Dawn bled across the Luo fortress in streaks of crimson and gold, painting the training yards in firelight. Yuchen stood at the center of the largest sparring ring, his father's soulsteel bracers gleaming against his forearms. Sweat dripped down his temples despite the morning chill.
Across from him, Luo Ren adjusted his grip on his practice staff, his broken arm now encased in a regeneration cast. The champion's expression was unreadable.
"Again," Yuchen demanded.
Ren didn't move. "You won. Why keep fighting?"
"Because winning once was luck." Yuchen settled into his stance, the bracers humming as they synced with his pulse. "I need to win every time."
A shadow fell across the sand.
"Then you're starting wrong."
Jiang strode into the ring, tossing aside his toolbelt. At his hip swung something that made both Yuchen and Ren stiffen—a live plasma blade, its containment field crackling.
Ren took a step back. "That's against training protocols—"
"And getting your ribs kicked in by an eight-year-old isn't?" Jiang ignited the blade, its blue glow painting his smirk in eerie light. "Lesson one, kid—Luo don't fight fair."
He lunged.
Yuchen barely dodged, the plasma scorching the air where his head had been. Xing, watching from the sidelines, let out a warning yelp.
Jiang didn't let up. "Wei-Xing won't bow just because you beat one soldier. They'll come at you with everything—poison, drones, assassins." His next strike came low, forcing Yuchen to leap back. "So stop fighting like a noble and start fighting like a survivor."
The blade grazed Yuchen's ribs, searing through fabric to leave a thin red line.
Ren sucked in a breath. "You're going too far—"
"He'll live." Jiang deactivated the blade. "Or he won't. But better a burn now than a knife in the dark later."
Yuchen touched the wound, his fingers coming away smeared red.
Jiang tossed him a rag. "Welcome to being heir."
The war room stank of ozone and tension.
Yuchen sat stiffly beside Jinhai as the elders debated Wei-Xing's latest movements. Holograms flickered above the table—troop deployments, supply routes, a flashing red dot marking a research facility near the old Shanghai ruins.
Elder Feng tapped the dot, his cybernetic eye whirring. "Our spies confirm it—they're rebuilding the AI project using the fragments they stole."
Elder Meilin's fan fluttered. "Then we burn it to the ground."
"With what army?" snapped Elder Guo, his jowls trembling. "The southern battalions are still recovering from the last skirmish!"
Jinhai remained silent, his gaze fixed on Yuchen.
A test.
Yuchen exhaled and stood.
The room quieted.
"We don't send an army." He zoomed the hologram in on the facility's schematics. "We send one mech."
Elder Feng scoffed. "Suicide."
"No." Yuchen tapped the display, highlighting a ventilation shaft. "Infiltration. Destroy the core from within, then vanish before reinforcements arrive."
Jiang, leaning against the wall, grinned. "Like Border City."
The elders stiffened at the reference.
Jinhai finally spoke. "Whose mech?"
Yuchen met his grandfather's gaze. "Mine."
The hangar was cathedral-quiet.
Before them stood the Xuanwu-EX, its sleek frame still bearing the scars of Phoenix Nest. Jiang had spent the past week repairing it in secret, splicing in every black-market upgrade he could scavenge.
"Neural link's stable," he muttered, slapping the cockpit hatch. "But the stabilizer's still fried. You'll have half the sync rate you did before."
Yuchen ran a hand along the mech's leg plating. "Enough?"
"Enough to die spectacularly." Jiang tossed him a modified headset. "This'll help. Stole the design from Wei-Xing's own prototypes."
Xing circled the mech, his nose working overtime.
Jinhai entered, his footsteps echoing. For a long moment, he simply studied the Xuanwu, his expression unreadable.
"You understand what you're asking."
Yuchen didn't look away from the mech. "Yes."
"The facility is guarded by two battalions. Experimental weapons. Their best pilots."*l
"I know."
"You may not return."
Yuchen finally turned. "Then I'll take as many of them with me as I can."
Jinhai's hand clamped his shoulder, the grip bordering on painful. "You are your father's son."
The words weren't praise.
They were a farewell.
Xing refused to be left behind.
The pup clawed at Yuchen's flight suit until Jiang rigged a makeshift harness in the cockpit. "Happy now, mutt?"
Xing licked his nose.
Jiang snorted, then turned to Yuchen. "Remember—in and out. No heroics."
Yuchen fastened his helmet. "No promises."
The hangar doors groaned open, revealing the star-streaked sky. Somewhere beyond it, Wei-Xing's scientists were rebuilding the monster his parents had died to stop.
The Xuanwu-EX's thrusters flared to life.
"Ready?" Yuchen asked Xing.
The pup's golden eyes gleamed.
Yuchen grinned.
"Let's go hunting."
The Xuanwu-EX cut through the night sky like a blade, its thrusters dialed to whisper-quiet. Below, the ruins of Old Shanghai stretched like a corpse picked clean—collapsed skyscrapers, flooded streets, and the occasional flicker of scavenger fires.
Yuchen's display flickered as Eos' fragmented ghost fed him data through the neural link.
"Target ahead," the AI's voice crackled in his skull. "Thermal scans show forty-two hostiles. Main force concentrated at the northern gate."
Xing, strapped into the secondary harness, let out a soft *whuff* of agreement.
The Wei-Xing facility loomed ahead—a hexagonal compound built into the skeleton of a pre-Collapse research center, its walls patched with salvaged alloy and humming with energy shields.
Yuchen slowed the Xuanwu to a hover behind a crumbling office tower. "Jiang, I'm in position."
The comm hissed. "Scans confirm your entry point—southwest maintenance tunnel. Shield's weakest there. But kid…" A pause. "They've got a new toy guarding it."
The display zoomed in.
At the tunnel's mouth stood a Wei-Xing Sentinel-class mech—twice the bulk of a standard unit, its arms replaced with twin rotary plasma casters.
Yuchen's fingers tightened on the controls. "I'll handle it."
The Xuanwu dropped like a stone, landing behind the Sentinel with barely a tremor.
Yuchen moved before the heavier mech could turn.
The Xuanwu's wrist-blade pierced the Sentinel's neural core, the monofilament edge slicing through armor like rice paper. The Wei-Xing mech shuddered, its systems dying before its pilot could even scream.
Xing's ears pricked.
"Good boy," Yuchen murmured, disengaging the blade. The Sentinel toppled in eerie silence.
Eos' voice flickered: "Hurry. Patrol rotation in ninety seconds."
The maintenance tunnel was a tight fit, the Xuanwu's shoulders scraping rusted walls. Glowstrips flickered overhead, their pale light revealing claw marks—something had tried to dig its way in. Or out.
Then the tunnel opened into hell.
The central chamber was a nightmare of flesh and steel.
Dozens of glass incubation pods lined the walls, each holding a child—some no older than Yuchen—wired into prototype neural interfaces. Their faces were slack, their limbs twitching as data streams scrolled across attached monitors.
At the chamber's heart pulsed the AI core, its fractured code glowing sickly green.
Xing growled, his fur standing on end.
Yuchen's stomach turned to ice. "They're using kids as test pilots."
A new voice crackled over the comm—not Jiang, not Eos.
"Correction," said a smooth, feminine tone. "We're creating the perfect fusion of human and machine."
The displays flickered, resolving into the face of Dr. Lin Xiao, the Wei-Xing scientist who'd escaped at Phoenix Nest.
She smiled. "Hello, little heir. I've been expecting you."
Alarms screamed.
The incubation pods hissed open, the children inside jerking upright with glowing, vacant eyes.
Eos' warning flashed red in Yuchen's vision:
"Neural override detected. Hostile sync at 87%."
The children moved as one, their small hands ripping free of the wires. Their mouths opened in unison, Dr. Xiao's voice pouring out:
"Let's see how the mighty Luo heir fares against his own kind."
The first child lunged.
The first child moved faster than humanly possible—a blur of pale limbs and fluttering hospital gowns. Yuchen barely yanked the Xuanwu's arm up in time to block the tiny fist that shattered the mech's forearm plating.
"Eos! Status!"
"Impact force exceeds baseline human capacity by 900%," the AI responded, damage reports flashing across Yuchen's vision. "Neural enhancement suggests full-body cybernetic integration."
Xing snarled as more children emerged from the pods, their movements eerily synchronized. Dr. Xiao's laughter echoed through their shared vocal cords.
"Beautiful, isn't it? No clunky mechs, no bulky interfaces—just pure human potential unlocked by your family's precious AI."
Yuchen's stomach turned. They'd perverted his parents' work into this—children turned into weapons, their bodies reshaped for war.
The Xuanwu's thrusters flared as he backpedaled, dodging another enhanced child's leap. His targeting systems struggled to track them—too small, too fast.
"Jiang! I need options!"
Static crackled before the engineer's voice cut through. "Their enhancements need power—look for emitter nodes!"
Yuchen's gaze snapped to the children's spines. There—pulsing silver implants at each cervical vertebra.
Xing barked sharply three times—left, right, above.
Yuchen moved.
The Xuanwu became a storm of controlled violence.
Yuchen sidestepped a child's flying kick, his mech's hand snapping out to crush the spinal implants. The small body went limp mid-air.
One down.
Two more attacked in tandem, their tiny fingers clawing at the Xuanwu's knee joints. Yuchen spun, his plasma blade activating at minimum power—just enough to sever their implants without killing them.
Three down
Dr. Xiao's voice turned shrill. "Kill him! Now!"
The remaining children swarmed like angry hornets. One latched onto the Xuanwu's back, small hands prying at the neural link housing.
Alarms blared as systems began failing.
Xing twisted in his harness, biting down hard on the emergency release. The cockpit hatch exploded outward, throwing the child clear.
Yuchen didn't hesitate. He fired the Xuanwu's shoulder thrusters at full burn, ramming the mech backward into the central AI core.
Glass shattered.
The children screamed in unison as their enhancements failed.
Amid the sparking wreckage of the AI core, something pulsed—a smaller, crystalline data module protected by redundant shielding.
Eos' voice turned urgent. "That's not just backup code—it's a transmitter! They've been broadcasting the AI fragments!"
Yuchen's blood ran cold. "To where?"
The answer came as the facility shook, dust raining from the ceiling. On the far wall, security feeds flickered to life showing a massive construction site deep in Wei-Xing territory.
There, half-buried in the earth like some ancient god, lay the frame of a Titan-class mech—easily three times the size of a standard Xuanwu.
And at its heart, the stolen code pulsed.
Dr. Xiao's face reappeared on the displays, her smile triumphant.
"You were always part of the experiment, little heir. Your attack here? Your resistance? All data points to perfect our real weapon."
The feed cut as the facility's self-destruct sequence activated.
"Yuchen! Get out now!" Jiang's voice was raw over the comms.
The Xuanwu's damaged thrusters screamed as Yuchen launched toward the tunnel. Behind him, the children stirred weakly—alive, but no longer threats.
Xing yowled as the first explosion rocked the facility.
Yuchen made it fifty meters clear before the shockwave hit.
The Xuanwu tumbled through the air like a shot bird, crashing through three ruined buildings before skidding to a stop in what had once been a shopping district.
Smoke poured from the mech's joints as Yuchen struggled with the harness release.
"Xing? You okay?"
A whimper answered from beneath a dented panel. The pup wriggled free, his silver markings dim but intact.
Yuchen's relief lasted exactly three seconds.
The ground trembled.
Through the dust storm ahead, five Wei-Xing Heavy-Frames approached, their weapons charging.
Dr. Xiao's voice echoed from their external speakers:
"Let's complete your final lesson, heir—how Luo scions die."
Smoke coiled from the Xuanwu-EX's shattered chassis as the Wei-Xing mechs closed in, their plasma cannons humming with lethal charge. Yuchen's fingers flew across the damaged control panel, rerouting power from nonessential systems to the last functioning thruster.
Xing, wedged between Yuchen's seat and the cockpit wall, let out a low growl as his silver-marked fur bristled with static.
"Eos—options," Yuchen demanded, his voice raw.
The AI's response crackled through the neural link like a dying radio signal: "Thruster power insufficient for escape. Suggest—"
The rest was drowned out as the lead Heavy-Frame fired, its plasma round shearing off the Xuanwu's already damaged left arm in a shower of sparks. The impact sent the mech skidding backward, its remaining armor screeching against broken pavement.
Yuchen tasted blood—his own, from biting his tongue during the impact.
Jiang's voice cut through the chaos on the comm: "Kid, listen carefully. There's an old sewer access point twenty meters behind you. If you can—"
Static swallowed the rest.
Dr. Xiao's laughter echoed from the enemy mechs' external speakers. "No last-minute rescues today, little heir. Only data."
The Heavy-Frames raised their weapons in unison, targeting the Xuanwu's cockpit.
Yuchen's fingers tightened on the controls.
Then—
The sky burned.
A streak of crimson fire split the clouds, impacting the lead Heavy-Frame with enough force to vaporize its upper torso instantly. The remaining Wei-Xing mechs staggered back as the shockwave rattled their systems.
Yuchen's display flared to life, painting the newcomer in tactical glyphs:
"Luo Dynasty-class Dreadnought: Celestial Retribution."
The massive warship hovered like a vengeful god, its ventral plasma batteries still glowing from the first shot.
Jiang's voice returned, clearer now. "Told you the old man wouldn't miss the party."
The comm channel exploded with Luo battle chatter as a full squadron of Phoenix-class interceptors screamed overhead, their wing-mounted guns shredding two more Heavy-Frames before they could raise shields.
But it was the sight that followed that stole Yuchen's breath—
A single mech dropped from the Celestial Retribution's belly, its obsidian armor gleaming with gold phoenix motifs.
Luo Jinhai's personal war machine.
The patriarch's voice boomed across the battlefield: "Wei-Xing has violated the accords. By my word, their research dies today."
The remaining enemy mechs fled.
Jinhai's mech landed beside the crippled Xuanwu with earth-shaking force. The cockpit hissed open, revealing the patriarch in full battle regalia—his face a mask of fury barely contained.
"You disobeyed orders."
Yuchen didn't flinch. "You didn't give me any."
For a heartbeat, the battlefield fell silent. Then Jinhai's lips twitched—the barest hint of approval.
Xing chose that moment to wriggle free from the wreckage, shaking debris from his fur before trotting over to sniff at Jinhai's armored boot.
The patriarch looked down. "And you brought the hound."
Jiang's laughter crackled over the comm. "Told you this kid had stones."
The medical shuttle smelled of antiseptic and burnt wiring.
Yuchen sat stiffly as a Luo medic tended to his injuries, his eyes fixed on the holographic report floating above the console. The data stolen from the facility painted a terrifying picture—Wei-Xing wasn't just building a weapon. They were building an army.
Jinhai studied the same data, his expression grim. "The Titan frame is only the beginning. They mean to mass-produce those child soldiers."
Xing, now curled in Yuchen's lap, growled softly at the images of the enhancement procedures.
Yuchen's hands clenched. "We have to stop them."
"We will." Jinhai tapped a command, and the display shifted to show the Titan construction site's coordinates. "But not today. Not without preparation."
Jiang entered, tossing Yuchen a fresh set of clothes. "Kid, you look like hell."
Yuchen caught them automatically. "The children at the facility—"
"Alive," Jinhai said. "Our medics are purging their systems of the enhancements."
It wasn't enough. Yuchen knew that. The scars—both physical and mental—would remain.
Just like his own.
Night had fallen by the time they returned to the Luo fortress.
Yuchen stood on the highest balcony, watching the distant glow of Wei-Xing territory on the horizon. The battle was won, but the war was far from over.
Jinhai joined him, his ceremonial robes replaced by simple training garb.
"You fought well today," he said quietly.
Yuchen shook his head. "I survived. That's not the same thing."
The patriarch studied him for a long moment. "Your father would be proud."
The words should have comforted. Instead, they burned.
"I don't want his pride," Yuchen said, turning to face his grandfather fully. "I want his justice."
Xing pressed against his leg, a silent vow.
Jinhai's gaze hardened. "Then tomorrow, we begin your real training."