The winds howled through the iron graveyard. The sky was low and gray, the terrain twisted with abandoned war machines, scorched bones, and rusted Ase-reactive steel.
Omo stood at the edge of a cliff, her visor flickering with data streams. Energy pulses danced across the holo-screen overlaying her left eye. Behind her, Zahra leaned against a crumbled Iron King ruin, the faint glow of Ase already building beneath her skin like smoldering coals.
"There," Omo said, narrowing her eyes. "There's a flare. A Chi burst—short, precise, like a flash-cut. That's him."
Zahra stepped beside her, gaze tracing the scorched trail and wreckage down below. Then she saw him.
Chizoba.
Alone, standing atop a raised hill of broken Iron King machinery, his posture relaxed but his gaze sharp. Before him stretched hundreds of Riftborn soldiers, many of them aberration-augmented, forming a semicircle around him like predators circling prey. Their armor was mismatched—part flesh, part machine—and their weapons pulsed with stolen tech and unholy Ase.
"He's going to die," Zahra murmured. "He's going to die fighting… but he'll still die."
Omo didn't blink. "No," she said. "If he wanted to die, he would've let them take him earlier. This isn't surrender."
She adjusted the dials on her left gauntlet. Her Ember Drive spun to life with a mechanical purr, heat building around her legs and arms.
"He's trying to win," she finished.
Zahra said nothing, but her eyes narrowed with restrained skepticism.
Then Omo jumped.
The Riftborn army surged forward, hundreds of boots thundering over broken steel. The first ranks raised rifles, others bore glaives or long pikes crackling with corrupted Ase. Aberrations roared among them—grotesque blends of man and machine.
Chizoba remained still, then exhaled.
He moved.
He dashed into the front lines like a silent wave. His movements were surgical, every strike flowing from complete mastery of body and breath. A parry became a wrist-break. A dodge became a rib-crushing elbow. A feint opened a soldier's throat with a flick of a shattered chain he still wore.
Chi to muscles—enhance strength by 20% for two seconds. Redirect to joints—speed and rotation. Flow to skin—dampen shock.
His Chi was not brute force—it was an artist's scalpel, not a hammer.
He disarmed a spearman, spun the weapon mid-air, and drove it backward through three charging enemies in a single fluid motion. One aberration with a massive bone-lance slammed toward him. Chizoba stepped to the side at the last second, placed a hand on the monster's neck—and sent a pulse of focused Chi through the creature's spine.
It dropped, twitching.
He was a blur—one man weaving through chaos, a whisper among thunder.
She hit the battlefield like a missile.
The Ember Drive on her back fired in short, calibrated bursts, lifting her above the ground just enough to skate across debris, avoiding terrain and dodging attacks. Her boots hissed steam as she landed in the midst of a rifle squad.
Target priority: Suppression squad. Five total. Focus fire.
Her left arm folded into a plasma-saw, buzzing with orange-red arcs. Her right arm fired a grapple line, latching to a Riftborn's chest. She yanked—spinning the soldier like a meat shield—before driving her saw clean through his torso, cleaving into the next.
Bullets ricocheted off her kinetic shield as her armor shifted, venting heat with a sharp hiss.
Two Riftborn charged from the side. Omo launched straight up using her boots, flipping midair, and dropped into a dive. She landed atop them, fists-first, driving both into the dirt.
Adrenaline spike. Coolant stabilizer… deployed.
She spotted Chizoba pinned by two aberrations. She fired a shock grenade in their direction. One seized up just long enough for Chizoba to pivot and remove its head with a single, focused palm-strike.
Where Chizoba flowed like water and Omo surged like fire, Zahra was the explosion.
She walked slowly into the fight, eyes closed. As she passed the first Riftborn, a wave of heat pulsed outward. Their flesh blistered, armor warped. Then she raised her hand—and the flame inside her roared to life.
With a shout, Zahra's Ase expanded from her chest, forming a serpent of flame that spiraled around her body before launching into the enemy ranks. It consumed a dozen soldiers before bursting like a firebomb.
"You desecrate the land of the gods—let it burn you alive."
A Riftborn with a shield charged. Zahra clenched her fist and superheated the air within the soldier's lungs. He collapsed, smoke trailing from his mouth.
An aberration leapt toward her—six legs, two saw-blades, a metal tail. Zahra raised both arms and formed a cage of flame, compressing it around the beast. Its scream was shrill and short.
She turned—just in time to see Omo tackle a Riftborn about to impale her.
Zahra grinned. "Didn't think you were the saving type."
Omo responded with a smirk. "Didn't think you'd roast an army."
The twisted metal of the battlefield still steamed. Riftborn corpses lay smoldering. The faint, acrid smell of burnt oil and cooked flesh lingered.
But then…
A low hum pierced the silence.
From the shadows of a collapsed Iron King tower, the Collector emerged. Blood on his lip. His armor cracked. His eyes furious. But most notably—on his back, something ancient and rusted whirred to life.
It was similar in structure to Omo's Ember Drive, but older… bulkier… unstable. Wires snaked into his spine, his chest glowing with an eerie blue-orange pulse, and his limbs were covered in hex-etched plates that hummed with hidden circuitry.
"If you want something done right," he growled, voice layered with static and distortion, "you do it yourself."
He slammed a gauntleted fist into the core at his chest.
The device screamed, and his body surged—muscles rippling, armor fusing to flesh, his speed and strength suddenly multiplying tenfold.
Then he moved.
The Collector blurred forward, closing the distance in less than a second.
Chizoba barely ducked, the punch slicing the air with a thunderclap. Omo's visor flared, trying to calculate trajectories, but even her reflexes barely kept her ahead of his onslaught.
Zahra raised a wall of flame—he punched through it like it was paper.
The Collector was a monster now.
A walking storm of brute force and corrupted Iron King genius.
Omo fired her plasma rounds.
Zahra unleashed waves of molten Ase.
Chizoba struck with surgical Chi-infused blows.
None of it got through.
A shimmering forcefield enveloped him—generating from the Iron King device on his back. It pulsed with every impact but refused to break.
Realization
Chizoba slid to a stop, sweat on his brow, his breathing calm but tight. His eyes narrowed.
"…The device. It's… not complete."
Omo's visor blinked. "Confirmed. It's overclocked. That core isn't stabilized—he's using raw output, no feedback regulation."
She looked at Chizoba, then Zahra. "He can't sustain it. We just have to survive long enough. And wear down that field."
Zahra flared her Ase again. "Then let's make him burn."
The trio shifted tactics.
Zahra bombarded the forcefield with searing heat meant to test its thermal limits.
Omo launched precisely timed shock charges, disrupting the Collector's equilibrium.
Chizoba used his Chi not for brute strength—but for internal strikes, timing them to subtly rattle the forcefield's harmonic resonance.
The field began to flicker. The Collector's movements grew twitchier, the strain of the Iron King tech catching up.
But he wasn't backing down.
Through the chaos, the Collector kept his eyes on Chizoba.
"You took something," he growled, "you have no right to!"
Then, mid-dash, he blasted past Zahra, absorbed a bolt from Omo, and tackled Chizoba into a ruined pillar.
They crashed through metal.
He reached for the inner coat pocket.
"The journal—it's all that matters!"
Chizoba struggled, elbowed him once, twice, but the Collector's strength was immense.
He tore the journal free.
Rip.
The journal split in two.
Half fluttered to the ground beside Omo.
The Collector stared at the ruined pages, stunned for a moment.
And in that pause, Zahra hurled a compressed flame core directly into his chest.
It detonated.
The forcefield shattered in a cascade of broken light.
Chizoba slid back to his feet.
Omo's Ember Drive flared.
Zahra summoned a flame spear.
Together, they lunged.
Chizoba slammed his palm into the Collector's diaphragm, cracking armor and disrupting breath.
Zahra's spear impaled the tech-core, melting circuits.
Omo grappled his arm, flipped him over her shoulder, and drove an energy blade into his spine-port.
The Collector screamed.
Then fell, body spasming as the Iron King tech failed, ejecting sparks and smoke.
Behind them, a hiss.
From a side tunnel, Ife emerged, trying to sneak away in the chaos.
Omo's visor pinged.
"Don't even try."
Ife turned—but Zahra was already behind her, palm raised.
A quick shockwave of Ase knocked her unconscious.
They dragged her back to the center of the battlefield.
Chizoba held the remaining half of the journal in his hands. The pages were charred and torn, but some of the information remained.
Zahra kicked the Collector's now-lifeless form. "You Riftborn are always the same. Obsession before sense."
Omo turned to Chizoba. "We need to know what's in this journal."
He nodded.
Then looked at Ife.
"She'll tell us."
Ife trembled.