Author's POV Tasmania burned quietly. Not with flame, but with pressure. Beneath the reinforced mountain vault that housed Project Aegis, machinery roared in disciplined rhythm. Arcane matrices spun like slow constellations. Aegis units, unfinished, silent, skeletal, hung in suspension chambers, veins of molten sigil-ink pulsing through their forming frames. Zenith stood at the center of it all. Power consolidation feather. A brutal phrase for a brutal necessity. She was overexerting herself deliberately, compressing, refining, binding her energy into denser channels so her output could scale without instability. Sweat traced down her spine. Her pulse was steady, but only because she forced it to be. Lucien watched the monitors. Alejandro watched her. Neither interfered. Because she needed this. Because Aegis would not wait. Thousands of miles away, The Haven of Shadows trembled. Nevada’s desert night split open like a wound. The Netherborn came first. They did not march, the
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