The Extra's Rise - Chapter 828

828: Infernal Armis (3) 828: Infernal Armis (3) The moment my five called allies crossed into Ashbluff Palace, the room changed.

The panic edge dulled; the noise in the command center settled into purposeful motion.

We didn’t get louder-we got clearer.

Cecilia, Rachel, Seraphina, Rose, and Reika didn’t bring speeches or ceremony.

They brought the steadiness that comes from having walked into the impossible and walked back out together.

Each of them stood at high Immortal-rank with the scars to match.

Together, they could stall a legendary-tier threat, break a small army, or at least keep one from breaking anyone else.

I felt the relief of their presence-and, underneath it, the truth I couldn’t shake: whatever waited in the crater to the west might be beyond anything we’d seen.

“A Calamity will rise,” Kali said.

She wasn’t dramatic about it.

She didn’t need to be.

She leaned against the command room’s wall, eyes fixed on the largest display where the Infernal Armis sat like a black thorn at the center of the impact bowl.

The light over it pulsed in slow, measured beats that made everyone’s skin want to crawl the same direction.

No one argued with her word.

In this world, “Calamity” is something you read in scripture, or hear in the old histories, or use as a caution in a bedtime story.

It is not a thing that happens to you on a normal day.

I bit the inside of my lip.

I had done a lot-killed the Axe King, held lines that were supposed to fall, paid debts older than Stella’s first smile-and one step still refused me.

I could feel it like a missing tooth whenever I tested my bite.

I still hadn’t broken through to Radiant-rank.

Crossing from quasi-Radiant to Radiant isn’t an upgrade.

It’s a change of axis.

New reach, new senses, new answers I might need in minutes.

“Breathe,” Rachel said quietly, already at my side, fingers light on my forearm.

I turned to her.

Sapphire eyes, a calm I’d borrowed more than once.

Our foreheads touched for a heartbeat.

Warmth, breath, a steady pulse: small things, but the lever I needed to pry my mind away from the useless spiral.

“You’re not alone,” Seraphina added.

She took my hand with careful precision, not because I needed help to stand, but because people are stronger when someone else is anchoring a corner.

Cecilia took my other hand and squeezed-just once, firm.

“And you don’t get to do the reckless-hero thing without us,” she said.

A flash of crimson in her eyes, then the iron softened to something like worry.

“Please.” “I can’t promise that,” I said, and her mouth twisted, because honesty is rude and necessary in rooms like this.

Across the link, Luna’s presence tightened in quiet agreement: few safe moves on the table.

We all knew the calculus.

Against a Calamity, regeneration becomes optional at best, irrelevant at worst.

I killed Vorgath quickly because Grey cuts across expectations.

Against a Mythical, rules bend first and ask permission later.

You can heal a body; it’s harder to heal the ground under the body if the ground refuses to be ground.

Rachel can knit flesh and soul faster than most people can say their own name, but if the other side is writing the grammar, even a Saintess can be left chasing better verbs.

Which meant the worst of it would land on me.

Fine.

Better me than anyone else here.

“The readings are stabilizing,” Rose said, her voice the clean cut that gets you through a knot.

She and Reika stood at the console cluster, moving through overlays as fast as the machines would allow.

“Amplitude is still rising, but the curve is flattening.

The transformation inside the artifact’s domain is approaching a peak.” Reika nodded, eyes tracking three graphs at once.

Her steadiness always felt like a hand over a quiet drum.

“Spatial distortion is contracting toward the core.

Twenty to thirty minutes until the selection completes, assuming current slope holds.” Valen stepped up to the main table, posture changing the room as much as any order could.

“We need something we can do,” he said.

“Arthur?” The projection of the crater hovered in the air: the torn ringwall, the bowl of raw glass and shattered stone, the pillar of otherworldly light like a spear planted in a gray sky.

At the center, the Armis bent the world around itself in clean, wrong lines.

“Direct assault the second the shell drops,” I said.

“No orbiting.

No introductions.

Whoever makes it through those trials will be disoriented.

Mythical power doesn’t wear correctly the first minute.” “Hit them before they understand their hands,” Cecilia translated, quick and practical.

“Yes,” I said.

“If the first thing they learn is that we can still hurt them, that shapes their choices.

It also buys us the only currency that matters at that level: time.” Jin, quiet until then, took one measured step forward.

“What about coordinated support?

If the shell collapses, surely the army can contain the perimeter, draw lines, create pressure.” “You and your father will handle the continent,” I said.

“Keep civilians safe, keep roads clear, keep supplies moving.

But the strike at the center will break ordinary units.

It needs people who can survive a Calamity’s first hour.

That’s… us.” “The six of us,” Seraphina said without emphasis.

She was counting pieces, not boasting.

Meilyn didn’t look up from the tactical river map.

“If your first hit fails and you must break contact, what route can we hold?” “Honestly?” I said.

“If it turns to straight attrition, there are no clean routes.

We buy time or we die.

If we have to run, we won’t know which way until our feet tell us.” “Then I’ll seed options,” Meilyn said, already texting without looking.

“Caches, signal codes, quick-raise wards.

If you need something, make blue-and-gold light in the sky.

We’ll come to that.” On the far wall, the pillar over the crater pulsed again.

The room seemed to breathe with it-everyone exhaling together because the air did.

The Armis’s pressure leaned against my senses like weather rolling through stone.

“It’s closing,” I said.

“The trials are nearly done.” Valen’s jaw set.

“Then move.” “As ready as we’ll be,” I said.

My palm brushed Nyxthar’s hilt.

The blade thrummed like a tight string.

The five fell into the geometry we always found: Rachel a half-step left for reach, Cecilia tight to my right shoulder, Seraphina and Reika guarding the rear arc, Rose already sorting transit lines and sight lanes.

I opened my mouth to give the word.

Crimson threads exploded into the room.

There wasn’t time to shout.

There wasn’t time to swear.

The cords were simply there-moving at a speed that made speed feel like a quaint old hobby.

They wrapped Valen before blinking was useful, crisscrossing until I could barely see him.

They gleamed like living veins and hummed with a pressure that didn’t belong in the room.

“What-” he said, and the bonds crushed the rest of the sentence out of his chest.

Recognition hit me with the cold certainty that only old enemies carry.

I knew that shade of red, that taste in the air, the faint hook it left in the mind.

“Alyssara,” I said, and the name came out a snarl.

Alyssara Velcroix.

The threads pulled.

Not toward a door.

Not toward a window.

They pulled him away, through a seam in space that hadn’t been there a heartbeat ago.

Valen fought-of course he did-but strength means very little when the rules under your hands have been edited.

The cords were half a step outside the world; leverage didn’t apply.

“Go!” Valen barked, voice iron even as the room lost its hold on him.

“Do not trade the mission for me!” Then the crimson was gone, and so was our king.

The air snapped back into itself.

The silence that followed wasn’t quiet; it was a pressure drop.

Plans stuttered.

The Calamity rose in the west.

Our strongest political anchor-and the commander who kept three fronts from turning into five-had been yanked off the board by the woman nations warned their children about.

The mission didn’t change.

The scaffolding around it did.

Kali swore once, softly.

Jin looked like a man memorizing faster than he could breathe.

Meilyn’s hands flexed once and went still.

She didn’t waste the motion on air.

Rachel squeezed my arm.

“Eyes on the work,” she said.

I took one breath, let it out, and set the pieces again.

Not perfect; enough.

“Change of plan,” I said.

“We go without a net.” No one argued.

Of course they didn’t.

Rose’s hands flew.

“Transit solution ready on my mark.

I can put us on the eastern ridge the instant the shell drops.

Not invisible-too much static in the air-but precise.” “Precise is what matters,” I said.

“We don’t need quiet.

We need close.” Reika skimmed two feeds and a thermal map.

“We’ll arrive in crosswind from the pillar.

Approach at forty-five degrees to reduce glare and get better read on wavefronts.” Seraphina nodded.

“I’ll raise outer wards on landing.

Rachel, keep inside my lines.

Cecilia-fill gaps, don’t chase.

Rose, watch our backs for anything that doesn’t care about directions.” Cecilia’s mouth tugged up, wry, because that’s how she says she loves us.

“Try not to give me a hole too big to plug,” she told me.

“I’ll try,” I said.

Kali stepped in front of me.

“I’ll keep this place intact,” she said.

“If anyone tries to make this a spectator sport, I’ll break their toys.

Don’t make me come get you.” “I’ll work hard not to,” I said.

Luna’s presence sharpened at the edge of thought.

‘The Heavenly Demon’s echo remains braided but not dominant.

The trials are still the engine.

Expect pressure toward endurance and destruction.

It will prefer the one who refuses to stop.’ “So it will like me,” I said.

‘It already does,’ Luna replied, maddeningly calm.

“Not helpful,” I said.

‘True,’ she said.

Jin stepped in close enough to keep his voice private.

“If Alyssara took Valen now, she wanted him gone before your strike.

She expects you to go anyway.” “She’s right,” I said.

“Then assume she prepared for that,” he said.

“I am,” I said.

“There’s a limit to the layers I can solve from a console.” “We’ll solve the rest,” he said.

He meant it.

Meilyn returned from a brief, low conversation with her aides.

“Fallback caches seeded.

Signal codes set.

If you need support, burn blue-and-gold in the sky.

We’ll come to wherever you make that light.

If you can’t burn, we’ll come anyway.” “Understood,” I said.

On the displays, the pillar’s rhythm lengthened and condensed, the way a runner gathers before a sprint.

The air in the room tasted faintly metallic, as if distance had become thin.

Outside, cordons held because a thousand ordinary acts-hot soup, clean blankets, clear directions-are stronger than panic when you stack enough of them.

“Whatever emerges,” Rachel said, “we hit it like the first hit must count.” Cecilia’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.

“We always mean it.” Reika brushed my shoulder with the lightest touch.

“Listen,” she said.

“Calamities make sound when they move.

Even if that sound is a silence you recognize.” “I’ll listen,” I said.

“The shell is thinning,” Rose said.

“Stand by.” “Positions,” I said.

We stepped into the shape we knew: angles opening, lanes clear, redundancies layered without getting in each other’s way.

I drew Grey up from the quiet place it lived, let it line my nerves and hook into my bones.

The world shifted a fraction to the side: edges sharper, time a little more honest, the next second available a hair earlier than usual.

On the main display, the spear of light over the crater brightened, then condensed, then became something you could only call an absence.

The selection shell didn’t break.

It exhaled.

“Three,” Rose counted, eyes on a metric only she could feel.

“Two.

One-mark.” Pressure eased, then returned in a different key.

The line of distortion around the crater stilled.

“The shell is down,” Reika said.

“We move,” I said.

We didn’t teleport-yet.

Rose’s gate was ready, but a breath to check for the obvious kills you less often than you’d think.

In that breath, the command center around us continued to work: bridges closed, hospitals staged, supply routes redrawn around a hole in the map.

Jin signaled governors.

Meilyn shifted garrisons as if she could see tomorrow’s mistake before it happened.

Kali checked a console that wasn’t a console and nodded to herself; somehow, that helped.

“Arthur,” Jin said, “if the claimant looks toward population centers-” “I know,” I said.

“Trust your people.

Keep them off the roads.

Don’t make targets.” Rose looked up.

“Say the word.” I met the eyes of the five who had come because I asked.

There were a lot of things I could say to them.

None of them would add leverage.

“Same promise as always,” I said.

“If I fall, get out.

If I don’t, stand where I need you.

If you don’t know what I need, stand where you won’t die.” “Understood,” Seraphina said, and the others nodded.

I took one last look at the display.

The Infernal Armis sat at the center of its wound, patient.

The pillar shed a fraction more light.

At the base of the bowl, the air shivered-not with heat, not with sound, but with attention focusing.

The selection door had opened, and something was about to choose to step through.

“Change of plans,” I’d said when Valen vanished.

The words still fit.

“We’re going in alone.” “On your mark,” Rose said.

I raised my hand.

And then we went.

The greatest battle of our lives was about to begin.