The jagged, crystalline rift at the mouth of the Skyfield Forest had finally begun to settle, the shimmering silver edges of the Formation Array pulsing with a steady, restorative blue light under the influence of the academy’s Defense Matrix. For the hundreds of soldiers and metahumans gathered in the clearing, the sudden silence was more jarring than the roar of the Beast Tide. The air, previously a choking slurry of ozone and gore, was now cooling, carrying the crisp, nightly scent of pine and wet earth from the deep woods.
The crisis had been averted, but the cost was written in the mud. As the frantic cheers of the survivors began to ebb into a somber, rhythmic relief, the cleanup phase—the grim "Industry" of the Metahuman World—began.
Leo Shaw stood at the center of the battlefield
