The war didn't announce itself with sirens.
It began quietly.
Unrankables across the world vanished in the space of hours—snatched from apartments, dragged out of shelters, erased mid-dungeon run by teams that moved with surgical precision. Post-Ranker Task Forces didn't leave rubble behind.
They left absence.
Kael felt each one like a needle in his skull.
Not pain—recognition.
A network he hadn't known he was sensing collapsed node by node, fires going out in ways that felt wrong. Not extinguished.
Neutralized.
He stood in Ashfall's operations room, hands braced on the table, eyes fixed on the rapidly updating global map.
Red markers bloomed everywhere.
"Confirmed hits in seven countries," Mira said, voice tight. "They're prioritizing isolated unrankables. Those without organizations. Without anchors."
Kael swallowed.
Lyra stood close—closer than usual. She hadn't left his side since Mina's episode.
"They're thinning the herd," she said. "Before we can react."
Seris tapped the screen, pulling up a new alert. "There's something else."
A video feed opened.
An old man sat in the middle of a wrecked living room, hands bound, eyes vacant. His fire flickered weakly—faint, unstable, like a dying candle.
Two civilians stood behind him.
A woman, shaking.
And a man holding a gun.
"He's an unrankable," the man in the feed was saying, voice breaking. "He doesn't even know who we are anymore. Please—just take him. Or let us end it."
Kael felt his stomach drop.
Seris spoke quietly. "His name is Orun Bale. Codename: Ash Saint. First-generation unrankable. He spent twelve years in the Freezer."
Lyra inhaled sharply. "He's a legend."
"He was," Seris corrected. "Now he's—"
The woman on-screen sobbed. "He killed our daughter during an episode. He didn't even remember afterward."
Silence crushed the room.
Kael turned away.
This is what they never show.
Mira broke it. "Post-Ranker units are inbound. ETA six minutes."
Kael straightened slowly.
"We're going," he said.
Lyra's head snapped toward him. "Kael—"
"We don't leave people to die because it's inconvenient," he said quietly. "Not even when it's ugly."
Seris hesitated. "If we interfere, we're openly opposing a sanctioned kill."
Kael met her gaze.
"We crossed that line a long time ago."
They arrived to chaos.
The Post-Rankers hit the perimeter just as Ashfall did—six units descending in perfect formation, anti-tech fields humming. Civilians screamed and scattered.
Kael moved first.
He stepped between Orun and the incoming hunters, fire pulled inward so tight it warped the air.
"Stand down," one of the Post-Rankers intoned. "Target designated non-recoverable."
Kael's voice was steady. "He's coming with us."
The woman screamed. "No! Please! You don't understand—"
Kael turned to her gently. "I do."
He looked at Orun.
The old man's eyes focused for a fleeting second.
Fire flared.
"Cold," Orun whispered. "Still cold."
Kael's chest tightened.
"Yeah," he said softly. "I know."
The Post-Rankers attacked.
This time, Kael didn't rush.
He let them come.
Their countermeasures activated instantly—memory disruption, fire inversion, null layering. Kael felt the pressure build, degradation scraping at the edges of his mind.
[SYSTEM ALERT: MULTI-UNIT NEGATION—OVERLOAD RISK]
Lyra stepped forward, fire blazing.
"I've got you," she said.
Kael nodded—and let go.
Not of control.
Of resistance.
He allowed the system to fully engage.
[SYSTEM EVENT: SYNERGY MODE — TEMPORARY]
Fire didn't explode outward.
It rewrote the field.
The Post-Rankers' counters unraveled, their logic collapsing as Kael deconstructed them in real time—turning anti-fire into inert heat, null zones into empty space.
One fell.
Then another.
The remaining units retreated, recalculating.
For the first time—
They hesitated.
"Extraction successful," Elias reported. "We've got Orun."
The woman collapsed to her knees as Ashfall pulled the old man away.
Kael looked back at her once.
"I'm sorry," he said.
She didn't answer.
Back at the safehouse, Orun sat quietly, hands wrapped around a warm cup. Fire dampeners hummed softly around him.
Lyra watched from the doorway.
"He's… peaceful," she said.
"For now," Seris replied. "But his degradation is advanced. He won't last."
Kael stood beside Orun.
The old man looked up suddenly.
"You're burning wrong," Orun said.
Kael stiffened.
"What?"
Orun smiled faintly. "Too many shapes. Too many voices. You're close."
Kael's mouth went dry.
"Close to what?"
Orun's eyes clouded again.
"Forgetting why you're angry."
Kael stepped back.
That night, it happened again.
Kael reached for a memory—
And found nothing.
Not blurred.
Gone.
He stared at the wall, heart pounding.
"What was her name?" he whispered.
Silence answered.
Across the city, Ministry analysts stared at their screens in disbelief.
"Sir," an aide said carefully, "Post-Ranker units are retreating from Unrankable Prime."
Director Harkon's jaw tightened.
"Then we escalate," he said coldly.
"Release the hunters who don't think."
"They did this on purpose," Lyra said, her voice tight. "They wanted the cameras. The fear."
Kael finally spoke. "They wanted me."
Seris pulled up layered feeds—civilian footage, Ministry drones, Awakened propaganda already spreading like a virus.
A masked figure stood amid the wreckage, arms raised, fire spiraling upward in a blasphemous helix.
"The cold is a lie," the figure proclaimed. "Pain is awakening. Death is proof of faith."
Kael's jaw clenched.
"That's Veyran," Seris said. "He's escalating. If this keeps going, the public won't care who started what. They'll want all unrankables erased."
Elias looked at Kael. "And the Ministry will be happy to oblige."
Kael closed his eyes.
For a moment, there was nothing.
No memory.
No anger.
Just emptiness.
Then—Lyra's breathing beside him. Steady. Familiar.
The fire came back.
"Get me his location," Kael said.
Lyra turned sharply. "Kael—this is what he wants. A confrontation."
"Yes," Kael replied calmly. "On my terms."
They found Veyran less than an hour later.
An abandoned cathedral at the city's edge—stone blackened by time and fire, stained glass shattered into jagged mosaics. Awakened members lined the nave, some lucid, others visibly degraded, their fire crawling across their skin like parasites.
Veyran stood at the altar, smiling as Kael entered.
"You came," he said warmly. "The saint of resistance himself."
Kael stepped forward, fire restrained but heavy, like a loaded weapon.
"You killed civilians," Kael said. "Children."
Veyran spread his hands. "Sacrifices. The world only changes when it's forced to look at its own blood."
Lyra's fire flared.
"You're not awakening anyone," she snarled. "You're breaking them."
Veyran laughed. "Breaking is the first step."
He looked back at Kael, eyes sharp. "Tell me—how many names have you forgotten today?"
Kael's stomach dropped.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Veyran continued softly. "The forgetting. The mercy of the mind. Pain becomes bearable when it blurs."
The Awakened around them murmured in agreement.
Kael realized then—
Veyran wasn't immune to degradation.
He was embracing it.
Using insanity as insulation.
"Step aside," Kael said. "This ends now."
Veyran shook his head. "No. This is where it begins."
He snapped his fingers.
Fire detonated across the nave as Awakened surged forward.
The fight was chaos.
Untrained unrankables over-assimilating in real time—steel, stone, liquid glass—bodies warping as minds fractured. Kael moved through them like a scalpel, disabling without killing where he could, but the sheer number overwhelmed him.
Lyra fought back-to-back with him, her fire precise, controlled—but Kael felt it.
Her strain.
Each time she anchored him, her own flame dimmed a fraction slower.
[SYSTEM WARNING: ANCHOR FEEDBACK—CRITICAL]
Kael staggered as a surge of psychic noise slammed into him.
For a terrifying second—
He didn't know where he was.
Lyra grabbed him.
"Kael! Look at me!"
Her face blurred.
Not gone.
But fading.
Something cold wrapped around his heart.
No. Not her.
Veyran watched from the altar, eyes alight.
"There it is," he said reverently. "The price of caring."
Kael roared.
The system flared violently.
[OVERRIDE: EMERGENCY COGNITIVE LOCK]
Fire didn't just burn.
It simplified.
Kael stripped the battlefield down to fundamentals—heat, mass, motion—discarding higher cognition to survive. The Awakened collapsed one by one, their borrowed faith unable to withstand raw reality.
Veyran fell to his knees, laughing.
"See?" he gasped. "You're just like us. You'll forget this too."
Kael stood over him, trembling.
"I won't forget this," he said.
He knocked Veyran unconscious with a single strike.
They left the cathedral in ruins.
Sirens wailed in the distance—Ministry forces inbound.
Lyra collapsed the moment they reached the extraction point.
Kael caught her.
Her fire flickered weakly, unstable.
"Lyra," he whispered, panic flooding him. "Stay with me."
She smiled faintly. "You're… heavy today."
Seris scanned frantically. "Anchor burnout. Severe. If she keeps stabilizing you like this—"
"I'll stop," Kael said immediately. "I swear."
Lyra's eyes fluttered. "You won't."
Kael felt something inside him fracture.
That night, alone, he stared at his hands again.
Another memory slipped away.
This time—
He didn't chase it.
He understood.
Forgetting isn't failure.
It's my mind trying to survive what shouldn't exist.
Above the city, Ministry broadcasts interrupted again.
Director Harkon's face was grim.
"Due to escalating terrorist activity," he announced, "the Ministry authorizes the deployment of Autonomous Post-Ranker Units."
No pilots.
No hesitation.
No mercy.
Kael watched in silence.
Then he whispered—
"Then I stop holding back."