Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 872: Kill the Sun 1

The raid on the unregistered world in the Corvane Expanse had, by every outward measure, already succeeded, and task force soldiers held the facility’s upper levels against the last scattered resistance while smoke curled thick off three collapsed structures and EDF and Eclipse fighters worked side by side through the wreckage, securing ground that had cost more blood than anyone had budgeted for going in.

Inside the ruined command chamber, Mr. Rowe pushed himself upright against a shattered console, blood still wet along his jaw, and smiled at his daughter like a man settling into a favorite chair rather than a man who’d just lost a fight.

"Before you say anything else," he said, voice unhurried and cultured, the kind that had never once needed to raise itself to be heard, "I’d like a moment to correct a misunderstanding."

"You don’t get a moment," Lila said.

"I’m afraid I’m taking one regardless." He straightened his torn collar with two fingers, an absurd gesture given the state of the room around him. "You’ve walked in here, bled a great deal, broken rather a lot of expensive equipment, and I imagine you believe you’ve won something. Haven’t you."

"We beat you."

"You beat an afternoon’s inconvenience." He said it lightly, almost fondly, the way one might correct a child’s arithmetic. "My darling, you and your little assembly of heroes have been playing checkers this entire time, while your mother and I have been playing chess since before you were old enough to hold a piece. You simply never noticed the board extended well past the room you were standing in."

"Dad—"

"No, let me finish, you’ve earned at least that much patience from me." He glanced at Diana and then at Angel, taking in the wreckage scattered between them with something almost wistful crossing his face. "Look at what you’ve assembled here. A grieving commander who hides it poorly, a married couple still playing at soldiers, an elf who mistakes kindness for strategy." He shook his head slowly. "You’ve built yourself quite the little band of brave warriors, haven’t you. I’m sure it feels like something, standing in this wreckage, congratulating yourselves."

"We’re still standing," Lila said. "You’re the one bleeding on the floor."

"Am I." He tilted his head, studying her with something that might have been pride if it hadn’t been so cold. "Tell me, Lila. What do you actually know about Red Hollow."

The question landed wrong and sideways, and Lila’s whole posture went rigid.

"Three years ago," Mr. Rowe continued, unbothered by her silence, "an EDF platoon leader sent a transmission from a mining colony in Sector Seven, saying they’d encountered a five horn, and the signal died mid-sentence. Nobody ever found him. Nobody ever found what he found." He smiled, thin and precise. "The EDF filed it as an isolated incident and moved on, because that’s what institutions do with problems too large to actually solve. Tuck them away, call them closed, sleep soundly."

"What are you saying."

"I’m saying you’ve sullied this family’s name among Purge ranks, child," Mr. Rowe said, something colder sliding under the polish now, "worse, in some circles, than the Reign girl ever managed, and we genuinely believed we’d raised you to understand patience better than this. But say what you will about our methods, Lila. We have never once let something valuable go to waste."

Several levels down, in a cramped maintenance corridor he’d ducked into to avoid a collapsing support beam, Kelvin stood with both eyes flared green, data pouring in faster than his conscious mind could fully sort it.

"Pithon to command," he said into his comm, voice tight. "Repeat, Pithon to command, we have a developing situation."

"Kelvin." Sophie’s voice came back immediate, sharp with alarm. "Talk to me."

"I’m reading an energy signature I genuinely cannot explain," he said, words tumbling fast now. "This facility’s output is nowhere close to what a mining operation should produce, and I’m looking at draw levels that would need at least one void stone just to sustain, something on the order of a third of the Ark’s own command center consumption. That’s not a number a settlement this size should ever touch."

"Kelvin, slow down—"

"The irregular cycling I flagged back during planning, the gaps in the power rhythm, that was never maintenance." His voice cracked slightly with the weight of putting it together in real time. "Oh. Oh, this isn’t a mine. This is a launch facility. Full scale. Something is being prepped to leave this planet, and soon."

Back in the command chamber, Lila’s comm crackled faint against her ear, Kelvin’s voice bleeding through just enough for her to catch the shape of it, and she didn’t need to hear the rest.

"No need," she said, cutting through whatever her father had been about to say next, her voice shaking now with something closer to horror than anger. "I already know."

Mr. Rowe’s expression didn’t shift at all, which somehow made it worse.

"Do you," he said.

"Red Hollow." Lila’s eyes locked onto his. "That’s what this is. That’s what you’ve had this whole time."

For the first time since the fight ended, something genuine flickered behind her father’s composure, not guilt, not fear, just quiet, satisfied confirmation.

"There she is," he said softly. "I did wonder how long it would take you." And with that, he reached for his wife’s hand without looking away from Lila, and dark chi bled thick from both their palms, coiling into a dense black smoke that swallowed them whole in the space of a breath. By the time the smoke thinned, the spot where they’d been standing held nothing but scorched floor tile and a faint, acrid smell already dissipating into the ruined chamber’s air.

Lila stared at the empty space a half second too long before her body caught up to what had just happened.

"Everyone, fall back," Brooks’s voice cut across every open channel at once, steady despite the alarm underneath it. "All teams, immediate retreat to the extraction point, now."

"Agreed," Kelvin said, already keying toward Diana’s frequency. "Diana, pull back, get clear of the lower levels, we are not equipped for whatever this actually is."

"No," Lila said.

Across the chamber, every head turned toward her.

"What," Diana said.

"We can’t just leave."

"Lila, it’s a five horn." Angel’s voice cracked sharp through the comm, disbelief bleeding into every word. "You understand that. We came in prepared for a mining depot’s security detail, and nobody packed for this, this is exactly the disaster this whole operation was supposed to prevent, not walk headfirst into."

"I know what it is," Lila said, "better than any of you, actually, since I’m the one who grew up listening to my parents discuss containment protocols the way other families discuss dinner plans. But think about what he just told me. They were never going to release it here, on us, because why would they waste something they spent three years capturing on a raid party, even one that actually managed to hurt them."

"So they’re taking it somewhere else," Brooks said slowly, working through it even as she argued. "That’s not better, Lila. That’s worse."

"It’s worse if we let them leave with it," Lila said, "but think about what that actually means for the long run. They’re not planning to use it today, which means they’re planning to use it eventually, somewhere, on someone who isn’t us, and none of us will see it coming until it’s already happening, same as last time, same as every time before that."

"That’s still not a reason to stay and fight a five horn with the resources we currently have," Angel said.

"I’m not saying fight it." Lila’s voice cracked slightly. "I’m saying I can’t live knowing they have that kind of power sitting in reserve, waiting for whenever it suits them. I won’t sleep again, not once, not knowing if today’s the day another Kruel happens somewhere and we find out three years too late, the same way we did the first time."

Nobody argued that point right away.

Diana’s jaw tightened, something working behind her expression. "She’s not wrong."

"She’s reckless," Brooks said.

"She’s reckless and not wrong," Diana said. "Those aren’t mutually exclusive."

Kelvin’s voice cut through again, tighter now, worse news layered on top of everything already sitting heavy in the channel.

"The station’s active," he said. "I’m seeing launch sequence indicators across every system I can reach, and based on the power curve I don’t think we have long before this becomes irreversible."

"How long," Sophie asked.

"I don’t know exactly, minutes rather than hours." He paused, something colder entering his voice. "I’ve also got eyes on the containment layer now, deep underground, buried, cameras I shouldn’t technically have access to but apparently do. It’s real. The five horn is real. I’m looking at it right now."

"So shut it down," Angel said. "You’re a genius technopath, Kelvin, hack the system, kill the power, strand them here."

"I can’t," Kelvin said immediately.

"Why not."

"Because the power I’d be killing isn’t just propulsion." His voice had gone flat, the weight of it settling into every word. "That same grid is maintaining the containment field holding the five horn in place right now. I turn it off, I’m not stopping an escape, I’m releasing the exact thing we’re all afraid of, except now it’s awake, and we’re standing directly on top of it."

Silence again, worse this time.

"So what do we do," Diana said.

Nobody had an answer.

While the others argued in the ruined chamber above, Lila was already moving.

She didn’t wait for a consensus. She tracked the fading edge of the dark chi scent down two collapsing corridors, boots skidding on debris, following the faint scorch marks her father’s escape had left scattered across the floor like breadcrumbs he hadn’t bothered to hide.

A door hung half torn from its frame ahead, and beyond it a narrower service corridor sloped down toward the facility’s lower levels, toward wherever a launch chamber big enough to move a five-horn might actually sit.

Lila found her parents moments later at the edge of a wide, circular chamber near the facility’s lower perimeter, a shimmering portal frame already humming to life, her mother and father standing calm in front of it like travelers waiting for a scheduled departure rather than two people who’d just lost a fight.

"Going somewhere," Lila said.

Mr. Rowe turned, unbothered by the blood still drying along his jaw. "Ah. I did wonder if you’d find us before we left."

"Where are you taking it."

"That’s rather the point of a secret, darling."

"Where do you plan to release this bomb," Lila said, voice shaking despite her best effort to keep it level.

Mrs. Rowe stepped forward, smoothing a strand of hair back into place with the same unhurried grace she’d carried into the fight hours earlier. "You already know you’ve lost, Lila. Your team is scattered, your little raid is over, and here you stand, alone, delaying the inevitable instead of simply accepting it. It isn’t too late to come back to the winning side. We would still take you."

Lila looked at her mother a long moment.

"I know the winning side," she said finally, "and it’s not you."

She stepped back from the portal frame, something settling cold and certain behind her eyes.

"Leave, if you’re leaving," she said, "but this station isn’t going anywhere."

She turned without waiting for a response, already keying her comm as she walked, voice steady now in a way it hadn’t been in the chamber above.

"Brooks. Angel. I have a plan."

"We’re listening," Brooks said.

"Retreat’s probably still the right call," Lila said, "but if we can’t stop the station from leaving, and Kelvin genuinely can’t shut it down without letting that thing loose on us directly—"

She stopped at the mouth of a corridor, looking back once toward the portal’s fading light behind her.

"Then we don’t stop the station," she said. "We kill the planet."

The comm stayed silent a long time.