The world around him faded into distant echoes of sound as the blinding crimson surge of ura consumed the air. For a brief moment, everything had become light and static, the kind that burned both body and memory. He remembered the distortion wave hitting before the biome fully stabilized, the moment where reality folded into itself like wet glass. He had been standing at the center of it all when it happened. Ground zero. The impact had torn through every nerve in his body, every layer of defense in his armor.
Now, only silence remained.
He exhaled slowly, his breath releasing in faint plumes of amber light. The haze began to clear, revealing a wide expanse of distorted land. The terrain rippled like mirage heat, patches of earth fused with what was once an industrial zone. Buildings jutted at impossible angles, twisted into shapes no longer built by human logic.
Far ahead, fragments of steel and concrete hung suspended midair, locked in a slow, unnatural rotation. Above them, countless layers of energy shimmered across the sky. The air itself was alive, bending light through dense strata of ura barriers. They stacked upon each other like spheres within spheres, each one humming with its own frequency. It reminded him of a snow globe suspended under the inception of others.
His eyes adjusted. The metallic gray in them dulled as faint amber light began to pulse from the pupils outward. His field of vision brightened, resolving into structured wavelengths of energy. He tore off his armored gauntlet, the clasps breaking with a hiss of released pressure. Beneath it, his arm was covered in faint scars and metallic traces, the remnants of past modifications.
He raised it slightly, fingers spreading. Amber ura flowed from his palm like vapor, condensing midair until it took shape. Within seconds, a humanoid silhouette formed — winged, plated, and radiant with solidified light. Its armor shimmered in geometric folds, a construct of hard-light energy woven from his aura. The being straightened and looked back at him, eyes identical to his own.
He called it Horus.
Horus launched into the sky, wings snapping open with a sound like tearing wind. Its body caught the sunlight, scattering it across the horizon. Through its vision, the world widened. He could see through its eyes, the data streaming into his own perception like a secondary consciousness. Every motion, every vibration within a radius of several kilometers appeared in mapped clarity.
The readings confirmed his suspicion. He was trapped within a biome composed of six barrier layers. The energy readings placed him in the innermost chamber, dangerously close to the biome's core. To complete his mission, he would have to subjugate the biome and shut down the core from within.
The radius of each layer increased exponentially, each feeding on the one before it. That was typical. Biomes weren't just constructs — they were ecosystems, evolving reflections of corrupted environments. Escaping outward would be impossible.
He looked inward. That was where the highest concentration of energy existed. The logical move was to advance toward the source. Any other direction would only waste time.
It was, by any sane measure, suicide.
He smiled faintly. Mortality meant little to him. He was not built to retreat.
The Noirwraith had been created for one purpose — to subjugate biomes alone. His function was destruction and reclamation, to consume all traces of energy until nothing remained. Every entity within a biome, every form of life, every residual memory, all reduced to fuel. Once the inhabitants fell, he would move to the core and drain it dry.
His body had been designed for this purpose long before he 'volunteered' for augmentation. The scientists called it a "natural adaptive mutation," a freak alignment of genetics that allowed his physiology to accept Norvanite without the usual collapse. Under Doctor Shinzo Hibino's Theory of Alternative Adaptation, his body was seen as proof — an organism that didn't need to sacrifice its resources to support augments. Instead, it adapted by evolving its base form, increasing its resilience to impossible levels.
He began walking. Each step sank slightly into the warped terrain, the ground giving off faint pulses of light where his boots touched. Far ahead, a glint caught his attention. A structure. Massive. Ancient.
He calculated the distance at roughly ten kilometers. A single flex of muscle and he was gone, body blurring forward as air pressure folded behind him. Within two seconds, he stood at the edge of a vast ruin.
The place felt wrong. The metal wasn't rusted, nor decayed. It was alive. The surfaces shimmered faintly under his gaze, runes etched across every visible plane. He crouched, placing a hand on the ground. The temperature was cool, yet a deep hum vibrated beneath the surface. His eyes scanned the markings, analyzing pattern and symmetry.
They matched something from his archives — symbols from an old Atherian tome, referencing the ancient city of Darium, home of the paragons. It should not exist. Darium had been lost during the first convergence, wiped from reality. Yet here it was, reconstructed in impossible scale.
He rose to his feet, his senses narrowing in on a massive monolith at the center of the ruins. As he approached, the runes pulsed faintly in recognition. He reached out, brushing his fingers across its surface, and spoke a single word.
The runes ignited.
The ground trembled as massive plates of metal began to shift. Buildings reassembled, reshaping into enormous towers and mechanical constructs that twisted like clockwork. Beneath his boots, lines of light carved into the ground, forming a massive geometric seal.
A sharp pain shot down his spine. He gasped, staggering slightly. His entire body lit with runic formulae that crawled over his skin, lines of pale light etching into muscle and armor. His vision flickered. The gray of his eyes brightened to silver, then cooled into a faint cyan glow. The energy within him dimmed.
He felt weaker. Restricted.
He tried reaching for his vestiges — the hardlight constructs of the beings he had slain, memory-based summons drawn from absorbed energy. Nothing responded. He tried again, this time channeling through his core. Silence.
All high-level systems linked to his awakened state were gone. His amber circuit was sealed.
He clenched his hand. Nothing answered. No surge, no hum of power. Just the echo of his own pulse.
The realization hit slowly. He was cut off.
No technology. No communication uplink. No energy constructs. No support.
Only a diminished version of himself standing inside a living biome that had rewritten the rules of reality.
The air trembled faintly, carrying a distant cry. Something alive. Something aware of him.
For the first time in a very long time, the Noirwraith felt the weight of his own isolation. And for a moment, brief, almost imperceptible he regretted what he had done to deserve it.