The sky over the Northern Range didn’t darken with clouds; it darkened with the weight of pressurized steel. The first wave of Global Defense Force gunships crested the jagged granite peaks like a flight of prehistoric predators, their matte-black hulls absorbing the pale mountain light until they were nothing but jagged silhouettes against the bruised purple of the twilight. Then, with a synchronized snap that vibrated in my very teeth, the searchlights hit.
Dozens of high-intensity beams, each powerful enough to blind a man for an hour, cut through the swirling mountain fog. They swept over the valley floor, illuminating the thousands of refugees—human, wolf, and Reclaimed—who were huddled in the frozen shadow of the Spire’s great obsidian gates. The panic was instantaneous. A low, co
