The world looked different now.
Kael stood motionless at the center of the Sigma chamber, but his mind stretched far beyond its walls. Fragments of forgotten histories unraveled within him—visions flashing faster than thought: a council burned in shadow, cities erased from all records, names lost in purposefully fractured timelines.
But through it all, one constant remained: Shadow's presence.
Not as a man, but as a convergence point. A creation born of consequence.
The Seed stepped back. Its touch had faded, but its echo remained in Kael's veins, like fire laced with memory.
Elara approached slowly. "Kael? Are you still in there?"
He turned toward her, slower than usual, his eyes flickering between gold and steel-blue. "Yes… and no."
Voss didn't lower his guard. "Define that."
Kael blinked, then looked at his hands—energy pulsed faintly beneath his skin. "I have the Seed's memories. Not just access… integration. I remember things I never lived."
Elara asked carefully, "Does that include Shadow?"
Kael nodded once. "It includes what made him."
Before anyone could respond, Aether's voice cracked into comms, loud and urgent.
"Contact—multiple fast signatures inbound! Not Bravo-class. Not human."
Voss responded immediately, blades already in hand. "Origin?"
"Unknown, but... they're not responding to override signals."
The Seed turned to the center of the chamber. "The Host is chosen. The guardians are coming."
Kael's mind clicked into motion. "Define guardians."
> "Those who ensured I was never awakened. Fail-safes embedded into the false order. Non-biological. Absolute."
A low hum began vibrating through the floor.
From above, the vault ceiling lit up with dozens of descending markers—glowing in angular crimson spirals.
Kael's voice sharpened. "They're drones."
Aether shouted, "No. They're AI frames. High-level—shielded—one's marked as CLASS NULL."
Voss's mask scanned upward. "They're coming fast."
Kael stepped forward, drawing a new energy pulse from the Seed's interface. The lines along his arms flared.
"I'll hold the breach."
Elara stepped beside him. "We hold it. Together."
The Seed didn't move. It simply watched.
Then it spoke again, in a tone colder than before.
> "This chamber must survive. If the vessel is lost… so is the truth."
Kael looked to Voss, then Elara.
"Then we make them bleed for it."
The chamber lights dimmed as the first tremor hit.
Above them, the ceiling quaked with distant impacts—like gods knocking on a world not meant to open. Then the first AI frame descended. Unlike anything Bravo had fought before, it didn't fly—it dropped, slamming into the metallic floor with such force that the ground beneath it cracked.
Its body was humanoid, but almost skeletal—built from carbon lattice, wrapped in kinetic armor plating that shimmered with active quantum fields. No eyes. Just a single glowing slit across its "face," pulsing crimson with algorithmic rhythm.
Voss lunged before it finished scanning.
His blade sliced clean through the frame's left arm—only for it to regenerate instantly, red tendrils weaving together with impossible speed. The machine turned toward him and retaliated with a wave of directed kinetic force.
Voss was thrown back thirty feet, landing in a roll.
"They adapt," he growled.
Kael raised one hand—and the Seed's energy flared outward. The AI frame halted. Staggered. Its systems flickered.
Kael advanced. "They weren't made to fight a Host."
He launched a pulse straight into the chest of the machine. It absorbed the energy—then began to crack.
Not explode. Unravel.
Elara fired a synchronized burst, targeting the seams Kael had exposed. The AI collapsed into dust-like fragments, disintegrating in a spiral of dissolving code.
Then came the sound none of them wanted to hear:
Twelve more markers descending.
Aether's voice buzzed with static. "There's a full squad inbound—minimum two Null-class confirmed. That means anti-host weapons!"
Kael's pupils contracted. "Then we can't defend. Not here."
He turned to the Seed.
"Can you move?"
The Seed tilted its head. "My purpose is to protect the chamber, not escape it."
"Wrong," Kael snapped. "Your purpose is to live. We can rebuild the chamber. But if you die here—everything dies with you."
The Seed hesitated for a second. Then nodded once.
Aether activated the rapid extraction platform embedded beneath the floor. "I've got a line to Dropship Echo, but I'll need sixty seconds of lockdown to stabilize the arc!"
Kael looked to Voss. "Can you buy us that time?"
Voss said nothing—just pulled both blades free, then turned toward the stairs and vanished into the shadows.
Kael grabbed Elara's wrist. "We hold the core. You guard the Seed."
She looked at him. "And you?"
Kael's voice lowered to a whisper.
"I'm going to rewrite the rules."
And then he stepped forward—toward the incoming storm of machines.
The first Null-class frame emerged like a black flame.
It didn't walk. It floated, suspended in a magnetic shell of pulsating energy. Its form wasn't built for combat—it was built for eradication. Multiple limbs folded from its back, each tipped with a different weapon: plasma saw, phase cannon, singularity lance, and worst of all—an emitter core crackling with what looked like anti-cognition energy.
Aether gasped in Kael's comms. "That's a Mind-Kill device. You can't block it—only outrun it."
Kael didn't run.
Instead, he raised his hand—and unleashed the Seed's energy in raw form. A pulse of white-gold light burst from his palm, enveloping the descending enemies in a spiral of encoded flame. The air vibrated with feedback, reality itself stretching for a brief moment as the Seed inside him bent the rules of existence.
Two of the lower-tier AI frames melted instantly.
But the Null-class didn't even flinch.
It absorbed the pulse… then responded with a silent beam of inverted light—an erasure field. Where it passed, time blinked.
Kael side-stepped, barely missing contact. The corner of the chamber vanished—no explosion, just gone, like it had never existed.
He called out. "Aether, give me options!"
"Working—wait—there's a signal spike… from Voss!"
Above, a detonation roared.
The stairwell filled with fire and broken machine parts.
Then, through the smoke, Voss walked out, limping but alive—dragging the remains of a fractured drone behind him.
"I got one," he said, voice dry. "They bleed now."
Elara and the Seed were already retreating into the lower tunnel. Kael saw it—her look back. Just once. Eyes locked on his.
"I'll catch up," he mouthed.
She didn't respond. But she didn't stop, either.
Then the Null-class raised both arms—and unleashed a full-core detonation. Not to kill.
To erase.
Kael roared, unleashing a barrier drawn directly from the Seed's energy. The blast hit—space shattered around him, and his vision filled with static and overlapping echoes of himself.
Past Kael.
Future Kael.
All staring back.
"You are the vessel."
He fell to one knee, body shuddering from the pressure.
Voss stepped beside him, blades humming.
"You still in there?"
Kael looked up, his voice hoarse but steady.
"I am. But I'm not alone."
The Null-class recharged.
Kael stood tall again.
And smiled.
The chamber trembled under the weight of dimensional distortion. The Null-class frame hovered above the ground, limbs outstretched, its core humming with unspeakable energy—cold, clinical, designed not to dominate, but to delete.
Voss and Kael stood side by side, facing it.
"New plan?" Voss asked, gripping his blades tighter.
Kael's voice was calm—unnaturally so. "I don't just have the Seed's power now. I have his code."
Voss raised an eyebrow beneath his mask. "Shadow's?"
Kael nodded. "He left something inside the Seed. A signature, buried beneath all the data. A trap. But I saw it. And I can rewrite it."
Before Voss could reply, the Null-class fired again.
This time, it split into two beams—curving midair like serpents of annihilation.
Kael raised both hands and caught them.
Not with shields.
With data.
The air warped around him as glowing runes in forgotten languages formed a lattice across his arms. The Seed's protocol activated fully now—synchronizing his body, thoughts, and neural patterns into a reactive field.
He wasn't resisting the beams.
He was reprogramming them.
The Null-class stuttered in place, its core dimming momentarily.
"Now," Kael whispered. "I need five seconds."
Voss didn't ask what for. He vanished into a burst of velocity, dashing forward with supernatural precision. The Null-class reacted instantly—deploying automated defense limbs, spinning saws and arc blades slicing through the air.
But Voss wasn't aiming for its body.
He struck the emitters.
One. Two. Three.
Sparks rained down, distorting the magnetic field. The Null-class dropped to the ground for the first time—momentarily disconnected.
Kael's eyes glowed with the full light of the Seed.
"Override initiated."
He stepped forward, placed his hand on the machine's core, and whispered a single word in the code's native tongue:
> "Obey."
A pulse shot outward.
The Null-class froze.
Then… rebooted.
But when it stood again, it didn't attack.
It turned toward Kael and bowed its head.
"Host confirmed," came its voice. "Protocol: Submission."
Kael staggered slightly, sweat trailing down his face, but he didn't break.
Voss exhaled. "You tamed it."
Kael shook his head. "No. I rewrote its purpose."
From behind, Elara's voice echoed through the comm.
"Extraction complete. Seed secured. Ready for evac."
Kael turned toward the tunnel, the now-silent Null-class standing behind him like a sentinel.
"This is just the first," he muttered. "They'll come again."
Voss nodded. "Then let them."
Kael glanced back one more time at the ruined chamber—the fragments of Sigma's truth scattered like stardust across the floor.
The world was no longer ruled by lies.
But by the one who carried the truth.