The journey back toward the Gate of Thorns was a frantic, silent blur of emerald shadows and cold, focused fury. We did not move like a desperate exodus of refugees this time; we moved like a precision scalpel cutting through the heart of the forest. Dr. Aris Thorne, her broken body stabilized by a potent mixture of ancient wolf-blood and enchanted forest herbs, rode on the broad back of a massive Ancient wolf. Her fingers flew across the cracked screen of a salvaged tactical tablet as she tracked the satellite’s lethal progress across the digital map.
"We have less than six hours left!" she shouted over the whistling wind and the thundering of paws. "The Aegis-9 system is already beginning its final planetary alignment. If we do not hit that ground-based uplink by midnight, the frequenc
