The molten lamp post sagged between Ember's hands like taffy, droplets of liquid metal hissing as they struck her armor.
"But heat..." She grinned, her voice layered with the crackle of distant flames. "...changes every—THING ."
With a wrench of her wrists, she tore the post in two.
Karen barely had time to register the movement before Ember's left arm twitched—no, not just her arm.
The ember-orange tattoo coiled beneath her skin, slithering up her forearm like a living thing.
It crawled past her shoulder, over her collarbone, and finally up her neck, where it settled just below her jawline.
The ink pulsed once, twice, then hardened into something jagged—a glyph Karen didn't recognize but instinctively feared.
"Guess I shouldn't underestimate you," Ember mused, flexing her fingers.
The air around her shimmered, warping like asphalt under midday sun.
Karen didn't wait.
Her Conduit flared to life, the Rank 2—Kinetic Surge glyph igniting in her palm.
The alley shuddered as debris lifted around her—shattered concrete, twisted rebar, the carcass of a burnt-out drone—all of it hurtling toward Ember in a storm of jagged metal.
But Ember wasn't there.
She moved like smoke through fire, slipping between the projectiles with eerie precision.
Karen barely had time to pivot before Ember was inside her guard—close enough to smell the acrid tang of superheated metal on her breath.
A glint of motion—Ember's hand darting toward her left pocket.
The comm unit.
Karen twisted, but too late. Ember's fingers brushed the fabric—then dug in, not for the device, but for her.
The punch landed just below Karen's ribs.
Her augmented left arm snapped up in a desperate block, the servos whining under the impact.
It didn't matter.
The force hit like a freight train.
Karen's boots left the ground.
The world blurred—alley walls, smoke-choked sky, the distant scream of collapsing infrastructure—all of it streaking past as she flew backward.
One block over.
Her back slammed into a pile of garbage, the only solace being that it was soft enough to dampen the impact.
Dust rained down as she slumped forward, her left arm hanging limp, the augment's hydraulics spitting sparks.
Ember stood where Karen had been a heartbeat ago, examining the stolen comm unit with idle curiosity.
"Hm. Not even a corporate tech." She crushed it in her palm, the circuitry popping like kindling. "Cheap."
Karen spat blood, her vision swimming.
Karen's ribs screamed as she pushed herself up, her left arm hanging uselessly, the augment's hydraulics spitting fluid.
Not just speed.
Strength too.
That punch had felt like getting hit by a train—no human, no matter how augmented, should've been able to generate that kind of force.
The tattoos.
They had to be the source.
She didn't have time to theorize.
Her pistol was in her hand before her brain fully registered the motion.
Three shots cracked through the alley, the muzzle flashes painting the smoke in strobes of orange.
Ember didn't flinch.
She raised her gauntleted arms—not to block, but to guide.
Her body swayed with unnatural precision, each bullet passing so close the heat scorched the leather of her jacket.
A breath's width.
No more.
Then she moved.
Her boots left the ground in a burst of embers, launching her three meters up.
The fire escape above her warped from the heat, its metal groaning as she arced downward, fist aimed like a piston at Karen's chest.
Karen threw herself sideways.
The world upended in a spray of shattered asphalt.
Ember's fist cratered the road, the impact sending a shockwave through the ground that knocked Karen back onto her elbows.
The impact sent shockwaves through the street, sending chunks of pavement the size of skulls flying through the air.
A thick cloud of dust and debris erupted around them, reducing visibility to mere feet.
Karen barely had time to register the screech of tires before a sedan came barreling through the dust cloud, its driver either panicked or already dead at the wheel.
The vehicle careened past them with inches to spare before smashing through a storefront in an explosion of glass and twisted metal.
Karen's breath came in ragged gasps as she processed the devastation.
No.
This can't be real.
She'd fought alongside augs who could crumple steel doors like paper.
She'd seen rawcasters reduce concrete barriers to molten slag. But this—this defied all logic.
There was no telltale shimmer of active glyphwork in the air, no conduit in Ember's hands pulsing with energy.
Just those damned tattoos, writhing beneath the Scorcher's skin like serpents made of living flame, channeling power directly from whatever hellfire burned in her veins.
Ember rose from her crouch with casual grace, shaking fragments of asphalt from her gauntlets.
The ember-orange tattoos pulsed rhythmically along her neck, their glow dimming slightly after the massive exertion.
"You're slower than I expected," Ember mused, rolling her shoulders in a lazy stretch. "Maybe I shouldn't have taken this too seriously after all."
Karen's jaw clenched hard enough to make her teeth ache.
The taunt was obvious—meant to provoke, to distract.
But what unsettled her more was the casual arrogance in Ember's tone.
This wasn't an opponent fighting for survival; this was a predator playing with its food.
The dust settled around them in a fine gray powder, revealing the true extent of the destruction.
The crater where Ember's fist had connected spanned nearly two meters across, its edges glowing faintly from residual heat.
Cracks radiated outward through the asphalt like a spider's web, some running all the way to the collapsed storefront where the wrecked sedan still smoked.
Karen's left arm hung useless at her side, the augment's hydraulics leaking viscous fluid that sizzled when it hit the scorched pavement.
Every breath sent fresh waves of pain through her ribs where Ember's first strike had landed.
She'd taken hits from augmented enforcers before, but nothing that compared to the raw, unnatural power behind that punch.
As Ember took a step forward, the tattoos along her arms flared brighter again, their intricate patterns shifting and rearranging themselves beneath her skin.
This wasn't just augmentation.
This wasn't standard rawcasting.
Whatever power Ember wielded, it was something maybe far older, far more dangerous than anything Karen had encountered in this city's brutal underworld.
The realization struck Karen like a bullet—she was outmatched.
No tactics, no augments, no glyphwork she knew could counter whatever hellfire powered Ember's unnatural strength.
Then—
"Karen!"
Lucent's voice cut through the ringing in her ears.
She turned just enough to see him sprinting toward her, his coat whipping behind him like a battle standard.
Beside him, Mags moved in eerie silence—no war cry, no wasted motion—just the smooth, lethal arc of Nex's shotgun swinging into position.
The weapon roared.
Ember twisted mid-step, her body bending at impossible angles as the first shell screamed past her cheek.
Mags didn't pause—she fired again, again, each shot perfectly timed to herd Ember backward, forcing her toward the wreckage of the crashed sedan.
Relentless.
That was Mags.
No hesitation, no mercy.
Just the cold arithmetic of kill shots.
Ember's tattoos flared as she moved—not just dodging, but flowing between the bullets, her feet barely touching the ground.
Karen had seen rawcasters bend physics before, but this was different.
This wasn't glyphwork.
This was something alive.
Sel, slumped in the wrecked sedan, barely lifted her head.
The neurotoxin still dulled her reflexes, but her eyes tracked the fight with cold clarity.
She didn't speak.
Didn't need to.
Ember landed in a crouch, her tattoos flaring crimson as she grinned. "Are you perhaps Lucent?" she mused, rolling her scorched shoulder. "We've been looking for you for a while now."
Lucent didn't answer.
His fingers tightened around his Conduit, the device humming to life with a low, dangerous thrum.
His eyes flickered over Ember's form—not just assessing her stance, but studying the glowing tattoos.
There was something unnatural about them.
Not just ink.
Not just decoration.
They moved.
The markings along her arms and neck twisted subtly, forming shapes that almost resembled glyphwork—archaic symbols that Lucent had only ever seen in fragmented texts from the Old World.
But unlike standard casting, there was no conduit channeling the energy.
No visible aura of power.
The tattoos were the glyphs.
And they were active.
Ember tilted her head. "Hmm… Not answering?" Her smile turned razor-sharp. "Fine."
Then—she moved.
A blur of heat and motion, too fast for unaugmented eyes to follow.
Lucent barely had time to react.
His Conduit flared as he activated Rank 1—Static Shield, the translucent barrier materializing just as Ember's fist connected.
The impact sent shockwaves through the air.
The shield shattered.
Lucent staggered back, his boots skidding across broken pavement.
The force alone should have sent him flying—but the shield had absorbed the worst of it.
Barely.
Ember didn't let up.
She twisted mid-step, her tattoos flaring brighter as she pivoted into a second strike—
—only for Mags to intercept, Nex's shotgun roaring again.
Ember flowed around the bullets, her body bending in ways that defied physics.
One shot grazed her ribs, drawing a thin line of blood, but she didn't so much as flinch.
Lucent's mind raced.
The tattoos.
They're enhancing her.
But how?
No time to theorize.
Ember lunged again—
Mags was already moving.
Her fingers flicked across the shotgun's barrel, activating a Rank 2—Kinetic Spread glyph inches from the muzzle.
The air shimmered as the spell took hold, warping the trajectory of the next blast into a deadly, widening cone.
The shotgun roared.
Ember's eyes widened—just slightly—as the spray of pellets tore through the space between them.
She couldn't dodge.
Not perfectly.
Not this time.
Her gauntleted arms snapped up in a cross-block, shielding her torso in a shower of sparks as rounds ricocheted off the reinforced plating.
But the spread was too wide.
Too fast.
Two buckshot pellets punched into her left thigh.
Another grazed her calf.
Blood streaked the pavement as she staggered—
—and Lucent struck.
His Conduit flared, the modified Rank 2—Kinetic Push glyph igniting with a sharp crack.
The force hit Ember like a speeding truck, hurling her backward.
She crashed through a weakened storefront wall, bricks and shattered glass exploding outward in her wake.
For half a second, the night was still.
Then—
Violet fire.
The sky split open.
A searing white flash erupted on every direction of Sector 23, turning midnight into false daylight.
The shockwave hit like a physical wall, shattering every remaining window on the block.
Karen's augmented arm short-circuited from the electromagnetic pulse; Lucent's conduit flickered dangerously.
Karen's augmented arm sparked as she braced against the sedan. "What the hell—?!"
Through the ringing in their ears, a sound cut clearer than glass:
Laughter.
Ember emerged from the rubble, her tattoos pulsing in time with the distant firestorm.
She wiped blood from her mouth, grinning at the hellish glow on the horizon—Blaze's work.
"Right on schedule," she mused. Her scorched gauntlets flexed. "Pity we'll have to finish this later."
The tattoos along her spine ignited like fuse wire, their glow intensifying as the wounds in her thigh and calf began to steam.
Flesh rippled—the pellets embedded in her muscles were slowly, grotesquely pushed outward by regenerating tissue until they clattered to the pavement.
Fresh skin knitted itself closed in their wake, leaving only faint pink scars that faded to nothing within seconds.
Before the last bullet hit the ground, Ember was already moving.
Her legs coiled—then released with unnatural force, launching her backward into the night sky.
One moment she filled their vision, the next she was just a dwindling comet of embers arcing toward Sector 20.
And the Skybreaker's echo still trembled in their bones.
***
The acrid smell of burning rubber and ionized air hung thick around them as they regrouped.
Karen leaned heavily against the wrecked sedan, her damaged arm spitting intermittent sparks.
Inside the car, Sel slumped against the dashboard, her breathing labored but her eyes sharp—the neurotoxin's grip slowly loosening.
Lucent's fingers tightened around his Conduit. "Why the hell are the Scorchers hunting me?" His voice was low, but the edge in it could have cut steel.
He scanned the smoke-choked streets. "And where's Kai?"
Karen wiped soot from her brow, her prosthetic hand twitching erratically. "We got separated when Blaze hit the hideout."
A muscle jumped in her jaw. "That woman was Ember. Lieutenant of the Scorchers."
She met Lucent's gaze. "And I've got no damn clue why they want you, but they were willing to burn half the sector to get it."
Mags, who had been silently reloading Nex's shotgun, snapped the breach shut with a sharp click.
Her dark eyes flicked to the Skybreaker's fading glow on the horizon - a wordless question.
Sel stirred in the car, her voice slurred but clear. "Not...just hunting."
She tapped her temple weakly. "They wanted you alive. Ember had chances to kill. Didn't take them."
A beat of silence passed. Somewhere in the distance, a building collapsed with a thunderous groan.
Lucent's Conduit hummed as he activated a scanner glyph.
"Then we find Kai first," he said, voice like gravel. "Before the Scorchers realize he's connected to me."
A map of Sector 23 materialized in the air, one blinking red dot stubbornly holding position amidst the chaos.
"He's still in the sector," Lucent muttered, relief bleeding through his gravel-edged voice.
His thumb swiped to initiate the call, the ringing tone cutting through the distant screams and collapsing buildings.
Each unanswered second stretched like a tripwire.
Then—click.
"You still alive?" The words came out rougher than he intended.
A staticky exhale. "Yeah." Kai's voice was hoarse but coherent. No small miracle given the night's hellfire.
"Let's meet at the—"
Karen's prosthetic hand clamped on his shoulder. "Your hideout's gone." Her voice was all battlefield calm, the kind that warned of landmines. "Blaze hit it first. Probably still burning."
The Conduit's glow illuminated the way Lucent's jaw went stone-stiff.
That hideout had taken every credit he had to rig—every sensor, every failsafe, every stolen corporate gadget painstakingly installed.
Now just more kindling for the Scorchers' pyre.
Karen didn't apologize. She jerked her chin toward the Talon base's direction. "We've got space. If you can stomach Talon hospitality."
The scanner glyph flickered as another building collapsed three blocks east.
"...Fine." Lucent wrenched open the sedan's dented door, its hinges screaming protest.
The engine coughed to life—miraculously functional beneath the shattered windshield and warped chassis.
He raised the Conduit again. "Tell me where you are."
The command left no room for debate, but the white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.
***
The sedan crawled through Sector 23's corpse like a wounded animal.
Lucent wrenched the steering wheel left, then right, the vehicle's bent frame groaning as they detoured around yet another collapsed overpass.
Chunks of reinforced concrete littered the road, some still glowing from residual heat.
The fifth U-turn in fifteen minutes.
Lucent's knuckles whitened on the wheel.
"I was gone for few hours." His voice was dangerously calm, the kind of calm that came before a storm. "What the actual hell happened here?"
Karen stared out at the skeletal remains of a residential block, its hollow windows still vomiting smoke.
"Urban warzone would be an understatement." Her damaged prosthetic fingers tapped a staccato rhythm against the doorframe.
Mags said nothing.
Her dark eyes tracked the ruins with clinical precision, noting kill zones, ambush points, the patterns in the destruction.
Nex had taught her to read battlefields like books.
This one screamed chaotic annihilation.
Sel, now mostly clear-headed, leaned forward between the front seats.
"Nex put a shotgun blast through Blaze's ribs five years ago." Her breath fogged the cracked windshield. "So why's the bastard breathing again? And why now?"
The car fell silent except for the ping of hot debris hitting the undercarriage.
Karen finally exhaled.
"If this was planned... Nex's death was an accident. Wrong place, wrong time." The words tasted like ash.
Mags' hand drifted to the steel talon sewn into her sleeve.
"Revenge." Single word, loaded like a gun.
"Doesn't track." Karen gestured at Lucent. "They want him specifically. This is a retrieval, not a slaughter."
The sedan lurched over a fallen beam, its headlights finally illuminating their destination—or what remained of it.
The department store's facade had been peeled away like rotten fruit, exposing its steel ribs.
Half the structure had slumped into the adjacent street, creating a makeshift ramp of shattered concrete and twisted rebar.
Lucent killed the engine.
For a long moment, no one moved.
The building didn't just look damaged—it looked violated.
Something had torn through it with singular purpose.
The scanner glyph still pulsed on his Conduit—Kai's signal came from inside that wreck.
No one spoke.
The car's dying engine ticked like a countdown.
Then—
A silhouette staggered from the ruins, backlit by embers.
Too tall to be Kai.
Vey's augments whined as he dragged Cale's limp form toward them, his melted face twisted into something that might've been a smile. "Took you long enough."
Behind them, the department store exhaled a final plume of sparks into the night sky.
The skeletal remains of its entrance yawned wide, coughing up one last survivor.
Lucent leaned out the driver's window. "Where's Kai?"
Vey jerked a thumb over his shoulder without turning.
"Inside. Catching his breath after playing hero." As if summoned, Kai emerged from the shadows, his Conduit's cracked screen the only light in the ruins.
He moved stiffly, favoring his left side, but his eyes were alert.
Lucent get out of the sedan. "You intact?"
Kai gave a weak thumbs-up. "Just need a week-long nap."
Vey did a quick headcount, his augmented eye whirring faintly as he tallied: Lucent standing beside Kai, Karen in the passenger seat with Sel slumped against her, Mags and her shotgun taking up half the backseat, Cale now propped against the sedan's hood, and himself.
His gaze swung back to the battered vehicle, its rear bumper barely clinging on.
Vey rapped his knuckles against the roof, the metallic ping echoing dully. "This junkheap won't fit all of us unless we start stacking people like firewood."
Sel's head snapped up from where she'd been slumped against Karen.
"The fuck you just say about my car?" Her voice was still slurry from neurotoxin residue, but the venom came through clear as broken glass.
Vey blinked his eyes before slowly dragging a finger across the sedan's dented hood.
It came away with dust. "Just stating facts, princess. Your chariot's seen better days."
The trunk latch chose that moment to finally give up, dropping open with a pathetic clunk.
A rustle of movement from above.
Pen dropped from a nearby fire escape, landing in a crouch that sent up a small cloud of ash.
She straightened, brushing debris off her sleeves. "That's a tough problem."
Vey groaned.
"Add another to the list." He eyed Pen's monofilament wires. "Unless you plan on zip-lining back to base."
Karen popped the trunk open with a creak of protesting metal.
"Two in front, three in back, one in the trunk." She looked at Vey. "You're the heaviest. Trunk's yours."
Pen smirked. "Seatbelt optional."
Kai rubbed his temples. "I'll walk."