By dawn, the field had stopped being theory.
Maps became roads. Names became positions. Political agreements became armor, weapons, sealed comms, medical bands, sensor tags, and the low mechanical hum of mobile barricades unfolding across the outer defensive line.
The beast season pressed itself against the horizon first, invisible but felt in the way soldiers checked their masks twice, in the way pheromone filters were tested until engineers began swearing, in the way even the wind seemed to carry something metallic and wrong from the infected territories.
Dean stood at the central command point with Arion beside him.
That had not been negotiable.
Arion wore black field armor fitted under his long military coat, the scar on his cheek pale in the morning light. Dean wore lighter armor, reinforced at the chest and throat, his collar locked beneath the high protective line. His tablet was strapped to one forearm. His neutralization field rested under his skin, awake but leashed.
