drove his Warden’s blade through its core.

  The Scherbe collapsed beneath him, black fluid spilling across the street like oil.

  Silence.

  Rhys stood there, frozen, looking down at the ruined machine.

  His first service kill.

  “I—I got one!” he shouted into the intercom, breathless, almost laughing. “I actually—”

  “Good,” Soren cut in immediately, voice calm but urgent. “Don’t admire it. Look up.”

  Rhys did.

  His stomach dropped.

  Down the avenue, an entire formation of Scherbe advanced in tight coordination, Panzerreiters looming behind them like walking fortresses. Explosions rippled as Panzerreiter cannons cleared wreckage, making space for the next push. The field was being cleaned.

  Before Rhys could move, warning tones screamed in his cockpit.

  Multiple target locks.

  “RHYS, MOVE!” Soren barked.

  Rhys reacted on instinct.

  He fired straight up.

  The grapple latched onto the side of a skyscraper, yanking him skyward as plasma fire tore through the air beneath him. He reeled in fast, boots slamming against the wall as he climbed vertically, then swung sideways—

  —and landed hard behind Soren’s Warden, clinging to the building at a ninety-degree angle.

  From there, the battlefield stretched out below them in fire and steel.

  Rhys pressed himself against the structure, chest heaving.

  Rhys caught sight of her again.

  Amélia streaked across the battlefield like a living trajectory line, her Warden reeling in, releasing, then firing again in a seamless loop. She hit the side of a building, ran along it, then launched herself outward, blade first. A Scherbe didn’t even have time to turn—its upper half split apart as she passed through it, sparks and black fluid scattering in her wake.

  She didn’t stop.

  Another grapple snapped forward, pulling her low across the street. She vaulted over a burning transport, landed on a Panzerreiter’s shoulder for half a second, then jumped, slicing through two Scherbe mid-air before they could finish locking onto her.

  Rhys stared.

  UF cadets—cadets—were following her lead now. Grapples fired in every direction, Wardens darting between buildings, collapsing on isolated Scherbe in coordinated bursts. The tide wasn’t turning, but it was slowing. They were buying space. Time.

  “Holy shit…” Rhys muttered. “She’s—she’s built for this.”

  Metal scraped behind him.

  Elias landed on the vertical wall beside him, his Warden locking magnetically into place with a heavy thrum. He glanced toward the chaos, eyes tracking Amélia as she carved another path through the enemy.

  “Yeah,” Elias said calmly. “She was made for mech combat.”

  Rhys nodded, still watching. “It’s like she doesn’t hesitate. Not once.”

  “Because she already decided she’d survive,” Elias replied.

  Soren’s voice cut in over comms. “You two—move. Civilians are breaking west. Protect them.”

  Rhys didn’t need to be told twice.

  He spotted them immediately—a cluster of civilians sprinting across an open street, smoke and debris raining down around them. Ahead of them, Vorl?ufers emerged from the haze, black-veined bodies moving too fast, too wrong.

  “No, no—” Rhys breathed.

  He launched.

  The Warden tore free from the wall, thrusters flaring as Rhys angled straight down. He came down like a hammer, crushing the first Vorl?ufer beneath his weight, the impact splattering black fluid across the pavement.

  The others turned on him instantly.

  One lunged, blade forming from its arm. Rhys barely got his sword up in time. The impact rattled his arms as he staggered back, boots skidding through debris.

  “Get back!” he yelled at the civilians. “RUN!”

  The Vorl?ufer pressed him, strikes coming fast—too fast. Rhys blocked one, ducked another, then shoved forward, driving his blade through its chest. It screeched, collapsing in on itself.

  Another came from the side.

  Rhys twisted, firing his grapple into its shoulder and yanking it off balance. He reeled it in and slashed upward, tearing it apart as it flew past him.

  A shadow loomed.

  Elias dropped in front of him, landing between Rhys and a charging Scherbe. His Warden moved with sharp, deliberate precision—he ducked under the Scherbe’s arm, drove his blade into a joint, then pivoted and ripped the machine apart in a spray of sparks.

  “Focus on the Vorl?ufers,” Elias said coolly. “I’ve got the metal.”

  Rhys nodded, heart pounding.

  Another Vorl?ufer leapt from a wrecked vehicle, landing hard and sprinting straight at the fleeing civilians. Rhys pushed his thrusters and intercepted it mid-charge, blades clashing in a shower of sparks. The thing snarled, strength far beyond human, but Rhys held his ground, teeth clenched as he forced it back step by step.

  I’m not running, he told himself. Not this time.

  He broke its guard and drove his sword through its skull.

  Black fluid spilled onto the street.

  Behind him, Elias finished off the Scherbe with a clean decapitation, then turned just in time to fire on another advancing unit. The two of them stood back to back for a moment, surrounded by smoke, wreckage, and the distant thunder of Panzerreiters.

  The civilians disappeared down an alley, alive.

  Rhys exhaled shakily.

  “We… we did it,” he said.

  “Theres still more of them!” Elias replied.

  Beside Rhys and Elias, two figures dropped into the battlefield with a practiced ease. Inside their cockpits, one was tall, lean, and calm—Tavian—and the other, Jax, shorter, grinning like he already knew the chaos around them was a playground.

  “Not bad guys,” Tavian said, voice steady as he swung his Warden’s blade through a Scherbe, slicing clean through its jointed armor.

  “Pretty flashy,” Jax added, spinning his Warden’s grapple to vault over a flaming wreck and land atop a smoking vehicle. “But don’t forget to eat dinner before you play with big toys, alright?” He chuckled, the sound almost surreal against the screams and crashes around them.

  Rhys didn't understand the joke. Elias smirked but stayed focused, already pivoting to intercept another Scherbe—a pale, skeletal mech with elongated limbs and blacked-out optical sensors.

  Tavian’s tone turned practical. “Civilians are mostly evacuated. Vorl?ufers down. We’re left with the swarm… and those three Panzerreiters.” He gestured to the horizon. Three towering machines loomed through the smoke, their legs pounding the cracked pavement like thunderclaps.

  Rhys’s gaze swept over the city. The streets were a hellscape: burned-out cars, collapsed roofs, jagged steel beams. Black fluid pooled around broken bodies of Vorl?ufers, Scherbe, and even some Wardens. Fires licked at the ruins, sending smoke curling into the gray sky. The smell of charred metal and burnt Magitium dust burned his nostrils.

  Jax grinned and revved his Warden’s thrusters. “Ready to slice some metal monsters? Let’s go!”

  Without waiting, Tavian and Jax surged forward, their Wardens leaping over debris, blades flashing. Rhys and Elias followed, instinctively moving in rhythm with their new allies.

  Rhys’s Warden lunged at the nearest Scherbe—its claws scraping, sparks flying as they met his blade. He parried and spun, then dove to the side as another came at him from behind.

  Thunk!

  A stray electromagnetic shell ricocheted from another Scherbe’s gun, hitting his Warden’s back-left leg. The HUD blinked in red: Back-left leg compromised. Mobility reduced.

  “Crap!” Rhys shouted, trying to compensate with his other legs. The Warden responded, but slower. Every maneuver was heavier, every turn more sluggish.

  Tavian’s voice came through his intercom, calm but firm: “Be careful! Don’t take unnecessary risks!”

  “I’m fine!” Rhys gritted out, though his voice trembled. He slammed his Warden’s blades into a Scherbe charging his left, splitting its armor as sparks and black ooze sprayed into the street.

  Jax zoomed past him, his Warden flipping over a ruined roof to land behind another group of Scherbe. “Move faster, rookies! Or get cut in half!” he shouted, laughing, though the spray of black fluid and molten metal behind him made the laughter sound insane.

  Elias intercepted a Scherbe leaping from a broken wall, blade flashing. He spun, cutting it clean in half before ducking under its partner’s swinging claws.

  The four Wardens—Rhys, Elias, Tavian, and Jax—became a tight formation. They flowed through the twisted streets, slashing, reeling, grappling over debris. Rhys fought to keep pace, carefully adjusting the damaged leg to maintain balance. Sparks flew with every impact, and his Warden groaned under the strain.

  “Keep moving!” Tavian shouted. “Those Panzerreiters aren’t waiting!”

  Rhys’s grip tightened. His heart pounded, sweat running down his temples despite the armor’s cooling system. He dove at a Scherbe, slashing vertically, black fluid spilling in a sickening arc. As he lifted, he saw the first Panzerreiter looming ahead, shielding several smaller units with its massive armored body.

  With Tavian and Jax ahead, Elias beside him, Rhys surged forward, reeling in and slicing, taking out one Scherbe after another. Each movement felt heavier now, but the teamwork gave him confidence—together, they could push through.