Location: Perimeter Airspace – Foxlight Ridge, 7:03 a.m.
The horizon darkened.
Thirty-six Seeker-class Rootlight drones swept forward—silent, winged like obsidian wasps, each carrying a temporal disruptor core capable of rewriting local causality.
Inside the cabin, Lin Feng finished syncing the maternal sphere.
[Anchor Calibration: 89% – Defensive Protocol Access Granted]
Amei stood by the window, her hands glowing faintly with the residual memory sync.
"They're not flying to kill you," she murmured.
"They're flying to overwrite you."
Lin nodded grimly.
"Then we'll make this mountain too loud to rewrite."
Sublevel – Emergency Protocol Vault
The orb hummed louder. Beneath it, a platform cracked open, revealing a control panel unlike anything Amei had ever seen—organic interface nodes, pulsing with latent emotional signatures.
Lin ran a hand over the core.
"My mother embedded defensive routines… but they're tied to emotional memory."
"They only activate if I still feel something real."
"Do you?"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he closed his eyes—and the mountain shifted.
Aboveground – Drone Strike Imminent
The first wave descended.
But the snow itself rose.
Spikes of mnemonic crystal erupted from the ground—memory forged into form. Each spike sang with a different resonance:
A laugh from his childhood.
A song his mother hummed.
A whisper from Amei the day she almost left him.
The drones faltered.
Unable to lock target coordinates.
"You're fighting them with emotions," Amei breathed.
"No," Lin said.
"I'm fighting them with everything they thought made me weak."
Cut To: Crimson Circle Skybarge – Southeast Vector
Xu Shanyue stood on the deck of a hovering Crimson warship as it raced toward the ridge.
Yan piloted.
"You sure this old monster still works?" she asked.
Shanyue smirked.
"It's powered by spite and unfinished poetry. It'll fly."
From the ship's lower bay, a Crimson-class Atmospheric Interference Cannon came online—an ancient relic once used to silence Rootlight's voice during the Third Spiral Conflict.
"Let's buy Lin some silence," Shanyue muttered.
Foxlight Ridge – Impact Moment
Three drones pierced through the outer defenses.
Lin raised his hand.
One drone fired.
And Amei stepped in front of him.
A shimmer—blue and gold—flared between them as the maternal anchor recognized her.
The blast dissolved.
Amei didn't flinch.
"We're not compatible because they made us that way," she said quietly.
"We're compatible because we chose to be."
The mountain erupted again—this time, not memory.
Fire.
Reveal – Project RED-ROOT: Experimental Fail-safe
Buried under the cabin, a last-ditch protocol: geothermal conversion seeded by Lin's blood signature.
Lin spoke the activation word burned into the edge of the control panel:
"Mother."
The ridge cracked. Molten light rose like dawn through frost.
The remaining drones began to fall—one by one.
Final Scene – In the Aftermath
Xu Shanyue's ship arrived just as the last drone burned in the molten snow.
She leapt down. Walked across smoldering ice.
Lin turned to her, covered in ash.
"Took your time."
"You lit a mountain on fire. I figured you had things handled."
Amei just laughed.
For the first time, in days… Lin did too.