"For what?"
"Rending Edge," Ariane whispered, and the Paladin lunged.
"Do it."
"I know," she said. And for the first time in months, she did not sound tired.
She threw Malachar into the burning wreckage of his own command platform and turned the Panzer Paladin toward the rising sun. The suit’s joints seized. Its visor flickered. Step by grinding step, it walked until it could walk no more. Panzer Paladin
Ariane unlatched the cockpit hatch and climbed out onto the Paladin’s shoulder pauldron. The air smelled of smoke, ozone, and something fragile—grass.
Malachar laughed—a wet, mechanical sound. "You’ll delete yourself, pilot. That core is gone. You have less than a minute." "For what
"Plenty of time," Ariane lied.
She didn't hesitate. The Paladin’s gauntlet shot out, its fingers closing around a fallen demonic greatsword still humming with residual heat. The weapon data flooded the cockpit— Rending Edge, class-C, durability 38% —and Flint absorbed it like a starving wolf. She threw Malachar into the burning wreckage of
In the shadow of the crumbling Orbital Gate, Squire Genn leaned on her broken halberd and watched the sky burn. Above her, the colossal war machine known as the Panzer Paladin —a suit of armor the size a cathedral—took a single, thunderous step forward. Its visor, a slit of molten gold, scanned the horizon for its next target.
Ariane had lost her squad to those blades. She had lost her voice screaming into a dead comms channel. All that remained was the Panzer Paladin and its strange, sacred function: to wield the weapons of fallen enemies.
