The battlefield was quiet now,too quiet.
Kaedra Voss had vanished into a smear of twisted, regenerating flesh, escaping through the fissures in the Nexus wall. The battle had left Selene drained, her Stellar Swords flickering as they returned to their astral sheath. She had delayed the inevitable, not stopped it.
Around her lay the scorched remains of corrupted beasts and collapsed buildings. No sign of reinforcements. No word from Command.
Her comms flickered. Static.
Then a voice, distorted and calm.
"Stellar Blade. We've seen your light. It will fade like all things."
She turned quickly, blade raised—but there was nothing.
Just echoes.
A shiver crept down her spine. The Creed wasn't done. Kaedra had been the opening note. There would be more. And next time, she might not be alone.
Selene clenched her fists and muttered:
"They'll all fall. By my blade, they'll fall."
>Noct's Perspective – Labyrinth Depths,
The terrain shifted beneath their feet—less ruin, more geometry. Walls curved at impossible angles. The air vibrated with faint numbers, like invisible equations being whispered.
Mia sensing the near by area. "We're entering a zone with higher ambient ather. Your ability might go haywire."
"Or stronger," Noct replied, focusing.
His Numbers flared around him like a halo of floating glyphs. The deeper they went, the more precise he felt—like his mind was syncing with the labyrinth itself.
Suddenly, the wall ahead pulsed.
A doorway opened of its own accord.
Behind it stood a tall humanoid figure clad in what looked like porcelain armor—but it wasn't human.
Its eyes shimmered with fractals. Its limbs were unnaturally long, and as it stepped forward, its very presence distorted the numbers in Noct's field.
Ellen raised her blade. "That's not a monster."
Mia's eyes narrowed. "That's an anomaly... but artificial."
The figure raised its hand. "Trial Initiated."
Before anyone could react, spears of spatial energy lanced out.
Noct activated Division Blink, splitting his coordinates just in time.
They were in a high-intensity ambush. A calculated one.
As Mia retaliated with copies of herself and Ellen moved like a flicker of light, Noct summoned a Formula Array.
This one was experimental—𝛑-Flux Compression Field. A recursive pattern designed to trap the figure in a loop of collapsing vectors.
The anomaly's body twisted, caught in the ripple, shrieking in distorted math.
Noct's head throbbed.
Too much computation.
He dropped to a knee, blood seeping from his nose.
The creature shattered—its body dissolving into a cloud of broken data. A shimmering cube remained.
Mia picked it up. "Venator Log. This was a test chamber."
Ellen glanced at Noct. "You okay?"
He nodded slowly. "I'm starting to see… there's a language to this place. A design. And it's learning from us."
>Deep Orbit Relay Station [Unknown Location]
Inside a cold, silent monitoring station suspended in high orbit, Seraphon stood before a vast holographic array—dozens of high-ranking Venators displayed in shifting grids of data.
Combat records. Tablet classifications. Ather signatures. Tactical footage. Behavioral models.
Selene's Stellar Judicium burned bright in one quadrant, the divine arcs of her celestial swords dissected in eerie, surgical detail.
Others flickered into view: a telekinetic sniper from the Arctic Coalition, a symbiotic duo specializing in labyrinth sabotage, a fire-wielding prodigy known only as "Ashbane"—each marked with crimson tags of "ACTIVE" or "PRIORITY THREAT".
At the edge of the feed, a name appeared briefly—Noct Valen.
Status: DECEASED – Presumed Lost in Tier-4 Collapse
Tablet Classification: Unknown / Inactive
Seraphon barely spared it a glance.
"This world clings to hope... even as it rots beneath their feet," he said coldly. "Let them rally their champions. We will give them extinction worthy of legend."
Behind him, the Inner Spire stood still—Kaedra's flesh rippling with slow, mutative pulses, Lucien lost in a silent cascade of accelerated thoughts, Revya quietly mouthing names of the absorbed.
The hologram zoomed out to display a blinking countdown in red:
Project Obelisk – Catalyst Initiation: T-18 Days