The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 143 - 144: We Adapt

Three days later..

The carriage wheels clacked steadily against the cracked stone road, the rhythm oddly jarring against the silence inside.

Atlas sat with his legs stretched forward, one boot tapping unconsciously against the brass latch on the bench. The file sat in his lap like a slab of iron—too heavy, too damning. His fingers were smudged with ink, pages dog-eared and scrawled with frantic marginalia. The smell of parchment, sweat, and old blood clung to the air like smoke.

He turned the last page again, as if this time the truth might rise from the paper like a ghost.

"...Air attack..." he muttered, voice half-broken by disbelief. "All these damn reports say air attack. But what kind of air attack does this? We had ten thousand men. Denish, Kury—these weren’t farm boys and wet-blade recruits. They were the kingdom’s finest. They were legends."

He stared at a torn map insert, a red X slashed across the canyon perimeter. A battlefield that no longer existed.

Claire hadn’t spoken. Not since they left the outpost days ago.

She just sat there, opposite him, her legs crossed with the poise of a noble, but her eyes sharp, shadowed, unreadable. One gloved hand rested on the edge of the window, her fingertips rhythmically tapping the frame like a code she wasn’t sharing.

Atlas felt the weight of her gaze—like a sword hovering just above his jugular.

He cleared his throat. "Claire...care to join in?" he said, holding the file loosely in one hand, as if daring her to take it.

Claire’s glare didn’t soften, not even a blink. She reached forward slowly, her fingers brushing his as she took the report. He watched her expression, but her face didn’t change.

’Fuck,’ Atlas thought. ’She knows something. Or suspects. Maybe both.’

Claire flipped through the file with practiced ease. She didn’t frown. Didn’t react. That made it worse.

"...It’s not useful thinking about it," she said finally, her voice measured and cold, like frost slipping beneath armor. "Speculation only wastes energy. What we need now is evidence. Something real. Not ghosts and guesses."

Atlas leaned back, rubbing his jaw, the scrape of stubble rough against his fingers. "Marquis Claire is always right," he muttered. Then, more firmly, "Our job now isn’t to mourn the dead. It’s to find out how they died. And stop it from happening again. Secure intelligence. Recover survivors. End the fucking bleeding."

Claire’s lips twitched—just slightly. "Finally, you sound like a prince," she said, folding the file closed with a soft snap.

"Mm-hmm," Atlas hummed, but his eyes drifted toward the fog-covered horizon. "You think it was magic?"

Claire didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze turned inward, like a memory had stepped on her lungs. "If it was, it wasn’t ours."

A pause.

Then:

"...I think..... it’s." she admitted, her voice lower now, like she hated every word. "It’s...Not wind. Not dragon. Something built. But not alive."

Atlas narrowed his eyes. "So...a construct? Or worse, a relic?"

Claire nodded once.

Atlas muttered, "Fuck."

Outside, the trees blurred past in silent rows, each one a witness to the coming storm.

Inside the carriage, silence returned—but it wasn’t the same.

It was colder.

Heavier.

The kind that follows when you realize you’re chasing a shadow older than your kingdom, and it’s already looked you in the eye.

Claire exhaled through her nose. "You think you’re ready, Atlas?"

He looked at her—really looked—and for a second, something cracked behind the gold in his eyes. Just a flicker.

"I have to be," he said. "I wasn’t born to survive. I was born to end things.....literally."

Claire turned her head, just enough to hide the shiver that passed through her. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t doubt.

It was prophecy.

Claire watched him, her eyes narrowing—not just with suspicion, but with something deeper. Worry. Familiarity. A strange, silent panic only people who’ve bled beside each other could recognize.

"You’re distracted," she said, softly but firmly. "...What’s wrong? You seem... elsewhere."

Atlas didn’t meet her gaze. His golden eyes flicked toward the horizon through the slit in the carriage window, distant. Unsettled.

"...Nothing much," he muttered, voice low and frayed. "Just—"

Shhhhhh—

A sound split the air. Thin. Too thin. Like a whisper made of blades.

BOOM!!!

The world ruptured.

The carriage erupted in a scream of fire and shattered metal. Wood splintered into the sky like confetti from hell. Horses screeched. Bodies flew. The entire left flank of their escort vanished in a plume of dust and crimson mist.

Soldiers and a few guards died, just like that.

And Claire—

She wasn’t in the carriage anymore.

She was in his arms.

Atlas had moved before sound could even catch up.

They landed a solid mile away—crashing against the earth with a crack that fractured stone beneath their feet. Atlas’s body broke the fall. Not hers. His coat burned, the seams melting. His gloves incinerated. His shoulder still smoldered where fire had kissed him.

But his skin?

Untouched. Not a single scratch.

Just smoke curling from his collarbone like steam off a god.

Claire wheezed, panic ricocheting in her ribs. "Wh...what the fuck just happened?" she choked out, voice distant to her own ears. Everything was muffled—like she was underwater, like she’d been submerged in war’s heartbeat.

Her hands trembled. Her throat burned with smoke.

Atlas didn’t answer at first.

He was gazing up.

Eyes narrowed.

Jaw locked.

Still. Frozen in a way that only meant one thing: dread.

"Atlas..." Claire repeated, voice softer now. Realer. Her ears ringing too loud to hear herself. "Say something."

"...It seems..." he muttered, blinking slowly, "they’ve advanced... much further... than us."

"What?" she yelled, her voice distorted to herself. "I can’t hear—"

He reached into his coat—what remained of it—and handed her a slim, silver vial. One of the few they’d prepared for emergency healing.

She downed it before thinking, the liquid hissing on her tongue like crushed mint and ash. Cold and sharp. A breath later, her hearing returned like a wave crashing into shore.

"I’m saying," Atlas said again, clearer now, calmer somehow, "we’ve been beaten."

Claire’s face twisted. "Beaten? In what?"

Atlas didn’t respond immediately. He just raised one arm and pointed.

Up.

Her breath caught.

Above them, the clouds fractured like silk cut by blades, revealing not one—’not just one’—but hundreds of massive floating machines. Like airborne fortresses, silent, majestic, and utterly alien. Shadowed balloons and reinforced hulls, held aloft by sorcery and steel. Each one bore sigils Claire recognize, recognized too well. Each one drifted with impossible purpose.

A fleet.

An invasion.

A fucking ’skyborne army.’

"What the actual fuck..." Claire whispered. "....How many?"

"...Hundreds," Atlas repeated. Voice flat. Final.

A beat.

Then another.

Claire’s knuckles whitened around the empty vial. "They have air superiority," she muttered, half to herself. "That’s what wiped Kury’s unit. They dropped from above. No scouts ever saw them coming..."

Atlas nodded, grim. "It’s not just magic. It’s something else. Something we haven’t seen before."

’What this world hasn’t seen before...’ he thought.

Claire turned to him sharply. "And you didn’t sense it?"

"I sensed something," Atlas said. "A faint distortion. But even my truth eyes couldn’t trace it through the clouds." He exhaled, slow and bitter. "They hid in plain sight."

Claire pressed her fingers to her temples. Her brain spun. "We’ve been preparing for a siege. A land war. A ground-based push."

"We were preparing for chess," Atlas said. "They brought a third dimension."

The sky, once serene, now roared faintly with the hum of enchanted engines. A storm of iron and flame waiting above their heads.

"...What do we do?" she asked, eyes wide. "What do we do, Atlas?"

He looked at her.

For a moment, just a flicker—he looked like the boy he had once been. Haunted. Relentless. Tired beyond years.

And then he stood.

The smirk was gone.

The mask was off.

Only fire remained.

"We adapt," he said. "We change the fucking game."

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