Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 855: Diversion

Six transports cut through the Eastern Cardinal sky in different directions, each one carrying a response team toward one of the flagged coordinates, Kelvin’s tracking systems still lit red across every screen back at HQ.

Sophie rode with her own unit toward the northernmost site, Sera leading a second team east, Angel’s task force splitting into three separate detachments to cover the remaining locations, Lila taking the closest team south toward a stretch of open farmland where the energy reading sat densest.

They landed and held position.

Nothing moved.

An hour passed like that, soldiers crouched behind cover in six different locations across the Cardinal, weapons ready, eyes on empty ground where a portal signature should have been tearing something violent into the world.

Sophie crouched behind a low ridge, watching the horizon through a scope that showed her nothing but grass and wind.

"Anything," she murmured into her comm.

"Nothing here," came the reply from her second-in-command, voice tight with the tension of waiting for a fight that refused to start.

The portal reading on her wrist display flickered.

Then, slowly, across every flagged site simultaneously, the readings began to fall. Not spike, not surge into something catastrophic. Just fade, steady and unhurried, like something closing a door quietly on its way out.

"Sophie." Sam’s voice crackled through her comm, urgent. "Sophie, all six readings just dropped to zero. Simultaneously."

"Confirm nothing came through," Sophie said, already feeling something cold settle in her stomach that had nothing to do with the wind.

"Confirming now."

Kelvin’s voice cut in a moment later, sharper than Sam’s, edged with something that hadn’t been there before. "Sophie. Something isn’t right."

"Talk to me."

"Six energy spikes, massive, exactly what we’d expect from a Kruel-level incursion. And nothing came through any of them. No creature. No forces. Nothing physically manifested at any site." A pause, the sound of him working fast on something in the background. "That’s not a failed invasion. That’s not how portal tech behaves when something goes wrong on the other end. This was designed to look like six imminent attacks without ever actually being one."

"A distraction," Sophie said slowly.

"Has to be."

She was already keying her comm to broadcast across every unit. "All teams, report in. What are you seeing, right now, exactly where you are."

The responses came back one after another, each one the same.

"Nothing here, ma’am."

"Clear. No contact."

"Empty field. Negative on any activity."

Sophie’s jaw tightened, grinding hard enough to ache.

Kelvin’s voice came back, quieter now, more careful. "Sophie. I found something else. Something you’re not going to like."

"Tell me."

"The portal sites. I cross-referenced their coordinates against regional infrastructure." Another pause, longer this time. "Every single one sits within a few miles of an academy. Six sites. Six academies."

Sophie’s blood went cold.

"It’s a diversion," she said, the words tearing out of her before she’d even finished thinking them through. "Oh god, it’s a diversion."

She was moving before she finished the sentence, sprinting back toward the transport, shouting into her comm at the same time.

"All units, listen to me! This was never the target, I need everyone rerouting now, immediately, to the nearest academy in your sector! Go, go, go!"

She rattled off assignments fast, matching teams to the closest academy, voices already scrambling to comply on the other end of six separate channels at once.

"Lila." Sophie’s voice sharpened, urgent. "Lila, come in, your team’s closest to Academy Twelve, I need you moving there right now—"

Silence answered her.

"Lila, do you copy?"

Nothing. Dead air.

Sophie’s stomach dropped further. She switched channels fast, patching directly into the ground unit Lila had been leading.

"This is Reign, where is your unit leader."

A pause, static crackling. "Miss Rowe left about ten minutes ago, ma’am. Said she had somewhere she needed to be."

"Lila," Sophie breathed, half a curse, half a prayer.

She didn’t waste another second. She was already at the transport, already barking at the pilot before her boots hit the ramp.

The transport lurched into motion, and Sophie kept broadcasting the whole way, voice hard and clipped. "Someone lead a ground team to Academy Twelve immediately, Lila’s unit is closest but she’s off comms, I need eyes there."

EDF troops were already scrambling back toward their own barracks across the Cardinal, transports screaming through the sky in every direction, and by the time Sophie’s own ship broke through the cloud cover toward her assigned site, the news feeds had already caught up with reality.

She watched it unfold on the small display bolted to the transport’s interior wall, a live broadcast cutting between six different locations, smoke rising from multiple points across the Eastern Cardinal skyline.

Black flags hung from shattered academy gates, from broken fence lines, from anywhere with a clear sightline for a camera. Stark black cloth marked with a pale infinite symbol, stripes bleeding down from it like something torn.

"Reports are still coming in," the anchor’s voice said, grim and unsteady, "but what we’re confirming now is a coordinated terrorist assault on six of the Eastern Cardinal’s twelve military academies. Casualty figures remain unknown at this time."

Sophie stared at the screen, hands curling into fists at her sides, and said nothing at all the rest of the flight.

---

Five hours later, the fires were still being put out.

Emergency transports crowded every available landing space across the Cardinal, medics moving in exhausted, endless streams between triage tents and incoming vehicles. Eclipse’s own resources had been stretched thin trying to help coordinate the response, faction members pulling double and triple duty at multiple sites simultaneously, hospitals already overflowing with students being brought in faster than beds could be found for them.

The debriefing room back at HQ sat heavy with a silence that felt physically different from anything that had come before it.

Sophie stood near the main console, staring at a wall of screens still cycling through incoming reports, casualty numbers ticking upward in small increments that felt somehow worse than if they’d all arrived at once.

"How could I let this happen," she said, mostly to herself, voice hollow.

Sera sat nearby, quiet, hands folded tight in her lap, saying nothing because there was nothing yet worth saying.

Brooks stood with her arms crossed near the door, jaw set hard, something simmering behind her eyes that hadn’t fully boiled over yet.

Diana leaned against the far wall, having arrived hours earlier straight from evacuation work, soot still smudged across one cheek, exhaustion written plain across her whole posture.

Kelvin sat at a side terminal, eyes glowing faint green, his auxiliary arms extended behind him toward a bank of floating screens, fingers moving fast across three separate data streams at once as he tried to make sense of the scale of what had actually happened.

"Five academies," Sophie said, still staring at the screens. "Five out of six. Gone. Burned, or worse."

"Several hundred confirmed dead," Brooks said quietly. "That number’s still climbing. Students reporting their abilities simply gone, others dead outright, the ones who tried to resist."

"Their abilities gone," Sera repeated, something disturbed in her voice. "Why?"

"We don’t know yet," Kelvin said, not looking up from his screens. "Something was done to them, systematically, at each site. I’m still pulling data."

Sophie pressed both hands against the console, head bowed. "I should have seen this coming. The moment those readings appeared, I should have questioned why they weren’t doing anything. I let a full hour pass, Sera, a full hour, while five academies burned because I was waiting for a monster to show up somewhere it was never going to."

"You could not have known," Sera said.

"I should have known." Sophie’s voice cracked. "That’s the whole point. This is exactly what we do. We anticipate. We prepare for exactly this kind of thing, and I still let it happen."

Brooks pushed off the wall, pacing now, something raw finally breaking loose in her voice. "You want to know what actually makes me sick about this? It’s not even the tactics. It’s the message. What are they even trying to say with this? Six academies, children, students who signed up to protect people, and they get slaughtered like this, for what?" She threw a hand toward the screens. "Are we supposed to believe this is about the EDF? That humanity’s evolution’s been stalled by some institution too slow to actually protect anyone? Or is it the other thing, the insane thing some of them actually believe, that the Harbingers are divine punishment and this is just them accelerating whatever apocalypse they think we deserve?"

"Does it matter which," Diana said, quiet, tired. "Either way it’s the same result."

"It matters to me," Brooks snapped, "because I want to understand what kind of belief system justifies burning children alive over a philosophical point. I want to know what conclusion they think this actually proves. Because from where I’m standing, all it proves is that they’re sycophants. Pure and simple. Worshipping something that doesn’t care whether they live or die, dressing up cruelty as conviction because it’s easier than admitting they just enjoy this."

Nobody argued with her.

"Several students reported their powers simply vanished," Sophie said again, voice thinner now, repeating it like saying it enough times might make it make sense. "Others who resisted are dead. I don’t understand what any of this actually accomplishes for them. Abolish the EDF? Is that the message? Because burning children doesn’t read like a political statement to me, it reads like—"

She stopped.

The door slid open.

Lila stood in the frame, covered in dirt, one side of her hair singed short and uneven, blood streaked dark across her jaw and down one arm, soaked into what remained of her jacket.

"Hey," she said, voice rough. "It’s none of your fault."

Sophie turned.

"It’s mine," Lila said.

Sophie crossed the room in three fast strides and grabbed her by the collar, shoving her back against the doorframe hard enough to rattle it.

"Damn right it is." Sophie’s voice shook, fury and grief tangled together so tight neither could be pulled apart from the other. "I don’t know how yet, but I know you had a hand in this. My mace never lies, Lila. It went off the second you walked into this building hours ago, and I let myself believe it might have meant something else."

"Sophie—" Kelvin started, rising from his terminal.

"Stay out of this," Sophie snapped, not turning around. "You’ve been backing her since the day this all started, Kelvin, and now what, you’re suddenly the calm one? Since when did you become the level-headed voice in this room?"

"Kelvin." Lila’s voice cut through, steady despite everything. "Back off. Let her."

He stopped, jaw tight, torn between the two of them.

"I deserve this," Lila said, meeting Sophie’s eyes directly, no flinch in it at all. "I should have come clean a long time ago. Weeks ago. I didn’t, and people died because of choices I made without telling any of you what they actually were."

Sophie’s grip didn’t loosen.

"And now I will," Lila said quietly. "Whatever’s left of this. Everything. You’re going to hear all of it."