Vescrutia: Legacy

The Crimson Cloud slipped through the darkened sky with solemn grace, its blood-hued hull dissolving into the night as cloaking arrays shimmered to life across its armored surface. In seconds, the colossal dreadnought became a ghost drifting silently above a world that had not yet tasted the full weight of imperial ambition.

–Below, the vast continent of Muu stretched endlessly like an emerald sea. Trees of impossible size rose from the depths of the land, their canopies thick with mist and laced with bioluminescent moss that pulsed like the veins of the forest.

From above, the entire region seemed to shimmer with life, but also something older… Primal. Powerful. Perhaps, something once sacred and treasured– intentionally hidden from prying eyes and greedy hands. Untouched by war or machines..

But no longer.

The Crimson Cloud crept forward on silent thrusters, its presence subtle yet suffocating. It came to a hover above a vast chasm in the jungle’s heart known as the Onyx Trench. The chasm yawned into a void of shadows and roots—where obsidian cliffsides vanished into thick veils of fog, and shattered ruins slept in silence.

From the bridge, Commander Delion stood silently, watching the vast green below with an unreadable expression. His long cobalt fingers tightened slightly behind his back, eyes narrowed as flashes from the brewing storm outside caught the edge of his armor. The power of this land was palpable, rising in curling currents even at this altitude.

From their reports on the area, Muu's entire biosphere was a wellspring of resources. Everything from the soil to the air was soaked in Naten or charged with ambient energy.

It reminded him of home. Of B'halia. But the soft hiss of pressurized doors behind him drew his attention back to the task at hand.

“General Qalen,” Delion said without turning, “Welcome to Muu.”

Bootsteps answered. Measured. Disciplined. General Qalen stepped forward—a towering mass of cobalt muscle patterned with sacred glyphs etched in pale silver. Across his broad shoulders hung a cloak fashioned from the hide of a deadly animal, and his harness bristled with throwing spears, curved sabers, and serrated knives carved from diamond. His presence exuded the silent precision of a born predator, or a trained and tempered weapon.

Behind him trailed his beast of war—an auburn striped TerraFang with luminous amber eyes and a tail that swayed like a pendulum.

“My soldiers are prepared,” Qalen said as he stroked his companion’s mane. His voice was deep and gravel-edged, yet calm as still water.. “Wherever the creature hides… it won’t be for long.”

Delion allowed a small, approving smile as he turned his head. “I expect no less,” he replied, his tone both casual and cold, a mixture of command and calculation. “General Kilik and the Mazoku Executioner are still recovering from their efforts in Helidor. I’d prefer not to interrupt their healing unnecessarily—not when I have someone of your caliber at my disposal.”

Qalen dipped his head in a warrior’s nod. “You honor me, Commander,” he said with quiet conviction. “Your faith in me will not go wanting.. ”

Delion turned back to the vast trench. “See that it isn't.”

Without another word, Qalen tapped his steed’s flank, and together they strode from the bridge like living shadows.

Outside, the night sky cracked and blistered with bolts of the coming storm.

From the underbelly of the Crimson Cloud, legions of drop-convoys descended like burning comets toward the Onyx Trench. The silence of Muu was ruptured by a symphony of low hums, hydraulics, and battle cries vibrating from within steel hulls.

Inside the armored transports, hundreds of B’halian soldiers sat in silence, backs straight and hands steady—newbloods eager for glory, replacements for those lost in the fires of Helidor. The Trench was their crucible, and they would march into it beneath the cover of nightfall.

The first boots touched the jungle canopy with little more than a whisper. B’halian soldiers emerged from their drop-capsules like phantoms, slipping through vines and thick branches with practiced finesse.

General Qalen’s convoy touched down last.

He stepped from his pod without fanfare, the obsidian-furred tiger pacing ahead of him, nostrils flared. Around him, elite rangers of the Joro kin assembled in silence, faces hardened and weapons already drawn. There was no need for speeches. They knew the hunt had begun.

The forest greeted them with stillness– the pervasive kind that sank beneath the skin and chilled the spine. Insects the size of daggers glided lazily through the mist. Somewhere in the distance, something howled once, then fell silent.

“Spread wide,” Qalen murmured, crouching low to brush the soil between his fingers. “Attune yourselves to the land..”

The Joro kin fanned out like liquid shadows, moving in concentric rings around the drop zone as they disappeared into the darkness.

Their forms blended seamlessly with the jungle, slipping through the foliage with an uncanny stillness. Though their armor bore no glow, their senses were sharper than most. Like all of their kind, the Joro were born under twilight skies—descendants of hunters and beastbinders who'd spent millennia stalking prey through lightless wilderness.

This made them the perfect prospects for this mission.

In the pitch-black gloom of the Onyx Trench, the Joro needed no torches. Instead, their eyes—once midnight black in the daylight—shifted beneath the canopies, shimmering like silver stars. The jungle unveiled itself to them in subtle hues and radiant pulses of energy. Where human eyes would see nothing but ink, the Joro saw heat trailing from beast and bird, and the faint hum of Naten glowing beneath bark and root.

Around them, huge, winding trees stood wrapped in coils of vines. Bioluminescent leaves pulsed overhead like the lungs of the jungle, and their veins glowed in a soft, calming rhythm. In the deeper trench walls, moss-covered pillars of long-forgotten temples jutted from the stone, half-devoured by roots, their carvings eroded to nothing.

Qalen paused beneath one such archway—half-buried in flora—and placed a hand against the soil once more.

Behind–his TerraFang prowled in the darkness of the Trench, muscles rippling beneath obsidian fur. It let out a soft, guttural sound—not a growl, but a warning.

The jungle was watching them back.

The rangers had already noticed. Shadows shifted where there was no wind. Eyes gleamed in the dark—too high for wolves, too low for birds. Native beasts, cloaked in camouflage and silence, watched the interlopers from all directions. Snaking tails vanished into bramble thickets. Huge winged insects darting into the sky. Qalen could sense it.. Something heavy loomed within this blackness.

Still, the Joro didn’t falter. The battalion moved as one body with many limbs, forming spiraling perimeters. Their kind didn’t need to see their quarry to feel it.

One ranger, perched high in a bough, paused and held up a hand. His eyes narrowed at a subtle indentation in the soil far below—barely visible, but recent. Not quite a footprint—It had no form, only weight. As though something impossibly heavy had pressed into the world without truly touching it.

He whispered into his comm.

Qalen heard it.

He rose from his crouch and glanced toward the jungle’s east flank, where the trench walls widened into a basin of mist-choked ruin and shifting echoes.

He spoke just once, quiet as falling ash: “It’s here.”

—---

Back on the bridge of the Crimson Cloud, Delion watched the operation unfold through a wide array of holo-feeds and sensor echoes. He could see the tremors in the trees, the heat signatures blooming in slow rhythm across the jungle floor, and the distant flickers of the soldiers’ beacons moving deeper toward the trench.

“We've found prints, Commander." Qalen's voice whispered through the comm system in his Delion’s ear. “Dimensions match that of our target— but still no sighting of the Velkyr.”

Delion gave a slight nod. “That’s to be expected. The Velkyr are not prey to be seen. They are to be lured, misled, pressured into revealing themselves.”

He turned toward the central display and keyed in a sequence. A new wave of drones detached from the ship’s undercarriage—sleek things built like locusts, humming with sensory arrays and micro-explosives. They scattered over the jungle like ash, some flying high, others diving into the trench below.

“Initiate phase two,” he said coldly. “Flush the trench.”

One of the attending operators aboard the Crimson Cloud nodded in affirmative to Delion's commands. They then keyed in sequence along the ship's central display, unleashing a wave of insect-like drones bristling with sensory arrays and micro-explosives from the ship’s undercarriage.

They scattered over the Onyx Trench like falling ash, some flying high, others diving into the trench in a cascade of whirring sensors and blinking crimson lights.

And soon, the jungle began to heave.

Ultrasonic pulses rippled through the basin, invisible but overwhelming. Designed to irritate, confuse, and provoke even the most resilient of apex predators. Roots shivered beneath these frequencies. Insects fled in frantic patterns. Winged things crashed into bark and stone, driven mad by the sound.

But then, something else answered.

Not with a roar, but a thrum—deep and slow. A lower frequency that made even the Crimson Cloud’s reinforced hull creak imperceptibly..

Qalen froze, his hand hovering near the hilt of his saber.

Across the comms, one of the Joro soldiers whispered, “Ambient energy readings within the Trench have shifted. Everything’s… bending toward the basin.”

Aboard the Crimson Cloud, Delion stepped closer to the holoscreen– eyes narrowing. Energy readings were spiking. The air around the region began to thrum and ripple in strange waves, flickering as if refracted through water. The terrain was not just reacting. It was reorienting.

“Stand your ground,” Delion commanded. “Do not engage until you see it move.”

But it was already moving.

From the mists below, a guttural snarl rippled through the fog like thunder, followed by the thunderous crack of shifting underbrush and something massive charging.

The Velkyr's gaze beamed from the darkness below.

It was bearish in size and sheathed in thick, shifting fur—camouflaged so flawlessly it seemed to melt into the jungle. At first glance, it was leonine: broad shoulders, sleek muscle, fangs built to sever bone. But atop its head rose a crown of blackened antlers, jagged and sprawling like petrified branches. They radiated a subtle force that quaked through the Trench—disrupting Naten in its radius.

The Joro felt their enchantments distort and wane. It was as if they'd been crippled, the weight of their equipment suddenly cumbersome. Upon laying eyes on it, their initial response had been to flee–to simply run away as far as they could, as fast as they could. But they remained steadfast and resolute before the seething beast, their focus honed to a razor's edge.

However, none of that mattered when the monster finally charged..

The first squad barely screamed before it was upon them—ripping through steel, flesh, and bone in streaks of warm crimson. One soldier was flung thirty feet into the air, his ribs shattered upon impact with the beast's crown. Another was trampled into the roots beneath its claws, his cries cut off mid-breath in a grisly display. Volleys of enchanted spears and arcane arrows struck the Velkyr's flesh but they either bounced off or shattered with little effect.

–General Qalen was already moving toward the screams, his TerraFang gathering him upon its back, snarling with challenge. “Target located, Commander,” he growled through the comms. “We're establishing a perimeter now..”

His men had cornered the Velkyr within a clearing of twisted roots and shattered stone, its massive chest heaving. Its breath came in clouds. Blood—not its own—streaked across its hide. Yet even now, it didn’t flee. It turned again, leering back at the scores of cobalt soldiers that surrounded it. The beast's muscles tensed. General Qalen arrived just as the rain began to fall.

“Steady men..” Qalen said from atop his stead, slowly drawing his daggers from his waist.

He watched it closely–the monster's gaze mirroring his fury, and then some. Even now, surrounded by dozens of its would-be killers, the Velkyr stood its ground. Ready to die. Qalen recognized this behavior from hundreds of other prey he'd hunted. This was territorial. It was protecting its home.. or something more.

The Joro soldiers readied their weapons at the orders of their General. Their tools and muscles may have been dulled by the Velkyr's aura, but their spirits remained undaunted.

"On my mark."

And soon, the jungle began to heave.

Ultrasonic pulses rippled through the basin, invisible but overwhelming. Designed to irritate, confuse, and provoke even the most resilient of apex predators. Roots shivered beneath these frequencies. Insects fled in frantic patterns. Winged things crashed into bark and stone, driven mad by the sound.

But then, something else answered.

The distant explosions hadn't gone unnoticed. Even before the ultrasonic waves reached the deeper canopy, Hitomi had felt the tremors—heard the unnatural drone of machines stirring chaos into the rhythm of the jungle. And then came the howls. Bark splintering. Brush crashing. But it was Velkyr’s guttural roar ultimately pulled her in.

She moved like a ghost through the upper reaches of the forest, perched now upon a massive moss-slick branch, suspended high above the basin’s chaos. Her breath was shallow. Her body still.

From the shadows, her gaze stretched downward—

–Below, in the trench's tangled ruins, where she watched the Velkyr tear through the Joro infantry with feral elegance. Claws severed limbs through war-forged alloy. Antlers swung like divine hammers, flinging soldiers into trees with wet thuds. Even the terrain recoiled. The very presence of the beast bent light, nullifying enchantments, and distorting the ambient weave of Naten until it shimmered uselessly around it.

Hitomi’s eyes narrowed.

She could see it somehow.. Colors twisting behind her gaze, the dreary Onyx Trench erupting into impossible waves—ripples of blue, red, and violet surging like a living tide.

“…What the hell…” she whispered, eyes flickering. A pulse of vertigo creeping behind her brow.

For a moment, the world felt surreal—as if she were looking at an oil painting melting in reverse. She was confused. Disoriented. And even blinked a few times before her focus adjusted and she could see it; The flow of Naten. The crumbling integrity of the Joro soldiers’ enchanted blood—thinning as they came within range of the Velkyr's aura.

“Well.. this is new..” she thought to herself, the corner of her lip twitching upward. “I didn’t ask for it, but.. I'll take it.”

She watched as General Qalen rallied what remained of his troops, surrounding the beast in a cleared basin of shattered stone. His warbeast growled beneath him, its fangs bared in anticipation. And the Velkyr stood tall amidst it all, unbowed—fatigued, perhaps, but far from weakened

"..this should be far enough.."

She whispered to herself before she unclipped the sleek, silver firearm from its magnetic buckle at her hip. The MK-I, a variable-form firearm equipped with adaptable transformation states. She pressed her thumb against the sole glyph near the grip. It clicked, hissed, and extended with mechanical whirs—shifting smoothly into its high-powered, long-range configuration. A gift from the Engineers of Hyperia– the world's first rendition of Anti-Mazoku Equipment.

Hitomi had been trained in all manners of combat from the moment she could walk. Swords, spears, firearms, archaic blades– all of them had been forced into her hands like toys. And though she loathed the idea of relying on anything outside of her own will, she could not deny her affinity for them.

And if nothing else, she did reserve a bit of pride in her marksmanship.

—From her pocket, she pulled a small silver case. Inside: a set of high caliber necromatter rounds. Dark, glistening ammunition engineered to destabilize organic matter on impact—subtle, clean, and silent. Designed to wound and cripple Mazoku physiology. Ideal for ripping the life away from any lesser organism.

She slid the first round into place.

Wind rustled the leaves around her, but she was already part of the canopy. Perfectly still. Perfectly poised, with her eye glaring down the scope of her rifle.

One breath. One pull.

The first shot cracked from the canopy without a sound. A Joro soldier was holding his position before a five inch hole was blown into his chest. No flash. No noise. Just liquifying force, enough to rip the seven foot giant clean off his feet.

Another breath. Another pull.

A second soldier jerked forward as if yanked by unseen hands, his head split open before it crashed against the grass.

In seconds, Hitomi had downed five more, each shot intended on fracturing the Empire's circle of containment around the Velkyr.

Confusion erupted below, but Hitomi was already chambering the next round.

Another breath. Another shot.

More than a dozen cobalt corpses fell cold on the muddied ground. Hitomi watched through her scope, utterly calm as soldiers scrambled to locate the phantom in the trees. But they would find nothing. Not in time. Not before her scope found their leader's head.

The battlefield stank of blood and ozone. Ballistics snapped through the air like angry whips, slicing past trees and armor with unnatural precision.

Qalen’s gauntlet clenched around the reins of his Warbeast, knuckles cracking beneath pressure. The TerraFang shrieked as a round punched clean through its armored neck, dropping it to a knee with a ground-shaking grunt. He curled behind his dying steed, the air around them shimmering with heat and residual discharge.

“Defensive positions!” he barked, throat raw. “Take cover! We are under attack!”

But his words were swallowed by chaos—by the sharp cries of dying men and the suppressed percussion of unseen gunfire. Another soldier was ripped backward, his spine severed by a round too fast to see. There were no muzzle flashes. No glint of glass or lens flare. Only that terrible whistle in the wind, and the knowledge that death could come at any instant.

Qalen turned, scanning the canopy with his trained eyes, but there was nothing. No shimmer. No displacement. Only silence between the gunfire—

The Velkyr stood at the eye of it all—still as stone amidst a storm. The creature didn’t know fear, nor strategy, nor divine deliverance. But it understood an opportunity when it felt one. Its would-be executioners were no longer a cohesive force. They were prey, scattered and bleeding. The creature’s form shifted, subtle. No longer bristling with hostility. Alert. Poised.

And then—like smoke through fingers—it was gone. Slipping into the timberline while the world burned around it. Qalen, too focused on the unseen enemy, didn’t even notice.

He wiped a streak of sweat from his brow with a grime-stained thumb. He knew this wasn’t some chance altercation . This was orchestration. Premeditated. Someone with intimate knowledge of Imperial Operations were foolish enough to stand against the Empire, but smart enough to lure them into a trap.

He tapped the glyph on his wrist plate, the thin filaments flaring to life with faint blue light as he linked to the relay beacon aboard the Crimson Cloud.

Static roared. Then, clarity.

A ghostly hue washed across Qalen’s face as Commander Delion materialized in the feed—still as a painting, his pale expression illuminated by the cold hum of the command deck behind him.

“Commander,” Qalen said, voice taut as bowstring. “Our position is compromised.”

Delion said nothing. He observed. Behind him, consoles flickered serenely—calm amid the thunder of war.

“A sniper,” Qalen pressed. “Unseen. Possibly cloaked. Precision strikes. We’ve lost two dozen in under two minutes. No trace of origin. Could be multiple assets.”

Delion arched a single brow. “And the Velkyr?”

“Contained,” Qalen ground out. “For now. But our arsenal—shinjutsu, rifles, binding fields—none of it works. The nullification zone is wider than predicted. Stronger. Sir… we’re bleeding out.”

A pause. Delion tilted his head, fingers steepled. “..fascinating.” He mused, sounding more curious and concerned.

Qalen’s frustrations sharpened. “With respect, Commander—this is no longer a controlled situation. We're being picked apart, Sir. I'm requesting aerial ordinance on my position—now. We can flatten the Trench, and bury the sniper and the Velkyr beneath the ashes.”

"Request Denied.”

Qalen fliched in disbelief, “Sir?”

“You are J’oro, General. Adapt.” Delion responded coldly. “The Velkyr must be executed at all costs. We mustn't allow it a chance to escape in the chaos.”

He turned slightly. “Scan the region,” he ordered an attendant. “Find our ghost. Greet them with extreme prejudice.”

Delion said before turning back to the projection of General Qalen. “Let me remind you General—the mission is all that matters. Needless to say, I expect more from a warrior from my tribe.. Do not disappoint me.”

The transmission severed with a soft pulse of blue light.

Qalen stared at the dead glyph on his wrist, his jaw clenched so tight his molars ached. Another scream rang out behind him, followed by the thudding collapse of another soul lost. The scent of scorched meat and burning armor grew heavier and heavier amidst the downpour.

It was then, as he took stock of the situation, that Qalen felt his gut swell with anxiety. He looked up, and Velkyr had disappeared. “Wait, where—!?” he shouted, peeking from behind the remains of his warbeast, only to have his cheek clipped by a bullet. Blood spilled in a thin, hot line down his face as he dropped again.

“Damnit! The Velkyr—!”

He scanned the loam and found deep tracks already fading beneath the rain and chaos. The surrounding squads were too pinned down to notice, their attention split between the mounting corpses and the phantom gunfire. But Qalen saw it. And he refused to return to the Crimson Cloud, a failure.

“RAHH!!” he roared, bracing his arms beneath the body of the TerraFang. And behind a guttural cry, he hoisted it and used it as a shield, charging recklessly into the woods.

–---

Far above the valley, streaks of crimson light tore across the clouds as the Crimson Cloud’s drop pods pierced the stormfront—falling like stars toward the earth. Each pod hit the ground with seismic force, kicking up walls of steam and soot that blanketed the treeline. When they hissed open, at least twenty Joro soldiers emerged.

They moved with eerie synchronicity—rigid faces sheathed in armor, breathing in perfect cadence. Each bore the black insignia of the Emperor’s Will stitched into the plates over their hearts.

“New directives..” the squad leader said, voice filtered caution. “Secondary hostile identified on the northern ridge. Triangulation confirms a singular entity. Thermal scan reads… human.”

“A human?” another echoed, disbelief leaking through his helmet. “Responsible for this many casualties?”

The leader responded with a stilted nod.

“Orders are clear–neutralize the threat and rendezvous on General Qalen's coordinates.”

From that point, there was no more chatter. No hesitation.

The Joro squad split, dividing into formation with machine-like grace. Each footfall was measured, their weapons raised with methodical precision as they vanished into the trees in search of this assailant.

The forest fell silent—unnaturally so.

Mist hung low beneath the canopy, dense as wool, coiling around the boots of the advancing Joro soldiers. Their formation was tight, disciplined, glistening eyes sweeping left and right in precise arcs. But as they encroached further into the greenery, their keen senses picked up on something.

The air itself grew thick. Oppressive.

Then, it began. Without sound. Without warning.

The first soldier vanished in a violent blur of motion—lifted clean off the ground by something unseen, his scream cut short as his body was ripped apart mid-air. Limbs flailed and snapped—bones torn from sockets with a wet, sickening pop. His innards sprayed the underbrush in wide arcs, painting the leaves and his squadron in streaks of arterial red.

His unit of men froze, petrified in a wide-eyed panic. They turned in unison toward the tree tops– but by then it was already too late.

It was as if death itself had descended upon them.
One soldier was driven into the soil with enough force to crater ground, his skeleton flattened into his armor like a tin plate. Another was slammed against a tree trunk, hard enough to leave behind nothing but a scarlet, five-fingered handprint smeared into the bark.

“Commander Delion! Something’s—!” the squad leader barked into his communicator, just before his head fell silently from his shoulders. This macabre parade ensued until the encroaching platoons of Joro were wiped out in similar fashion–massacred along the mud filled puddles of the Trench.

And perched high above their scattered pieces, nestled in the branches sat Hitomi.

And she didn’t blink. Hell, she barely noticed they were there at all.

Her eyes were glassy and cold, almost bored, as her rifle rested against her shoulder. Her Immortal Art was fully active. Her W’rayths circled her like a pack of invisible wolves, eviscerating anything that stepped within ten meters of her perch.

Each death below was little more than static at the edge of her perception. Her attention remained focused on securing and protecting the Velkyr.

She fired again—another sharp whisper of a round—another soldier collapsed.

No flourish. No battle cry. Just precision.

Her body was nearly motionless except for the slow, meditative reloading of her rifle. And even then, she barely moved. Efficient, mechanical—like the ticking gears of a clock.

Then, just beyond the edge of her scope, she saw it. The Velkyr, breaking away from the chaos and into trees.

It moved with intelligence. It's breathing shifting into a more measured gasps. The creature that understood this chaos wasn’t its doing—but could serve its purpose. It was using the Joro's confusion as a veil to escape..

Just as Hitomi planned.

She adjusted her aim, trailing it through the gaps in the trees. The creature charged through a thicket. “..and where do you think you're going?” She mused to herself as she lined up her shot.

She exhaled once—slow, controlled—and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet lanced through the foliage, catching the Velkyr in the flank. Not fatal. Just enough to hobble.

She let the scope linger a moment, watching it stagger as she traced its path. Then she saw something else: movement behind it. A Joro soldier, one of the few survivors, sprinting hard in pursuit—using the corpse of a fallen animal as cover.

“Shit—” she hissed.

She pivoted and. tried to line up a clean shot, but the two of them vanished into dense undergrowth. Gone.

Fially, she moved.

She dropped from the canopy—silent, weightless, with the grace of a falling leaf. Her landing barely stirred the forest until she tapped the dial on her wrist mic. .

“Dr. Cyvell." Her voice was low, crisp. "Target moving south-southwest. Minor wound to the rear abdomen. I’m in pursuit.”

Static crackled. Then Cyvell’s voice responded—, pleased.

“Excellent. We will begin preparing for containment. Are there any remaining on-site hostiles?”

“I’m working on it,” she replied, already cutting the line as she holstered her rifle behind her and disappeared in a blister of speed.

Her feet barely touched the earth, her presence more phantom than flesh as she whipped through the trees. The wind howled through the branches as she sped past the piles of cobalt corpses left strewn in the muck.

Her crimson gaze burned through the darkness—fixated on the path left by Qalen and the Velkyr.

Tracking them was trivial.

What wasn’t—was what hadn't yet revealed itself.

The Mazoku soldier. The one she'd been promised.

She wondered how long they would withhold their greatest weapon.. What would she need to do to shake the proverbial tree? Regardless, Hitomi was prepared to burn the entire Empire's armada here in this jungle if they refused to send her a worthy opponent.

Inside the command deck, beneath a dome of translucent screens, Commander Delion stood statuesque—arms crossed, eyes flickering across a spread of holographic feeds suspended in the air before him.

Combat telemetry. Vital readouts. Tactical overlays.

And, most useful of all, live footage relayed from the insectoid drones scattered across the skeletal sprawl of Onyx Trench.

Through their segmented lenses, he watched chaos unfold. Each screen whispered of disaster. A score of lifeless Joro wherever he looked, felled by unseen hands in pursuit of the fleeing Velkyr.

“Patch me into the secondary squad.” He ordered, his voice cold and tight. “I'd like to monitor their progress against this long range coward.”

Static crackled on an empty screen—then cleared.

The visuals flickered to a birds eye view– an overhead drone gliding silently over the treetops like a curious specter. It dipped low at Delion's request, weaving through branches, and spiraling toward a forest clearing stained with moss and blood.

There, it found them.
Or rather, what remained.

Delion’s brow twitched

The secondary team had been dismantled and disassembled—their corpses strewn about in pieces along the mudslicked ground. One soldier had been decapitated, his open neck still steaming in the cold air. And next to the dismembered hesd was another cobalt corpse plastered against a tree with such force it had cratered the bark behind it.

There were no signs of a struggle. No gunfire exchanged. Just… carnage. Angry, silent, and visceral.

“No human could have done this,” one of the bridge officers whispered, half to himself.

Delion didn’t even glance back. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

With a gesture, he expanded one of the feeds—highlighting the trail of ordinary footprints pressed into the wet loam. Human in size. Barefoot.

Uneasy glances darted across the command deck. No one dared speak. No one but the Commander.

“Trace the other teams. Where’s the rest of my infantry?”

More feeds sparked to life—half of them blackened with signal disruption. But a few still gave clear visuals.

The central path. The ravine. The outermost flanks.

The pattern was the same.

Bodies. Rows of them. Joro soldiers shot dead by a precision shooter from unseen vantage points. Some still clutched their swords in lifeless hands. Others hadn’t even drawn their weapons.

The curling smoke from warm wounds left a ghastly imagery in the cold light. This was no battlefield.

Just a graveyard.

Delion’s jaw tightened. “Vital readings?!” he snapped.

A beat of silence, followed by a sequence of keystrokes. Then the servitor-tech responded: “Only one life signal remains within the active perimeter, Commander. Squad General Qalen. His heartbeat is elevated. Pursuit pattern detected.”

Delion’s head snapped toward the screen. “Show me.”

The view changed.

From the perspective of a skittering drone lodged in the canopy, the image showed Qalen charging through a thinning corridor of mist-drenched forest. The General's enchanted armor flickered with faint pulses of stored energy. His breath came hard through clenched teeth, but his pace didn’t slow.

Ahead of him—bounding through foliage with predatory grace—was the Velkyr.

Delion leaned forward, transfixed. He watched Qalen draw one of his spears, using Shinjutsu to encrust it in a shimmering diamond shell. He hurled it with a shout and the spear cut the air like lightning—only to shatter to dust on impact.

Delion scoffed.

Qalen, undeterred, drew his blade next—a twin-edged sabre whose blade grew sharper beneath moonlight. He used his powerful legs to launch himself into the air and closed the gap in seconds. With another thunderous roar, Qalen brought his blade down upon the creature with both hands tightened in fury.

The Velkyr turned, and rebuffed his approach with one claw. Sparks burst from Qalen’s chestplate as he was launched into a tree, splinters exploding outward from the impact.

Still, he rose. Bleeding, defiant

He slashed again—but his blade slid harmlessly off the creature’s hide. Nullified. Dulled. Useless.

The Velkyr was suppressing his Naten. His enchantments. His techniques. His weapon. His essence.

Delion exhaled sharply through his nose. The room had gone silent.

He stepped back from the screen. “Enough.” The nearest officer turned to him, expectant. "Your orders, sir?"

Delion’s voice lowered, cold as frost. “The General has failed his Zenith. Prepare for Kuran's deployment.”

The officer was hesitant. “But Commander—his tissues are still knitting. His organs—”

“Will regrow,” Delion retorted sharply. “The Velkyr is still breathing. And we’ve made contact with something… new. Possibly allied. Possibly feral. Either way, our current infantry is outclassed. And I won’t gamble with subordinates when I have a celestial weapon aboard my deck.”

He turned and strode from the chamber, boots echoing off steel as the lift doors hissed open.


—The lights down here were low, filtered through arches of grown wood and tempered steel. In the center of the chamber, wreathed in bio-organic scaffolding, sat Kuran. The Mazoku soldier.

Sylva Dryads worked over him in near silence. Their fingers—rootlike and fluid— slid along his chest, stitching tissue with emerald light. They did not speak. Only the whisper of leaves and the hum of restorative energies filled the air.

Delion entered without hesitation. And the Dryads froze, sensing the storm that followed him.

Kuran stirred. Slowly. His eyes opened—not fully, but just enough to reveal the amber slits within.

Delion did not flinch before him. He steeled his nerves long before he arrived at the door. “Prepare for deployment, Executioner." He said with a solemn reverence. Nodding his head as he continued. "The Velkyr is in the forest below. And with him—something else. Unseen, and demonstrably lethal.”

He let the words hang. Momentarily unnerved by Kuran's silence.

“You represent the will of our Zenith, and he would see them buried beneath this jungle..”

Kuran made no effort to respond. But he didn't need to. His adjusting himself and rising from his seated position was confirmation enough.

Delion took a step back, as did the attending Slyva medics when Kuran stood up. The room quaked as he moved past them, and none but Delion dared share his glance. “He's on the move.” He said into the communicator latched onto his ear. “Open the bridge doors, and establish a safe perimeter from the Trench—immediately."

The wind howled around the ship’s exposed deck as Kuran stepped to the edge.

No words or ceremony.

He stood silent as the grave, rain hissing off the freshly sealed wound in his gut—a gaping hole mended with silver thread and Dryad roots. Still warm, still aching.

Behind him, the Dryad healer knelt in exhausted reverence, her breath shallow. Kuran looked back as if to acknowledge their aide.

Then, he stepped off the deck.

He plummeted ike a comet launched from the heavens, his body sheathed in friction borne flames. Trees blurred beneath him. Wind tore at his skin as the ground rushed to meet him. The Onyx Trench had no time to brace before—


His body slammed into the ground with a sound that split the jungle apart. The force vaporized the underbrush, sending roots flying into the darkened clouds, and leveled the towering trees in a wide, simmering arc around his crater. His descent marked the jungle in fire.

And at the center of the flames stood Kuran. Steam curling from his ivory fur, eyes glowing faint beneath the curtain of ash and heat. His breath was slow, measured. Ever mindful of his threads knitted beneath skin and cracked bone.

He rose to full height.

In the distance, he could see his prey.. still playing with its food.

Qalen was grappling with the Velkyr, his movements desperate and deteriorating. One arm hung broken, his breath labored, blood trailing down his leg. The beast toyed with him, its fangs bared in anticipation of the kill.

But then the earth shook. And Qalen’s eyes darted to the source– toward the massive shadow rising from the crater.

And he froze.

“No..” His voice trembled as he staggered back from the Velkyr, who paused in confusion of its prey's sudden terror.

But Qalen was no longer concerned with the beast. Certain doom had come for them both.

When he saw Kuran’s face take form through the smoke, he felt his soul wither and shrink in his chest. He understood what it meant when a Mazoku Executioner arrived on a battlefield… it ceased to be a battlefield at all.

It became a tomb.

He pushed himself up, staggered, blood trailing from his lips. “Executioner—” he muttered hoarsely, eyes fixed on the Kuran as he stepped from the crater. “I… I was closing in. I had the creature isolated. I just—needed—”

Kuran did not respond. He stepped closer, and the weight of his foot cracked the forest ground.

Qalen’s voice caught. “Please—Let.. me finish the fight.”

Still no answer.

Kuran turned his head slightly, gaze sweeping the ruined battlefield—the splintered trees, the blood-slicked roots, the Velkyr watching cautiously in curious silence.

Then, his amber eyes settled on Qalen, and in them the General saw his death reflected a hundred times over. Buried in fury. Smothered by pain.

Qalen faltered. One step back. Then another.

And then—

Kuran's trunk-sized arm ended his life with a single horizontal swipe. The impact quaked through the jungle like a wardrum. He was dead long before his body shattered against a nearby tree, but he would have been pulverized into a mist if not for the Velkyr's dampening aura. Even at this distance, it managed to suppress Kuran's full strength.. But it wouldn't matter for long. What remained of his might would be more than enough.

The Executioner's eyes shifted with an eerie focus, dilating as they hovered over the Velkyr. The beast roared, stamping the soil with primal defiance.
Kuran’s bloodied fist twitched and curled with anticipation.

The Velkyr growled, a low, guttural sound echoing through the mangled trees. It circled its new foe warily, sensing that threat level had magnified considerably.

Kuran didn’t move. He simply exhaled, steam rising from his nostrils like a slumbering volcano. His towering frame crackled with latent energy, the silver-threaded wound in his chest still glowing faintly beneath the skin.

The jungle was still echoing from the tremor of his landing when Hitomi arrived..

Her boots landed light atop the ruined branch of a tree fractured by the impact, her white hair slick with rain, braided down the center of her back like a whip—tight, neat, controlled. Every part of her was ready. Every step she took was measured, down to the number of breaths she drew in the shadows.

It was there she saw her target standing at the center of a clearing squaring off with the Velkyr—a monolith of power, sculpted more like a weapon of war than living being.

Finally, She murmured as she assessed the titan. His silvery fur steaming in the downpour, muscles taut beneath it. He was like a beast carved from moonstone. Majestic, yes.. but Hitomi's eyes were more drawn toward the freshly mended wound across his abdomen.

“There you are.” She raised the Mk-I rifle in one fluid motion, her finger resting against the trigger with a hunter’s poise.

Then—


Four thunderous shots ripped through the air, aimed for Kuran's throbbing wound. But his forearm snapped up like a wall of stone, intercepting the incoming fire with a flash of speed so sharp it nearly startled her.

Each round exploded against his arm, and hissed as they burrowed into his flesh. The bullets hadn’t pierced deep—but they burned. The flesh around the entry wounds sizzled unnaturally, the healing slowed to a crawl. And blood, dark as oil, dripped from the wound.

Hitomi watched, eyes sharp as razors. Her lips curled upward in subdued excitement. “Well.. looks like It’s working.”

She reloaded in a flash, her body tense like a coiled spring.

Kuran turned. Fully, now. No longer leering at the Velkyr, which had wisely begun to slink back into the shadows. No—his attention had shifted entirely to her. To the one bold enough to challenge the chosen race. And his amber gaze could see her clear as day upon her sniper's perch. He didn't move. He didn't flinch. Just a hollow glare, practically daring her to take her best shot.

Hitomi met his gaze with a smile. “Oh, c’mon now..” She said, resting her reticle upon the center of his skull. “..don't make this too easy for me.” She pressed a button along the hilt of the rifle, shifting its rate of fire from semi-auto, to fully automatic. The next sound that followed would be a hail storm of bullets, shredding through bark and foliage with nearly athousand rounds per minute.

The jungle erupted into a roar of gunfire.

Hundreds of rounds shredded the canopy, carving gaping wounds into the treeline, vaporizing leaves, and hammering the clearing in a torrent of blistering steel. The very air fractured under the onslaught, becoming a chaos of splinters, thunder, and smoke.

Yet Kuran did not yield. He did not retreat.

He raised his arm like a fortress wrought of flesh and bone, meeting the halistorm of ballistics head-on. Bullets chewed through his fur, tearing into tendons and sinew, peeling back muscle in jagged bursts of heat and agony. Each impact sounded like a drum beating against his body. Blood spilled dark and slow, steaming in the rain. Still, he did not falter.

He bared his saber-sized fangs in a feral grimace, breathing a chorus of ragged snarls. Pain, for him, was no deterrent—it was fuel. It only sharpened him.

His chest rose with a rumble, veins crackling like molten threads beneath his skin.

Then, with a guttural snarl, Kuran slammed his uninjured arm into the ground like a gavel.

The effects were instantaneous and cataclysmic.

The ground shattered with a thunderous quake, as if the Odinson himself had descended the clouds and struck the world with his hammer. The force tore through the jungle, splitting the land open in a roaring chain reaction. Earth buckled. Trees were ripped from their roots and hurled skyward, caught in the tidal wave of upheaval.

The Velkyr, still retreating, was swept away in the chaos—torn from the battlefield and hurled into the abyss with a scream swallowed by the storm.

The tree where Hitomi had perched gave a final, groaning protest before the ground beneath it collapsed. Its roots torn free, bark splintered, as the entire ridge caved in beneath the sheer physical might of a Mazoku Executioner.

And Kuran was already in motion— as vicious and Merciless as his sobriquet would suggest.

He launched from the crumbling ground like a cannonball, hurtling toward Hitomi like a demon out of hell—more fury than flesh. He pulled back his mangled arm mid-flight, infusing it with so much Naten his fist began to shimmer like a full moon.

He meant to obliterate her.

To punch straight through the one who dared challenge a Mazoku Executioner—to return the wound she gave him with a vengeance tenfold.