The Elders watched the machine as its smooth alloy faceplate sealed once more, blades retracting, standing idle— Mitsuko’s blood still dripping from its limbs. And trepidation etched deep scowls into each of their faces.

“Several hundred thousand… by nightfall.”

Doctor Bhu’s words echoed like a ...

The sentinel’s flamethrower roared at point-blank range, a spiraling column of scarlet and white designed to erase all within it. But through the inferno—through the blistering heat and pain—Mitsuko moved.

With a defiant roar, she slung her enormous ax in a wide arc. The weapon tore through the ...

Hitomi circled the sentinel slowly, her sharp eyes catching every subtle movement in the mercurial sheen of its ten-foot frame. Its surface rippled softly, like liquid metal reflecting impossible angles, the faintest pulse of energy flickering beneath the alloy skin—a weave of ancient technology and ...

[Several Days Later] [/b]

The courtyard was radiant in the early amber light, veiled in a soft mist that clung to the cobbled stones like breath to glass. Towering marble obelisks etched with flowing runes encircled the clearing—monuments to the Yaarou Clan’s centuries of arcane legacy. In the ...

It was too late.

The seal had already formed beneath her fingertips—black sigils coiling outward like oil in water, creeping across his skin, threading into the very marrow of his bones. The runes pulsed with rhythm, each beat syncing with Hiroshi’s soul as if testing its tensile strength.

And ...

The hour drew past midnight..

And shortly after, the door to the chamber slid open without ceremony.

No guards. No escort. No fanfare. Only the quiet hiss of air against stone, and the bare, measured steps of his granddaughter as she entered.

Hitomi stepped into the chamber with neither ceremony ...

[ ..Continued From Here.. ]

By the decree of the Xhi’on, the traitor Hiroshi Yaarou was confined inside the highest sanctum of the Central Palace—deep within the Restorative Chambers.

It was a place once reserved for the honored and the dying. Anointed with centuries of incense and prayer, etched ...

But just as Hiroshi was set to unleash the storm of energy he'd been amassing for centuries, a second force collided with his spine with a sickening crunch of fury and might.

BOOOOOOM.

His body was launched through the air like a ragdoll on fire, crashing into the far wall of the chamber with ...

But then.. something halted him. Hiroshi brow arched in confusion looking at his outstretched hand, frozen mid-reach as if he'd been ensnared in an invisible web he couldn't see or feel until he'd wandered to close.

And once he did, he could feel them everywhere.

They coiled through the ...

Kier’s body stewed in a steaming heap of melted viscera, his once-imposing frame now a warped ruin pooling into the obsidian floor.

What remained of him hissed and twitched before he went completely still. And the chamber recoiled in response.

Even the Elders flinched. Ayune muttered a prayer ...