Chapter 30 · The First Voice of War

The first rune tower turned red.

Across the black glass walls of the chamber, its reflection multiplied—one crimson spire becoming ten, ten becoming a hundred. The light pulsed through the veins of the Ashfall Core beneath Xia Lan’s boots. Each pulse sent a tremor through the floor and a thin metallic whine through her teeth.

Then another tower answered.

Then another.

Milo staggered away from the control dais, one hand pressed against the blood-soaked bandage around his ribs. His face had gone gray beneath the soot.

“No,” he whispered. “That isn’t a launch sequence. It’s a confirmation cascade.”

Xia Lan barely heard him.

The black box hovered above the core, its edges sharp enough to cut the air. Inside it, frozen in blue-white light, stood a girl with silver eyes and a slash of black hair across her cheek.

Xia Lan.

Not the woman standing in the chamber now. Younger. Straighter. Unafraid.

The recording’s image lifted one hand.

“Begin Continental Ignition,” the younger Xia Lan said. “Priority one: destroy all border arsenals. Priority two: sever military command networks. Priority three: prevent any surviving authority from reassembling.”

Her voice was calm. It was not the voice of a frightened prisoner.