Iron Beneath The Veil

The Bastion was quiet—too quiet. Not with peace, but with pressure. Like a dam on the verge of collapse.

Beneath layers of steel and obsidian, the Loyalist High Command convened in a war chamber devoid of warmth. The long, circular table in its center glowed with red and orange lights, painting the faces around it in fire. Each seat was filled with a voice of power—generals, tacticians, ministers—but none dared speak without permission.

At the head sat Marrow Vex, the Grand Strategist of the System. Cold-eyed and unflinching, he surveyed the live reports flickering across the chamber's central display. Riots. Mass gatherings. Civil zones shifting red. Loyalist units overrun or defected. Worst of all: the truth, broadcast freely to every screen and mind across the city.

"They've weaponized the people's ignorance," he muttered, folding gloved hands. "And turned it into fire."

One minister stood. "Sir, we have prepared counter-narratives, seeded new broadcasts—"

"Noise," Vex interrupted. "Too late. The people aren't afraid of what they don't understand anymore. They're angry about what they do."

Another general leaned forward. "Then we request full activation of Protocol Black."

A murmur rippled through the room.

Vex nodded once.

"Granted."

Across the city, under the veil of midnight, black-suited teams moved into position. The Wraithbound, elite operatives trained not for control, but for cleansing. Each unit carried advanced suppression tech and neural disruptors. Their faces were masked, not to hide identity—but to erase it. They weren't soldiers. They were silence incarnate.

Commander Lyn Kael led the first unit.

Standing in the bay of a low-hovering gunship, she looked out over the city she once protected as a cadet. Now, she was its executioner. Her voice crackled through her squad's comms, sharp as a blade.

"They've chosen anarchy. We give them clarity."

The gunship descended into Sector Nine, where flames danced along rooftops and rebel graffiti claimed the walls. As her boots struck pavement, Kael drew her weapon—a resonance rifle designed not just to wound, but to disrupt Echoes before they could form. In the shadows, figures fled.

Too late.

One rebel raised his hand, light blooming into a soft sphere.

Kael fired once.

The light shattered. The rebel collapsed, twitching.

No one else tried.

Elsewhere, in the Bastion's deep research wing, engineers powered up the Echo Suppressor—a device once outlawed for its unpredictable impact on human consciousness. Now, it hummed with quiet menace. The order had been clear.

"If we cannot control their minds," Vex had said, "we will silence the part of them that dares to resist."

As the device pulsed to life, a subtle shift echoed across the city. A faint pressure. An eerie stillness. Those with latent Echoes—awakened or not—felt it. A tug behind the eyes. A whisper at the edge of thought. And then… silence.

Something inside them had gone quiet.

Not dead—just bound.

For now.

But Vex wasn't done.

In the war chamber, his attention shifted to a new file. A red-marked profile. One name.

Alexander.

"You've exposed my system," Vex whispered. "Now I'll strip you of yours."

The room around him fell into shadow as Vex authorized his final command:

Initiate Operation Veilburn.