ROGUE BLOOD
POV: GUS
The sky is still dark when the anchor cracks.
I see it before I hear anything. A thin, sharp column of fractured light shoots up from the east tree line behind Arachne’s property, silent, wrong, like lightning that forgot to make thunder. It splits the air for half a second, then collapses inward on itself like a dying star.
I smile.
“Status,” I say calmly into the comms.
Static. Breathing. Then Jensen’s voice, tight but steady. “Charge placed and triggered. Anchor fractured, not destroyed. We are pulling back. No engagement.”