Day 82-83 Post-Impact
The Sovereign's first wave hit like a tidal surge of corruption.
Three hundred converted crashed against Wei Ming's barrier in perfect synchronization, their gray forms pressing against the translucent blue energy. The shield flickered, held, but Sarnav could see the strain on Wei Ming's face as he poured power into maintaining it.
"They're testing the barrier," Serena reported, her probability sense reaching out. "Looking for weak points. The main assault will come from the southeast in approximately four minutes."
"How do you know?" Zara asked, her weapons already summoned. Twin combat rifles, military-grade, loaded with essence-enhanced rounds.
"Because that's where the probability of barrier failure is highest." Serena's eyes were distant, calculating. "My brother's been maintaining this field for weeks. He's strongest at the north face, weakest where he can't see directly. The Sovereign knows this."
"Then we reinforce the southeast." Sarnav turned to his assembled forces. Ishani led a squad of awakened fighters, her light constructs already forming defensive barriers. Jade monitored communications from a protected position. And scattered among the defenders, Wei Ming's people waited with the desperate determination of survivors who had nowhere left to run.
"On my signal," he said. "We let them through in a controlled breach. Funnel them into the kill zone."
"Let them through?" One of Wei Ming's lieutenants looked horrified. "Sir, if the barrier falls..."
"It won't fall. It will open." Sarnav met the man's eyes. "Trust me."
The lieutenant looked to Wei Ming, who nodded once. "Do what he says. He's fought these things before."
The second wave hit harder. The converted weren't just pressing now; they were clawing, biting, throwing themselves against the barrier with mindless fury. Behind them, human soldiers in New Order tactical gear advanced with actual weapons, laying down covering fire that sparked against the shield.
"Barrier at 73%," Wei Ming called out, sweat dripping down his face. "I can hold for maybe ten more minutes at this rate."
"You won't need to." Sarnav watched the Sovereign through the barrier. The enemy leader stood back from the front lines, observing with the patience of someone who had already won. Dark energy swirled around him, the same corruption that animated his converted forces but concentrated, refined, terrifying.
He was S-rank. Maybe higher. The most powerful enemy Sarnav had faced since the sealed entity in the rift.
"Serena. The breach point?"
"Southeast corner. In ninety seconds, the barrier will thin enough for penetration. If we open it first, we control the flow."
"Wei Ming, on my mark, drop the southeast section for exactly three seconds."
"Three seconds?" The barrier specialist's voice cracked. "That's not enough time to..."
"It's enough. Trust me."
The converted surged. The New Order soldiers advanced. And the Sovereign finally moved, walking toward the barrier with the casual confidence of absolute power.
"Now."
Wei Ming dropped the southeast section.
The converted poured through the gap like water through a broken dam. But they didn't find an open campus. They found Ishani.
Her light manipulation erupted in a blinding cascade, flash after flash that seared converted flesh and left the creatures stumbling blind. Behind her, the awakened fighters opened fire with everything they had. Bodies fell. Gray mist rose from dissolving corpses. The gap became a killing field.
Three seconds. Then the barrier snapped back into place, cutting off the flow. Fifty converted had made it through. Forty were already dead or dying.
"Again," Sarnav ordered. "Northwest this time. Serena?"
"Seventeen seconds until optimal breach point."
They repeated the process. Drop the barrier, funnel the enemy, annihilate them in prepared kill zones. It was brutal, efficient, and exactly the kind of tactical warfare that made Harmony's small force effective against larger numbers.
But the Sovereign was learning.
"He's adapting," Jade reported through the network. "The converted are holding back from the breach points. He's concentrating them for a single massive push."
"Where?"
"Everywhere. He's going to hit the entire barrier at once."
Sarnav felt the enemy's power surge. The Sovereign raised both hands, dark energy coalescing into something vast and terrible. The converted began to glow with the same corruption, their individual strength multiplying as their leader poured his essence into them.
"Wei Ming, full power to the barrier. Everything you have."
"I can't maintain that for long..."
"You won't need to. Just hold."
The assault came like a hammer blow from a god. Three hundred converted hit the barrier simultaneously, their combined strength amplified by the Sovereign's power. The blue shimmer turned white with strain. Cracks appeared in the energy field.
Wei Ming screamed.
The barrier shattered.
"Defensive positions!" Sarnav was already moving, essence flooding his body as he activated every ability at his disposal. Through the network, he felt his wives respond. Ishani's light blazed. Serena's probability manipulation tilted the odds. Jade's digital interference disrupted enemy communications.
And Zara, who wasn't part of the network, fought with the precision of someone who had trained for exactly this moment.
Her summoned weapons cycled through configurations faster than the eye could follow. Rifle to shotgun to blade to rifle again, each transformation perfectly suited to the enemy in front of her. She moved like a soldier, like a weapon herself, cutting through converted with mechanical efficiency.
But she stayed close to Sarnav. Close enough to watch his back. Close enough to see the Sovereign break through the defensive line and come straight for him.
"Sarnav Vale." The Sovereign's voice carried across the battlefield, cutting through the chaos of combat. "The one who killed my Herald. I've been wanting to meet you."
Up close, the enemy leader was worse than Sarnav had imagined. The corruption didn't just animate him; it had become him. His eyes were voids of swirling darkness. His skin rippled with patterns that hurt to look at. Power radiated from him in waves that made the air taste like ash.
"You've caused me considerable trouble," the Sovereign continued, walking through the battle as if it didn't exist. Converted and defenders alike parted around him. "The Herald was useful. Difficult to replace."
"Then you shouldn't have sent him against us."
"Perhaps." The Sovereign smiled, and his teeth were black. "But I've learned from that mistake. This time, I came myself."
He attacked without warning.
The dark energy struck like a physical blow, slamming into Sarnav with force that would have killed anyone below A-rank. He caught it on crossed arms, essence flaring as he absorbed the impact, but the sheer power drove him back. His feet carved furrows in the ground. His bones creaked with the strain.
The second strike came before he could recover. And the third. And the fourth. The Sovereign wasn't fighting; he was demolishing, using overwhelming power to break through any defense.
"Impressive." The Sovereign advanced with each attack, closing the distance. "A-rank, yes? Strong for your age. Strong for this region. But you're not strong enough."
Through the network, Sarnav felt his wives' fear. They were too far away, too engaged with their own fights. Ishani was holding a breach point. Jade was protecting the command center. Serena was with her brother, keeping him alive as he tried to reform the barrier.
He was alone against an S-rank enemy.
The next strike knocked his guard aside. The one after that drove the air from his lungs. He felt ribs crack, tasted blood, saw the killing blow coming and knew he couldn't stop it.
"Goodbye, Sarnav Vale."
The dark energy spike formed in the Sovereign's hand, aimed at Sarnav's heart. There was no time to dodge. No time to block. No time for anything except the certain knowledge of death.
Then Zara was there.
She appeared between them with impossible speed, her summoned weapon already transforming into something new. Not a rifle. Not a blade. A shield, massive and glowing with power Sarnav had never seen her manifest before.
The dark spike struck the shield.
The impact threw her backward, the shield shattering into fragments of light. She hit the ground hard, rolled, came up bloody but alive. And in the fraction of a second she'd bought him, Sarnav recovered enough to strike back.
His counter caught the Sovereign off-guard. Soul Transformation essence, concentrated into a single devastating blow, slammed into the enemy's chest. The dark figure staggered. Black blood sprayed from a wound that should have been instantly fatal.
But the Sovereign didn't fall.
"Interesting." He looked down at the hole in his chest, then up at Sarnav with something like respect. "Very interesting. That actually hurt."
"Then let me do it again."
They clashed in earnest. S-rank against A-rank, corruption against cultivation, the future of Singapore decided in a brutal exchange of power. Sarnav was faster, more versatile, blurring around the Sovereign's devastating strikes, using Harmony Shields to deflect blows he couldn't dodge, Soul Crushes to punish every opening. But the enemy was stronger, shrugging off wounds that would have killed anyone else.
And Zara, injured but refusing to stay down, provided support fire that forced the Sovereign to defend on multiple fronts.
"Serena!" Sarnav called through the network. "I need probability!"
Working on it. The Sovereign's power creates interference. I can see possible futures, but they're... corrupted.
"Give me something!"
In twelve seconds, he'll overextend on his left side. That's your opening.
Twelve seconds. An eternity in a fight like this.
The Sovereign's next attack opened a gash across Sarnav's shoulder. The one after that nearly took his head off. He was losing, slowly but certainly, the gap in their power too great to overcome through skill alone.
Eleven seconds.
Ten.
Nine.
Zara's rifle barked, the shot catching the Sovereign in the back of the knee. He stumbled, turned to eliminate the annoyance, and Sarnav surged in close with blinding speed to drive another Soul Crush into the wound he'd already made.
The Sovereign roared. Dark energy exploded outward in all directions.
Eight seconds.
Seven.
Sarnav caught Zara as the blast threw her toward him, shielding her body with his own. The corruption burned where it touched, leaving marks that smoked and bled.
"You should have stayed down," he told her.
"Not a chance." She was bleeding from a dozen wounds, her summoned shield gone, her rifles depleted. But her eyes were fierce. "I don't abandon allies."
Six seconds.
Five.
Four.
The Sovereign recovered, darker than before, angrier. The wound in his chest was closing, corruption knitting the flesh back together. "Enough games. You die now."
He gathered power for a final, overwhelming strike. The kind of attack that would leave nothing behind but ash and memory.
Three seconds.
Two.
One.
Now!
The Sovereign lunged left, overextending exactly as Serena had predicted. Sarnav was already moving, everything he had concentrated into a single point of devastating force. He drove his fist into the wound in the Sovereign's chest, past corrupted flesh, past bone, until he found something vital.
And he released everything.
The explosion of essence vaporized the Sovereign's left lung and shattered three of his ribs. Dark blood sprayed across the battlefield. The enemy leader screamed, a sound of genuine agony that silenced the fighting around them.
For a moment, the Sovereign hung there, impaled on Sarnav's arm. Their eyes met. And in those swirling voids, Sarnav saw something he hadn't expected.
Fear.
"This isn't over." The Sovereign's voice was wet, broken. "You've won nothing."
He dissolved. Not died, dissolved, his body breaking apart into streams of corruption that fled across the battlefield and vanished into the pre-dawn darkness. His converted forces collapsed as his power withdrew, the animated corpses becoming just corpses again.
The Battle of NUS was over.
Sarnav stood in the middle of the carnage, covered in blood both red and black, his arm still extended where it had pierced the Sovereign's chest. Around him, the defenders slowly realized they'd won. Cheers began to rise. Wei Ming slumped against a wall, exhausted but alive. The barrier wouldn't be needed anymore.
"You did it." Zara's voice was raw. She'd dragged herself to her feet, limping but standing. "You actually did it."
"We did it." He caught her as she swayed, pulling her against him. She was warm despite her injuries, solid and real and alive. "You saved my life."
"You saved everyone's life."
"No." He looked down at her, at this soldier who had thrown herself between him and death without hesitation. "You did. That shield. I've never seen you summon anything like that."
"Neither have I." She laughed weakly. "I didn't know I could. I just... I saw him about to kill you, and I couldn't let it happen. Something inside me broke, and then... then I could."
Through the network, Sarnav felt his wives converging on his position. Ishani arriving first, her light constructs fading as she assessed their injuries. Serena and Wei Ming coming together, the siblings reunited. Jade emerging from the command center with damage reports already compiled.
But his attention stayed on Zara. On the woman who had risked everything to save him without being bonded, without being part of his network, without any guarantee of reward.
"Why?" he asked quietly. "You could have let him kill me. Gone back to your government with a report about how the Sovereign was too powerful. No one would have blamed you."
"I would have blamed me." She met his eyes, and all her professional walls were gone. "I couldn't watch you die, Sarnav. I tried to stay professional. I tried to keep my distance. But somewhere in the last week, I stopped being an observer and started being... yours."
The word hung between them, heavy with meaning.
"Zara..."
"Don't." She pressed a bloody finger to his lips. "Not now. Not in front of everyone. Just... know that when we get back to Harmony, we need to talk. About everything."
He nodded, and she pulled away, soldier's mask sliding back into place as the other wives arrived. But something had changed. Something fundamental. She had saved his life, and in doing so, had admitted something she couldn't take back.
The sun rose over Singapore, painting the battlefield in shades of gold and red. Two hundred survivors emerged from shelters, realizing the siege was broken. Wei Ming's people began the grim work of clearing bodies. And somewhere in the distance, a wounded Sovereign plotted revenge.
But for now, there was victory. For now, there was hope. For now, there was a woman who had found her answer in the moment between one heartbeat and the next.
Sarnav looked at the dawn and smiled.
[DAY 83]
[WIFE COUNT: 8/32]
[ESSENCE: 876,100 / 1,000,000]
[COMBAT BONUS: +20,000]
[SOVEREIGN: WOUNDED, FLED]
[SINGAPORE: LIBERATED]
[ZARA HASSAN: STATUS CHANGED]
[HARMONY SAFE ZONE STATUS][POPULATION: 1,050][TERRITORY: STABLE][NOTE: MYTHILI MANAGING OPERATIONS DURING SINGAPORE CAMPAIGN]
[NEXT: BREAK]