The Extra's Rise

The Southern border did not ask. It told. Towers every ten kilometers. Fences layered with Aetherite film. Drone nests on ridges and in culverts. Checkpoints built into the rock. The Viserion crown called it the Iron Line. The Abyssal Kin had other names for it, all bitter.

At 05:42 local, every tower display blinked to black for a single breath, then returned with a new line of text at the top left: war. No horns. No speech. Just one word and a flood of red pins crawling along three sectors at once.

On the palace command floor in Valdris, the wall screens woke in layers. Satellite passes. High-altitude drones. Wardline telemetry from the Aetherite lattice that ran like a second set of nerves under the mountains. Road cameras from the lonely places where you could stand for an hour and hear nothing but wind.

"Duskline Pass, multiple air contacts," Captain Yorin said, fingers sliding across the projection. "Ironveil, soil liquefaction along the outer fence. Blue Sluice, surface skin moving against the gate film."

King Marcus Viserion stood with his hands on the rail, flame-red hair tied back, golden eyes steady. Low Radiant sat on him like gravity—present, unadorned. At his right, Queen Lyralei kept her arms folded and her gaze sharp. Her Nyx Tiger bloodline showed in the calm way she watched for the first mistake. At his left, Prince Ian leaned forward, peak Immortal humming around him like heat before lightning. He was close to low Radiant. Everyone who spent time in the ward rooms could feel it in the way the palace metal vibrated when he exhaled.

"They're moving in blocks, not probes," Marcus said.

"They expect the first line to bend," Lyralei answered. "They've timed the pushes to split us."

Ian didn't wait for his name. "Duskline."

Marcus nodded once. "You lead three flights. Rules of engagement hold. Intercept, break their lines, push them back before they settle. If the null-song starts, fall under ward. No chase past the second ridge. No heroics."

"Yes, Father."

The flight pit under the balcony came alive. Gantries swung. Harness lines hummed. Drakes took their places without complaint: bronze, silver, and gold, scale-armor snug under strips of smart fabric. Riders dropped AR visors. Aethernet channels in their helmets flipped from orange to green. Ian jogged to the edge, the gold drake lowering its head to meet him. He laid a hand under its jaw and felt the strong pulse there answer his own.

"Gold on me," his voice came through the command speakers, low and clear. "Silver high left. Bronze low cut. Hold formation. Don't give their cameras angles. On my mark."

They launched clean. Three bodies of muscle and hot breath rose into a hard blue. On the wall, the Duskline feeds tilted to show the pass from above. Bone gliders rode the thermal seam beyond the fence—black frames stretched with dead hide, each moving as if a child had imagined a bird and built it badly. Under them, lines of infantry marched between rib-cage engines that walked on jointed legs.

Below the command floor, the ward choir took their seats around the Aetherite core—thirty elder women with dragon rings and steady lungs. Engineers checked the counter-hymn patch and lifted a thumb. You don't shout down the Abyssal null-song. You set a human note under it and make the world remember its own weight.

"Blue Sluice pressure up twenty percent," the Minister of Wards said. "Membrane holding. Secondary film primed."

"Ironveil soft ground expanding," Logistics added. "Braces out. Stakes going in."

"Flights in contact," Sable, the command AI, said without drama.

Duskline opened in long shot: switchback road, cliff faces, heat shimmer. The bone gliders banked toward the fence, looking for gaps that didn't exist. Ian didn't go straight. He rolled the formation into a crescent, let Silver bite high and Bronze knife low. He flared a brief white flash off Gold's chest at the last heartbeat, angled to blind side cameras, not eyes. Bronze came up like a hook under a jaw. Two gliders folded. The rest spread like oil.

The null-song slid in. You feel it first in your teeth, then in your bones. The ward choir's note rose, warm and ordinary, through stone. On the side screen, the waveform steadied. Drone feeds flickered and then found a band that held. The gliders' edges went uncertain for one beat. It was enough.

On Duskline's left wall, the cliff softened a hand's width like bad bread. Under it, something moved in a way rock should not. Lyralei's pupils narrowed.

"Seam."

Ian pivoted midair without overcorrecting. Silver bled lift from the softened pocket. Bronze carved low. Gold drew a thin line of fire along the seam. Not a bloom. A cut. Heat met stone and reminded it what it was. The movement under it stopped being anything at all.

Two riders fell when their mounts trusted soft that was no longer soft. Bronze got there. Hook, pull, finish. No trophies. No cruelty. The Iron Line did not make long ghosts.

"Blue Sluice," Wards warned.

The canal camera showed a black skin moving across the surface at walking speed. The Aetherite film bowed, then bulged. It held. The secondary film dropped in a shimmer. The skin hit both and went glassy. A guard touched it with a pole. It shattered like sugar. The water cleared. Gate lights stayed green. The crew cheered once, short and tight, and returned to their boards.

"Ironveil," Logistics called. The soft ground oval had closed. Fence anchors read true. Dune sensors picked up the same shiver, smaller. Sand Viper sappers flashed a thumbs-up from under the outer mesh and drove a coil into the soil until it hummed.

On the pass, the gliders peeled and fled. Ian held formation one heartbeat longer than he had to. Habit. He broke the habit.

"Recall."

They came home fast. One drake limp-roped between med-drones, rider pale but awake. The harness auto-injectors had already sealed the worst. Two more set down with shallow cuts already turning pink. Ian walked in with a strip of soot across his cheekbone and his helmet under his arm.

"We held," he said.

Marcus nodded. "Second wave in forty. Eat. Hydrate."

Ian took a bottle from a runner and drank it dry. He didn't look back at the big board. He didn't need to. Sable was already drawing the new picture.

War banners rose beyond the fence. Salt rings on black cloth. Slashes that looked like wounds. Null-priests in lacquer black carried frame drums and struck them once. The air trembled like a string too tight on a cheap instrument. Behind them, the rib-cage engines arranged themselves and locked legs.

"Three main thrusts," Sable said. "Duskline, Ironveil, Blue Sluice. Offsets timed at seven minutes. Twelve minor pushes along low-coverage tiles. Intent: divide response windows."

"Nyx Cataphracts to Ironveil," Marcus said. "Storm-Griffons to Blue Sluice. Prince takes Duskline with Bronze and Silver. I anchor ground."

"Yes," Lyralei said, already moving. Three squad leaders in striped armor fell in behind her at a jog.

Ian dropped his empty bottle into the bin and ran. The gold drake lowered without being asked. Harness locked. Visor down.

"Gold up. Silver and Bronze, same splits. Watch for drum clusters. If they try to aim the note, break their hands again."

The launch was louder this time. Not the engines. The men. The held-in sound you make when your body wants to shout and you don't let it.

Duskline filled with bodies and bone. The priests stepped to the road and set their drums. The sound didn't travel. It occupied. The ward choir's note wavered and then steadied like a person planting their feet. The fence lights dimmed and burned brighter again.

Marcus stepped onto the road.

Low Radiant did not make him flash. It made the world around him behave. Stone under his boots steadied. Edges sharpened. Men on the wall breathed in their own rhythm again. He lifted one hand, closed his fingers, and the nearest engine folded like bad metal. He brought his hand down and set it against the road. It did not get up.

Ian cut through air and bone above him. He didn't waste the sight. He used it to settle.

"Push the priests," he told his wing. "Don't get greedy."

Bronze went low and mean. Silver peeled gliders off the camera lines. Gold dove, flared at the last heartbeat, and gave a shock-lance the inch it needed to turn a drum into dead leather. The choir's note flowed into the space the drum had tried to claim.

At Ironveil, Lyralei's bikes ran the hard strip her scouts had mapped at three in the morning. The ground ahead flexed like a grin. She didn't brake. She jumped it. Her second file landed past the smile and knifed left where the fence line turned. Her voice stayed level as she marked the bad tiles on her visor for the next file.

"At my mark. Hard left, then through. If the sand smiles, ignore it."

At Blue Sluice, Storm-Griffons rode spirals that turned violent on command. Shock-lances cracked hymn cannons into useless frames. One rider slipped, fell, and hit the membrane, which caught him and slid him like a child on ice to a guard rail. He swore once, climbed out, and raised a hand to the wardhouse camera. The clip hit the line: membranes holding.

For an hour, war was clean work. The Iron Line flexed and did not break. The choir's note held. The Aetherite lattice warmed but did not overheat. Medics ran out of tape before they ran out of sealant. The South had built this on purpose after the last time, and now it paid for itself in lives not lost.

The third wave at Duskline changed the shape of things. The ridge beyond the pass shed a skin. Not rock. The shape of rock. It slid, stood, and put two hands on the fence. Where it touched, the lattice screamed without sound. Ten warders jammed Aetherite spikes into sockets along the inner edge, and the fence lit from within. The thing pushed. The lights dimmed, then steadied.

Ian took its knuckles off one by one. Where they fell, they turned to steam and did not return. He didn't think about what that meant. He only made sure they stayed gone.

"Keep cutting," he told his wing. "They don't like holding shape."

He didn't see the blade that tried for his knee. He felt the intention and rolled. It took a scale off his drake instead. The harness rang. Heat poured into muscle. He breathed through it.

"Good," Marcus said softly, not to him, to the fence. The fence listened.

By late afternoon, the numbers in the corner of Sable's main screen told a simple story: the Abyssal Kin had lost more bodies than they expected, and the Iron Line had lost fewer than it feared. The choir swapped leads without breaking the note. Someone sent them soup and honey. Someone else sent the clip of last week's pancakes. It made it to a hundred phones anyway. Men and women smiled without meaning to.

Dark fell clean. The Status Crimson banner stayed up. Patrols doubled on the quiet stretches. The allied families rotated their units by plan. The border slept with its eyes open and its hand on its own shoulder.

Ian slept four hours on a mat in the training hall, boots touching, visor by his chest, blade within reach. He woke before the horn.

War had started. The Iron Line had answered. It would answer again.