Ethan stood by his dormitory window, watching Reach’s skyline slowly brighten.
Dawn broke through the atmosphere, staining the eastern sky a dim, hazy orange-red.
He knew this moment would come.
He had waited eight years for it.
Harvest.
A human colony orbiting the system’s star, Beta Eridani.
Three million people.
Cotton fields, waves of amber grain, old songs his mother hummed in the kitchen—things he had lost forever in another world.
He repeated the number silently in his mind.
Three million.
Chief Petty Officer Mendez had once said: Data does not lie, but data does not offer comfort, either.
Ethan pressed his fingers against the cold glass.
The world outside was so peaceful, as though the tragedy unfolding on the other side of the universe was nothing more than a distant string of electromagnetic signals.
He remembered the day he transmigrated—no, that was merely his own “transmigration.” To this world, he had always been Ethan-007.
It was just that deep within his memories, there were things that shouldn’t exist.
He knew this room would eventually be blown to pieces.
He knew his parents were currently safe in a civilian sector on Reach, transferred over by Dr. Halsey under the guise of “special medical observation.” That was the biggest “butterfly effect” he had caused since arriving here—not interfering in battle lines, nor leaking intelligence, but saving his own parents.
He could only save two people.
Three million people.
He clenched his fists, relaxed them, then clenched them again.
0615 hours.
The Briefing Theater.
The Spartan-II trainees lined up in the dark.
They wore formal black dress uniforms—not the camouflage fatigues used in training, nor the standard tactical gear used in field exercises, but the formal dress brought out only for funerals.
The crisp black cashmere fabric felt stiff and cold, its rigid collar scratching at their necks.
John stood at the very front of the formation, a Purple Heart pinned above his left breast pocket—a medal awarded to service members wounded in action.
During the raid on Eridanus a month ago, he had taken three bullets to the shoulder, and bandages were still wrapped beneath his uniform.
Ethan stood in Black Team’s formation.
Positioned second from the left based on height, he was half a head shorter than Tucker and slightly taller than Cohen.
His breathing was steady, his pulse normal, and his pupils showed no abnormal dilation.
As a transmigrator, he had spent a long time learning this: how to appear completely normal on the outside.
Tak-047 stood beside him.
Ethan could feel the restless aura radiating from him.
Tucker’s jaw was clenched, the muscles along his neck slightly bulging, looking as if he were ready to pounce on something at any second.
To this young man, the death of three million people was not just a number; it was a scream, an unstoppable plunge into the abyss.
Riley-111 stood to Ethan’s right.
His expression showed no flicker of emotion, but Ethan noticed his eyes constantly shifting, sweeping across the ceiling vents, scanning every door in the auditorium, and lingering on John’s back at the front of the line.
*He’s analyzing,* Ethan thought.
*Calculating the enemy’s potential attack routes, assessing our defensive vulnerabilities, deducing how many minutes we could hold out if the Covenant appeared right here.* His mind never stopped working.
Cohen-099 stood at the far edge of the formation.
His hands hung at his sides, fingers slightly curled.
Ethan knew what that silence meant—a violent yet protective youth accustomed to hiding his rage beneath a calm exterior.
Cohen rarely spoke, but his silence weighed heavier than any words.
The briefing theater doors slid open.
Vice Admiral Stanforth stepped inside.
His footsteps echoed in the silent hall like an ominous countdown.
Senior officers followed behind him—Vice Admiral Cole, Colonel Hardy, and several field-grade officers whose names Ethan couldn’t recall.
Stanforth’s face looked as if carved from granite, utterly expressionless.
He came to a stop before the podium.
“All Spartan trainees on Reach,” his voice was deep and authoritative, “tonight’s briefing is classified Top Secret. Nothing you are permitted to learn here may be disclosed to anyone in any form. Violators will face court-martial.”
Ethan knew what was coming next.
Yet he maintained his heartbeat at its required rhythm—sixty-two beats per minute, well within normal parameters.
Stanforth gestured to the operator.
The holographic projector on the ceiling hummed, casting a beam of blue light up from the center.
Everyone held their breath.
An image of Harvest appeared in the middle of the theater.
The blue-green planet rotated slowly, clouds floating across its atmosphere, oceans reflecting starlight.
Then Stanforth spoke.
“Military Calendar, October 31, 2525. UNSC communications with the Harvest colony were lost.”
A pause.
“At 1700 hours local time, after Harvest transmitted its final standard time signal, all communications ceased completely. We initially assumed it was an equipment failure or solar storm interference. However, by 2350 hours on October 31, a scout ship arrived at the outer rim of the system.”
Stanforth’s voice lacked any emotion, as if he were reading a weather forecast.
The holographic projection shifted.
The display switched to live feed recorded by the scout vessel.
Harvest was still there.
But it was no longer blue.
The surface that once bore land and oceans was now a scorched, glassy expanse glowing dull red.
The towns, farms, and roads that had once existed—every trace of human presence—had been erased, leaving behind only a smooth crust reflecting the star’s glare.
Three million people.
Ethan repeated the number in his mind.
Staring at the dead ocean of glass on the screen, he remembered the small hill he used to climb as a child.
Standing at the peak, he could see the whole village, where evening smoke rose from chimney to chimney, merging into a hazy blue mist.
Where was that hearth fire smoke now?
His expression did not change.
His fingers hung at his side, knuckles turning slightly white, but the black cloth of his uniform concealed it.
His pulse remained at sixty-two beats per minute, but only he knew that each of those beats felt as though it were being ground down by sandpaper.
Tucker let out a low growl beside him.
Ethan felt his teammate’s muscles tense, like a cheetah poised to strike its prey.
Three million people.
To Tucker, that was no mere number—it was corpses, the stench of blood he could almost smell, an urge to tear something apart with his bare hands.
Riley’s breathing rate didn’t change.
His lips moved slightly; he was calculating.
Ethan knew what kind of math was running through his head: three million people, assuming average population density per square kilometer, meant how many square kilometers of land completely eradicated; what output plasma weaponry required to melt rock and soil into a glassy silicate substance; the range, accuracy, and cooling requirements of such weapons; if the Covenant could “glass” a planet, how many warships, how much time, and what kind of energy replenishment would they need?
The more he calculated, the deeper his despair grew.
Yet nothing showed on his face.
The holographic projection changed once more.
The image zoomed out, displaying the orbit above Harvest.
“According to the scout ship’s report,” Stanforth’s voice grew exceptionally heavy, “they found this at the outer edge of the Harvest system.”
A warship appeared in the projection.
Ethan truly saw it for the first time.
Not through game screenshots from before his transmigration, nor through blurry news footage, but through the lens of a scout ship, witnessing it floating in space in stark reality.
Its hull was made of some organic matter, resembling the skeletal structure of a leviathan sea creature, its surface covered in translucent carapace.
Beneath the shell, a fluid flowed visibly, like blood or luminous biological tissue.
Its bow resembled a massive whale, its sleek lines exuding an ancient, abyssal majesty.
On either side of the forward structure, pale purple weapon bays slowly opened, like the gaping maw of a deadly organism.
The Covenant.
Extraterrestrial intelligence.
The threat from the galaxy’s edge that humanity was encountering for the very first time.
Ethan stared at the warship.
He knew this was merely an advance scout.
He knew more warships would follow—more CAS-class and CCS-class battle groups.
He knew this war would last twenty-eight years, claim tens of billions of lives, and push humanity to the brink of extinction.
Yet right now, standing in this briefing theater and looking at the hologram, what he felt was not fear, but a cold, lucid fury.
Tucker spat out a barely audible curse.
Ethan felt his comrade suppressing himself with every ounce of strength to keep from charging out.
That warship—it wasn’t human technology, nor anything a human engineer could conceive.
It looked like a creature born of nightmares, a living engine of war.
Riley’s calculations accelerated.
Ethan knew he was assessing the gap between human weapon systems and this warship—energy weapons versus energy shields, plasma versus metallic armor, thrusters versus slipspace drives.
The numbers he arrived at were undoubtedly grim.
Cohen clenched his fists.
Ethan knew Cohen was recalling the days when his mining colony was devastated by war.
His knuckles turned white, but his face remained emotionless.
The hologram played on.
The scout ship’s recording showed the Covenant warship turning toward the distant human fleet.
Two UNSC destroyers appeared on screen—the *Arabia* and the *Vostok*.
Their names had appeared in countless lore texts and game lore, yet now they were right there, standing defenseless in the cold vacuum of space before an unknown enemy.
The *Arabia* opened fire first.
Flashes of missiles and MAC rounds pierced the void, racing toward the massive organic warship.
Ethan watched as humanity’s proudest weaponry hit the target, only to be deflected.
A pale blue shimmering halo flickered across the warship’s surface.
Energy shields.
Human weapons striking it were like rain falling on a pond, raising tiny ripples before vanishing without a trace.
Then the warship returned fire.
A dazzling beam of purple light erupted from the forward weapon bay.
It was not a laser, nor a missile, but plasma—superheated to millions of degrees and accelerated to near-light speed, striking the *Arabia* in an elegant, deadly arc.
The *Arabia* vanished from the screen.
Not pierced, not exploded, but simply gone.
Ethan stared at the void where the *Arabia* had been, now containing only drifting debris and gas.
He knew the crew—over two hundred naval personnel—hadn’t even had the chance to send a distress signal.
The moment the plasma beam struck, their ship, their bodies, everything they were was vaporized into plasma.
The *Vostok* attempted to flee.
But the Covenant warship’s pale purple weapon bay opened once more.
Another beam of purple light.
The *Vostok* vanished.
“The *Heracles* was heavily damaged and managed to escape,” Stanforth’s voice interrupted Ethan’s thoughts.
“The supply ship *Proconsul* attempted to approach the battle zone to rescue survivors and was likewise attacked. The captain of the *Proconsul* ordered a retreat, and the vessel is currently en route back to Reach.”
Dead silence gripped the briefing theater.
Ethan could hear his own heartbeat, Tucker’s heavy breathing, and the faint intake of breath from Riley’s slightly parted lips.
Three million people.
The crews of those two destroyers.
And the wounded sailors aboard the *Proconsul*.
The hologram shifted again.
The screen changed to an audio player waveform.
“We intercepted this broadcast,” Stanforth said, “at 1752 hours, shortly after Harvest was destroyed.”
He signaled the operator to play it.
At first, there was only static.
Then a voice resonated through the theater—it was not human.
It carried a metallic resonance, like wind rushing through the pipes of a giant organ, or an ancient, deep-sea entity singing.
Ethan’s blood froze in that moment.
It was the Covenant’s voice.
In another life, he had heard it countless times—in games, in movies, across all kinds of media.
But never like this: right before him, so clear it felt like someone whispering directly into his ear.
The voice spoke in strange, archaic English:
“Your destruction is the will of the gods.”
A pause.
“And we are their instrument.”
Static followed, then a string of language Ethan didn’t understand.
The Covenant language.
In his previous life, he had learned a few basic words—”will of the gods,” “cleansing,” “glorious death.” But at this moment, none of those words seemed to matter anymore.
What mattered was that a group of beings had drifted through space for thousands of years, finally finding what they had been searching for: humanity.
And then, they decided to slaughter every last human being.
Because their religion demanded it.
Because humanity’s existence violated their Great Journey.
Because in the eyes of their gods, thirty billion human lives were nothing more than a “cleansing.”
Stanforth shut down the holographic projection.
The theater fell into darkness once more, lit only by the faint, pale glow of the ceiling emergency lights.
“This is the enemy we face,” Stanforth’s voice echoed in the dark.
“We do not know where they come from. We do not know their social structure, nor their political system. We know only one thing: they intend to destroy us.”
He paused for a long moment.
“United Nations Space Command has declared a state of full general alert. Vice Admiral Cole will command the largest military force we have ever assembled. At the same time, Project MJOLNIR,”
He cast a glance at John.
“—officially enters its final stage.”