A furious wall of white salt dust swallowed the midnight perimeter of the northern stockade.
The gale screamed across the barren plateau, tearing through canvas awnings and burying the barbed-wire trenches in drifted alkali powder. At the stockade gates, two iron-armored sentries huddled over a sputtering charcoal brazier, their frost-bitten hands jammed deep into their armpits.
Neither guard heard the faint, static hum in the wind.
Sera Thorne appeared out of empty air ten paces behind the perimeter watchtower.
Silver lightning flickered across her boots, then grounded silently into the dry salt crust. Beside her, Elder Sterling materialized like a mountain shadow, his white hair plastered flat by the screaming wind.
Before leaping from the mouth of the western smuggling tunnel, both had swallowed a Tier 5 Cloud-Veined Supreme Void-Armor Pill.
An invisible, diamond-hard kinetic envelope now coated their skin, weapons, and armor. Even if a heavy ballista bolt struck them square in the ribs, the force would dissipate into harmless ripples of silver light.
Sera raised two fingers, pointing toward the central yard.
