The copper taste of victory vanished from Reid's mouth before the spray of blood could even hit the scorched gravel.
Kneeling, ruptured, and broken, DOOMTAG should have been dead. Anyone would have died in.
But she survived, Slowly the erratic, violent pulsing of her pink third eye stabilized.
The fractured bones in her sternum snapped back into alignment with a horrific, wet crunching sound. The wide, manic grin returned to her blood-soaked face, splitting her cheeks almost to her ears.
Her frame rose back to its full, terrifying height.
She was smiling. "Ok, let's end this."
The atmosphere didn't just ripple—it disintegrated.
Before Drakye Void could even blink DOOMTAG vanished, She appeared directly in the center of their defensive perimeter, a blur of absolute, unholy speed.
Her right claw swung in a wide, horizontal arc, slicing cleanly through the darkness enveloping Shadow. The jagged claws tore through his uniform and deep into his chest muscles, spraying blood across the cracked stones.
Shadow gasped, his knees buckling as he was hurled backward into the dirt.
In the same microsecond, before the blood from Shadow's chest could drop to the floorboards, DOOMTAG pivoted on her heel toward Reid Gideon Swallow. Reid desperately tried to raise his forearms, his mind scrambling to calculate the incoming vectors to deflect her hands away from his torso.
He was too slow.
DOOMTAG's clawed hands moved like twin guillotines. With two clean, horizontal flashes of purple corrupt energy, she severed both of Reid's arms entirely at the elbows.
"AAAGHH!" Reid screamed, a raw, agonizing shriek of pure torment echoing through the trenches as he fell backward, blood geyser-ing from his ruined limbs onto the cooling magma below.
"Captain!" Kylo screamed, rushing forward blindly, but DOOMTAG didn't even look at him.
She thrust her bare, residue-slicked hand straight forward, driving her arm deep into Drakye Void's chest plate. The alloy buckled and snapped as her hand buried itself directly into his thoracic cavity, crushing his ribs and puncturing his lung.
Drakye froze, his eyes widening in absolute shock as his vision flickered. He coughed violently, a thick torrent of blood spilling over her arm.
DOOMTAG pulled her hand out of Drakye's chest with a wet schlurp, letting his limp, broken body drop face-first onto the gravel beside the writhing form of Reid and the unconscious, bleeding Shadow. She looked down at her blood-stained claws, then at the three primary leaders of the operational squad, her voice dripping with a mocking, childish sadness.
"Looks like I broke my toys," she whispered, tilting her head as she took a slow step over Drakye's shaking shoulders. "That's so sad."
Drakye was face-down in the dirt, clutching his chest as he gasped desperately for air that his punctured lung couldn't hold. Every breath felt like inhaling liquid fire, his vision blurring into a dark, vignette ring. Beside him, Reid was hyperventilating, his face pale from rapid blood loss as his severed limbs twitched against the stone floorboards. Shadow lay completely motionless, his dark aura entirely extinguished.
DOOMTAG took another step forward, her bare foot pressing lightly against the side of Reid's face. She tapped her chin with a bloody finger, then casually tapped her foot against the stones, leaving a heavy, glowing purple energy bomb pulsating right on the ground where the three captains lay shattered.
"Pathetic," DOOMTAG giggled, spinning on her heel and walking away.
*BOOM!*
The energy bomb detonated. A column of absolute purple destruction fire erupted from the bedrock, consuming Drakye, Reid, and Shadow in a blinding, catastrophic pillar of energy that leveled the remaining spires of the left flank.
*10:30 AM: Xenocides Academy –
The morning sun shone brightly over the pristine, white stone courtyards of the Xenocides Academy training facility.
Drakye Void sat on a wooden bench, his hands wrapped tightly in white combat tape, his head hanging low between his knees. His uniform was torn, stained with the gray, ash-like blood of the Zethrians they had encountered during their first deployment.
Beside him, leaning against the stone pillars with his arms crossed and his eyes staring blankly at the sky, was Reid. Shadow sat in the deepest corner of the pavilion's roof structure, his silhouette trembling slightly with an uncharacteristic, volatile anger.
They had gone to the frontline battlefield believing they were ready. They had gone believing their unique capabilities made them invincible.
They were wrong.
The Zethrian forces had crushed their unit within minutes.
They had been completely outmatched, unable to read the enemy's movements, unable to break their formations.
Because of their failure and hesitation on the field, Dozens of their comrades had died right in front of their eyes just to buy them enough time to retreat.
"We couldn't do a damn thing," Reid muttered, his voice cracking with a rare, bitter vulnerability. He clenched his fists so hard the knuckles turned white. "We stood there like children while the others got torn apart. Because we weren't fast enough. Because where weak."
"Shut up, Reid," Shadow spat from the rafters, his voice dripping with an intense, frustrated rage. "It wasn't just you. We all froze. The numbers didn't matter. We lacked the raw, lethal intent to end them.m."
Drakye didn't speak. He just looked at the dirt between his boots. The frustration was eating him alive, a burning, acidic knot in his stomach.
He didn't feel like a xenocides, He felt like a fraud.
"We're going to become captains," Reid said, his voice dropping into a solid, unyielding vow as he looked down at Drakye. "We have to. We climb to the absolute top of the divisions. We build our strength until we are the ones holding the wall. We won't ever let anyone down again.?"
Drakye closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping. "I... I don't think I'm captain material, Reid. Look at what happened today. This stuff isn't meant for me."
The conversation drifted away as Reid and Shadow walked back toward the training grounds, their resolves hardened into iron. But Drakye remained on the bench, trapped in his own head, unable to shake the ghost of his failure.
Later that afternoon, Drakye walked through the serene, He needed space to think.
"The weight of a fallen comrade is a difficult thing to wash off, young Void."
Drakye snapped his head up, his posture instantly straightening into a formal military salute. Walking down the stone path was Doc Von, the legendary supreme leader of the Xenocides. His presence radiated a quiet, absolute authority that made the entire garden feel grounded.
"Supreme Commander Doc Von!" Drakye stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Doc Von walked up beside him, gesturing for him to relax. He looked out over the courtyard, his expression calm and wise. "I read the report from the Zethrian skirmish. I see the anger in your eyes, Drakye. Tell me... why are you here? Why do you want to be a Xenocide?"
Drakye looked down at his taped hands, his jaw tightening as the memory of the slaughter flashed through his mind. "I want to make sure nobody else has to die because someone wasn't strong enough to protect them, sir. I want to be the shield."
Doc Von nodded slowly. "Then why do you resist the captain's track? The instructors tell me you have the capacity, yet you refuse to submit your name for becoming a captain."
Drakye let out a long, ragged sigh, his voice filled with an honest, painful emotion. "Because the current divisions are set in their ways, sir. They focus on massive, sweeping military formations. Today showed me that when things go wrong, large units fracture. If I become a captain of a standard division, I'm just managing numbers. I don't want that."
Drakye looked up, his eyes suddenly flashing with a spark of deep, unyielding ambition that surprised even Doc Von.
"I want to create my own division," Drakye said, his voice steadying. "My own team. I want to pick them myself. A group of people who are willing To fight to the very end . Just a tight family that can handle the worst situations without breaking. If I can't do that, I'm not fit to lead."
Doc Von stared at him for a long moment, a small, knowing smile developing on the leader's face. He placed a heavy, reassuring hand on Drakye's shoulder. "Then go build it, Drakye. Find those who match your stride, and never let them fall."
Back in the apocalyptic reality of the shattered valley, the roaring purple firestorm from DOOMTAG's energy bomb slowly began to dissipate.
DOOMTAG was already walking toward the center of the crater where Tyson and Malkor were preparing to clash, her mind completely dismissing the left flank as a cleared zone. "Three down," she hummed to herself.
*FWUSH.*
A sharp, violent gust of wind swept through the smoke behind her, completely snuffs out the remaining purple flames.
DOOMTAG stopped dead in her tracks. Her pink third eye twitched violently, spinning backward to lock onto the center of the detonation zone.
Standing amidst the cooling magma, their uniforms completely scorched and their bodies covered in bleeding, raw tissue, were the three captains.
Drakye Void stood at the front, his hand pressed tightly over the gaping wound in his chest, his fingers channeling a continuous, hyper-compressed seal of hardened air directly inside his own thoracic cavity to manually keep his punctured lung inflated and halt the internal bleeding.
To his left was Reid Gideon Swallow. He was standing straight, balancing his weight perfectly. His arms were completely gone from the elbows down, but his posture was completely unyielding. He had applied a permanent internal vector lock to his own major arteries, stopping the blood loss through sheer willpower.
To his right was Shadow, his eyes completely pitch-black, dark tendrils of shadow manipulation actively sewing the massive laceration across his chest shut like iron thread, his teeth bared in a wicked, dangerous grin.
Drakye looked through the thinning haze at the back of DOOMTAG's head. Despite the excruciating pain ripping through his chest, a confident, sharp smile cut through the blood on his face. He let out a low, gravelly chuckle that turned into a fierce, defiant grin.
"Yo, shadow, Reid," Drakye said, as he laughed let's kill this bitch. "Let's kill this bitch."