The night was a black shroud, pulled tight over the world of Elara. No moons broke the cloud-cover; the only light came from the great fire pit at the heart of the Stone Circle. Around it, figures moved in a slow, silent dance. They were tall, unnaturally slender, their skin the color of bone under the bruised sky. Their ears, elongated and pointed, twitched at the crackle of the flames. They were the Lumin, the pale people of the twilight forests, and their faces were masks of hollow-cheeked solemnity.

Within their circle, closer to the fire’s hungry heat, stood the true power. Five women, robed in linen so white it seemed to bleed light into the darkness. They were the Silent Sisters, seers of the Lumin, and their mouths were moving in a low, rhythmic chant. The language was old, older than the stones, a series of guttural clicks and soft, sighing vowels that did not belong to any human tongue. The firelight cast their shadows, giant and wavering, against the ancient monoliths.

One of them, the eldest, her white hair streaming from beneath her hood like a spectral waterfall, suddenly went rigid. Her chanting ceased. Her sisters did not stop, but their eyes slid toward her, wide with apprehension.

"A vision," the elder priestess breathed, her voice a dry rustle against the backdrop of chant and fire. She swayed, her hands coming up as if to grasp something in the air. "I see… a woman. She stands upon a spire of black glass, under a sun I do not know. Upon her breast, a sigil… the triple helix of House Freides. A coreworld house."

A collective shudder went through the circling Lumin. A coreworlder here, in a vision? It was an omen of terrible scale.

The priestess’s voice gained strength, edged with terror. "And behind her… armies. Not of polished steel and proud banners. Ragged hordes. The scarred and the hungry. The outerworld legions, rallying to her call. She raises a sword, and they—"

The sound that cut her off was not of this world. It was a war horn, but one born of a screaming engine and shredded metal, blasting across the sacred clearing. It drowned the chant, shattered the silence, and brought the ritual to a dead stop.

From the inky treeline, shapes resolved. Not Lumin. These were figures encased in sleek, matte-black armor, moving with a predator's grace. Their faces were hidden behind mirrored visors that reflected the fire, turning them into creatures of dancing flame. In their hands were weapons that hummed with a vicious, blue energy.

"Assassins!" a Lumin guard cried, his voice high with panic. He fumbled with a curved bone sword. The local guards, perhaps two dozen, surged forward from their posts, their simple leather armor and stone-tipped spears a pathetic contrast to the advancing tide of technology.

It was not a battle. It was a slaughter.

Blue energy bolts ripped through the night, silent but for the wet thump of impact. They did not pierce; they liquefied. Lumin guards fell, their albino skin blackening and bubbling, their cries cut short as the energy ate through them. The smell of ozone and cooked meat filled the air. One guard managed to close the distance, bringing his spear down on an assassin's shoulder. The spearhead snapped against the armor. The assassin didn't even stagger. A backhanded swipe with a gauntleted fist caved in the Lumin's chest with a sickening crunch of bone.

The Silent Sisters did not flee. They closed ranks around the elder, their chanting now a desperate, keening wail, a shield of sound against the coming silence. The assassins cut through the last of the guards with methodical, dispassionate efficiency, stepping over the twitching, blood-soaked corpses.

The lead assassin raised its weapon, the humming muzzle centering on the elder priestess's forehead.

She knew she had heartbeats left. Her vision—the woman, the sigil, the rallying hordes—it could not die with her. Her hand dove into the folds of her robe. Her fingers closed around something small, cold, and smooth. A drone, no larger than her thumb, shaped like a teardrop of obsidian.

As the assassin’s finger tightened on the trigger, she slammed the drone against the stone at her feet and hissed a single, sharp command in the old tongue.

The drone didn't whir. It pulsed. A single, deep, subsonic thrum that made the assassins hesitate for a fraction of a second. A lens like a black pearl glowed faintly on its front, fixed on the priestess's face.

"I have seen the herald," she spat, her eyes burning with defiance and madness, blood trickling from her nose from the strain of the sending. "The Thanatos woman. She comes for the core. She comes with the outer dark at her back. Warn the—"

The blue bolt took her in the mouth. There was no more head, only a spray of red mist and fragments of bone against the white robes of the sister behind her, who screamed, a raw and human sound amidst the alien chaos.

The drone, spattered with gore, shot upward into the darkness like a bullet. An assassin snapped its weapon up, firing a rapid burst of searing energy, but the tiny object was already a speck, weaving through the pillars of smoke rising from the dead. It pierced the cloud layer, and was gone.

Below, the remaining Sisters were silenced, one by one. The fire began to die, its light guttering on the expanding pools of blood that seeped between the sacred stones. The assassins stood amidst the carnage, their mirrored faces showing only the reflection of the fading flames and the pale, dead eyes of the Lumin. They had completed their mission.

But in the cold, airless void beyond the world, a tiny dark teardrop hurtled onward, its black pearl lens holding the final, bloody moments of a seer, and the terrible promise of a woman yet unknown.