The ringing of the return bell rippled through the compound like a tremor, and in its wake the inhabitants of Rook & Pegasus HQ became a single organism. Every office, dormitory, and maintenance shed feeding its occupants into the arteries of the main structure, up and out toward the grand observation balcony. In the past, its has become a tradition, whenever the knights arrive from certain mission back to the HQ, happiness and admiration fill the entire HQ as they already expect a good thing will come with the knights, because to them they are the hope that will bring salvation to the people.
Yet, unlike past arrivals, there was no celebratory cheer or expectant murmur. The mouths can only hold silent and the eyes can only hold a gloom expression.
From the administrative gallery, Isabella and Alessia joined the exodus, moving with purposeful speed through the seething corridors. The crowd was thickest near the upper decks, where the glass curtain walls offered the best view of the landing platforms. Even the most stoic engineers and quartermasters jostled for position, their veneer of military decorum stripped away by the stakes.
The hangar doors yawned open to the thin morning light, framing a runway that shimmered with last night's rain. Beyond, the sea was a slate sheet, and in the distance the stormclouds had pulled apart just enough to let the sun paint gold onto the battered foam. This was, Isabella thought, the precise image she would keep if everything ended today: a world on the brink, yet still capable of a desperate, quiet beauty.
A low hiss from the far end of the observation deck announced the arrival, and all heads turned. The speakers overhead crackled to life.
"Inbound signature confirmed," came the voice of the comms officer, tight with urgency.
"Three ships, inbound. Knight-class carrier, two support shuttles. ETA ninety seconds."
A collective exhale, but it was not one of relief. Seven ships had been deployed. The crowd's silent dread was now a tangible, shared grief.
At the threshold of the main hangar, Cecill Ackerman stood alone, back ramrod straight, suit as crisp as the doctrines of old-world intelligence. He surveyed the gathering crowd with the hawk's gaze of a man who had witnessed every permutation of hope and betrayal, his hands clasped behind him to suppress the twitch of nerves. He acknowledged Isabella and Alessia with a nod as they fell in behind him.
The first ship to land was the least damaged—its hull a patchwork of old wounds and fresh burns, but its descent was smooth, almost defiant. It taxied to a halt, and for a moment all movement ceased, even the wind arrested by the spectacle of arrival. Only after a full count of ten did the access ramp lower, steam billowing out around it, as if the vessel exhaled the suffering it had contained for so many hours.
The doors hissed. From within, the Knights emerged, their armour a testament to a brutal, close-quarters fight. Lord Hideyoshi led, his crimson-and-gold armour unmarred by fatigue, eyes as sharp as a hawk's, yet his shoulders were visibly slumped. Behind him, Syr Lancelot, his violet armour scraped and dented, his movements stiff with exhaustion. Then Syr Agravain, every step measured and even, despite the visible limp in his stride. Galahad and Noor close behind, flanking the silent, gleaming figure of the golden knight.
They did not pause for applause or reverence. Instead, they formed a corridor, parting so that the next contingent could emerge: the Knights of Primus, a dozen or so, their own armour less ornate but serviceable. They filed out with the bearing of men and women who had seen too much and lived too long in the trenches between disaster and reprieve.
But it was the third wave that stilled even the most restless of the watchers: a casket, borne aloft by four Pegasus soldiers, its shape unremarkable save for the heavy black shroud that draped it. The soldiers moved in careful lockstep, heads bowed, the casket supported not only by their hands but by the implicit weight of their own futures. Each step echoed in the hangar, amplifying the finality of the gesture.
On the adjoining landing deck, the second airship grounded with less ceremony. One of its landing legs buckling so that the vessel touched down at a jarring angle. The crowd flinched as one, but the ship held. Its rear door spat out a gust of steam, and then a voice, ragged and wild, split the tableau:
"Medic! MEDIC—now!"
Medics broke from the perimeter, wheeling carts and stretchers. There were a clatter of boots and the shouted exchange of triage codes. The first out of the craft was a Pegasus trooper, helmet shattered, one side of his face bandaged in a makeshift shroud of gauze; he leaned on the arm of a comrade, the two of them stumbling forward until a medic intercepted and bore him away. The next was a woman with her arm slung in bloody cloth, her eyes wide but unseeing as she was coaxed onto a stretcher.
The third and final airship limped in on a plume of smoke, one engine sparking, hull pocked with fresh craters. From within, nothing emerged at first—just the hiss of cooling metal and the acrid tang of burning insulation. Then, with terrible slowness, a single figure crawled to the lip of the ramp, collapsed, and was instantly surrounded by medics.
The assembly on the observation balcony did not move. They watched as the wounded were ferried across the tarmac, as the dead were laid out in rows, as the casket was placed in the centre of the hangar with a reverence that transcended speech. Some among the crowd wept openly, others clasped hands in mute solidarity. A few, like Isabella, simply stared, unable or unwilling to blink, as if to miss a single second of this ceremony would be to forfeit a vital piece of history.
Cecill Ackerman's face was a mask, the only betrayal of emotion a tremor in his jawline as he surveyed the aftermath. He glanced to Alessia, who stood at rigid attention, and then to Isabella, who had drawn her notebook without realizing and now gripped it like a relic.
"Three ships," Cecill said quietly, to no one in particular. "Three."
Alessia did not reply, but her hand dropped to her side, fingers curling into a fist.
Below, the Knights stood sentinel, watching the work of the living. Lord Hideyoshi's gaze swept the hangar, missing nothing.
Lancelot murmured a prayer over the casket before moving to assist with the triage. Agravain barked orders to the Knights of Primus, organizing the rescue crews and directing the medics with a general's clarity. Galahad knelt beside the most grievously wounded, pressing his hands to their armour as if the act alone could stave off death. Noor walked among the dead, eyes closed, reciting under his breath a litany in a language few in the room would recognize.
As for Marigold, he remained apart, just beyond the threshold of the ship, helmeted and motionless, the gold of his armour and shoulder cape touched by the blood and with faint scratches can be seen.
The crowd remained in place until the last of the wounded were accounted for, the last of the caskets draped, the last of the ships powered down and sealed. Only then did the watchers begin to disperse, returning to their work with the slow, measured steps of the shell-shocked. The hangar was left to the medics and the Knights, and the only sound that lingered was the low, uncertain hum of the generators.
For the first time since the Emergence, Isabella felt the full weight of what it meant to endure. To survive was not only to live, but to remember, and to bear the cost of memory each loss etched into the living, each arrival a ledger of wounds and wonder.
In the hangar's hollow quiet, the parade of pain and pageantry played itself out.
Once the last of the wounded had been borne away, attention shifted inevitably back toward the surviving Knights.
At first, they were merely six figures in the vast hangar: Lord Hideyoshi at the vanguard, his red cape catching the turbine-borne draft, his armour freshly polished yet already marked with the faintest hints of a new campaign. At his right hand, Syr Lancelot—the gentle giant whose very posture radiated a gravity at odds with the whimsical legend of his namesake.
To Hideyoshi's left, Syr Agravain, his features etched in the grim lines of someone who understood both order and its price. Behind, in a perfect parallel, stood Sir Galahad and Sir Noor—the former the youngest but most unyielding in aspect, the latter older, leaner, his very stillness a rebuke to the restless world. And furthest back, as if by design or personal inclination, stood Sir Tristan, marked by a sullen remove, his eyes fixed somewhere above the heads of the living.
They formed two parallel columns, the space between them a corridor of expectation. It was said, among the staff, that you could always tell when Lord Hideyoshi entered a room: the very air seemed to thicken, the gravitational field shift. That was not metaphor, it was memory, the residue of victories and sacrifices layered on every encounter.
From the shadowed edge of the balcony, Isabella caught her breath, arrested not by the spectacle of armour and capes but by the undertow of myth that followed the Knights. She remembered the first time she had seen them, only on a tv screen. Throughout this year, the knight have been relentlessly fighting emergence all around the globe.
She spoke the words almost unconsciously, a prayer or a verdict. "That's them. The Knights."
Beside her, Alessia responded, voice pitched low: "Yeah. Centre is Lord Hideyoshi. Right, Lancelot. Left, Agravain. Two in the back are Galahad and Noor, with Tristan further behind. He hates being front and centre, can't stand it." Alessia's tone was neither boastful nor matter-of-fact; it was the voice of someone who had studied the contours of this ritual and found comfort in its predictability.
Isabella turned, eyebrows raised in a rare moment of genuine surprise. "You know all their names?"
"Of course," Alessia replied, not quite smiling.
"Everyone here does, at least the people who've lasted more than a season. After the Emergence, they started issuing little books to the staff called 'The Knights' Codex.' So, that we can properly know who are we working with. Makes sense. Besides, they're all over the security feeds. You pick up patterns. Habits. The way Hideyoshi will never break formation, or how Galahad and Noor always hangs back to check on the wounded, even if it means being late to the briefing."
The moment stretched. Down below, the Knights maintained their formation, not moving or acknowledging the gaze of the crowd. The hangar, so recently the site of chaos and suffering, had become a kind of stage: the Knights as actors, the rest of humanity as audience, each waiting for the other to break character first.
But then Isabella noticed something new, a shining glare in the parade. Behind Sir Tristan, so close as to be almost a shadow. Stood a seventh figure, smaller in stature but dazzling in appearance. Where the other Knights wore their battered armour like old wounds, this one's suit did have few faint scratches and blood but still looking radiant, a gold so pure it could make a gold bar look nothing in comparison. A scarf or cape. She could not tell which of royal blue trailed from the shoulders, the only splash of colour in the sea of alloy and blood.
"Wait," Isabella whispered, her eyes narrowing. "Who's that? The one behind Tristan."
Alessia followed her gaze, squinting through the glass. For a long moment, she said nothing, as if assembling a puzzle from incomplete pieces. Then, in a tone both proud and awed, she answered:
"That's the new one. The newest Knight. Marigold, they're calling him."
"Marigold?" Curiosity engulfed Isabella.
She wondered what history, what story, what sorrow or miracle had produced a Knight so gilded and luminous.
"That's what the report says," Alessia added.
"Supposedly he just—appeared a year before. It's also says, Hideyoshi find him at Malaysia, a country in Southeast Asia. At the time when Hideyoshi found him, a giant sword already appeared in the city."
"A giant sword?" Isabella's eyes diluted as she confuses on what Alessia just told her.
The conversation lulled, both women watching as Marigold took his place at the very rear of the formation, never once removing his helmet.
Below, the Knights awaited their summons to the war room, as tradition demanded. But for this moment, they stood as monuments: the last defence, the hope that endured, the stories yet to be written.
Isabella found herself unable to tear her eyes away from Sir Marigold and his gleaming armour. Her mind buzzed with questions, intrigued by the mystery of his tale. His armour reflected the light so intentionally that it seemed crafted to capture attention and hush any whispers. One cannot overlook the helmet he wears: seamless, golden and utterly unyielding. None of the other Knights wore theirs in the hangar, at least not for long; they bared their faces to the air but, Marigold remained locked away, a riddle in lacquered gold, refusing either vulnerability or communion.
The rest of the Knights drifted into repose as soon as their obligations were met. Lancelot stooped by the stretcher-bound, offering soft words and the touch of a knight's hand. Galahad and Noor moved among the injured with a physician's triage, their gestures precise and unhurried. Tristan, as always, found the darkest shadow and stood sentinel, neither joining nor departing. Only Lord Hideyoshi maintained absolute stillness, standing at the fore with the bearing of a general awaiting judgment.
And judgment was not long in coming. Cecill Ackerman descended the observation stairs with the tread of an executioner, his every muscle coiled, his suit—despite the early hour and the sleepless night—impeccable. He strode across the hangar's open floor, the assembled Knights and medics parting before him as if by instinct. He stopped two paces from Hideyoshi, squared his shoulders, and met the other's gaze without hesitation.
"Report." Cecill's voice was a tight, strained whisper, as if he were afraid to hear the what had happened.
Hideyoshi let the silence linger. He did not glance away, nor did he consult a any of the knight to remind him. He simply knew.
"Casualty, Forty-two. Four Knights of Primus. The rest Pegasus regulars. The first city we managed to evacuate them. They are now safe on a remote location on an island."
Then, follow by a quick silence, "The other one…We couldn't make it. All of them gone. We…failed. The city is now engulfed by monsters."
His tone was almost pastoral, as if the tragedy had been entered in a ledger that only he and Cecill could read.
Cecill's jaw worked, teeth grinding audibly. "Couldn't make it? We've given you everything. Technology, resources, everything this compound has, and you couldn't get there in time?"
"The Emergence does not fight on our schedule, Director," Hideyoshi answered, his voice a low counterpoint.
"It adapts. We were fighting three waves of High-class anomaly creatures, securing the evacuation for one settlement only. By the time we finished, the horde at the other city already breached. There was nothing left to save."
"So all of this," Cecill gestured wildly at the caskets, "for a line you call a perimeter? I don't see a victory here, Lord Hideyoshi. I see a catastrophe."
"There is no victory, only survival," Hideyoshi said, his voice quiet but carrying an immense, unshakeable authority. "We bought time for thousands. Their sacrifice purchased us another day."
Cecill's right eye twitched. He turned away slightly, as if the act of looking at Hideyoshi was an admission of defeat. When he spoke again, it was with the venom of a man who knew his anger to be pointless.
"I only asked you to help them," he said, his voice now softer, but cutting more deeply. "Maybe save them, if you could."
Hideyoshi embraced the agony as a rightful penance.
"We are not gods, Cecill. We push our limits, striving desperately, but all we manage is to steal fleeting moments of time, nothing more. We do what we must, and we stand by the consequences."
The words landed with the weight of a verdict. For a heartbeat, no one spoke. The medics and engineers in the gallery watched the tableau as if expecting something to shatter.
Cecill mastered himself. He inhaled, squared his jacket, and turned back to Hideyoshi.
"We'll take this to the war room. After the formalities."
He snapped his fingers, and the security officers stepped smartly to the sides, opening a corridor to the inner elevators.
Hideyoshi nodded, stepping aside to gather his knights with a gesture so subtle it might have been a benediction. The Knights fell in around him. Marigold silent and gleaming, Lancelot radiating sorrow, Agravain and the rest already shifting into the strategic calculus of the next battle.
As they moved toward the elevator, Cecill stood rooted, his eyes on the departing Knights. Only when Hideyoshi was nearly gone did Cecill call out, his voice stripped of all but the barest residue of pride:
"Sorry for not addressing you by your proper title."
Hideyoshi, pausing, turned back and offered a sad smile.
"It's all right, friend."
The hangar emptied, the echo of footsteps and loss reverberating in its steel-boned heart. Isabella watched until even Marigold's gold had vanished, then scribbled a single line in her notebook, unsure whether she was recording history or just trying to catch a moment before it dissolved.
At the far end of the corridor, just beyond the hangar's perimeter, the Knights gathered briefly at the elevator. Lord Hideyoshi signalled for the team to board, but Sir Noor hesitated, his hand resting on the cool steel of the bulkhead as the others filed in.
"Permission to remain, my Lord?"
Noor's voice was a study in restraint, the accent sharper under stress, yet the request itself an old habit - deferential, but never meek.
Hideyoshi paused, reading something in Noor's face—a haunted shadow, perhaps, or simply the exhaustion of one who saw more in a day than most could bear in a lifetime.
"Granted," he said, with the smallest dip of his chin.
"Do what you must."
Noor bowed slightly, then turned back to the hangar floor where the medics toiled, their movements alternately frantic and numbed by repetition. He moved among the wounded, kneeling beside those who could not move, pressing gloved fingers to pressure points, murmuring comfort in half a dozen languages. With each action, he wove a thread of dignity back into the broken narrative of the day.
When there was a lull in the chaos, Noor gravitated toward the rows of dead. He knelt beside the shrouded bodies, drawing from memory the ancient rituals of burial: a hand over the heart, a whispered benediction, the slow tracing of a sigil no longer recognized by any people but still powerful to those who needed its consolation. Even the medics, hardened by months of disaster, found themselves standing a little straighter in Noor's presence.
Above, in the gallery, Cecill was already moving with purpose, the brittle energy of his anger now redirected toward the practicalities of aftermath. He spotted Alessia and Isabella, beckoning them with a brusque gesture.
"Report to the war room," he said, voice stripped of all warmth. "Now."
Alessia nodded and nudged Isabella, who closed her notebook with a snap and fell in beside her. Together, the three made their way through the shifting labyrinth of the HQ, passing from the violence and mourning of the hangar into the antiseptic sterility of the administrative core.
The war room awaited: cold, bright, untouched by the blood or smoke of the battle just ended. On the main display, the maps and manifests blinked in silent accusation—territories lost, anomalies sighted, resource tallies recalculated in real time. It was a room designed for the management of extinction.
Cecill took his place at the head of the table. Alessia and Isabella stood behind him, neither speaking, each lost in the churn of her own thoughts.
Only when the heavy doors slid shut did the world outside disappear, replaced by the hum of the monitors and the knowledge that, before the day was out, the lines on the map would shift again.
In the hangar, Noor worked in silence, a solitary figure among the recumbent dead. In the war room, the living prepared to spend the last fragments of hope on tomorrow's impossible odds.