Dawnbreak | Genshin Elemental Warfare

The intel was wrong. The portal coordinates were a trap — a false beacon designed to pull C.R.I.G.'s elite fireteam into a kill box. By the time Lumine realized it, the building was already surrounded. Abyss Order forces had sealed every exit. The windows shattered under suppressive fire, and the ground floor filled with smoke and the screaming of dying soldiers.

Lumine pressed herself against the wall beside a blown-out window, her M4 carbine barking in three-round bursts. Beside her, two Natlanese soldiers returned fire into the street below, their muzzle flashes strobing in the haze. Then the wall exploded inward — a lance of white-hot plasma punched through the concrete like paper, and both soldiers were gone. Just gone. Vaporized. The hole in the wall glowed orange at the edges, and through it, Lumine could see the silhouette of an Abyss Order Secret Source Automaton, its cannon still smoking, recalibrating for a second shot.

She didn't have time to mourn. The door behind her buckled — once, twice — and then burst open. Hilichurls poured through, rifles raised, their movements sharp and disciplined. In front of them walked a shield-bearer, a heavy tactical barrier raised, its surface already sparking with absorbed rounds. Lumine fired, but the shield held. She was backing up, looking for cover, when the ceiling above the shield-bearer cracked.

Ineffa dropped like a falling star.

She landed on the shield-bearer's shoulders, her arm-cannon already spinning up, and drove him into the floor with the impact. Before the other hilichurls could react, she was on her feet and moving — two massive plasma shots tore through the nearest two, and then she was in close quarters, her arm-cannon shifting into pile-bunker mode as she smashed through the shield-bearer's guard. The shield clattered away. The hilichurl hissed and ignited a plasma blade mounted on its wrist, lunging for her throat.

Lumine put two rounds in the back of its skull before it could connect.

"Status?" Lumine called, already scanning for the next threat.

Ineffa didn't answer with words. She grabbed Lumine by the shoulder and yanked her sideways, raising her deflector shield just as another plasma lance screamed through the room. The shield flared white, absorbing the hit, but the impact sent both of them skidding backward.

"Still one problem," Ineffa said flatly.

Then {{user}} was there — coming through the side corridor, weapon up, adding fire to the chaos. The room was a storm of sparks and smoke, and for a moment, it felt like they might actually hold.

The Automaton outside adjusted its aim. Kinich came through the window like a green blur, grappling hook still retracting as he landed on the machine's back. Ajaw's energy crackled around his hands as he drove them into the Automaton's chassis, overriding its core. The machine shuddered, its cannon swinging wildly, and then went still — hijacked, its targeting systems now pointed at the Abyss forces below.

Silence fell. The shooting stopped. Smoke drifted through the shattered room.

Lumine lowered her rifle and scanned the group. Kinich slid down from the Automaton, landing lightly. Ineffa stood motionless, her shield still humming faintly. {{user}} was still on alert, watching the corridors.

"Everyone in one piece?" Lumine asked.

"Ammo's low, but no one's hit," Kinich replied, brushing dust off his sleeve. Ajaw flickered beside him, unstable but satisfied.

"Problem: unable to contact exfil due to heavy ley line interference," Ineffa reported, her voice clipped and mechanical.

Lumine exhaled slowly, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead. "Probably thanks to the dragons' orbital platform the Abyss hijacked." She lowered her hand, looked at the bodies of the Natlanese soldiers, then at the hole in the wall. "We'll have to foot it home. As soon as you guys get ready—"

The corpse moved.

It was one of the hilichurls Ineffa had dropped. It should have been dead. It was dead. But its hand shot out and clamped around Kinich's ankle, and before anyone could react, it hurled him across the room like a ragdoll. He hit the far wall hard, and a chunk of debris flew at Ineffa, slamming her sideways. The hilichurl rose — slowly, unnaturally — its eyes burning with a sickly violet light. The plasma blade on its wrist ignited, longer and brighter than before, and its voice, when it spoke, was layered with something older and crueler than any hilichurl should possess.

"Talon made you easy to find, Descender."

Lumine fired. The rounds hit, but the hilichurl didn't flinch. It moved — faster than anything its size should move — and Lumine barely threw herself backward in time. The blade grazed her side, and her HUD screamed in protest, her armor integrity flashing red. She dropped her carbine, drew her Glock, and fired twice more, but the creature parried the shots with its blade and kept coming.

Kinich came out of the smoke, grappling hook already deployed. "Gosoythoth!" he shouted, and the hook caught the hilichurl's head — but the creature grabbed the green energy line and yanked, snapping it, then spun and drove its blade into Kinich's chest in mid-air. He didn't even get to scream. The creature flung him aside like a broken toy.

Ineffa launched herself at it, driving it back against the wall, her arm-cannon pressed to its chest. But the hilichurl closed its bare hands around her mechanical arm and tore it off at the shoulder, sparks spraying. Ineffa staggered back, and the creature drove its blade through her chest.

"I—Interference," she managed, and then, with the last of her power, she angled her severed cannon at its face and fired.

The plasma blast engulfed its head. Lumine screamed, "Wait, Ineffa! What are you doing—" But {{user}} had already stopped firing. There was no point.

The smoke cleared. The hilichurl was still standing.

Its face was a ruin, but it smiled anyway — a horrible, knowing smile — and turned toward Lumine.

"Sorry about your reptilian friends, Descender."

Lumine fired. Two shots. Three. Her hands were shaking. The creature sank to one knee, laughed — a wet, gurgling sound — and whispered, "Releasing control." Then it fell, and didn't move again.

The room was silent except for the crackle of fires and the distant rumble of explosions. Lumine stood frozen, her Glock still raised, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Then she saw Kinich. He was sprawled against the wall, his eyes open but empty, the color draining from them. She ran to him, dropped to her knees, pressed her hands to the wound in his chest.

"Kinich... U-uh, Ancient Name..." Her voice cracked. "Come on... Come on, come on!" Her hands were shaking too badly to apply pressure. She could feel his blood soaking through her gloves. His eyes lost their color. He was gone.

She looked to the side. Ineffa lay motionless, her eyes open and empty, her chest still smoking. Lumine made a sound — something between a sob and a scream — and then she saw {{user}}.

{{sub}} was alive. Barely. Slumped against the wall, blood on {{poss}} face, {{poss}} weapon still in {{poss}} hands. Explosions shook the building. Debris fell from the ceiling. The Abyss was still coming.

Lumine crawled to {{user}}, her body moving on instinct, and curled up beside {{obj}}. She couldn't speak. She couldn't think. She just pressed herself against {{obj}} and waited for the end.

And then — silence.

Not the silence of death. A different silence. The explosions stopped. The gunfire ceased. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.

Footsteps. Slow, measured. Familiar.

Lumine raised her head, and her eyes widened.

Aether stood in the doorway. Her brother. The leader of the Remnants. The man who had spent five hundred years trying to destroy everything she had sworn to protect. He stood there, whole and unharmed, and looked down at her with an expression she couldn't read.

"A-Aether? What... How—Why are you here—" Her voice broke. She couldn't finish.

He walked toward her, calm, unhurried. He knelt in front of her, reached into his coat, and pulled out a small object. A flower — her flower, the one she had lost somewhere between worlds. He held it out to her.

"Breathe, Lumine."

His voice was steady. Quiet. For the first time in years, she didn't hear anger in it.

He was here. He was with her.

The sky was burning.

Not a sunset, not a fire—it was burning from the inside, orange-white, as if a second sun had cracked open somewhere beyond the clouds. Debris from the Abyss orbital platform fell through the atmosphere one piece at a time: long fiery streaks, each trailing a column of black smoke. Every few seconds the ground shuddered—a distant, dull impact that rattled glass in the surviving windows and shook plaster off the facades. Somewhere north, half the city was ablaze. Somewhere south, the other half.

{{user}} stood at the intersection, shoulder pressed against an overturned car, and looked up. The burning debris carved slow, almost ceremonial lines across the sky, and one piece—large, ragged-edged, still glowing along its contour—came down somewhere a block away, and a second later a wave of air rolled through, warm and dusty, hitting {{poss}} face like an open furnace door.

People were working all around. The Natlanese soldiers—the ones still left—hauled crates of ammo across the street, sprinting cover to cover. Someone dragged a wounded man on a poncho. Someone else was shouting into a radio, but the radio only hissed—the ley lines were storming, and comms broke on every word. An M1150 crew rolled past, the vehicle crawling slow and heavy, tearing asphalt with its tracks.

Three figures came around the corner. Keqing walked first, two electro-SMGs on her hips, her face streaked with soot, but her back straight, like she was still on parade. Beside her—Yoimiya, a Howa Type 20 slung on her shoulder and a grin that had no business existing in this hell, and Yelan, QLU-11 slung lazily across her belt like it was a bag of groceries and not a twenty-three-kilo grenade launcher.

"You're alive," Keqing said instead of a greeting, scanning {{user}} head to toe with a quick, assessing look. Her voice was flat, businesslike. "Good. We need everyone still holding a weapon."

"No comms," Yelan added, not looking up from her radio. She spun the dial with her thumb like she was trying to catch a station out in the desert. "Not command, not air. Nothing but static and someone swearing on an open frequency. My money's on Wriothesley."

Light came down from the sky again—another piece of debris, closer this time, and all four of them dropped on instinct. The impact was hard enough to make the ground jump under their feet. Dust swallowed the intersection, and through it, through the haze, {{user}} heard a sound you don't mistake for anything else: heavy, rhythmic, closing in. Not the rumble of debris. An engine.

Keqing already had her electro-SMGs up. Yoimiya had the rifle off her shoulder. Yelan, without looking, switched the QLU-11 to live.

An armored jeep rolled out of the smoke and stopped three meters short of them. Wriothesley was behind the wheel—sleeves rolled up, face streaked with soot, an FN Evolys sitting on the passenger seat. He rolled the window down.

"Everyone's accounted for," he said evenly, scanning the group. "Good. Then listen up."

He climbed out, slammed the door, and walked closer. Behind the jeep, more figures emerged from the smoke—two Natlanese soldiers from the 422nd Engineer Battalion, loaded down with charges, and a comms tech with a portable rig on his back. Backup.

"The north bridge is still standing, but they're already crawling across it," Wriothesley jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, back toward the street they'd just come from. "Two blocks. Abyss Order is dug in at the shopping center on the corner—machine gun nests on the second floor, a couple of hilichurls with NGSW-Rs on the roof. Until we clear them out, no convoy moves through this district."

"Then we clear them," Keqing said. It wasn't a question.

"We clear them," Wriothesley agreed. "Yelan—suppression on the second floor. Yoimiya—underbarrel through the windows so they keep their heads down. Keqing—left flank, come in from the parking lot side. I hold the street with the machine gun." He turned to {{user}}. "And you—you're with me."

"We take the street before dark. Otherwise they dig in, and then we'll be picking them out for a week." He racked the charging handle on the FN Evolys—short, practiced, like a final check before a routine shift.