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Present…
"Instructor Ral" stood before the massive wooden barrier, his face a mask of calm authority under the flickering torchlight. Behind him, the gates were barred tight, but faint screams echoed from within; high, piercing wails that cut through the night like shards of glass. Hange's squad fanned out, blades drawn, faces set in grim determination. Mike loomed like a storm cloud, his nostrils flaring at the scent of blood and ozone wafting from beyond the walls. The standoff at the gates was a powder keg with a lit fuse.
Hange stepped forward, her sword still clutched like a talisman, eyes blazing. "Open the gates. Now."
Ral tilted his head, feigning confusion with theatrical perfection. "Hange Zoë of the survey corps? What an unexpected visit. And at this hour? As I said, the grounds are closed for special training. I'm afraid you'll have to leave."
Hange's lip curled in disgust. "Cut the act. We know who you are—or rather, who you're not. We found the real Ral and Kent buried in the woods. Shallow graves, sloppy work. You're one of them; the face-stealing spies."
Ral's expression didn't change, but a flicker of annoyance crossed his eyes. He glanced at the unconscious bodies of his men on the ground, bound and bloodied.
"Unfortunate. But irrelevant. This doesn't concern you, Scout. Turn around and leave."
From beyond the gates, a fresh scream tore through the air; a child's wail of pure terror, cut short by a wet crunch. Hange's blood ran cold.
"What's happening in there? Those screams—!"
Ral smiled thinly, a chilling curve of lips with no warmth. "Cadet paranoia. Night training can be... intense. Imaginations run wild."
"Bullshit!" Hange snarled, her voice cracking with fury. "We know about the purge. Your dying friend spilled it all. You're not instructors—you're murderers. Let us in, or we'll go through you."
Ral's facade finally shattered, his eyes narrowing to slits of cold malice. "Meddlesome Scouts. Always sticking your noses into the divine order. Fine. If you insist on interrupting an important purge... you can join it."
He drew his blade with a hiss of steel, and from the treelines above, more Forever Knights in ODM gear dropped like shadows given form; six in total, blades gleaming, faces set in fanatic resolve.
Mike didn't wait. He exploded forward with his ODM gear; barreling through the slightly ajar gate in the process, a blur of muscle and fury, as his sword arced toward Ral's neck. Ral parried with surprising speed, the clash ringing like a bell.
"Intruders!" he shouted. "Eliminate them!"
The fight erupted in a maelstrom of steel and shadows. Mike pressed Ral relentlessly, his massive swings forcing the Knight back step by step. Ral dodged and weaved, his blade a viper striking at gaps, but Mike's raw power shattered his guard; once, twice; until a glancing blow opened a gash across Ral's shoulder, blood spraying.
Hange swung her blades, intercepting it with a Knight's who lunged from above. The impact jarred her arms, but she countered with a knee to his gut, sending him staggering. Moblit parried a blade with his own, sweat pouring down his face, while Keiji and Abel flanked another Knight, their coordinated strikes overwhelming him; Abel's slash to the leg dropped him, Keiji's thrust to the chest finished one with a gurgle.
Nifa fired her anchors, swinging high to ambush a Knight mid-leap. Her blade sliced his harness; he plummeted with a scream, crashing into the dirt below, bones snapping like dry twigs.
But the Knights were fanatics, fighting with suicidal zeal. One charged Moblit, blade raised; Hange intercepted, her sword piercing his knee with a wet crunch. He howled, collapsing, but stabbed wildly, grazing her arm in a line of fire. Blood welled, hot and sticky, but she ignored it, bashing his head with the helm of the sword until he went limp.
Mike's duel with Ral intensified. Ral phased his blade through Mike's guard; it was a feint. Mike twisted, but the Knight's dagger nicked his side, blood blooming. Mike roared, headbutting Ral with bone-crunching force. Ral staggered, nose shattered, blood pouring like a faucet, but he laughed through the pain.
"You can't stop the cleansing!"
Mike's sword descended; Ral blocked, but the force drove him to his knees. "Your purge ends here," Mike growled, kicking him square in the chest. Ral flew back, crashing against the gate with a thud, winded but alive.
More Knights dropped; eight now; surrounding the squad. Hange's team formed a circle, backs together, blades out. "We hold!" Hange shouted, her voice raw.
A Knight lunged at Abel; a clean slash to the thigh making blood spurt in rhythmic pulses. Abel staggered, clutching the wound, artery nicked.
"Abel!" Keiji yelled, slashing the Knight's arm; crunch of bone; but another stabbed Keiji in the shoulder, blade grating against clavicle.
Nifa swung overhead, her anchor embedding in a Knight's harness; she yanked, ripping it free. He fell, but fired his own anchor mid-drop, hooking Nifa's leg; rip of flesh as she screamed, tendon torn.
Moblit parried desperately, his blade chipping, but a Knight's boot to his knee; pop of joint; dropped him. "Squad Leader!"
Hange fought like a demon, blades piercing armor, hilt cracking ribs, but a slash opened her side; hot agony, blood soaking her shirt. She staggered but swung her foot back, caving in the Knight's helmet with a sickening crunch.
Mike chased Ral; Valerius; who fled toward the grounds. "You're done!" Mike roared, leaping over debris, once again activating his ODM gear cable.
Valerius laughed, blood bubbling from his lips. "You are a little too late for that, beast-hunter."
"Stop running, you bastard!" Mike roared, his voice a gravelly thunder that echoed off the trees. But Valerius didn't look back. Instead, he veered abruptly changed trajectory, vanishing behind a dense thicket of pine. Mike followed, cables biting into bark. He landed in a crouch, boots skidding on the needle-strewn floor. There simply wasn't any motion at the corner of his eyes. As if the man had vanished to thin air.
Silence, thick and sudden, pressed in. Then, the hellish chorus from the training grounds swelled to fill the void. Not just screams now, but the distinct, wet crunches of impacts, the sizzle and abhorrent smell of superheated air, and the panicked shouts of dozens.
Mike's blood ran cold. 'The cadets...'
He abandoned his search, firing his anchors toward the sound. He burst through the treeline onto a high, rocky outcrop.
The sight hit him like a Titan's fist.
The quad below was a slaughterhouse under the moon. Cadets dangled from ODM wires like broken marionettes. Bodies littered the ground; some motionless, others twitching, leaving dark trails. The demon dog, a living furnace of purple muscle and strobing sigils, phased in and out of reality. Its heat aura made uniforms smoke and skin blister before a swipe of its claws turned the air into red mist.
But it wasn't the only predator. Mike's sharp eyes caught other movements: figures in trainer uniforms moving with cold, surgical precision, cutting off escape routes. They wielded their blades not against the beast, but against the children. One, on a platform, calmly impaled a cadet who had broken ranks.
A profound, icy rage settled over Mike. This was no accident. This was orchestrated slaughter.
"What the hell is the meaning of this?!" Mike growled to the empty air, his voice a raw thunder of rage and horror. His mind reeled, the pieces slammed together in his mind: the purge the spies had ranted about. A cleanup. Of witnesses? Of the entire corps? Did they have the same objective of containing this strange anomaly…except that included anybody that encountered it??? The scale of it, the cold calculation, made his stomach churn. These weren't soldiers fighting Titans; these were fanatics erasing lives like stains on a map.
"Distracted, Beast-Hunter?"
The voice came from above. Mike snapped his head up. 'Ral' stood balanced on a thick branch, having never truly fled. The instructor's face was in place, but the expression was all wrong; cold, intellectual curiosity.
"The choice is a simple one," Ral continued, his voice carrying over the din. "You can continue your futile chase. Or you can try to play the hero for those." He gestured lazily toward the field of carnage. "But you cannot do both. What will it be? Your duty to capture a spy? Or your conscience?"
"You bastard," Mike snarled, anchors firing. He launched upward, blade drawn; but Ral was already moving, swinging deeper into the woods, laughing as he went.
Mike hesitated for a split second, blade trembling in his grip. The screams from the grounds swelled; agonized, childlike wails that clawed at his soul. 'The purge... this is it. Madness. Absolute madness.' His mind spiraled: Why kids? What kind of twisted "higher purpose" demanded this? The horror of it—the sheer, incomprehensible evil; nearly buckled him. But rage won out. He couldn't save them all by chasing one man.
With a guttural curse, Mike pivoted mid-swing, anchors retracting as he hurtled back toward the grounds. The wind howled in his ears, drowning out Ral's fading laughter.
'Hold on, kids. Just hold on.'
He burst from the treeline into hell.
Mike's world narrowed to the physics of falling bodies, the scent of ozone and fear, and the calculation of a desperate interception. A female cadet; no more than fifteen, her training uniform singed black from the Vulpimancer's heat aura; tumbled through the moonlit air like a discarded doll. Her ODM gear was a melted ruin on her sides, cables snapped, gas tanks ruptured. She wasn't screaming anymore; the fall had stolen her breath, leaving only wide, terror-glazed eyes that locked with Mike's for a heartbeat that stretched into eternity.
His anchors fired with explosive force instinctively, biting into wooden beams above. He swung low and fast, muscles screaming as he pushed his gear beyond safe limits. The wind roared in his ears, but beneath it, he could hear the screams and howls of other cadets. He stretched out his arms, the ground rushing up to meet them both.
But shadows dropped from the canopy: three Forever Knights in ODM gear, blades drawn, blocked his path like a living wall. One fired an anchor at Mike's wire, tangling it mid-swing. Mike cursed under his breath, twisting to avoid a slashing blade that whistled past his ear. He parried the next attack with a clang of steel, his massive frame absorbing the impact, but the third Knight's boot connected with his side, sending him crashing into a pole.
Wood splintered; Mike rolled, coming up with blades ready, breath ragged. "Out of my way!" he roared, charging. The Knights; fanatics to the core; held their ground, blades weaving a deadly net. Mike's sword arced, shattering one's guard and opening a gash across his chest; blood sprayed as the man gurgled till he fell. But the others pressed, one slashed at Mike's arm in a line of fire, drawing blood that soaked his sleeve.
He couldn't disengage. He saw the girl out of the corner of his eye, the falling cadet was near reaching the ground, her limbs flailing in the air, she was going to die at any rate now. Mike's vision tunneled, rage boiling. "Damn you—!"
A sound like shattering glass cut through the night. Not violent, but crystalline, precise. A geometric slab of pure, shimmering diamond erupted from the earth directly beneath the falling cadet. It didn't spike upward; it formed, materializing in the space of a blink, its surface fracturing light from the torches into a thousand prismatic shards. It was angled, smooth, catching her with impossible gentleness.
Thump.
The impact should have been bone-jarring. Instead, it was a soft, cushioned landing. The diamond slab absorbed her momentum with physics-defying grace, then dissolved back into sparkling motes that vanished like frost in sunlight. The girl lay on the ground, stunned but alive, her chest rising and falling in shallow, disbelieving gasps.
The veteran scout's brain, trained for Titan combat and survival calculus, short-circuited.
Crystal? From the ground?
Before he could process it, more crystalline interventions erupted across the slaughterhouse quad.
A cadet boy dragged an unconscious friend toward a treeline. A Forever Knight detached from the shadows, blade raised for a clean executioner's strike to the back of the neck. The boy didn't see it coming.
A sharp whisper through the air. A shard of diamond, no longer than a dagger but honed to monomolecular (I think I'm spelling it right) sharpness, shot from the darkness between two barracks. It didn't arc; it traveled in a straight, laser-line trajectory, moving faster than any thrown weapon had a right to. It passed through the Knight's gauntleted wrist with a sound like a bell being struck once, cleanly.
The Knight froze. His blade clattered to the ground. He looked at his hand, which remained gripping empty air for a second before the rest of his forearm followed, severed clean through. Blood jetted in a pressurized fountain that painted the grass crimson. The Knight's scream was raw, shock and agony ripping from his throat as he clutched the stump, nerves firing like live wires.
"My hand—! What sorcery—?!"
Before the scream could fully form, another diamond slab; this one shaped like a flat tombstone; shot from the ground and slammed into him, pinning him against the thick trunk of an old oak. It molded around his torso and remaining arm, encasing him up to the neck in glittering, unbreakable restraint. His screams became muffled, panicked grunts as he thrashed futilely.
Confusion rippled through the Forever Knights' ranks, utter, bewildered chaos. "What is this?!" one barked, dodging a shard that embedded in the dirt like a thrown dagger. "Another abomination?!"
"Impossible—! The purge was meant to be clean!" another snarled, his voice laced with fanatic desperation, but his blade trembled as more crystals bloomed, shielding cadets and disrupting attacks.
Mike used the distraction. He surged forward, his powerful swings overwhelming one Knight, shattering his sword and then his collarbone. He elbowed the second in the throat.
He caught his breath, scanning. The scent was overwhelming: vaporized air from the beast, blood and fear from the cadets, smoke from burning uniforms, and… something new, yet familiar. Sterile, mineral, and very similar to the shard Hange possessed, hell its texture looked the same.
His gaze found the source. A creature; tall and gleaming with the same crystal substance stood poised before gliding into motion again.
What…
On a splintered wooden platform fifteen feet up, Oulo Bozado was having the worst night of his life, which, given the last week, was saying something. He'd managed to haul an unconscious cadet named Joren onto a relatively stable section of collapsed roofing, his own arm burned and throbbing, his heart hammering against his ribs. Below, chaos reigned: the demon dog phased in and out of reality, leaving trails of superheated air and dismembered bodies; black-clad "instructors" cut down anyone trying to flee; and the air tasted of copper, ozone, and cooked meat.
"Just... just gotta... get down..." Oulo panted, trying to spot a path through the carnage. Joren was heavy, a dead weight across his shoulders.
The platform shifted. A support beam, charred by heat, gave way with a groan. Oulo's footing vanished. He and Joren tumbled into open air, a whirlwind of terror and gravity. Oulo's mind flashed to Jansen's body, to Thom's burned face, to Instructor Ral's cold eyes.
'This is it. This is how I die. In the dark, forgotten, just 'nother roadkill in someone else's war.'
A shadow blurred below them; then impact, but not the bone-shattering kind. They landed on something hard yet yielding, a platform that caught them mid-fall. Oulo gasped, rolling with Joren, the surface smooth and cool beneath his palms.
…crystal?
The platform lowered them gently to the ground, dissolving as their feet touched earth. Oulo stumbled, catching Joren before he collapsed. "Joren! You alright? Joren!"
Joren groaned, his face pale as milk, blood bubbling at his lips; internal bleeding, ribs punctured, the wound a gaping horror. But he was alive…For now.
Oulo looked up, his eyes widening in awe and terror. A figure stood before him, silhouetted against the chaos. Tall, imposing, its body a living armor of crystalline diamond, facets shifting and gleaming with an inner light. Arms crossed over a broad chest, green energy pulsing through veins of emerald.
It-It couldn't be…But it was!
"Y-you..." Oulo stammered, his voice trembling. "Th-the Crystal Titan... you're... you're real? Ain't...ain't a myth?"
The "Crystal Titan"—not a myth, not a rumor, but real, stood here in the flesh… or whatever this was.
The helmeted head tilted slightly. A voice emanated from its mouth, deep and resonant, echoing slightly as if from within a gem. "Get to safety. Hide—or run as far as you can. I've got more to save."
Before Oulo could stammer a thanks or a question, the Crystal Titan; Obsidian; leaped away, shards forming under its feet like stepping stones, carried the imposing figure back into the fray. Oulo watched, dumbstruck, as more crystals bloomed; shields blocking Knight blades, platforms catching falling cadets, spikes impaling assailants with wet crunches (Yes, he will still catch bodies even as he restrains some).
Chapter 27-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.