After a brief delay, three signal flares shot high into the sky. The charged crystals sealed within them erupted violently once their inertial locks released, activating the Rune Arrays inscribed inside the shells. For the next several seconds, enormous spheres of light, visible even from Fort Greta far away, illuminated the thick, ink-black clouds. Blinding red radiance spread through the dense cloud cover, and almost at the instant that light blossomed, the moisture gathering over the narrow plain reached its peak.
On the ground, the final heavy shell fired by Winter's Wrath had just completed its long flight and descent. Amid an earthshaking explosion, a massive mushroom cloud rose into the air. Yet few Aberrant limbs or fragments were blasted into the Shockwave—the Aberrants and bio-synthetic beasts on the battlefield had already been mostly destroyed by the previous barrage. Leaving behind countless wrecks, the monsters swiftly abandoned the positions they had just "occupied" and retreated toward the border of the Gondor Wasteland.
They clustered amid corrupted soil and jagged boulders, howling in the dust-filled air. The meteor-like fire falling from the dark clouds had ceased, but the searing agony and terror brought by that "heavenly fire" seemed to remain deeply branded into their twisted, mutated Nervous Systems. The smoke and dust raised by the final bombardment had yet to disperse, and the lingering tremors rolling through the earth still persisted. This horrifying scene was transmitted through the monsters' Nervous Systems and the psychic links between them, eventually converging at the Command Node of the Wasteland Legion, converging in their "brain"—the Dark Priests entrenched deep within the ruins of an ancient fortress on the Wasteland border northwest of Fort Greta.
This was an ancient border fortress. During humanity's distant age of glory, it had served as a frontier outpost of the