The compound does not sleep.
Neither do I.
By dawn, the war room is still lit, still buzzing with analysis and repositioning. The Covenant retreat left behind more than cracked earth and residual magic.
It left intent.
Morgan stands over the holographic projection of the region surrounding the compound. Five red pulses blink in a slow rhythm.
“Secondary anchors are stable,” she says. “They’re not active yet, but they’re primed. Each one is feeding faint energy into a larger unseen pattern.”
“Which means what?” Kade asks.
“It means Eclipse was phase one.” Morgan glances at me. “They weren’t attempting ascension. They were mapping response variables.”
“They stress-tested divine blood under eclipse pressure,” Thorne translates quietly. “Measured reaction strength, anchoring capacity,
