Chapter 78: Into the Pass
The advance team moved slow and deliberate through the narrow valley, five Sentinels handpicked for stealth and speed rather than raw combat power, Jayden leading them with careful, measured steps along the shadowed ridge line.
"stay low," he murmured, scanning the pass ahead. "eyes on every angle. Reid, anything on your end?"
"nothing yet," Reid’s voice crackled back through the communication relay, positioned at the rear of the main formation still holding position outside the pass’s mouth. "keep it slow. I don’t like how quiet this place feels."
Jayden didn’t like it either. The valley stretched narrow and winding ahead, steep rock walls rising sharp on either side, more than enough cover for anything waiting to strike from above. He’d studied every scrap of intelligence they possessed about this route, weighed the risk carefully against the alternative paths, and settled on this one because it offered the fastest route toward the last confirmed sighting of concentrated Aberration activity.
He had no way of knowing it was also, precisely, the killing ground Ian had built specifically to catch anyone approaching from the south.
"movement," one of the Sentinels whispered, freezing mid-step, weapon rising slow and careful.
Jayden’s whole body went still, following the man’s gaze toward a shift in shadow along the valley’s upper ridge, subtle enough that untrained eyes might have dismissed it as wind through loose scree.
"hold position," Jayden breathed. "don’t engage yet."
The shadow resolved slowly into a single gray shape, shambling and slow, the kind of rogue Aberration they’d all grown grimly accustomed to handling with practiced ease.
"just one," the Sentinel murmured, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. "want me to take it out quiet?"
Jayden hesitated, some old, careful instinct nagging at the back of his mind. A single, isolated rogue, wandering alone through a narrow valley pass that offered ideal ambush terrain, felt wrong in a way he couldn’t quite name yet.
"wait," Jayden said slowly. "something’s off. this feels too easy."
"sir, it’s only one rogue..."
"I said wait," Jayden snapped, quiet but firm, eyes scanning the ridge line above with renewed, sharpened focus.
The single rogue shambled closer, and Jayden watched it carefully, cataloging its movement, its posture, everything about it that should have matched the mindless, predictable patterns they’d grown used to fighting.
It stopped. Directly in the center of the pass, gray head tilting slightly, as though listening for something none of them could hear.
"that’s not normal rogue behavior," Jayden murmured, pulse spiking. "fall back. slowly. don’t run, don’t make noise, just..."
The rogue’s head snapped up toward them with sudden, unnatural precision.
"go, go, GO..." Jayden shouted, all pretense of stealth abandoned instantly, and the advance team scrambled backward toward the pass entrance just as the ridge lines on both sides erupted with movement, dozens of gray shapes pouring down from concealed positions with terrifying, coordinated speed.
"AMBUSH!" Jayden bellowed into the communication relay, blade already flaring gold as he cut down the first Aberration closing on their retreating formation. "full ambush, valley pass, we need immediate support..."
Reid’s voice crackled back sharp and urgent. "pulling the main formation forward now, hold your position if you can..."
"we can’t hold, there’s too many..." Jayden shouted, driving his blade through another attacker, the narrow terrain that had seemed like reasonable caution only minutes ago now working brutally against them, funneling the enemy’s numbers directly into their retreat path with nowhere to properly maneuver.
Two Sentinels went down hard, claws tearing through protective gear that hadn’t been designed for an assault this coordinated, and Jayden felt raw, desperate fury boiling up through his fear as he fought to cover their retreat, gold light blazing bright against the narrow rock walls.
"this was a trap," he snarled, cutting down another attacker. "the whole approach, this whole valley... it was built for exactly this..."
The main formation crashed into the pass’s entrance moments later, Reid at the front with the Emperor close behind, both of them cutting a fast, brutal path toward the retreating advance team.
"fall back to open ground!" Reid roared, blade meeting claws with bone-jarring force. "we can’t fight in this bottleneck, get them OUT..."
The combined force fought a desperate, bloody retreat, dragging wounded Sentinels back through the pass’s mouth as the horde pressed relentlessly, and it was only once they finally broke free into the wider terrain beyond, forming a proper defensive line with room enough to actually maneuver, that the tide of the fight finally, gradually began to turn in their favor.
The last of the pursuing rogues fell back eventually, retreating into the pass’s shadow with the same eerie, coordinated precision they’d advanced with, and the exhausted, battered rescue party finally, gratefully, found themselves alone again, breathing hard, counting losses with grim, familiar dread.
"two dead," Reid reported, voice tight. "four wounded, one seriously."
The Emperor stood amid the wreckage, chest heaving, staring back toward the pass’s narrow mouth with something cold and furious settling behind his exhaustion. "that wasn’t a chance encounter," he said. "that was designed. built specifically to catch anyone approaching from this direction."
"agreed," Jayden said grimly, wiping blood from a shallow cut along his jaw. "we walked in careful, and it still nearly cost us everything. whoever built that trap knew exactly what an approach from the south would look like, and prepared for it precisely."
Reid’s jaw tightened, exhaustion and fury both plain across his scarred features. "then we need a different route entirely," he said. "and better intelligence about what else might be waiting for us before we try again."
"where do we even get that," Logan said, voice raw, kneeling beside one of the wounded Sentinels, applying pressure to a wound that clearly wasn’t going to stop bleeding on its own without proper attention. "we’ve lost people every single time we’ve tried to gather it directly."
Nobody had an answer for that, the question hanging heavy and unresolved over the battered formation, none of them aware how close, how devastatingly close, they’d actually come to the exact information that could have spared them this entire, costly ambush... sitting locked away in the mind of the one person they were risking everything to find, with no way yet to reach them.