The stillness of the mountain darkness was an illusion. Beyond the reinforced shutters of Lupus Haven, the world was dying bit by bit. But within, a new, concealed energy hummed—silent, deliberate, and imbued with a ghastly contradiction. Kael's unstated intentions had borne their first, hesitant fruits: Project Aegis stood on the brink of its field test.
The plan was not to win a war, but to wage a silent, surgical campaign of mercy. They would be ghosts of the plague machine, scalpels where the world of man was a clumsy, ineffective axe.
It was a tiny team, brutally winnowed out by Kael's new, unstated standards of loyalty. At its center was Orrin, his training as a hunter redirected to healing. He was accompanied by Lyra, to handle the tech, and Finn, to be their conscience and emotio
