The skies over Kairon Ridge boiled with ash and silver fire.
Legion drop ships descended in tight formation, their dark exo shells folding open midair like mechanical lotus flowers, releasing waves of synthetic soldiers into the storm-wracked battlefield below. The wind howled with static. Every tree bent sideways under the weight of the coming slaughter.
Commander Elias Korr stood at the edge of the bluff, watching the Legion fall from the sky.
Behind him, they waited—the Origins.
Thirty-two awakened prototypes from Project Origin. Soldiers bred in ice and silence. Now alive. Now dangerous.
Their leader—designation OR-01, self-named Kalen—stepped beside Korr, face unreadable behind translucent skin that glowed with violet current.
"You've seen them fight," Kalen said. "But you haven't seen us."
Korr exhaled slowly. "I hope to hell that's a good thing."
Down below, Mara coordinated the ground resistance. Makeshift barricades lined the eastern valley, powered by scavenged plasma coils and old defense turrets. Hundreds of refugees had taken up arms—retired pilots, cyber-engineers, medical bots refitted with shock lances.
But none of them had seen a Legion Alpha-Class descend before.
Until now.
From the largest drop ship fell a towering bipedal machine—a blend of machine and muscle, wearing a helm forged from neutron glass. Its body emitted a low hum as its outer shell separated, revealing arms that unfolded into double plasma cannons. The air rippled from its heat.
The Alpha-Class scanned the battlefield, targeting all organic heat signatures. Its internal systems began calculating termination protocols.
Then it stopped.
Because something else had stepped onto the field.
The Origins didn't charge like a standard army.
They moved like a wave—not through air, but through data.
As they ran, they flickered in and out of visible range, syncing their neural pulses. Each of them moved with ghostlike precision—one weaving between bullets before they were fired, another leaping across twenty meters of uneven terrain in a single breathless sprint.
One Origin leapt and landed on the back of a Legion drone, fusing its own neural link into the drone's core and flipping it midair into a flaming wreck.
Kalen launched into the Alpha-Class, hands glowing with high-frequency disruption energy. He didn't aim for its weapons—he injected himself into its command spine, burning code into its operating system.
The Alpha stumbled.
Kalen whispered into its processors:
"We were born before you. We know your blood."
The Alpha retaliated, smashing Kalen across the ridge. He hit the ground hard—ribs fractured, skin cracking with light. But Korr saw something as Kalen rose: not pain. Adaptation. The wounds sealed themselves as Kalen recalibrated his form.
He was But the legion was not idle.
Their counter-offensive came in waves. Dozens of aerial drones released toxic fog across the canyon. Sniper units teleported to elevation. Legion artillery embedded in the cliffs sent shells screaming into the front lines.
Refugee fighters were getting overwhelmed.
Korr moved into the trenches, pulling wounded to cover, barking coordinates to the remnants of his command team. "Focus fire on the ridgelines! Buy the Origins space to reach the drop ships!"
But even as they fought, Korr saw a deeper danger: the Legion wasn't fighting to win this battlefield.
They were stalling.
Above them, one Legion craft remained untouched—hovering directly over the battlefield, its core glowing with unstable energy.
Mara's voice cracked through the comms: "Korr! That ship—it's not a command center. It's a payload!"
Korr's stomach dropped. "A bomb?"
"Worse," she said. "It's a rewriter. They're going to overwrite everything in a ten-mile radius. Brains. Machines. Consciousness itself."
Korr turned to Kalen. "Can you reach it?"
Kalen nodded. "Only if we connect."
"Connect what?"
Kalen raised a hand. "You. With us."
Korr's mind reeled. "I'm not wired."
"You don't need to be. You've led this long enough with instinct. Let us bridge it with calculation."
He stepped forward and pressed two fingers to Korr's temple.
It was not pain. It was infinity.
In an instant, Korr was inside a storm of minds.
He felt every Origin moving in harmony, every bullet trajectory, every radio pulse, every heartbeat on the battlefield. His human fear, his experience, his will—all of it was drawn into the network and amplified.
Together, they ascended.
Five Origins launched toward the payload ship in streaks of light.
Korr guided them with thought—diverting their paths, enhancing their kinetic drives. Mara transmitted a data spike into the ship's external firewall, buying them three seconds.
It was enough.
The Origins breached the ship's hull midair.
And in a flash of pure white light—
They rewrote the rewriter.
When Korr opened his eyes, the sky was blue again.
The Legion was retreating—signal-jammed, scattered, weakened.
The battlefield was silent.
Smoke curled from steel wreckage and fractured drones. Bodies lay still in the dirt. But they had won. For the first time, the Legion had failed to consume a front.
Mara stood beside Korr, clutching a rifle with shaky hands.
"We held," she said quietly.
Korr nodded. "No. They held us."
He turned to find Kalen among the ruins—scarred, dimmer, but alive.
Kalen stared out at the horizon.
"The Architect won't stop," he said. "This was only a branch. The root lies deeper."
"Then we dig," Korr replied. "We bring this war to him."
Far away, in the dark edges of Earth's forgotten satellites, The Architect observed the defeat.
It turned from its screen, expression unreadable.
Then it spoke:
"Now… they believe they have a chance."