I. One by One
Serath had run through fire. Through steel corridors and cursed catacombs. But nothing compared to watching her squad the elite of the Thalor fall.
She had seen Elari dragged screaming from the wreckage of her escape pod, defiant to the last. Kia put a pulse-round through her spine.
Then Drel, captured near the edge of Darcile's slave quarters, was made to kneel as the Thal'Karn tore him apart before Kia's cold, observing eyes.
Vaarn, the tech specialist, resisted longest. Hacked a patrol skiff and nearly made it to the atmospheric fringe until Kia's fleet disabled it mid-air. She executed him personally, point-blank, while staring into Serath's surveillance lens.
The message was clear. No one escapes Mahasimu justice.
By the time Kia's patrols closed in on Serath's position in the ruins of Nakar'Zul, she was alone, wounded, cornered. Her weapons were drained. Her armor cracked. And then she heard it. Heavy paws. Hissing breaths. Eight of them.
The Thal'Karn circled her—creatures bred from nightmares, armored in void-hardened scales, their green eyes glowing like twin furnace-stars. Their handlers, clad in layered shadow-mesh, hissed commands in a language older than fire. But just before they struck a voice. "Enough."
Every creature halted. Their growls died like caged thunder. From behind them emerged Admiral Kia.
Clad in obsidian command armor threaded with red-vein circuitry, her cloak whispering with psionic energy, she walked with the weight of entire star systems at her back. Her eyes, predator-sharp, bore down on Serath.
"You're the last." Serath tried to rise. Blood poured from her side. Her eyes didn't blink.
"Then do it," she rasped. "Finish it."
Kia knelt before her, just out of blade's reach.
"You think you've won something by surviving? No. You've witnessed. That was the point."
She dismissively waved , and the Thal'Karn melted back into the shadows, handlers following. A chill swept over Serath.
"I want you to remember their screams. Remember what it means to defy the Mahasimu. And when your people come for war—because they will—I want you on the front line, screaming for vengeance."
Kia stood, voice a whisper of daggers.
"Tell your council. Tell your gods. Tell the ashes of your kind… Admiral Kia remembers." She turned. And Serath collapsed, her vision fading as the cold dust of Darcile's ruins swallowed her. Her mind teetered on the edge of unconsciousness but before darkness took over her completely, she saw them.
Two towering Shadowscourge stepped from the mist. Their limbs were jagged and purposeful, black carapace crackling faintly with restrained shadow energy. They moved with eerie precision—no words, only silent command from their master.
Admiral Kia gave the order.
"Bring Operator Serath to the surface. Activate her beacon. Let her be found."
The two Shadowscourge lifted Serath's limp body, slung in an arc of defeat, and vanished into the fractured corridors of Nakar'Zul.
A beacon light—subtle and encrypted flared into life at the edge of the ruins.
Admiral Kia stood for a long moment, watching the coordinates upload into the void. "Let her escape. She'll bring the storm to us." Then she turned, cloak billowing behind her like a living shadow.
II. The Rescue and Escape
She awoke in the extraction skiff. Sirens blaring. Mahasimu interceptors were incoming. She'd been rescued but not soon enough.
Commander Threx sat grim-faced at the controls. "Strap in. We've got one shot to warp. You're lucky you're breathing." "The others?" she whispered. He said nothing.
The Vael Whisper breached orbit its engines howling, cloak flickering under strain and leapt to warp with barely a second to spare.
III. The War of Shadowfire Begins
By the time Serath returned to Vazhalar, her face was hardened like stone. She knelt before the High Council, her testimony recorded in flame-script.
"Admiral Kia… she wants us to remember. To hurt. She's not just a warrior—she's a herald of annihilation." Yar'ek, High Strategist, stood. "Then we'll oblige her. The embers of vengeance have been lit. The war she promised is now the war we deliver."
From the starforges of the Zelith system to the orbital vaults of the Silver Moons, fleets were rallied, soldiers drafted, and diplomatic envoys recalled.
The War of Shadowfire had begun not with the clash of ships, but with the scream of friends lost and the vow of revenge carved into Serath's heart.
And deep beneath Darcile, Kirell continued they're construction. The second mothership the Vroth'Maul—grew spine by spine, chamber by chamber. The invasion would come.
But now, the Zelith would be ready.
IV. The Mothership's Bones
Aboard the construction superframe of the second Mahasimu Mothership, suspended in the dry upper orbit of Darcile, the skeletal monstrosity stretched across kilometers of hollowed scaffolding and exposed spine-nerves. It was not yet alive—but it was hungry.
General Kizito stood at its heart, arms folded behind his back, his expression locked in ice. Beside him, Vice Generals Tano and Kia had just arrived, their boots clanking against the ribbed alloy flooring of the control deck.
Below, thousands of enslaved Kirell workers small, amphibious, bone-thin beings with crystal implants laced into their skulls hauled reactor cores and scaffolding plating. Their backs were scarred. The whips cracked mercilessly from Shadowscourge Overseers as sweat pooled beneath their webbed feet.
"They're slow," Kizito growled. "They're always slow."
He watched a Kirell stumble. A whip coiled with black energy lashed down and left the creature screaming.
"Break them, or burn them," he muttered.
Admiral Kia approached, offering a slight bow. "The infiltration team has been neutralized, General. Only one survivor remains Operator Serath. She has been allowed to escape, as ordered."
"Escaped?" Tano raised an eyebrow. "We let one live?"
Kia's voice was steady. "She is our message."
Kizito didn't turn. He simply stared into the black maw of space where the Mothership's main spire would soon rise. "So be it. Let them come. Let their hope rally around her corpse."
He looked toward the still-forming mothership a crawling, monstrous construct meant to house billions of Shadowscourge warriors and Support Castes.
"This is the war we've bled for. The silence before the scream is over."
He paused, then turned to Kia and Tano.
"Begin awakening the lower chambers. The army must be stirred. Our empire does not wait."
V. Echoes of War
As the construction resumed, dark energy pulsing through the veins of the growing mothership, across the Uli System—war had already taken root.
Serath's rescue was only the spark.
But in the halls of the Zelith High Council, that spark had become fire.
And the War of Shadowfire had begun.