The Skyfiends dropped their riders at the first defensive line and swept back up into the Cavern's ceiling haze, joining the wing reserve Kaiden had staged overhead.
Kaiden stepped off his mount onto abyssal stone.
They were at the chokehold where the Cavern narrowed into the corridor's throat, set deeper in from the gate with the Safe Zone's hundred-meter circle visible across the Cavern's open span ahead of them. Everything past the Safe Zone was his to shape. Everything inside it was untouchable ground by system rule, for as long as it took the enemy to walk out of the bubble.
Vespera's shadow lattice had already braided itself through every vertical surface around him, a wall of dark cables waiting for weight to test them. Scarlet stood a half step off the lattice's right edge with her twin red-gold lances held in overwatch, gate in her line of fire.
