The war should have been swift.
At least, that's what the strategists of Gaia's Interdimensional High Command thought when the first reports from the mineral star came through. What they didn't account for was the psychological weight of fighting an enemy that wasn't just monstrous, but unknowable—beings whose very existence threatened the logic of reality.
But there was another truth even more unsettling: the war was becoming boring.
Not to the humans. Not to the Charym'Zul.
To the gods.
Low-tier deities, once silent watchers of universal evolution, had begun interfering. Bored by millennia of cosmic order, they now toyed with fate like children kicking dust. And nothing delighted them more than a conflict that was supposed to be simple… spiraling into chaos.
---
Captain Lys Renholm stood in the Vault of Harmony, a chamber hidden beneath the Gaian citadel of Arken-3. The walls buzzed faintly with the residual energy of Riftcraft—technology made from stabilized rift cores capable of folding dimensional space. She'd just returned from a diplomatic strike on the outer Charym'Zul sensor web. The mission was successful, but it had rattled her.
"They weren't machines," she said aloud to no one.
From the shadows, Emeric Talon, her second-in-command, emerged. "You saw the eyes too, didn't you?"
She nodded. "Emotion. Hunger. Grief? I don't know what it was, but it was more than programming."
They weren't dealing with AI. The Charym'Zul tech was biological—a symbiotic fusion of flesh, alloy, and something spiritual. Something... corrupted.
---
Meanwhile, in the upper layers of the 6th dimension, a celestial tavern known only as The Beckoning Shell echoed with divine laughter.
"Have you seen the humans try diplomacy?" cackled Veyr-Tali, God of Unpredictable Outcomes, lazily flipping an obsidian coin. "They bring pamphlets and rift grenades. Adorable."
"Let them be," murmured Issada, Patron of Forgotten Oaths. Her voice shimmered like fog. "It is not their tactics I find dull, but the lack of drama. I might whisper to one of the Charym'Zul priests. Stoke the fire."
Behind them, under a cloak of void-mist, sat another figure: Murex, Lord of Minor Disasters. He said nothing, but on Gaia, a supply ship exploded mid-transit, killing 600 engineers and redirecting vital Riftborn prototypes to deep space.
---
Back on Gaia, Lys walked through the Hall of Statues—monuments to every major dimensional pioneer. Her eyes landed on the last one: Dr. Tovan Renholm. Her father.
Killed during the first stabilization test of Fragment Theta, the initial rift crystal that allowed interdimensional travel. It had torn a hole through the third axis of time, aging his body 80 years in one second. He'd died laughing, knowing what they had just unlocked.
Lys had been 14.
Now, decades later, she wore his coat beneath her Riftborn armor.
A voice broke her reverie. "Captain, command requests your presence in Warspike 7."
Warspike 7 wasn't just a command deck. It was a convergence point between tactical AI, god-signal analysis, and dimensional weaponry. The fact they summoned her there meant one thing: escalation.
---
War Council, Gaia Central, Warspike 7
General Kairon stood like a steel post. "We have confirmed energy pulses from Kharz'Vora. The Charym'Zul are preparing to activate the Soul Forge."
"What's that?" asked Emeric.
"Something... ancient," muttered Oracle Phis, a human-seer hybrid. "A war device powered not by energy, but by belief. Sacrificial belief."
The room fell silent. Belief-powered weapons were considered a myth—until now.
"Then we strike first," Lys said. "We send the Riftborn."
The Riftborn weren't soldiers. They were experiments—volunteers permanently grafted with rift energy and stabilized by crystallized Zenthirite. Weapons and humans fused together.
Some called them monsters. Lys called them necessary.
"Do we have a team ready?" she asked.
Phis opened a channel. A screen flickered to life.
A dozen figures stood in a void-lit chamber. Each wore black exo-armor laced with veins of glowing purple light. At the center stood a woman with obsidian eyes and twin blades forged from memory-threaded ore.
"Kara Vex reporting, ma'am. The Riftborn await."
Lys's voice tightened. "Deploy. Hit their forward altar field. If the gods are watching, let's give them something worth remembering."
---
Far in the Charym'Zul sanctum, nestled within the spiked core of Kharz'Vora, a priest knelt before a writhing mirror.
"Who touches the stone of war?" the mirror asked.
"Humans," said the priest. "And something... broken. Children made of light and regret."
A voice from the mirror laughed.
"Then we shall meet them with children made of ash."
---
As the first Riftborn drop ships pierced through sub-dimensional barriers, the gods leaned forward.
A minor deity rolled dice made of comet bone.
Issada whispered again.
And somewhere, beyond dimensions, the Codex of Zenthir stirred.