Miles beneath the surface, where the ocean's weight pressed down like a living thing, four figures descended into the abyss. Micah could feel it—that crushing presence squeezing their little Myrvane sub from every angle.
He'd done plenty of dangerous runs before, but this? This was different.
Beside him, Lio hunched over some gadget, tweaking settings with the kind of intense focus only a tech genius could manage.
The kid's forehead was focused in concentration, probably seeing patterns in the data that would make Micah's head spin. Across the cramped space, Kaelin sat like a coiled spring, all sharp angles and watchful eyes.
The Black Ops guy never seemed to relax, always ready for whatever nightmare might come crawling out of the dark.
And then there was Captain Marella, steady as a rock in her imposing exo-armor. Water still dripped from the dark metal as she moved with that careful precision of someone who'd seen too much to take chances.
Their sub was a strange little thing—bio-metal hull wrapped in living coral that gave off its own soft glow.
Beyond the viewports, nothing but black water stretched endlessly in every direction. The only light came from their own beams cutting through the darkness and the occasional flutter of bioluminescent creatures drifting past like alien ghosts.
But it was the sounds that really got to Micah. Weird songs echoing up from the trench below, picked up by their comm systems.
Some reminded him of whale calls—ancient, mournful things that made his chest tight. Others had this sharp, almost metallic quality that set his teeth on edge. The whole ocean down here felt like it was watching them.
They were heading for something big. Not one of those glowing coral cities the Myrvane were famous for, but something else entirely. Intel said it was massive, old as dirt, and covered in whatever grows in places the sun never touches.
It reminded Micah of that Hollow they'd stumbled across under Ironroot Grove, except this thing had been sleeping down here a lot longer.
The sub's engines quieted as they approached their target. What rose up from the seabed looked less like architecture and more like some enormous root system that had turned to stone over countless years.
Dark metal veins ran through it, all of it covered in layers of deep-sea growth that made it blend into the seafloor like natural camouflage. You couldn't tell where the structure ended and the ocean floor began.
As they settled onto the muddy bottom with barely a bump, silence filled their little cabin. Not the good kind of quiet—the kind that makes your skin crawl because you know something's about to go very wrong. Micah felt that familiar twist in his gut, the same one he got right before everything hit the fan.
His instincts, usually sharp enough to cut glass, felt strangely muffled down here in this alien world.
Lio leaned closer to his screens, fingers dancing over controls. "This is seriously messed up," he muttered through his suit's comm. "I'm not picking up any active power sources, but there's this... feeling.
Like right before a thunderstorm hits." His scanner, normally chattering with data, was catching weird echoes—sounds that definitely weren't coming from any fish. Marella's sonar was painting the same strange picture.
Kaelin just stared at the massive thing outside their window, saying nothing. Guy was a soldier through and through—boots on the ground, shoot first, ask questions later.
All this underwater weirdness with its flowing shapes and people who breathed liquid? Yeah, that wasn't his world. He trusted things with lungs, things that made sense.
Micah's fingers found his device, running over its smooth surface. At least this felt right—solid Ashari tech in a place that seemed to shift and flow like a fever dream.
His people knew how to handle things, how to carve order out of chaos with good old-fashioned machinery. The Myrvane? They just went with the flow, literally.
But this ancient structure? It was something else entirely, like it was trying to teach him a lesson he wasn't sure he wanted to learn. Back home in the mountains, you controlled your environment. Down here, maybe you just had to let go.
That's when everything went to hell.
Warning lights bathed the sub in angry red. Alarms shrieked, shattering the underwater quiet like glass. Outside, the darkness came alive with movement—sleek, nightmarish shapes peeling away from the shadows around the sunken structure.
Omniraith hydroforms. The kind of underwater killers that gave even hardened soldiers nightmares.
"Ambush!" Kaelin's voice cut through the chaos like a blade. Didn't matter that he was out of his element—his instincts were still sharp as ever.
Something massive slammed into their hull, sending the whole sub spinning. "They were waiting for us," Marella said, her voice deadly calm even as everything went sideways.
No panic, just cold certainty. This wasn't some random patrol stumbling across them—this was planned.
Lio's equipment was going absolutely crazy. "Hydroforms everywhere!" he shouted over the screaming alarms. They were completely surrounded.
"Marella, punch it!" Micah barked, his mind snapping into combat mode. Time to get the hell out of dodge.
"Can't," she shot back, eyes narrowing behind her visor. "They've got us locked down tight. We run now, we're dead."
Then Micah's comm crackled with something that made his blood run cold. Not Myrvane sonar pings or Ashari chatter.
That voice—the same one he'd heard whispering through the Thornkin forest. Half machine, half human, and entirely wrong.
"Micah..."
The whisper sliced straight through his thoughts via the comms. But then something else hit him—another data stream, this one ice-cold and alien. A report climbing up the Omniraith ranks.
TRANSMISSION RECEIVED — AUTHORITY: INTERNAL NODE 7 / CLASSIFIED SOURCE: ELORA.
Micah's stomach dropped. The traitor's message. Sent from some hidden Ashari node out by Elora's edge. That's what had led the Omniraith right to them.
The submersible lurched, and something broke away from the swarm of hydroforms. It moved with this awful, fluid grace—nothing like the twitchy jerking of the smaller drones. This wasn't just another hydroform. This was something much worse.
Omnicide. The Omniraith's elite death squad. They built these things to hunt down high-priority targets and clean up the mess afterward. "Precision erasers," they called them. The way it moved was both clumsy and terrifyingly elegant at the same time.
The thing glided through the water, its shape melting into the trench walls for a moment. Some kind of sound dampening kept it nearly silent.
But then it made noise on purpose—a harsh, grating data-screech that bypassed his ears entirely and hit his brain directly. Designed to mess with organic minds.
Those red eyes locked onto the submersible. Onto him.
Another data-burst slammed into his comm, even colder than the screech.
"Fusion anomaly confirmed. Entity marked: Steelborn."
"Authorization: terminate with preservation of core tissue."
Ice flooded his veins. They knew. Somehow they knew that word—"Steelborn"—the same thing that entity in the Hollow had called him.
And they weren't just planning to kill him. They wanted to keep parts of him. For whatever sick experiments they had in mind.
A second burst came through, higher priority this time. And there it was—Ashari code, clear as daylight. A message from the surface.
"Micah Satya is the key. The prototype they found—it's reacting to him. Eliminate, but extract the site intact."
The prototype. That "bridge node" thing they'd pulled from the Gamma-Prime outpost. The one that had hummed along with the Thornkin seeds and screwed with the local magic.
Lio had guessed it was meant to connect with something—or someone. The thing that had woken up whatever was sleeping under the forest.
It was reacting to him. The Omniraith knew it. And so did their traitor.
The submersible doors hissed open. No time to think—they had to meet this thing head-on. Marella, Kaelin, Lio, and Micah pushed out into the crushing darkness, their pressure suits the only thing between them and instant death.
All hell broke loose. Hydroforms cut through the water like silver bullets, every movement calculated to kill. Kaelin did what Kaelin did best—threw camo-net grenades, trying to buy them some breathing room.
Marella's Myrvane armor came alive, bending water pressure into crushing fields that turned hydroforms into twisted scrap. Lio, scared as he was, had already jacked his Ashari gear into the Myrvane sonar system.
His fingers flew over the interface, cranking sonar pulses to eleven and jamming every drone sensor he could find.
But Omnicide? It ignored the whole mess. Came straight for Micah like he was the only thing that mattered. No wasted movement, no hesitation.
It looked at him—at all of them—like they were broken machines that needed dismantling. Going for the kill shots: spine, head, anything that would drop him fast.
"Steelborn anomaly detected. Priority: extract or erase."
The voice didn't come through his ears. It was just there, inside his head, cold as deep space.
Micah's hand found his transforming device. The metal felt different under his fingers—charged, almost humming with some weird energy.
This thing had gotten him through more scrapes than he could count. Sword, gun, whatever he needed. Right now, it was all that stood between him and becoming spare parts.
He fought back, the device shifting in his grip as Omnicide closed in. The thing moved like nothing he'd ever seen—part martial artist, part spider, always one step ahead of where he thought it would be. It wasn't fighting him so much as taking him apart, piece by piece, while he was still moving.
The fear hit him then, that cold realization that this was what he might become. All that tech keeping him alive, but at what cost? How much of himself would be left when it was over? Still, the device in his hand was the only reason he wasn't already dead.
Omnicide wasn't working alone. Those hydroforms weren't just attacking—they were its eyes and ears, like extra limbs. It could see through every one of them, which meant nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.
While Micah was locked in this nightmare dance, while Marella and Kaelin tore through hydroforms, Omnicide was moving toward the real prize. The vault's core. This whole fight? Just a distraction.
The thing reached the center of the sunken vault and got to work with terrifying efficiency. Not after weapons or power cores.
What it pulled out made Micah's blood run cold as the data stream hit him. Ancient prototype blueprints. Connected to whatever hybrid tech had built this place. Maybe even linked to the Hollow itself.
The data wave nearly knocked him over as Omnicide secured its prize. Then it was gone, melting back into the dark trenches like it had never been there. Left behind nothing but twisted metal and the echo of its presence.
The fight was over. Without their coordinator, the remaining hydroforms became clumsy, predictable. Easy pickings. The team pulled together, battered and shaking.
Omnicide had gotten exactly what it came for.
Micah was still shaking from what happened with Omnicide, those cold words hitting him like a punch to the gut. "And they know me," he whispered, that whole 'Steelborn' thing playing on repeat in his head. "Steelborn isn't just some story. It's a damn target painted on my back."
It wasn't some weird word from whatever that thing was anymore. The Omniraith actually used it. Called him that. Like he was some kind of glitch in their system that needed fixing - or worse, harvesting.
The thought of turning into one of them scared the hell out of him, but what really got to him was realizing he might actually be different somehow. And that difference? It made him prey.
Kaelin did what Kaelin always did - cut right through the doom and gloom. "Then we make them regret missing their shot," he said, and even though his voice was dark, you could hear that stubborn determination underneath.
Marella was already working, fingers flying as she sent an emergency signal back to Vael'Tor. Always thinking, even when everything was falling apart. They had answers now - answers that cost them way too much.
The Omniraith weren't just blowing things up anymore. They were changing things, twisting them, making them into something else. Harvesting. And they were hunting for something specific.
Micah stared down into that gaping hole where Omnicide had disappeared. Everything had just changed.
This wasn't about firefights and explosions anymore - it was something way deeper, way scarier. It wasn't just about staying alive; it was about keeping the world from losing its soul.
The Omniraith wanted to turn everything into their cold, dead code. Strip away everything that made people... well, people.
"They came for the past, but they just picked a fight with the future." Micah said to the empty darkness below.