Torran Fortress - Located in the heart of Arvenhalt, a city permanently shrouded in drifting fog, Torran Fortress is not just a military base it is humanity's final line of defense. The massive 80-story structure rises over the broken skyline, built on titanium foundations and shielded by an electromagnetic field. Behind its unyielding walls lie cutting-edge laboratories, a command center powered by advanced AI, and an experimental weapons division accessible only to the highest-ranking personnel. This is where the elite gather not for glory, but for survival.

Outside, the sky remains tainted with a lingering purplish-blue haze - plasma particles left behind from a battle that erupted two days ago. Inside, on the 37th floor of Torran Fortress, a long sterilized hallway of reinforced steel leads to a crucial nerve center: the Central Operations and Surveillance Room, or COS-Room.

With a soft hiss, the biometric steel door slides open. A girl stands in the doorway, her posture sharp, gaze unwavering. Her combat uniform is a muted shade of black, lined with silver detailing across the shoulders and wrists - markings of the Tactical Tech Unit. Young, but well-known for her efficiency in close-quarters combat and tactical foresight. No ranks decorate her chest, but among the personnel, her reputation echoes louder than most titles.

Strapped across her back is a rare weapon: a lightsaber blade, its hilt crafted from dark titanium, engraved with faint symbols. The blade is currently deactivated, yet its presence alone speaks of silent readiness.

Her eyes sweep the room. The COS-Room is anything but ordinary. Its walls pulse with faint blue light from embedded digital panels. Desks form a strategic radial pattern, each one glowing with tactical data, projected maps, energy grid readouts. At the center, a Main Command Table gleams under a ring of white light. Above it, a massive curved screen, twenty meters across, dominates the far wall.

On that screen: a surveillance still - blurred, unstable - captured hours ago by reconnaissance drones. Even through the distortion, the silhouette of The Vast looms unmistakable. Towering. Twisted. Its form resembles a living mountain, arched like tangled roots, with glimmering black tendrils and a single burning red eye hanging over the ruins like a celestial curse.

Red points blink across a virtual map tracking the creature's unpredictable movements over the past month. Below it, an AI-generated forecast reads: "PLASMA ANOMALY DETECTED - POTENTIAL EMERGENCE IN 12–78 HOURS. TIME UNCERTAIN. PROBABILITY: 68.2%"

In front of the screen stands a man known by name across every regiment in Arvenhalt: Captain Cael Draven.

Tall and broad-shouldered, his presence is a command in itself. He wears a sleek exo-armor rig equipped with internal cooling systems, and a VKT-X9 sidearm rests secured at his waist. His jet-black hair falls slightly unkempt over his brow, and his eyes - sharp, steel-gray - remain locked onto the data, reading it like a battlefield.

To his right stands scientist Dr. Kenaris Vale, pale-haired, eyes sunk behind translucent protective lenses. His lab coat bears the insignia of Division IX. On Cael's left, red-haired technician Lieutenant Lirea Korr operates the energy monitors with swift precision.

Another spike flashes on the screen. Draven's jaw tenses. He speaks, his voice low and grave: "It doesn't make sense. If its core temperature dropped that fast, it shouldn't regenerate this quickly."

Dr. Vale interacts with a holographic display, dragging a sequence of pulses and overlaying new scans of The Vast's bioform: "We believe it's absorbing the residual energy from our defense grid. The outer shell is acting like a conductor."

Cael narrows his eyes. His gaze shifts, briefly, toward the lower deck of the observation room where more military personnel begin gathering: "If this is true, every time we fire, we're feeding it."

Lieutenant Lirea Korr points to the energy fluctuation chart now glowing crimson: "Then we need to recalibrate the plasma coils. Otherwise, the next strike could power it up instead of slowing it down."

Cael doesn't answer. His gloved right hand slowly clenches into a fist. Not in anger - but in something colder, more patient. A tightly-wound control. A silent reckoning.

The specialist remains by the door, silent and watchful. Her eyes rest on Cael. She's only spoken with him twice in her entire service, and neither interaction had left much warmth. Efficient, distant - he treats everyone like another circuit in the machine. But there's something about the way he stands in this room, in front of that screen, that makes him seem like more than just a soldier. Almost like a fault line holding the entire fortress together.

The light from the holograms casts long, stretching shadows across the steel floor, turning Cael and the two standing beside him into silhouettes edged in blue. Faint vapor from the cooling systems dances around their boots.

The specialist says nothing. She doesn't need to. Her mere presence, unspoken and alert, is a reminder that all of them - soldiers, scientists, leaders - are counting down to something unseen. And The Vast, somewhere beyond the city's edge, cloaked in fog and silence... is only waiting for the moment to open its eye again.