CRACK! TINK!
Kochav's barrier shattered apart in front of him.
He turned—
Bodies surrounded him.
Troops lay crumpled across the metal floor, armor folded inward without scorch marks or shrapnel.
Some had died mid-motion.
Others still knelt where they had been a second earlier.
Silent.
Kochav's eyes swept across them for only a heartbeat—
Then snapped back toward the Knight.
Between them stretched a ruin of exposed industrial flooring lit by the sun of Thrysa, littered with disabled machinery, shattered crates, and debris fallen from the Spire's crown.
The radiance would have formed a perfect ring of light—
if not for the lodged antenna from the higher tiers, carving a paved path of shadow between them.
Kochav glanced around, eyes tracing the inner walls of the Spire.
Movement.
He closed his eyes for a brief second—
Then opened them again, irises glowing orange with divination.
Sound crashed into him.
Echoes.
Images.
A thousand overlapping impressions flooding his mind at once.
Lasrifles priming.
Autoguns racking.
Murmurs upon murmurs.
Then flashes—
Countless troops lining the walls above.
Ten thousand?
Twenty?
Maybe even thirty.
He was completely surrounded.
Sigh—
"This would be one of those moments where I asked myself—
Why am I here?
And to answer that question, I would need—"
—
"Why are you monologuing?"
Anathor asked, finger slowly raising toward Kochav.
—
He closed his eyes
Hhhh—
A deep breath in.
Haaaaa—
A long breath out.
He slowly opened them.
"And why are you interrupting me?" Kochav shot back, both hands rising to match, psychic pressure crawling along them.
—
A short pause.
Calculating.
"We don't know—"
—
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three purple beams snapped from Kochav's index finger before Anathor could finish, kicking up smoke and dust from the debris between them.
"How does it feel—being interrupted?" Kochav snarled through gritted teeth, eyes fixed on the curtain of obscurity.
Then—
A red dot from Anathor's helm cut through the smoke like judgment.
The smoke held—
Then it dimpled.
A small hole punched through the curtain, neat and sudden, as if something had passed through—
But there was no flash.
No trail.
Only a faint displacement.
Like the air itself had been pushed aside.
"What…?"
Kochav muttered quietly, eyes fixed on the opening as his hands tensed in anticipation—
Another appeared far to the left.
His gaze snapped toward it.
At the same time, the cursed hand moved instinctively, mirroring the point.
"Huh—?"
Pressure sliced through the air.
An unseen lance grazed his cheek, blood spraying outward—painting shape around the projectile for the briefest instant.
His eyes locked onto it.
Thin.
Distorted.
Then instinct kicked in.
Kochav snapped toward the second opening—
The one his cursed hand had already followed.
A psychic barrier flared into existence between him and the distortion.
At the same time, five violet points ignited at the cursed fingertips—
CRACK!
The barrier shattered like glass.
SHKKK!
The unseen lance tore through the corrupted arm at the elbow.
The severed limb spun through the air.
For a single moment, the daemon's eye within the palm locked onto Kochav—
Wide. Furious.
Then another distortion punched through it.
SHHHWWK!
The cursed hand vanished in a burst of violet mist and burning scales.
Kochav twisted sharply to the right, eyes scanning.
His right hand was already glowing.
Psychic pressure condensed into a dense blue sphere at the center of his palm—
THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
PEW-PEW-RATTATATATA!!
A chorus of firepower saturating the entire platform.
But he had already seen this.
Kochav fired the sphere at the ground.
BOOM!
The blast cratered the metal beneath him and hurled his body sideways through smoke, debris, and gunfire.
A heartbeat later—
The place he had stood was marked and torn apart by kinetic fire.
Then he blinked—
The area collapsed inward.
Invisible force ripped through the ground in intersecting lines, shredding stone and twisted metal into fragments.
The concussion arrived late, rolling through the platform a second afterward.
Kochav hit the ground shoulder-first, skidding through ash before forcing himself back up—
Breathing hard. Fast.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Three bulkheads exploded open across different sections of the Spire.
Forces poured through them.
Helsin.
Shadowgaze.
Rouar.
All advancing from separate fronts.
All occupied.
Kochav glanced to his right.
Rouar and Ruk'Tan were already pushing along the adjacent ring, Vraskariin's scales raised beneath incoming fire.
He unsheathed his dagger.
The red pommel glowed—Then shifted blue as psychic pressure flooded into it.
Kochav hurled the weapon toward the walls.
The dagger spun forward with violent momentum, carving through defenders across the same tier before disappearing into smoke and sparks.
Crimson mist rained from above, soaking the metal platforms beneath in red.
Kochav had erased the entire firing line.
He hurled broken tiles and debris toward his allies, shielding their advance while his eyes remained locked on Anathor.
The walls shifted their focus onto him.
Lasfire.
Autoguns.
Heavy emplacements.
None of it could touch him.
It was foreseen.
Except for one thing.
The Knight.
"So you were the one shooting at my friends earlier?" he shouted between breaths.
The smoke thinned.
—
Anathor still stood where he had been, motionless as an ivory statue.
"We removed the daemon," Anathor said flatly, lens fixed on Kochav.
"We assumed it was influencing your personality."
Then something caught his attention.
At the stump—The air warped.
Flesh twisted into existence.
Dark scales crawled outward as the cursed hand regenerated within seconds.
"…Strange," Anathor muttered.
—
Kochav shot him a glance and barked back—
"Strange?"
"Have a look at yourself, daemon-engine!"
He clawed broken tiles from the ground and hurled them toward Anathor.
Three invisible lances pierced through them in an instant—
Reducing the debris to fragments mid-flight.
Anathor's red lens shifted sideways.
A barrage of guided projectiles rocketed toward Kochav from the surrounding walls.
WHOOOM!
Kochav crossed his hands—A psychic shockwave burst outward.
The incoming missiles veered violently off-course mid-flight, twisting through the falling debris before screaming toward Anathor.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The detonations crashed against his raised forearm.
Smoke swallowed him—
But before it could settle, something pierced through.
A barrage of violet and blue beams tore from the haze.
Anathor raised one arm.
Invisible pressure folded outward—
The blue beams shattered apart instantly, ripped into sparks before they could reach him.
The violet ones struck.
They burst harmlessly across his armor in sprays of warped light.
"Unrefined," Anathor said calmly.
"Volume without calculation."
He lowered his arm and drove a hand into the ground.
CRACK!
Metal screamed beneath the platform.
A massive support pillar tore free from the industrial flooring as Anathor wrenched it upward one-handed.
Then he charged, dragging the pillar along the floor with a terrifying screech.
Each step dented the metal beneath him as the continuous barrage crashed uselessly across his armor.
Blue detonations burst against ivory plating.
Violet impacts splashed and crawled away in thin streams of warped light.
Anathor ignored all of it.
Kochav launched a huge debris at him—
BOOM!
The pillar swung sideways, tearing through the debris, his free hand raised and aiming at Kochav.
Thoom! Thoom! Thoom! Thoom!
Invisible lances detonated around Kochav—
He only grinned.
Sliding forward through the collapsing terrain, he broke into a direct charge toward Anathor with dagger in hand.
"You would approach me?" Anathor asked indifferently.
"You are but flesh and bone, Cursed Child."
—
"If you think size can intimidate me, you're wrong," Kochav shot back.
His cursed arm flared violently.
Twin barrel-like growths unfolded across the knuckles—
KWOOM! KWOOM!
Two spheres of violet energy screamed forward, carving circular tunnels through debris and wreckage alike.
"I have already felled a Titan larger than you," he hissed.
Then he vaulted from a broken support column—Launching himself airborne as the distance between them vanished.
—
"Then die."
Anathor answered flatly and swung the pillar upward, the massive structure blotting Kochav's sight completely—
Kochav twisted mid-flight and landed atop the rising pillar.
Beneath his feet, the metal suddenly glowed—
BOOM!
The pillar detonated.
The blast hurled debris in every direction as Kochav braced himself behind a force shield.
CRACK!
The barrier splintered.
Shrapnel and invisible pressure tore through him at once, punching bloody holes across his body as he fell backward through the smoke.
Pain flared.
Kochav crushed it down through sheer concentration, bloody teeth gritted as he seized the cursed arm and aimed the daemon's eye directly at Anathor.
The eye widened.
Laughing.
Whispering to no one.
Then a single massive beam erupted outward—Snaking through the collapsing debris before splitting apart into multiple writhing lines, each hunting its own path toward Anathor.
Anathor swung the exposed rebar through them.
The beams bent.
Tilted aside.
Crawling around the metal instead of colliding with it.
The Knight tightened his grip.
Electricity burst from his hand and surged through the rebar—Erasing several tendrils into nothingness.
The remaining strands struck his arm.
HISSSSS!
Violet corruption splattered across the ivory plating in violent sprays, smoke hissing from the impact points.
Anathor tried to wrench the corruption free—
His arm did not move.
For the first time, resistance met him.
The Knight's lens lowered toward the locked limb.
Beneath the ivory plating, damaged servos whined and ground against warped internals.
Corroded.
But not from this attack.
"Your previous barrage…" Anathor spoke, voice calm despite the spreading violet decay.
"Some of the impacts carried acidic agents."
He forced the arm downward with visible effort, metal shrieking against itself.
"And this beam was intended to act as the catalyst?"
—
Cough! Cough!
"Blegh—!"
Kochav wiped blood from his mouth and forced himself upright, navy-blue jacket soaked dark with blood.
"Yes," he rasped.
"I figured you out."
His eyes locked onto Anathor's humanoid frame.
"Your limbs are conduits.
You need streamlined structures to channel whatever force you're using."
His right hand tightened around the dagger.
The blade glowed red-hot.
He drove it against his side.
SIZZZZ!
His flesh burned.
The smell of cauterized blood filled the air.
Kochav grinned anyway, hiding the pain as he raised the cursed hand toward Anathor once more.
—
"So your intention is to dismantle my limbs?" Anathor asked.
Then, without hesitation—He tore the corrupted arm free from the shoulder joint.
—
"Correct."
Kochav shrugged.
A blue sphere formed at the tip of his index finger, growing denser by the second.
"Now I just need to figure out how to see your projectiles."
The moment he finished speaking, he charged toward Anathor again.
—
On the far side of the Spire.
BANG!
"That damn Mon-keigh…"
Click-Clack.
A Ranger long rifle cycled.
Shadowgaze hissed in annoyance, red lens narrowing behind the scope.
"He's completely ignoring everyone shooting at him."
The reticle shifted from one head to the next—
BANG!
Another shot cracked across the Spire.
—
"The boy wants to dance, so let him—"
PEW! PEW!
Two las bolts splashed harmlessly across ceramite armor.
PEW!
The third punched straight through a crimson's torso.
"We've got a ship to find," Helsin said flatly as he rose from cover.
Vraskariin scales surrounded him like a moving fortress beneath the storm of incoming fire.—
"Commissar! The Inquisitor has been located!"
An officer monitoring the battlefield from atop the Spire snapped to attention.
A visual feed appeared in the center of the command chamber—
Helsin advancing beneath layered shield walls.
—
Reyvis studied the projection for only a moment before stepping onto the balcony and raising a monocular toward the battlefield below.
His lens centered on Helsin immediately.
"Deploy the closest elements."
A pause.
"Tagma(Regiment) Four through Six."
He lowered the monocular slightly, expression unchanged.
"Heavy solutions at the ready."
His gaze remained fixed on the battlefield below.
"I don't care how many it takes to kill one man."
Then he turned and walked back into the command chamber.
A figure clad in obsidian-black stepped forward and intercepted him.
"What is the progress of the core extraction, Commissar?" the man asked.
—
Reyvis turned slightly and nodded toward the nearest officer.
She saluted immediately before hurrying into an adjoining chamber.
"We are nearly finished, Executor Nikolya," Reyvis answered calmly.
—
"Good."
A faint smirk touched the Executor's lips.
"The faster the performance, the greater the rewards."
He stepped closer to Reyvis.
"Perhaps our Lord will promote you yet."
—
The corner of Reyvis' mouth curled upward slightly.
"I have little doubt of that, Executor."
—
THOOM!
Anathor's armored heel crashed into the platform.
The impact split the ground apart—
Light poured through the widening fractures as broken debris rose into the air, electricity arcing violently between the levitating fragments.
"You are not merely fighting me, Child," Anathor said, raising a finger toward the floating wreckage.
Kochav vaulted onto the debris and launched himself forward through the air toward the Knight.
BOOM!
One of the fragments detonated beneath him.
The blast twisted his body sideways mid-flight, but Kochav shoved against the air with psychic force, dragged another floating slab beneath his feet, and continued advancing.
"You are also fighting the corruption."
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The debris field erupted one after another.
Shrapnel screamed past him as Kochav twisted through the explosions, launching himself higher and higher through the collapsing storm of metal and light.
—
"I know," Kochav answered.
He floated in the air, slowly descending through drifting ash and sparks.
Then the debris changed direction.
Shrapnel.
Broken steel.
Fragments of shattered platforms.
Everything began circling him in widening spirals.
His human hand twisted sharply behind him while the cursed arm held him suspended in the air.
"Think of it as my handicap against you!"
The maelstrom tightened instantly—
Folding inward into a rotating cocoon of metal around his body.
THOOM!
The cocoon detonated outward in every direction.
Debris became a storm of hypervelocity shrapnel that tore across the surrounding tiers.
Walls ruptured.
Troops vanished into red mist.
Blood rained endlessly through the Spire as bodies collapsed from the firing lines above.
Kochav hovered amidst the crimson downpour.
His figure was drenched entirely in blood—
Nothing visible except the glow of blue eyes and the crescent of a wicked smile beneath them.
"I finally see everything."
The charged air still lingered between them.
Blood mist drifted through the battlefield, mixing with static and floating ash.
And within it—
Kochav finally saw them.
Thin distortions cutting through the atmosphere around Anathor.
Not invisible.
Refractions.
Pressure made visible by blood and charged particles.
Then his eyes narrowed toward the Knight's missing arm.
Around the shoulder joints, skeletal vine-like distortions twisted through the air, forming the outline of a limb.
They both aimed at each other—
Cursed against Distortion.
Violet tendrils collided with invisible lances mid-air, devouring them in writhing bursts of warped light.
Behind Anathor, multiple spheres of distortion unfolded into existence.
More lances emerged from them—
Bending through the air before converging toward Kochav from different angles.
"So that's how you've been firing continuously," Kochav muttered.
He twisted sideways to evade the first wave, then ripped an entire platform free from the nearby wall.
Metal screamed.
Bodies—
Dead and living alike—
Tore loose with it.
The mass collapsed downward toward Anathor like a falling slab of flesh and steel.
"Your hands weren't the only things shooting," Kochav shouted from behind the descending curtain of corpses and debris.
Anathor stood his ground.
One arm rose across his face, shielding all but a narrow fraction of his glowing lens as it tracked through the storm.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Bodies slammed against the armored limb—
Screaming.
Crying.
PBLELCH! PBLELCH!
Invisible lances tore through them from within the curtain, bursting flesh and snapping bone apart in sprays that soaked Anathor's ivory frame.
The wall of corpses collapsed unevenly around him.
But Kochav was nowhere.
His frame hissed.
Armor plating separated slightly from the joints, hovering apart as if suspended by unseen force.
Between the gaps—The distortions became visible.
Skeletal vines twisted through empty space beneath the ivory shell, threading between the floating plates as his crimson lens brightened further.
Then they shifted—
To the right.
Kochav.
Falling like a comet through the rain of corpses.
His body vanished within the crimson storm—
Visible only by the glow of blue eyes against the red canvas of blood and flesh.
One hand clenched tightly around the dagger—
WHOOOM!
Psychic pressure burst outward.
The rain of corpses and debris was blasted aside, clearing the battlefield between them in an instant.
Nothing remained obstructing Kochav's path.
Anathor's hand extended.
The floating armor plates around his arm shifted apart—
Distortion-vines tightening beneath them.
The dagger flared violently in Kochav's grip.
The cursed arm whispered mockingly into his mind.
Closer.
Closer—
GRIP!
Anathor caught him mid-descent.
Metal fingers closed around Kochav's body with crushing force.
CRACK!
Something snapped inside him.
"Got you," Anathor said.
—
Kochav grinned through the pain.
One eye opened slowly.
Blue—
Then, for the briefest instant—
Violet.
"No."
Blood ran down his teeth as the grin widened.
"You."
The seams between Anathor's armored digits suddenly glowed blue—
BOOM!
The Knight's hand exploded apart.
Armor fragments blasted outward in every direction, exposing the distortion-vines beneath the plating—
The invisible structures still wrapped tightly around Kochav's body.
Then color emerged.
Dark purple.
The corruption spread rapidly through the skeletal distortions, swelling outward like veins filling with poison.
Anathor reacted instantly.
The remaining arm moved with surgical precision—
A sharpened distortion-vine cleaved through the corrupted limb at the joint.
The severed construct writhed purple as it separated.
Kochav dropped free from the collapsing grip, falling toward the shattered platform below—
Still smirking.
—
The scope of the long rifle zoomed in briefly on him.
Then lowered.
"You had better find a way to bring your warlock back!"
Shadowgaze shouted but got no response
She swung the rifle onto her back, vaulted onto a nearby pipeline, and began climbing toward the upper tiers.
RATTATATATA—
KROOM!
A twin-linked autoturret opened fire.
And the pipeline exploded apart beneath her.
Shadowgaze kicked off the collapsing metal and skidded across a parallel platform instead, twin daggers already drawn.
Hundreds of Xarcarions waited ahead.
"Tch."
She lunged forward.
One dagger buried itself in a trooper's throat.
Before the body could fall, Shadowgaze twisted behind him, wrenched his arm backward, and forced his finger tight against the rifle trigger.
The weapon roared to life—
Rounds tore through his own comrades as Shadowgaze used the dying man as a living shield.
Two felinids surged behind her, wreaking havoc across the firing line while guarding her flanks amidst the chaos.
Far below, Helsin advanced in parallel.
Vraskariin scale-bearers surrounded him on all sides, forming a moving fortress of interlocked shields beneath the storm of incoming fire.
They advanced only a few more steps before the defenders swarmed them—
Literally.
Men hurled themselves onto the formation from every direction.
Some climbed atop the shield wall with blades and hooked tools, trying to wrench open the seams between the scales.
Nothing worked.
Conventional firearms shattered harmlessly against the armored barricade.
Then—
Phewwww...
A descending whistle.
BOOM!
A mortar round struck only inches from the formation.
The explosion tore apart dozens of nearby defenders, blasting bodies across the platform—
Ironically freeing Helsin's group from the crush.
Only for a few seconds.
"Damn it," Helsin muttered within the shield formation.
The only light came from the dataslate in his hands while the ground trembled violently beneath them.
On the display, he searched desperately for any active airborne Machine Spirits.
Nothing.
No landers.
No gunships.
No extraction craft.
BOOM!
A muffled explosion rocked the formation from above.
Blood seeped through the seams between the scales, dripping across the glowing display and smearing the tactical feed crimson.
Helsin's irritation hardened into something colder.
"Halt!" Helsin barked.
The formation stopped instantly amidst the chaos.
He dropped the dataslate to the floor.
CRACK!
His boot crushed it beneath the shield wall.
Another tremor rolled through the Spire.
The distant howl of collapsing metal echoed somewhere deep below them.
Then Helsin looked toward the center shaft of the structure—
The Drill.
"To the center," he ordered.
—
"Damn it."
Shadowgaze clicked her tongue in annoyance.
Amidst the chaos surrounding her, she searched for Kochav through the storm of bodies and gunfire.
She found him far across the Spire—
Still fighting,
smiling.
She needed to get his attention.
Needed to pull him back.
A trooper lunged toward her.
Shadowgaze stepped in first—
Her fist crashed into his faceplate.
CRACK!
Before he could fall, her dagger flashed across his throat.
She immediately launched herself upward toward the ceiling infrastructure.
One dagger punched deep into the metal overhead, suspending her body beneath it while the other hand swung the long rifle free from her back.
But when she raised the scope—
The battlefield below was a wall of movement.
Bodies.
Smoke.
Blood mist.
Even her sightline was drowning in the chaos.
Shadowgaze exhaled once.
Then slowly opened her eyes.
They glowed bright green.
For a fraction of a moment,
The battlefield slowed.
Or perhaps her perception simply sharpened beyond mortal rhythm.
The air around her shifted.
And far ahead, overlapping with the battlefield, she saw a bonfire.
Blue.
Tinted faintly with yellow-gold at its core.
But wrapped around the flame—
A purple distortion.
Not consuming it.
Cloaking it.
Coiling around the fire like something learning its shape.
"Your impulses always irritate me," she whispered.
Her glowing eyes remained fixed on the distant bonfire wrapped in violet distortion.
"Wake up…"
A pause.
"Or just die."
Shadowgaze squeezed the trigger.
"Anar'rhûn yaë."
Daylight has come.
PEW!
The round crossed the battlefield at impossible speed—
Passing through bodies, ignoring debris.
Cutting through the chaos between worlds.
Then it found Kochav.
Instinctively, he turned.
His vision blurred.
The battlefield vanished.
Only the bullet remained.
A single bolt of light within endless darkness.
The cursed hand rose on instinct.
Kochav's eyes locked with the daemon's.
For one brief moment—Neither moved.
Then everything went dark.