The first image on the screen was not the battlefield.
It was an armory.
The drone footage had been cleaned enough to show faces, but the picture still skipped at the edges. Broken crates lined the walls. Depot maps lay scattered across the floor. Roachaline stood near the center table with her knife low at her side and both shards burning under her armor.
Lyra stood opposite her.
The wind user looked smaller indoors. In the street, with her cyan shard lit and air moving around her, she had seemed like part of the storm. In the armory recording, she looked tired, dirty, and young enough that Elias had to remind himself what she had done to the Federation line.
Zykra stood near the door. Sylira leaned on a console. Torqa watched from the far wall with his bandaged shoulder, jaw set in a way that promised violence if Roachaline asked for it.
Roachaline's voice came through the command-room speaker with most of the distortion scrubbed away.
"Show us the heart of your shard."
