The peace of the Sentinel Gate was shattered not by an invasion from another world, but by an uprising from the depths of our own. The "Rats" and the remnants of the Eclipse Wing had not vanished; they had simply moved into the vertical shadows of the Needle. They realized that whoever controlled the heights of the tree controlled the flow of trade between the 99 Earths.
Vertical Warfare
The attack began at midnight. It wasn't a frontal assault, but a coordinated strike across the vertical axis of the great tree. Saboteurs used high-frequency resonance blades to cut through the transport vines, sending supply platforms plummeting thousands of feet into the Jiangnan fog.
Xin was at the mid-canopy station, helping a group of healers from the 14th Earth, when the first explosion rocked
