They came at dawn.
Not with thunder, not with cannon fire or war horns. But with silence — perfect, unnatural silence. The sky above the Cordillera Mountains shimmered like a mirage, then tore open in a thin vertical line of blinding white.
Elijah was already awake.
He had barely slept in the past nights. Visions haunted him — not dreams, but warnings. Prophecies. Ghosts of futures that may yet come to pass. His fingers ached from gripping his weapon too tightly. His mind felt split between this world and another, echoing with voices he didn't recognize but somehow understood.
Eli-Ah burst into his tent, breath ragged, eyes wild.
"They're here."
---
A Rift in the Sky
The beacon had shut itself off at precisely 04:38.
By 04:40, the sky above Mt. Pulag cracked open.
The rift shimmered like oil on water. Dozens of Aeternus figures stepped through, each clad in adaptive armor that flickered between transparency and metallic brilliance. They bore no flags. No insignia. Just a singular pulsing glyph on their chests — a symbol Elijah recognized from his visions.
They weren't here to invade.
They were here to erase.
And they moved fast.
Within the hour, the entire northern perimeter had been breached. Forward scouting posts were eliminated before they could send distress calls. The resistance's newly laid traps were bypassed entirely by the Aeternus walking over them — or through them.
Eli-Ah was the first to engage.
She tore into the enemy with a fury that few could match, wielding her hybrid blade with surgical precision. Her shouts echoed through the trees. Sparks exploded from Aeternus armor where she struck true, and still more came. She had fought these things before.
But never this early.
Not in this timeline.
She fell back only when the plasma rain began — the Aeternus activated orbital drones, small as birds, that rained burning streaks of energy across the forest canopy. Entire squads went silent in an instant.
Elijah gathered the core command beneath the stone halls of the Cordillera base. Faces were grim.
"These are not machines," he told them. "They think. They adapt. They will not stop unless we force them to."
General Ortega leaned in. "Can we?"
Eli-Ah wiped blood from her brow. "Only if we hit their command signal. It's being relayed through the rift."
"Then we close the rift," Elijah said. "Even if we have to drag it shut with our bare hands."
---
A War Within
But not all enemies were made of metal.
As the battle raged, so too did suspicion within the ranks.
Some accused Eli-Ah of luring the enemy here.
Others began to question Elijah's authority — why did the Aeternus target them so precisely? Why now, when they were on the verge of pushing the Americans out of northern Luzon?
The worst blow came when a cache of newly constructed energy weapons — made from scavenged Aeternus technology — exploded in a controlled blast, killing six men. A saboteur. From within.
Eli-Ah confronted the traitor first.
It was a lieutenant named Alcaraz, once part of a splinter faction that believed Elijah's knowledge of the future made him a danger. He had sabotaged the weapons to "weaken the Aeternus curse."
"Your ignorance killed your own," Eli-Ah spat. "You think superstition will save you?"
The man died screaming as one of the damaged weapons overloaded in his arms.
---
The Bonds that Strain
Isa found Elijah hours later, near the ridge overlooking the burning valley.
Her eyes were hollow from exhaustion, blood staining her uniform.
"Half the mountain's on fire," she said.
"I know."
"We're losing."
He turned to her. "No. Not yet."
She hesitated. Then stepped closer.
"I heard what some of the men are saying," she whispered. "About you. That maybe you're not fighting the Aeternus at all. Maybe… you're a part of them."
"I don't blame them," Elijah said quietly. "I've wondered the same."
Isa touched his hand.
"I haven't."
He looked at her — really looked at her — and for a moment, the world fell away.
He leaned forward, forehead resting against hers.
"Isa…"
She closed her eyes.
But before the moment could tip into something more, a voice cut through the air.
"Elijah!" It was Eli-Ah.
They pulled apart.
She approached, her face unreadable. But Isa didn't miss the flicker in her eyes.
Jealousy.
Eli-Ah wasn't blind to what was building between them. And perhaps… something inside her stung.
But now wasn't the time.
"There's a way to disrupt the rift," Eli-Ah said. "But we need to get close. Within thirty meters. And we'll have minutes, at best, before they lock it again."
Elijah nodded. "Then let's finish this."
---
Storming the Rift
They moved under cover of smoke and ash, a handpicked squad led by Elijah, Eli-Ah, Isa, and Ortega. The enemy was distracted — spread thin across the burning slopes, hunting survivors.
Eli-Ah carried a device salvaged from the original beacon, now retrofitted into a jamming spike. It hummed in her arms like a living heart.
They reached the rift.
It floated midair, suspended over a rock plateau scorched clean of vegetation. It pulsed with the same rhythm Elijah had felt in his dreams. His body responded to it.
Like it recognized him.
The Aeternus commanders stood nearby — taller than the others, more heavily armored, their faces completely obscured by black visors that glowed with cold blue light.
Elijah stepped forward.
For a moment, they paused — as if acknowledging him.
Then all hell broke loose.
Gunfire roared. Explosions shook the stone.
Isa fired with brutal precision, shielding Eli-Ah as she ran the jamming spike to the base of the rift. Elijah cut through two enemies with his modified kampilan, sparks flying with every strike. His movements felt… guided. Familiar. As though the blade moved with memories he didn't yet remember.
At the final second, Eli-Ah plunged the spike into the stone.
The rift screamed.
A high-pitched, reality-bending shriek filled the air, and the sky folded in on itself. The commanders reeled. The ground shook.
Then — light.
And silence.
The rift was gone.
---
Fallout
Dozens of resistance soldiers watched from afar as the sky returned to normal. The Aeternus retreated — not defeated, but disrupted. Their first true offensive… repelled.
But not without cost.
Dozens were dead.
Their mountain was in ruins.
And now, the world knew that this wasn't just a war for freedom.
It was a war for existence.
Elijah stood among the ashes, Isa at one side, Eli-Ah at the other.
He had survived the first breach.
But deep in his heart, a new certainty burned:
> That wasn't their full strength. And the next time… they won't be testing him. They'll be coming to claim him.