Chapter 94

• The war room had never been so quiet and so full at the same time.
• All five teams — Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Omega — stood around the central Nexus map, along with Elyndor and Zareth, and the room was packed with people and yet held the concentrated silence of a breath drawn and not yet released. The Final Lock was at five percent. Three anchor points had held against the First's initial assault, but Zareth had spent the previous cycle walking Kael through the tactical records of the first war, and the pattern was unmistakable: what they had experienced was the opening move.
• "The First do not escalate gradually," Zareth said, standing at the head of the war table with the natural authority of someone who had commanded armies across dimensions. "When their initial softening fails, they recalibrate. And when they recalibrate, they commit. The next assault will not target three anchor points. It will target all five. Simultaneously."