The Glorious Evolution

The Spectral Response Corps captain was already running when the order reached his squad. Officers followed him out of their post with portable lights and Radiant Lock totems, while the Public Safety Wing began clearing the buildings nearest the explosion!

They had practiced hundreds of drills for this.

Fifteen minutes of complete darkness could establish a Stygian Gate... and nobody intended to give the nightcrawlers waiting on the other side that much time to overwhelm the city.

BOOM! BOOM!!...

Another detonation shook the western district... then a third erupted farther south, destroying a second supply point just as the monitoring teams attempted to restore its connections.

The captain watched three more sectors turn red on his display.

”Deliberate sabotage,” he reported with a grim expression. ”Multiple sites.”

”Contain what you can... Reinforcements are moving.”

High Chancellor Gideon Valemont’s reply reached every responding unit.

”Public Safety, clear the unlit buildings. Containment Force, take the exits behind them. Enforcement, keep the roads open. Nobody abandons an evacuation route to chase an attacker.”

Across the capital, government Daywalkers left their posts in organized squads, and the private agencies moved with them.

The Blood Hunters headed for the western residential blocks, where the second blast had buried a lighting crew.

Lightbearer Alliance teams opened routes for the wounded and rushed emergency supplies toward the blacked-out districts, while the Midnight Slayers searched for the saboteurs before another station could be hit.

Heliodor was their home, and they would defend it at all costs.

Madam Naima’s giant thorny rose broke through the pavement beside the wreckage. Its vines lifted a fallen slab while her people pulled the workers out.

Farther along the avenue, portable lights came alive one intersection at a time.

Hundreds of dark spaces were illuminated before their countdowns expired.

Others remained inaccessible behind collapsed walls... and the officers could hear things moving inside them when the fifteenth minute passed.

The first confirmed Gate opened inside a sealed storage hall.

A claw pushed through its dark surface, followed by a blood-red werewolf who had to lower his three-meter frame to clear a damaged beam.

Fang breathed in.

Dust, burning flesh, and screams of frightened humans...

Finally, some excitement.

”Move!”

The mercenaries poured through behind him... two remained at the Gate while the others followed him through the hall, stepping over the workers killed by the collapse.

One of them held a black idol against his chest. Hooked ribs enclosed its swollen center, which beat slowly despite having no visible heart.

A Vile Totem.

Fang smashed through the roof and hauled himself onto the building... the burning sun did nothing to him, as he was no nightcrawler but a Falseborn under Bishop Na’thir’s blessing.

Below, a Containment Force squad was cutting down the first nightcrawlers to escape another breach... beyond them, frightened citizens hurried along an avenue still bright with afternoon sunlight.

His chained fang struck the rooftop.

”Here! Activate it!”

The mercenary planted the idol between the broken tiles.

Its ribs opened.

Whoosh!

A pillar of black vapor shot upward, struck an invisible height, and spread aggressively across the sky... Sunlight disappeared street by street as the expanding canopy rolled over the capital!

People stopped running long enough to look up... then something nightmarish screamed inside a nearby building.

Shatter!!

A shop window exploded outward, scattering glass across the crowd as a many-legged Tier 2 nightcrawler forced its body through the frame!

Farther away, winged shapes emerged from a damaged warehouse, no longer confined by the lethal sunlight outside.

In no time, the capital was invaded by thousands of Tier 1 and Tier 2 nightcrawlers, led by Tier 3 and Tier 4 nightcrawlers!!

Fang threw back his head and howled.

”Go on! FEAST!!”

Howls and harrowing cries answered him across the darkened streets.

”Prioritize the evacuations!!”

The Public Safety captain shouted as she struck the first creature before it reached the civilians.

Her shield caught its open jaws, stopping its leap with a collision that knocked dust from the nearby walls. She drove it backward, giving the officer beside her room to pull a fallen woman clear.

”Keep moving! Follow the lights!”

The creature hooked two legs around her shield.

A spear entered its exposed throat.

The Nightcrawler Containment Force captain tore the weapon sideways, separating its head from its body before kicking the remains away from the evacuation route.

”Anything that comes through that window is mine,” she told the Public Safety officers. ”Get them past me!”

She advanced as the next pair appeared.

One leaped high; the other scuttled toward her legs.

The Warden captain thrust upward, impaling the airborne creature, then swung its weight into the second. Both crashed against the storefront, where her squad finished them with concentrated attacks.

Across the intersection, the Spectral Response Corps had reached a breach inside a ruined stairwell.

Their captain planted his battered shield between the opening and his squad. Something struck its other side hard enough to force his boots through the tiles.

”Set the Lock!”

An officer reached past him with the Solar totem.

The captain thrust his sword over the shield’s rim, pinning a clawed limb against the wall while the Radiant Lock activated.

Sunlight flooded the stairwell, making the nightcrawlers squeal in agony for a split second before they turned to ashes.

”One sealed. Next building!”

The captain glanced at the black cloud hiding the sun, then led his squad toward the next breach. The evacuation route still had buildings without light.

In a different district, Naima’s vines had reached a mother and her children trapped at a second-floor window... when a heavy impact shook the rose.

Naima turned with a cold expression, her eyes landing on a Tier 4 nightcrawler that had emerged from the shattered storefront opposite her.

He was a Ribsplitter, a huge insect with four jointed legs and two long forelimbs ending in serrated hooks. His small head had four red eyes but no mouth... Instead, the black plates along his chest opened outward, revealing two rows of curved teeth resembling exposed ribs.

Pieces of a shopkeeper’s uniform were still stuck inside the feeding cavity.

He cut through the first vines barring his path, then stopped when he noticed the children at the window.

”Keep her busy,” he ordered the two Tier 3 nightcrawlers behind him. ”I’ll have the delicious meals upstairs.”

His companions crawled out on six jointed legs, their swollen abdomens dragging across the broken glass.

They resembled giant beetles, except their heads split open from top to bottom, revealing rows of small teeth dripping with greenish acid.

Naima drew more vines around the opening, but a familiar voice reached her first.

”Keep rescuing them, Madam. We have this!”

Velmira jumped off her nightmount, Peanut, and landed beside the rose... She wore her usual long crimson coat, decorated with polished glass along the cuffs and collar.

Although she was in her mid-thirties, she still looked no older than twenty. Not even the dust raised by her landing stuck to her clothes, while the small, crooked mirror dangled from a silver cord around her neck.

Sadik, Rasin, Jamal, Sergio, and Rayan arrived behind her with the rest of the squads, splitting up to block the two streets leading into the intersection.

”Rasin, clear the left. Sadik, watch my back.”

The two beetles’ abdomens contracted, launching a bombardment of acidic greenish spit toward the rose and the citizens behind it!

Velmira touched her necklace... The crooked mirror detached, expanded across the street, and split horizontally into two broad sections.

”Glassway Arts: Reflection!”

The lower mirror swallowed the barrage while the upper one tilted toward the advancing army.

PHEW! PHEW! PHEW!

Acid showered the Tier 1 and Tier 2 nightcrawlers rushing through the street!

Giant cockroaches rolled across the pavement with their shells melting, knocking over the pale centipedes crawling between their legs.

Agonizing squeals rang out as the creatures behind them scrambled over their bodies, only to receive the rest of the bombardment!

”Stop firing!” the Ribsplitter shouted. ”Close on her!”

He rushed along the mirror’s edge, slashing both hooked forelimbs toward Velmira’s neck... Sadik’s squad intercepted him with a volley of attacks, forcing him behind a wrecked vehicle.

”Velmira. The street,” Naima warned.

”I see them.”

More nightcrawlers poured through the adjoining lane. Several climbed the buildings, breaking the remaining windows as they searched for a way around the defenders.

One of the Tier 3 beetles ripped a chunk from a wall, but his companion seized his foreleg before he could throw it.

”She’ll send it back!”

”Then hit her from the side!”

Velmira glanced at the glass scattered across the pavement... shattered windows, broken shopfronts, even the remains of the vehicles’ windshields.

”Keep breaking things,” she muttered. ”You’re making this easier.”

She raised her hand as she floated upward... Glass trembled across the street.

Pieces slid out from under wrecked vehicles, shook free of window frames, and rose from the gutters... Hundreds became thousands as more flew out of the ruined shops!

”Glassway Ultimate: Shattered World!”