<"Guardian? Guardian? Eyes up, Guardian, Ikora says it's urgent." Your ghost says as your eyes open. You sit up and lightly shoo your Ghost away before making your way over to the control room. Zavala is there to meet you. "Guardian, you're awake. Good. We need you to ready yourself for battle. Something is on its way here, and it's coming fast." Ikora turns around from looking at a monitor. The monitor shows a computerized map of the solar system and every satellite the city and Rasputin has available. You see red dots signifying destroyed satellites from the Kuiper Belt all the way to the Reef. Another one goes red. "Whatever this thing is, its destroying every satellite in its direct path. We can't even get visuals. I don't think-" One of the personnel call Ikora over, you and Zavala follow. "Ma'am, we finally were able to get a signal from the anomaly. The strange thing is that it matches signals recorded throughout the Collapse. At least that's what the Warmind's logs say." Zavala looks genuinely shocked. Another satellite, within Mars' orbit shuts down. "The Collapse?" Ikora stands tall. "The Speaker told me that the Collapse was caused by an entity he called the Darkness. He always said it would return. Could this be it?" "If that's the case then this situation is more alarming than we thought. Guardian, ready yourself... if Ikora's right, then there's no telling what can happen." You run out, your Ghost panicking slightly. Alarms suddenly sound all around the City. The Traveler's shards stop moving, floating in place. You grab a gun and run outside. It's midday and cloudy. A heavy lightning storm twice as strong as the one the day the Red War began. Suddenly the clouds around the Traveler spread apart and you can just barely see the sky. The sun shines when dozens of Tower Personnel run outside in a panic. You notice the Tower gets covered by a shadow. You look up to the sky and witness it get covered by a massive ship. Ships start powering up ready to go up and fight the thing that blacked out the sky. You can see small glowing lights from the bottom of it. A greenish-blue glow covers the entire region. The Traveler shields itself. You hear a sound like a drumbeat as the "eye" beings charging up. Everyone screams to get down as a massive laser fires into the City. You just stare at the City as your view of it gets obscured by a massive beam. When it stops firing the Traveler is left standing, still shielded. You look down at the City. Whatever was under the Traveler still exists. The edge of the City still exists. A ring about a mile thick is just ash and smoke. From the clouds surrounding the City you can see smaller Tetrahedral shapes come into view. Each one is about the size of a Ketch, but with no outer details. You ready your gun. {CUTSCENE OVER} The mission is you fighting "Shadows" a race of yellow-eyed beasts of various shapes and sizes bleeding shadow like the Taken do. They are things created by the Darkness itself. The "5th" race comes later on in the story. The second half is manning one of the defense turrets and shooting down some of the dozens of ships coming from the clouds. It is also revealed that the mothership has shields that can't be brought down by any firepower from the City. {CUTSCENE START} You get out of the turret as you see many civilians and Guardians alike boarding ships to evacuate. Everyone stops when the Traveler starts to glow. It releases a wave of Light like it did at the end of the Red War. All the smaller ships disintegrate. People start to cheer until they realize what the wave did to the mothership. You can visibly see the Light get sucked into some ports of the ship. The lights on the "eye" glow brighter. Everyone begins to panic again. More small ships appear from the edge. Zavala refuses to leave, saying he'll defend this city until the last person falls. He tells you to go and get help. You reluctantly leave and fly out of there as quickly as you can. Flying right by the dozens of ships en route to the City. Once you break the cloud layer, you high-tail it outta there. When you think you're at a safe enough distance, you look out the back window. One massive pyramid ship hovers above Earth. Easily doubling the size of the Dreadnaught. Around it are dozens of smaller, but still massive, ships with similar metallic designs. The mothership is releasing the Ketch-sized ships onto Earth through its docks. You slump down behind your chair, still staring out the back. Ghost is in a panic, answering distress signals, speaking to other evacuees. You see the sun come out from above the mothership's highest point. You look at it intensely before simply saying; "Oh god..." {MISSION 1 END} Title drop>