Garrison Boston, December 2027

  Leo's transport and team looked exactly the same.

  His special transport semi looked exactly the same as it had during their transport missions, its gray exterior blending seamlessly with the hundreds of identical vehicles all getting ready in the staging area.

  "Leo!"

  Tom emerged from the cab at a full sprint, his broad shoulders cutting through the stream of personnel moving between vehicles.

  "You made it!" Tom grabbed Leo's hand and pulled him into a back-slapping embrace.

  "We heard you passed the threading test perfectly. That's incredible."

  Leo found himself grinning back.

  "Tom! What are you doing here? I thought you'd be assigned to a standard transport."

  "And trust your life to someone else?" Tom shook his head.

  "Jimbo pulled strings. Got the whole crew together."

  "The whole crew?"

  "Vivian, Matt, and the Yale Flying Aces team! Well, the ones who could make it." Tom steered Leo toward the truck.

  "Jimbo's the team leader for the major operation. You should see what he's put us through. The man's a perfectionist."

  Leo noticed the sword holstered at Tom's hip. A spiritual blade, modest but finely crafted, with formation work glinting along the scabbard. He had never seen Tom carry one before.

  "Since when do you carry a sword?"

  Tom's smile flickered. He touched the hilt.

  "It's an Exeter tradition. If we fall in battle, our sword gets brought back for homecoming. Or a replica, if the original is lost." He paused.

  "We never thought about commissioning one before. Seemed morbid, you know? But now that we're actually going to be fighting Nascent Souls directly..."

  He trailed off, then shrugged.

  "We wanted to leave something for our families. In case we don't make it back."

  Leo felt the weight of that settle over him.

  "Vivian was the first one to order hers," Tom said quietly. "She's channeled all that grief into something else now."

  "Revenge?"

  "Focus." Tom's expression was hard to read. "She doesn't talk about it."

  Then his usual easy smile returned.

  "But we made it work. While you were training at Princeton, we were running simulations and drills. Barely got certified in time, but we're cleared to drive the truck and tether for you. That's what teammates do."

  Leo felt something loosen in his chest. He wasn't the only one who had been grinding this past month. While he'd been dying daily to Lord Ironhorn and learning to do the impossible below the Frick Formation Laboratory, his team had been putting in their own work.

  It was good to be back.

  They rounded the corner of the truck, and Leo stopped.

  Vivian sat in the driver's seat with the door open, her legs dangling as she studied a tablet displaying what appeared to be trajectory calculations. Her glasses reflected scrolling data. A spiritual sword hung at her hip, its scabbard plain black with no ornamentation. She looked up at Leo's approach, offered a brief nod of acknowledgment, and returned to her work.

  "Vivian's our driver," Tom said. He paused, clearly struggling with something. "Look, I have to address the elephant in the room."

  Vivian's eyes flicked up from the tablet.

  "An Asian woman," Tom said. "Driving."

  "Tom." Vivian's voice carried a warning.

  "It's just..." Tom held up his hands. "Statistically speaking, this seems like a questionable command decision. Have they seen you parallel park? I have. There was crying involved."

  "That was one time."

  "Do you not see the fear in the eyes of the draftees whenever we pull up to the loading docks?"

  Vivian's expression had shifted from neutral to murderous.

  "I scored in the 99th percentile across all piloting metrics," Vivian said. "That includes Foundation Establishment drivers. My error rate is four times lower than baseline."

  "And yet," Tom said gravely, "there was that one loading dock."

  Vivian threw her tablet at his head. Tom caught it, laughing.

  "The driving technique for the tether is incredibly demanding," Tom said, returning the tablet. "That's actually why Vivian's here."

  "You and Vivian are going to be at two points on the tether." Tom pulled out his own tablet, displaying a diagram. "She has to maintain exactly the right amount of slack. Enough to give you unlimited free range of movement. Too much slack and the tether drags on the ground, or too little slack and..."

  Leo suddenly looked very worried. He never considered that the tether goes both ways. Someone had to hold the base of the tether for him to rely on it as a lifesaver.

  "It yanks me out of the lava chute," Leo finished.

  "Which is a death trap." Tom's voice lost its cheerfulness. "Vivian has to keep that tether at optimal length while you're threading a Nascent Soul's most devastating weapon."

  Leo looked at Vivian with new appreciation. He had reservations about trusting his life to someone else, but if it was Vivian, the choice made sense.

  "How long did you train for this?"

  "All month." Vivian's voice remained flat, factual. "Fifteen hours a day. I gave up all my merit opportunities and personal cultivation. We all did."

  Tom nodded. "Every hour we could. Training simulations, practice runs, emergency drills. We wanted to make sure we'd be ready."

  "Why?"

  Tom looked at him like he'd just asked if the sky was blue.

  "Because it's you, Leo. There's no one else we'd trust your life to."

  Leo didn't know what to say to that.

  "Vivian ended up being one of the top drivers in the country," Tom continued. "And she's been even better in live practice. The instructors couldn't believe her multitasking scores."

  A voice echoed from deeper in the staging area. Matt emerged from beneath the truck, grease staining his coveralls. A spiritual sword hung at his hip too, looking slightly out of place against his mechanic's outfit.

  "Leo! You have to see what they gave us." Matt wiped his hands on a rag that only spread the grease around. "This semi is incredible."

  "It looks like every other semi in the convoy."

  "Exactly!" Matt's enthusiasm remained undimmed. "That's the genius of it. Twenty thousand transports in this operation. Every single one carrying three modular fort containers for a total of eight guns. We're completely camouflaged."

  He led Leo around the truck, pointing out details invisible to the untrained eye.

  "Each transport has four sets of dual flak cannons spread across the containers. The fort containers themselves are designed to detach and function as defensive walls when we reach the target zone. Every semi is double-crewed. Sixteen people per vehicle."

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  "Three hundred twenty thousand personnel just for driving the transports." Matt nodded. "Multiply that by twenty-seven Catacombs. It's the largest coordinated military action in American history."

  He patted the truck's armored hull with obvious affection.

  "But ours is special. We're designated as a Flyer delivery platform. That means we get the good stuff."

  Matt opened the first container. Inside, Leo saw the tether mechanism, a complex arrangement of spiritual steel cables and formation-inscribed pulleys. Beside it sat a medical pod covered in monitoring runes. His armor hung on a rack nearby, the peak Tier 4 equipment gleaming with protective formations.

  "The tether device and your recovery systems," Matt explained. "Plus two flak cannons on top, standard configuration. Looks like every other container from the outside."

  The second section contained living quarters, compact but functional. Bunks, storage lockers, a small kitchen area, as well as a VR game pod and cultivation chamber. More flak cannons mounted above.

  "All of these are reinforced beyond standard specifications," Matt said. "The walls can take a direct Nascent Soul strike without breaching."

  Leo raised an eyebrow. "Direct strikes?"

  "Nascent Soul combat is unpredictable." Matt shrugged. "But I'd rather be in here than anywhere else on the battlefield. Safer than a Dreadnought, honestly. Dreadnoughts are targets. We're one truck among twenty thousand."

  The third and fourth sections looked identical to the fort containers on nearby vehicles.

  "Higher-end defensive equipment. We're going to be directly engaging Catacombs Nascent Souls, so they upgraded our gear. Formation shields that can resist T4 strikes. And a lot of high-end shells."

  "Because Vivian's going to be so focused on the tether driving, I'm going to be handling navigation." Matt explained. "Tom's on communications."

  Voices approached from the direction of the processing building.

  Leo turned to see Jimbo leading a group across the staging area. The Bulldog defensive line, Zhao, and even Dr. Reyes. Zhao gave Leo a small nod of acknowledgment.

  Dr. Reyes looked completely different in military fatigues instead of her usual lab coat. The captain's insignia on her collar made Leo do a double take. She had always been intimidating in the training facility, but now she looked downright terrifying.

  "Dr. Reyes?"

  "Captain Reyes, technically." She allowed herself a small smile. "I'm here to make sure that if you get injured, you'll be recovered in time for the first game against Florida. That's in a few weeks. Coach Williams would never forgive me if I let his starting Flyer miss the opener."

  Behind her came Shawn and Dee, the defensive captains of the Yale Bulldogs. They were leading five more members of the defensive team and practice squad, all of whom Leo recognized from training.

  "Shawn and Dee." Leo nodded to them both. "They've got you on the cannons?"

  "Someone's got to keep you from getting shot down," Dee said, pushing his glasses up. "Might as well be people who've done it before."

  "After sparring with you every week in practice," Shawn said, "we figured we're the people who know you best. Made us the obvious choice for covering your entry and exit."

  "I'm responsible maintenance and repair of the tether system," Zhao said. "I'll work on getting Matt the technical docs, but for now, everyone else is occupied."

  The last figure to emerge from the group made Leo's heart skip.

  Kim Yuna stood slightly apart from the others, wearing a Korean military uniform that somehow made her look even more striking than he remembered. Leo had forgotten just how pretty she was.

  "Miss Kim is here as a special military attaché," Jimbo explained. "Korea is one of our most important allies. They're observing this mission."

  Yuna gave Leo a small, shy smile.

  Leo turned away, feeling heat rise to his cheeks.

  Jimbo cleared his throat, clearly enjoying the moment.

  "This is all deliberate," he said, gesturing at the assembled team. "The truck needs to blend in. That means a mix of lower-tier cultivators. No Gold Cores. Any Lord scanning the convoy should see exactly what they expect to see. A standard transport with a standard crew."

  He looked around at the faces gathered by the truck.

  "But make no mistake. This is the most stacked team in the entire twenty-thousand-vehicle convoy. Every person here was selected because they're the absolute best at what they do."

  Jimbo's eyes found Vivian in the driver's seat.

  "You won't find a better driver under Gold Core in America. Leo, you focus on threading that domain. We'll handle everything else."

  "Thank you." He wanted to say more, but didn't know how.

  Jimbo just nodded.

  "Save the thanks for after we kill some Nascent Souls. We need to catch the convoy to Fort Allston. Let's move."

  ---

  Fort Allston

  The convoy stretched across the irradiated wasteland like a steel river.

  Twenty thousand semi-trucks, each pulling four container forts, moved in synchronized waves across the blasted terrain. One hundred sixty thousand flak cannons. The formation shifted and reformed as Leo watched from the cab.

  It seemed fitting the invasion point was at Fort Allston. The T3 spirit vein sat close to the subterranean exit point that had been used to ambush the Kenway-Allston convoy. The battle was fresh in Leo's mind, especially the casualties.

  Now they were going back. With one hundred sixty thousand guns instead of six thousand.

  Vivian kept her hands steady on the wheel, her eyes fixed on the holographic navigation overlay projected across the windshield. Matt called out coordinates from the passenger seat, tracking their position relative to the shifting formation. Tom relayed commands from Boston Command.

  Jimbo stood behind them, gripping a ceiling rail as the truck accelerated.

  "The spirit vein is the key," Jimbo explained. "If we take it, we control the subterranean exit point. We can launch direct invasions into the minor realms below, or just lob shells down the hole and annoy whoever's on the other side."

  The convoy surged forward, approaching the distant shimmer of the T3 vein. Leo could see it through the windshield, a column of spiritual energy rising from the earth like a pillar of pale fire.

  Then the warning sirens screamed.

  "Weeping Spires firing," Tom announced. "Boston Command tracking six shells. Four minutes to impact."

  The formation exploded outward. Twenty thousand trucks scattered in practiced patterns, maintaining their battle speed while creating maximum separation. Leo felt the g-forces press him into his seat as Vivian executed a sharp banking maneuver.

  "The shells are homing," Jimbo said, watching the holographic display. "They can course correct within a one-mile radius at the last moment. Even if we dodge perfectly, they operate as area denial."

  Leo watched the red dots on the display, each one representing a shell that could obliterate everything in its blast radius. The convoy flowed around the projected impact zones like water around stones, never slowing, never bunching up.

  "Battle speed is crucial," Jimbo continued. "We need to drag out and separate enemy Nascent Souls. If they blob together, we're finished. But if we can draw them out individually, the dreadnoughts and scorpions can pick them off."

  The shells detonated behind them, pillars of black fire erupting from the wasteland. The convoy had already moved beyond the blast radius.

  "The Obsidian cult," Leo said. "That's who we're facing?"

  Jimbo pulled up a hologram. The image showed a massive war machine, all angles and spiritual steel, bristling with formation arrays.

  "Weeping spires, the artillery of the Obsidian cult. Giant machines that can fire shells from nearly two hours away. Relics from the last war." He zoomed in on the targeting systems.

  "High command thinks drones and satellites have made long-range artillery mostly obsolete. The cult knows it too. They'll throw everything they haven't scrapped at us before it becomes completely useless."

  The convoy reformed as they retreated from the spirit vein, pulling back to Fort Allston's defensive perimeter. Another drill completed. Another day of practice.

  The next morning, the Catacombs responded.

  Leo watched from the cab as thirty Nascent Soul signatures emerged from the subterranean exit point, their spiritual pressure visible as distortions in the air. Weeping Spires deployed behind them, the artillery pieces unfolding like mechanical flowers.

  The convoy scattered again, running the dispersal drill for real this time.

  "We're testing their response time," Jimbo said. "Probing for weaknesses."

  The formation mixed and reformed, trucks switching positions in seemingly random patterns. Leo's transport moved from the center to the flank, then back to a different position in the center. Somewhere in the chaos, other special operations transports were doing the same thing, hiding their movements in the larger shuffle.

  "This is how we get you to critical positions," Jimbo explained. "No one can track a single truck when twenty thousand are all moving at once."

  The Nascent Souls retreated after an hour, apparently too annoyed to play with the convoy. The Weeping Spires folded back into dormancy.

  That afternoon, Jimbo pulled up a second hologram. This one showed something that looked like a boat, if boats were made of obsidian and covered in T4 formation arrays.

  "Obsidian Barges. Specially designed to counter American flak cannons."

  Leo studied the design. The thing was ugly. It was filled with brutal angles and reinforced plating.

  "Officially, America claims we won Kenway-Allston because the Divine Child was foolish enough to waste time on unimportant transports." Jimbo's voice carried a note of skepticism. "In reality, massed flak fire is terrifying. The cult knows it, and they've been testing strategies and counters."

  He highlighted the barge's armor configuration.

  "T4 spiritual materials. T4 formations. The barges can only fire indirect shots because they need full armor coverage, so they mount two flak guns on the upper sections."

  The hologram rotated, showing the barge's underside.

  "When facing heavy flak, they turn their bottoms to tank the hits. Nascent Souls can use them as mobile shields. If the flak pressure drops, the Nascent Soul can catch shells midair, seize control, and replenish the barge's ammunition."

  "They can also dive down and fuse with shrapnel on the ground," Jimbo continued. "Bulking up their bottoms to serve as stronger shields. Intel from expedition teams suggests they've stockpiled hundreds of these."

  Leo felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. "How do we counter that?"

  "One hundred sixty thousand flak cannons," Jimbo said. "Even firing T2 shells, that volume of fire is absolutely terrifying. The enemy will have to blob around their only good counters."

  He pulled up a new display showing the thirty five Nascent Soul Domains.

  "Only three of the thirty five Nascent Soul Domains are perfect counters to massed flak. The Mountain Domain of Eight Trigrams. The Southern Domain of Six Harmonies. The Great Gate of Seven Stars."

  Leo recognized the first one. Lord Ironhorn's domain. The one he had spent a month learning to thread.

  "There are others that work in specific circumstances," Jimbo continued. "The Yin of Two Polarities is effective but bad for blobbing. The Metal of Five Elements is resistant enough to handle something like the six thousand flak cannons at Kenway-Allston. But against one hundred sixty thousand cannons?"

  "They'll get popped fast." He mimed a couple pops with his hand.

  "So I'm responsible for killing all the Mountain Domain Lords?"

  "Command expects you to kill one. Its a near certainty you will get hit on the way out. The domain destabilizes when the Nascent Soul undergoes tribulation, and that flickering makes a clean extraction impossible." Jimbo's voice was matter-of-fact.

  "Command suggests you take the hit rather than try to exit safely after a successful strike."

  Leo chewed on that. The acknowledgment that his well being after a successful strike was considered optional by high command.

  One Nascent Soul. One Mountain Domain. One threading attempt with no safe exit.

  Leo looked out the windshield at the twenty thousand trucks running formation drills across the wasteland. At the distant shimmer of the T3 spirit vein they would soon be fighting to control. At the subterranean exit point that led to minor realms filled with enemies who had been preparing for this war since before he was born.

  This was the war his generation inherited.