Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 863: Eye in the storm

Golden morning light broke slow across Raiju, spilling over a horizon unlike anything Earth had ever offered, cities rising in tiered spires that caught the sun in sheets of pale gold and silver, blue electricity threading through conduits woven visibly into every structure, running along building facades like veins beneath skin, pulsing gentle with the planet’s own rhythm rather than anything mechanical.

People moved through the streets below, some walking, some drifting a few feet off the ground on personal grav-plates, tech generations beyond anything Earth had managed to build, and above it all, transports cut clean lines through the sky, silent, efficient, leaving faint trails of blue-white light in their wake.

At the heart of the capital, the royal palace rose taller than anything around it, its spires catching the dawn first, and inside, in a private chamber overlooking the waking city, Lucy stood in her armor while her parents watched her finish the last of the buckles.

"You don’t have to do this alone," Damien said, voice careful, worn thin from an argument they’d already had too many times to count. "Let me send our best generals with proper authority to command—"

"I need to be careful," Lucy said, cutting him off gently but firmly. "I know, Dad. You’ve said it enough times I could recite the whole speech back to you word for word."

"Then hear it one more time anyway."

Vivian crossed the room instead, taking both of Lucy’s hands in her own, armor plating cold under her palms.

"Don’t focus on careful," Vivian said, quiet and steady. "Focus on this. Do not fail your brother. Whatever else happens out there, whatever it costs, you bring something back for him. That’s the only outcome I can live with."

Lucy held her mother’s gaze a long moment. "I won’t fail him."

"Good." Vivian pulled her into a tight embrace, brief, fierce. "Then go be what this family needs you to be."

Damien stepped forward last, and for a moment the argument between them fell away entirely, replaced by something simpler.

"Come home," he said.

"I will."

She left them standing in the chamber, armor humming faint around her with every stride, and stepped out onto the palace’s grand terrace overlooking the staging fields beyond the capital.

The sight stole her breath even now, even after seeing it built piece by piece over the last three days.

Thousands of Raiju soldiers stood arrayed below in tight formation, blue-plated armor catching the dawn light in a single unbroken wave that stretched to the horizon, men and women both, veterans and fresh recruits standing shoulder to shoulder. Beyond them, ships hovered in staggered formation, sleek attack cruisers alongside heavier transport vessels, gunships shaped like curved blades hanging silent in the air, the whole armada arranged in disciplined ranks that spoke of a military tradition centuries deep.

Lucy walked to the terrace’s edge, lightning crackling faint and controlled along both shoulders, and raised a hand.

The field went silent.

"Greys," she called out, voice carrying clean across the massive gathering, amplified by something in her own armor that pushed it out over the crowd without strain. "Look around you. Look at who stands beside you today."

Thousands of faces turned up toward her, waiting.

"You already know our enemy," Lucy continued. "You have known him for generations, even before any of us standing here today were born. Arthur. A man who once ruled beside the seven original families before betraying every single principle that bound us together. A man who tortured my own father for months, and who built, out of his own broken ambition, a war that has cost this family, this planet, this entire people, more than any of us should have had to bear."

A low murmur rolled through the assembled ranks, not fear, something closer to resolve hardening in real time.

"His son," Lucy said, voice sharpening, "took something from my brother that we do not yet know how to give back. Lucas Grey. Your prince. A man who has fought beside every single one of you, who has bled for worlds that were never even his own to protect, and who now lies frozen, unable to defend himself, while the architect of everything that’s happened to this family still draws breath somewhere out there in the dark."

She let the silence hold a moment, let it settle into every soldier standing below her.

"We know what Arthur’s forces are capable of," she continued. "We know what One did to my brother, and we know that whatever waits for us on that planet will not yield easily. This will not be a clean fight. This will not be a fight any of us walk away from unscathed." Her voice climbed, hardening further. "But I need every single one of you to understand something before we leave this world today. We are not going there to make a statement. We are not going there for revenge, though I will not pretend that isn’t part of what drives me forward. We are going there because my brother is counting on us, whether he knows it or not, frozen in a chamber that should never have needed to exist in the first place."

Lightning built brighter around her shoulders now, crackling audible in the morning air.

"Every soldier standing here today wears the Grey," she said. "That name means something. It has meant something for longer than any of us have been alive, and I will not let it mean nothing on the day we finally face the man responsible for so much of what this family has suffered. We do not yield. We do not buckle. We do not retreat simply because the fight grows difficult, because difficult has never once stopped a Grey from finishing what needed finishing."

She raised her fist, lightning arcing bright and sharp against the golden morning sky.

"For Raiju!" she shouted. "For every soldier this war has already taken from us! For my brother, your prince, who would stand exactly where I stand now if our positions were reversed, without a single moment’s hesitation!"

The field erupted.

"YES, MY KING!"

The chant rolled out across the staging field in a single unified roar, thousands of voices crashing together, fists raised, weapons drawn and held aloft, the sound of it carrying far enough that Lucy felt it as much as heard it, vibrating up through the terrace stone beneath her boots.

"Board your vessels!" she called out over the noise. "We leave within the hour!"

The formation broke into disciplined motion, soldiers filing toward transport ramps with the practiced efficiency of a military tradition that had drilled for exactly this moment more times than any of them could count, ships beginning to power up in staggered sequence across the wide staging field.

Lucy turned from the terrace and made her way down through the palace, armor humming steady with every step, until she reached the command ship waiting at the field’s edge, its hull dark and sleek, already thrumming with contained power.

She boarded, and the crew snapped to attention as she passed, and she made her way to the main viewport at the ship’s forward section, standing alone for a moment as the vessel began its ascent.

Someone had already placed Valor there, resting against the viewport frame, Lucas’s storm relic axe, blue-green lightning still tracing faint along its blade even in stillness, waiting for a hand that wasn’t currently able to hold it.

Lucy reached out and took it, the weight of it familiar and wrong at the same time, her brother’s weapon in her grip instead of his.

Through the viewport, Raiju fell away below, the golden morning light catching the planet’s surface one final time, tiered cities and blue conduit lines shrinking smaller and smaller until the whole world became just another point of light among thousands, indistinguishable from the stars surrounding it.

Behind her, the wider Grey armada fell into formation, ships stretching out in disciplined ranks across open space, engines flaring bright as the fleet built speed toward the dark stretch of void ahead.

Lucy held Valor close against her chest, watching her home disappear entirely behind them.

"Arthur," she said quietly, to no one, to the empty space ahead, to whatever waited for her at the end of this. "I’m coming for you."

***

Back on earth, the hangar bay thrummed with pre-mission energy, transports lined in staggered formation, EDF ground crews moving between them running final checks alongside Eclipse’s own technicians, the two organizations’ logistics teams working side by side for what felt like the first genuinely coordinated effort either had managed in years.

Kelvin stood near the center of it all, fully suited into KROME, the mech’s plating catching hangar light in dull gunmetal sheen, and his auxiliary arms extended from his spine, synced now directly into the suit’s own systems, moving in perfect coordination with the mechanical limbs already built into KROME’s frame.

Diana walked a slow circle around him, arms crossed, inspecting the integration with genuine professional interest.

"Show me," she said.

Kelvin flexed all the arms at once, two auxiliary, two KROME’s own, each one moving independently, targeting different points in the air around him in a display that looked less like a demonstration and more like a very expensive, very deadly dance.

"See, this is the part I’m actually proud of," Kelvin said, grinning behind the suit’s open faceplate. "Before, the auxiliary arms and KROME operated on separate control logic entirely, which meant I could use one or the other but switching between them mid-fight cost precious fractions of a second I genuinely didn’t have to spare in a real engagement. Now they’re unified. Single neural interface, four independent limbs, all responding to the same thought process at the same time."

"That’s four weapons platforms operating simultaneously," Diana said, something impressed slipping through her professional tone.

"Four weapons platforms," Kelvin confirmed, "operating simultaneously, which, and I want to be clear I’m not being modest here, is genuinely insane. Nobody else in human space has anything close to this level of multi-limb coordination. I also upgraded the shoulder-mounted plasma emitters, doubled their output without increasing the heat signature, which took me actual weeks to solve because thermodynamics is, and I cannot stress this enough, extremely rude—"

"Kelvin."

"—and I redesigned the leg servos entirely, better shock absorption for hard landings, which, given how often Noah crashes things, felt like a reasonable investment even though he’s not here to benefit from it directly, and honestly the whole suit runs about thirty percent more efficient across the board now, which means longer operational windows before I need to—"

"Kelvin." Diana caught his faceplate gently between both hands, stopping the momentum entirely. "I love you. I love this. I love watching you get like this. But we have maybe ten minutes before Sophie starts the debrief, and I need you breathing normally when that happens."

Kelvin exhaled, visibly reeling himself back in. "Right. Sorry. I get like this."

"I know. It’s why I married you."

Sophie approached from across the bay, King’s Gaze already held in her hand, the mace’s eye dim and quiet for now, and Sera walked beside her, Faithful Feathers already fitted and settled against her back, wings tucked but ready.

"Status," Sophie said, stopping in front of them.

"KROME’s fully integrated," Kelvin said, some professional composure sliding back into place now that the actual mission had arrived at his doorstep. "Auxiliary arms synced, weapons systems calibrated, I’m ready to go whenever we’re moving."

"Good." Sophie looked around the bay, taking in the scale of the operation properly.

Angel stood near the far transport, dressed in standard EDF field gear rather than her usual blood-red armor, sidearm holstered, tablet in hand as she coordinated final logistics with her task force lieutenants. She caught Sophie’s eye and gave a short nod, all business, the softness Noah had once mentioned tucked away somewhere beneath the professional exterior she wore into every operation like this.

Brooks moved through the crowd nearby, checking gear on a cluster of Eclipse ground troops, tightening a strap here, correcting a stance there, the particular focus of someone who’d trained soldiers for years and still couldn’t fully switch that instinct off even now that most of these people had already proven themselves in the field.

Lila stood near the second transport, arms crossed, quiet, watching the preparations with an intensity that hadn’t fully left her since the confession, since the wedding, since everything that had happened in the weeks leading up to this exact moment.

Sophie crossed to the center of the bay, and gradually, without needing to call for attention, the noise around her settled, soldiers and technicians alike turning toward her by instinct.

"Alright," she said, voice carrying clean across the hangar. "Final debrief."

The room quieted fully.

"We know this," Sophie said. "Unregistered world, Corvane Expanse. Confirmed mining operation on the surface, energy signature disproportionate to what that operation should actually produce. Kelvin’s reconstruction gives us a working layout, but I want everyone treating it as a starting point, not gospel. Terrain, structure placement, all of it could shift once we’ve got real eyes on the ground."

Nods rippled through the assembled teams.

"Angel and Brooks have built our operational structure," Sophie continued. "Angel leads recon, staggered insertion, minimal signature. Sera goes with her, aerial coverage, confirms perimeter before anyone else commits to landing."

Sera inclined her head once, wings shifting slightly against her back.

"Once recon confirms layout," Sophie said, "Diana leads breach, Lila navigating alongside her given her firsthand knowledge of the interior. Kelvin, you’re supporting breach directly, KROME’s firepower and mobility both matter more inside a fortified structure than they do holding a perimeter."

"Understood," Kelvin said, all business now.

"Brooks holds perimeter command," Sophie continued. "Cutting off retreat, cutting off reinforcement, making sure nothing gets in or out of that facility once breach is underway."

Brooks nodded, already running through contingencies in her own head, Sophie could tell by the particular set of her jaw.

"I’m running a floating response element with Sera once her recon work is complete," Sophie said. "Reacting to whatever develops mid-operation rather than sticking rigid to a fixed assignment. King’s Gaze doesn’t work on command, but if it gives us even a partial read once we’re close, that changes how careful we need to be in real time."

"And exfil," Angel added, stepping forward to finish the picture. "Transports hold pattern outside atmosphere until breach confirms clear. Nobody lands early, nobody sits exposed on the ground longer than absolutely necessary. If stealth fails at any point, priority shifts immediately to extraction over objective completion. I don’t care what we find in there if it costs us people getting it back out."

"We’ve discussed the possibility of non-human hostiles," Brooks said, addressing the wider group now. "Purge has a documented history of coordinating with Harbingers directly, going back to Kruel’s original deployment three years ago. Lila’s own account from her time on-site suggested no direct Harbinger presence, but I want every single person walking into that facility prepared for the possibility regardless. Better prepared for a threat that isn’t there than blind to one that is."

A murmur ran through the ranks, soldiers adjusting gear, checking weapons one final time, the reality of what they were about to walk into settling properly now that the abstraction of planning had given way to actual departure.

"This is the first genuine joint operation between Eclipse and the EDF since everything that happened years ago," Sophie said, voice steadying, carrying real weight now. "I know most of you in this room have your own history with that fracture. I know trust between these two organizations hasn’t come easy, and honestly, some of it’s still not fully earned back on either side. But today, we’re standing here together anyway, because whatever’s waiting on that planet matters more than old grievances, and because the people responsible for burning five academies to the ground do not get to walk away from that untouched."

She looked around the bay, at every face turned toward her, EDF and Eclipse both, standing in the same space, preparing for the same fight.

"We move in staggered phases," Sophie said. "Recon first. Confirm before we commit. Nobody gets left behind, nobody goes further than the plan allows without good reason. This is not a revenge mission. This is a controlled, disciplined operation against a confirmed threat, and we execute it exactly that way."

She raised her mace slightly, the eye at its center flickering faint, dormant but present.

"Let’s go get these bastards."

The hangar erupted into motion, soldiers filing toward transports with practiced efficiency, Kelvin’s KROME suit powering up with a low mechanical hum, Sera’s wings unfurling to their full span as she moved toward the lead recon vessel, Diana and Lila exchanging one final look before boarding together, Brooks already barking last-minute logistics at her perimeter teams, Angel leading her own people toward the forward transport with quiet, practiced authority.

Sophie stood a moment longer in the center of the emptying bay, watching it all unfold around her, before she finally turned and followed the rest of them toward the ships waiting to carry them all somewhere far from home.