Last Light in the Dark

The team conducts a pre-dawn assault on the first Ninth Circle ritual site, a fortified farmstead in rural Appalachia. Haatim coordinates from the ridgeline using his Gift while Niccolo dismantles the spiritual wards through prayer, Petrillo and Arthur breach the perimeter, and Emma runs overwatch.

Haatim monitors three demon engagements in eighteen hours as Abigail's corruption broadcasts a beacon drawing demons to their location. He calculates the team has roughly two weeks before collapse while secretly researching a possible cure in a private notebook.

A guerrilla operation successfully extracts a civilian from a low-tier demon. Post-mission, Haatim reviews six weeks of operations and Arthur warns that Belphegor's silence signals strategic regrouping.

Ren scouts the Cathedral Province border, discovering the demons have adapted patrol formations and camouflage to counter the army methods from the southern campaign.

Bryce wakes at Nexus Keep, reflects on the failing seals and his role as the only Guardian anchor for the reflection technique. He tells Abigail and then Gregory about his decision to sacrifice himself.

Cael Morevan, New Haven's aging Coordinator, observes successful Scavenger-Confederation integration in the market before the fourth tremor of the week strikes during a council session.

The Army of the Immaculate launches its first assault on the Crucible. The demons are organized and the mountain itself fights back with adaptive terrain — boneglass eruptions and shifting slopes that learn the army's tactics. 347 dead in four hours.

Ren leads his twelve scouts in a flawless smoke-and-misdirection ambush killing seven demons in a ravine, returning to camp with zero casualties. Over morning tea with Nella, Harsk, and Fossick, they discuss the branded observers watching their operations and the political friction as common...

Ren, a seventeen-year-old thief's apprentice, picks a Kellmar six-pin lock to steal shipping contracts from merchant Aldren Coss under mentor Tik's silent watch.