The dim glow of flickering lumen-strips cast long shadows across the cramped defense control alcove, painting Cassias Marel’s gaunt features in pallid light. His dark, grey-streaked hair was cropped close to the scalp, sweat beading at his temples as his calloused fingers danced across the turret’s diagnostics console. The rhythmic clatter of keys and the low hum of dormant weapon systems filled the silence—routine maintenance, nothing more.

Then the screen flickered.

A string of cipher-locked clearance codes scrolled past, crimson runes blinking in the corner of the display. Alpha-IX-Pri. A security tier Cassias had never seen before, not in eighteen years of service. His grey eyes narrowed, fingers freezing mid-motion. The turret’s logs showed movement—unauthorized, untracked—ghostly signatures flitting through the fortress’s blind spots, slipping past sentry guns and auspex sweeps as if they weren’t even there.

His pulse spiked. Something was inside.

The console chimed softly, a fresh alert pulsing. More breaches. More phantom traces. No alarms. No lockdowns. The fortress’s own defenses were being bypassed with surgical precision, the way he might have done it—if he’d had the clearance. If he’d been suicidal.

Cassias exhaled sharply through his nose, jaw tightening. His subdermal plating flexed faintly along his forearms as he reached for the vox-bead at his collar.

Then—hiss.

The blast door behind him slid open, and Cassias' blood turned to ice.

That door was keyed to one access code. One. Only the Warsmith should have been able to enter.

Slowly, Cassias turned.