The beach was too quiet.
No gunfire. No alarms. Just the hiss of waves over black sand and the distant, hollow groans of the dying facility. The Wandering Tide's survivors moved like ghosts through the predawn gloom, their boots sinking into wet ash. The air reeked of melted metal and something sharper—ozone, the telltale stench of overloaded energy cores.
Xing's nose twitched as he scouted ahead, his silver-marked fur standing on end.
"Where are the guards?" Vera whispered, her plasma pistol sweeping across the shattered remains of a perimeter wall.
Jiang kicked a smoldering Wei-Xing helmet. "Where's anyone?"
Yuchen didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the facility's main entrance—a yawning maw of twisted alloy, its edges still glowing cherry-red from whatever blast had torn it open. The holodrive's feed had cut out minutes before landfall, but not before showing Dr. Lin standing her ground in the control room.
Not before showing the pods opening.
Lucien adjusted the slim silver band around his wrist—a Valois neural scanner, now flickering erratically. "I'm reading life signs. Hundreds of them. But they're… scattered."
A breeze stirred the ash at their feet.
Then—
A child's laugh.
High, bright, and utterly out of place in this ruin.
Yuchen spun.
At the tree line, half-hidden by fronds, stood a boy no older than six. His silver eyes gleamed in the dark, his grin missing two front teeth.
"You're late," he said cheerfully.
Behind him, the jungle moved—dozens of small shapes stepping into the open. Children. All with the same luminous eyes, the same circuit-like markings curling up their arms.
The awakened.
The free.
Jiang's rifle lowered an inch. "What the hell happened here?"
The boy's grin widened.
"We did."
The facility's interior looked like the aftermath of a hurricane.
Control panels smoked. Security drones lay in pieces, their wires chewed through. And everywhere—everywhere—were the children. Some perched on overturned consoles, swinging their legs. Others crouched over maps, whispering. A group of teenagers had commandeered a weapons locker and were passing plasma pistols around like candy.
At the center of the chaos, seated calmly on a pile of rubble, was Dr. Lin.
She looked up as they entered, her face gaunt but her eyes clear. "Took you long enough."
Yuchen stepped forward. "You freed them."
"They freed themselves." She nodded to a cluster of older kids gathered around a cracked holoscreen. "Once I disabled the neural dampeners, their abilities… amplified. Beyond anything Wei-Xing predicted."
The screen showed security footage from earlier—the moment the facility fell.
The children hadn't fought.
Hadn't needed to.
One by one, the Titans had simply… stopped. Their systems frozen mid-activation, their massive frames shuddering as if gripped by invisible hands. Then the security feeds cut to static.
"They hijacked the neural links," Lucien realized. "Turned Wei-Xing's own weapons against them."
Dr. Lin's smile was thin. "Poetic, isn't it?"
A tug on Yuchen's sleeve. The gap-toothed boy from the beach held up a cracked data tablet. "We found something you should see."
The screen displayed a map—dozens of red dots scattered across the continent.
Facilities.
Prisons.
Laboratories.
"There are more of us," the boy said.
Xing's growl was low, constant.
Yuchen's hands curled into fists.
"Not for long."
Later, they found Song Lihua at the water's edge.
She stood knee-deep in the surf, her back to the ruin, her silver hair whipping in the salt wind. The other children had said she'd been here since dawn—waiting.
Yuchen approached slowly, Xing at his side.
"They're calling it a revolution," he said.
Lihua didn't turn. "It's not."
"Then what is it?"
The ocean heaved.
Not from the storm—from something deeper.
"A homecoming."
She turned then, and Yuchen saw it—the change. Her eyes weren't just silver anymore. They held the same impossible depth as the Abyss's, galaxies swirling in their depths.
When she spoke again, her voice wasn't entirely her own.
"The children are awakening to their true nature. Just as the beasts did."
A wave crashed, spraying foam over their feet. In the mist, shapes flickered—memories, or visions.
A laboratory.
A whale screaming.
A choice.
Lihua's hand found his. "Wei-Xing didn't create the Collapse. They caused it."
The truth settled over him like a weight.
The awakened children.
The beasts.
They were never experiments.
They were revenge.
The war room was a converted mess hall, its walls papered with stolen maps and hacked surveillance feeds. Vera's injured arm hung in a sling, but her remaining hand moved with lethal precision as she marked targets.
"Wei-Xing's scrambling to contain the news, but it's too late. Footage of the facility's fall is already spreading."
Jiang grunted. "Won't stop them from trying to silence every kid who got out."
"Which is why we move first." Lucien tossed a holochip onto the table. It projected a sleek, black-skinned airship—a Valois stealth cruiser. "My family's offering full support. Extraction teams for every known captive, medical evac, the works."
Dr. Lin frowned. "Why? The Valois never risk their necks for anyone."
"Because they finally realized which way the wind's blowing." Lucien's smile was razor-thin. "And because Versailles pecked my uncle until he agreed."
The peacock preened.
Yuchen studied the map. The red dots seemed to pulse like wounds.
"We hit them all. At once."
Silence.
Then Vera grinned. "Now you're speaking my language."
Jiang cocked his rifle. " I'll prep the explosives."
And outside, the children waited.
Watching.
Hungry.
The jungle air hummed with tension as the last of the supply crates were loaded onto the stolen Wei-Xing skiffs. The awakened children moved with eerie efficiency—no wasted motion, no unnecessary words. They didn't need them. Their silver eyes flickered with shared understanding, their thoughts brushing against each other like leaves in the wind.
Yuchen adjusted the strap of his borrowed tactical vest, watching as the youngest children were ushered onto the most secure transports by Dr. Lin. The older ones—some barely teenagers—clustered around the weapons cache, their hands steady as they checked plasma charges and hacked security passes.
Xing nudged his leg, his golden eyes reflecting the predawn light.
"They're ready," Song Lihua said, appearing beside him.
Yuchen didn't ask how she knew. The connection between the awakened had deepened since their communion with the Abyss. It wasn't just shared purpose—it was something closer to a hive mind, a whisper-network of instinct and intent.
"They shouldn't have to be," he muttered.
Lihua's gaze drifted to the horizon, where the first hints of sunlight bled through the trees. "None of us should."
A sharp whistle cut through the chatter. Vera stood atop a supply crate, her injured arm still bound but her voice carrying effortlessly.
"Listen up! Wei-Xing's scrambling, but they'll regroup fast. Our window's tight—hit the targets, free the prisoners, and get to extraction before their heavy battalions mobilize." She tossed a handful of holochips into the crowd. The children caught them effortlessly, slotting them into wrist displays. "Each team has a designated facility. Stick to the plan, watch each other's backs, and for fuck's sake, don't hesitate."
Jiang shouldered his rifle. "And if you see a Titan?"
Every silver eye in the clearing gleamed.
The gap-toothed boy from the beach grinned. "We say hello."
The skiffs launched in unison, cutting through the morning mist like blades. Yuchen's team took point—Vera piloting, Jiang on the mounted gun, Lucien and Versailles monitoring comms. Behind them, six more transports fanned out, each carrying a squad of awakened children and their assigned targets.
Lihua had stayed behind.
"They'll need a guide," she'd said, her star-flecked eyes distant. "The Abyss will show me the way."
Yuchen hadn't argued. Some battles weren't fought with guns.
The first facility appeared on the horizon—a squat, windowless complex half-buried in the cliffs of the northern coast. Officially, it was a weather research station. The holochip's intel told a different story.
"Neural conditioning site," Lucien said, scanning the readouts. "Where they 'prepare' the children before transferring them to the Titan program."
Xing's growl vibrated through the deck.
Yuchen's fingers tightened around his rifle. "How many inside?"
"Thirty, maybe forty kids. Light security—they rely on secrecy, not firepower."
Vera's smirk was vicious. "Their first mistake."
The skiff dove.
They hit the facility at dawn.
Jiang took out the perimeter drones with two precise shots. The children moved like shadows, their small hands flashing over the security panel. The doors hissed open—then slammed shut again as the lockdown protocols engaged.
A teenager with braided hair and a scar across her nose didn't hesitate. She pressed her palm to the metal.
The doors shuddered.
Then melted.
"Huh," Jiang said. "That's new."
Inside was a nightmare of white walls and flickering fluorescent lights. The air stank of antiseptic and fear. Alarms blared as Wei-Xing guards scrambled into position—but they were too slow.
The awakened children were everywhere at once.
A boy no older than eight touched a security console, and every camera in the facility shorted out. Twin girls held hands, and the reinforced cell doors bent like tinfoil.
And the prisoners—
They emerged blinking into the light, their silver eyes dulled by sedation but burning with dawning recognition.
One, a skeletal girl with patchy hair, looked at Yuchen and whispered:
"You came."
Something in his chest fractured.
Xing nosed the girl's hand gently.
Vera's voice crackled over the comms: "We've got incoming! Wei-Xing reinforcements, five klicks out!"
Yuchen scooped the girl into his arms. "Time to go."
The escape was a blur—falling back to the skiff, the awakened children herding the newly freed like seasoned soldiers. The last thing Yuchen saw as they lifted off was the scar-nosed teenager standing at the facility's shattered entrance, her hands raised toward the approaching enemy vehicles.
The ground beneath them rippled.
Then erupted.
Jiang whistled. "Remind me never to piss them off."
Behind them, Blackcliff burned.
The other teams reported in one by one.
"Silverspire is down."
"We own Frosthold."
"The children at Marrowgate are free."
Each transmission came with footage—facilities crumbling, Wei-Xing soldiers fleeing, the awakened leading their liberated kin to safety.
But it was the last message that changed everything.
A public broadcast, hijacked mid-propaganda reel. The screen flickered, then resolved into the face of a girl Yuchen recognized—one of the first they'd freed.
Her silver eyes filled the screen.
"My name is Echo-11," she said, her voice steady. "I am eight years old. Wei-Xing took me from my parents six months ago."
The footage cut to security recordings—children in cages, scientists in white coats administering neural shocks, rows upon rows of glass pods.
"This is what they do. This is what they are."
The transmission spread like wildfire.
By nightfall, the world was screaming.
Yuchen found Lihua standing at the edge of the Sutherland stronghold's highest tower, her hair whipping in the salt wind. Below, the ocean churned, its surface alive with bioluminescent swirls.
"They're calling it an uprising," he said.
Lihua didn't turn. "It's not."
"Then what is it?"
She smiled.
Far below, the waves parted.
The Abyss watched.
"Justice."
The world held its breath.
Footage of the freed children played on every screen, in every city, across every faction's territory. The images were raw, unedited—no propaganda, no spin. Just the truth, brutal and undeniable.
A toddler with silver eyes, clutching a stuffed rabbit as she was led from a cell.
A boy with circuit-like scars on his arms, screaming as medics removed neural inhibitors from his spine.
A teenager standing atop a ruined Wei-Xing drone, her hands glowing as she shielded a group of younger children from gunfire.
The broadcast ended with a single line, scrawled in shaky Common:
"We remember. The world will too."
Yuchen watched the fallout from the Sutherland war room, where live feeds from a dozen factions flickered across the holographic display. The Valois ambassador had publicly denounced Wei-Xing. The Luo Dynasty had released decades of classified intelligence proving Wei-Xing's atrocities. Even the neutral territories were turning—merchants closing their ports to Wei-Xing ships, civilians tearing down recruitment posters.
Xing let out a low whine, pressing his muzzle into Yuchen's palm.
"It's not enough," Yuchen murmured.
Jiang, leaning against the strategy table with his arms crossed, grunted in agreement. "They'll throw a few generals to the wolves, claim it was a rogue branch. The machine keeps turning."
"Not this time."
Lucien swept into the room, Versailles perched on his shoulder. The peacock's feathers were fluffed in agitation, her golden eyes darting between screens.
"Wei-Xing's leadership has gone to ground," Lucien said, tapping a command into the holotable. A map of the Pacific lit up, with a single red marker pulsing over a remote island chain. "But we've finally found their heart."
Yuchen recognized the coordinates instantly.
The first Titan facility.
Where it all began.
The Sutherland fleet mobilized at dawn.
It wasn't just warships—civilian vessels had joined them, their decks crammed with volunteers. Fishermen and merchants, armed with nothing but old rifles and burning fury. The awakened children stood among them, their silver eyes reflecting the morning light.
Song Lihua waited at the docks, her bare feet planted on the sun-warmed wood. She didn't board a ship.
She didn't need to.
The ocean knew its own.
Yuchen approached her as the final preparations were made. "You're not coming with us."
It wasn't a question.
Lihua smiled. "I already am."
Behind her, the waves stirred. Something vast moved beneath the surface, its shadow darkening the water.
The Abyss was coming to war.
The Wei-Xing island was a fortress.
Turrets lined the cliffs. Drones patrolled the skies. And at its center, half-buried in the mountain, was the Titan hangar—its doors wide open.
Empty.
"Where the hell is it?" Vera snarled, scanning the thermal readouts.
The answer came from the sea.
A tremor rocked the fleet. Then another. The water near the eastern shore bulged, as if something massive was rising from the depths.
The first Titan emerged like a nightmare given form.
Bigger than the prototypes.
More refined.
And on its chest, the Wei-Xing dragon warred with the Luo phoenix—two stolen sigils forced together in a grotesque mockery of unity.
Jiang spat over the railing. "Bastards rebuilt it."
The Titan's eyes flared crimson.
Then it moved.
The battle was chaos.
Sutherland plasma fire scorched the Titan's armor, but the beast barely flinched. It waded through the fleet like a child kicking over sandcastles, its fists cratering decks, its footfalls capsizing smaller vessels.
Yuchen clung to the rail of the Wandering Tide as another shockwave nearly sent them under. "We need to get to the island! The control hub's there!"
"Easier said—!" Vera wrenched the helm hard to port as the Titan's fist grazed their stern. "—than done!"
A shadow passed overhead.
Versailles dove like a feathered bullet, her talons extended. The peacock screamed, a sound too large for her body, and the Titan flinched.
For a single, breathless moment, its systems stuttered.
Lucien's eyes lit up. "The neural link! It's still vulnerable to awakened interference!"
Xing howled.
Yuchen understood.
He grabbed the comm. "All awakened! Target its neural core! It's the only—"
The Titan's back split open.
Revealing rows upon rows of glass pods.
Each one held a child.
Each one was connected.
Dr. Lin's voice crackled over the comms, frantic: "They're using them as living batteries! Don't attack the core—you'll kill the children!"
The Titan raised its fist.
And the sea exploded.
The wave that hit the Titan would have flattened a city.
The Abyss didn't surface. It didn't need to. The ocean itself became its weapon, a thousand tendrils of water lashing around the Titan's limbs, dragging it down.
On the shore, Song Lihua stood with her arms outstretched, her eyes bleeding silver light.
The Titan roared.
The children in its pods screamed.
Then—
A new voice.
Young.
Furious.
The gap-toothed boy from the beach stood at the prow of a sinking ship, his hands glowing white-hot. "Let them go."
Every awakened child echoed the command.
The Titan staggered.
Its chest plate cracked.
And from within the ruined core, a single figure emerged—
A girl.
Her silver eyes opened.
"Enough."
The Titan shattered.
The collapse was slow, then all at once.
The Titan's limbs gave out first, crashing into the waves. Then its torso, then its head, the metal screaming as it tore apart. The pods spilled free, bobbing in the suddenly calm water.
The awakened children moved as one, leaping into the sea to pull their siblings to safety.
Yuchen found the girl from the core kneeling on a piece of floating wreckage, her hands still sparking.
"You're okay," he said, reaching for her.
She looked up.
Her smile was terrifying.
"We're awake."
Behind her, the ocean moved—not with the Abyss's rage, but with purpose.
The war wasn't over.
It had just begun.
Silence.
Not the absence of sound, but the kind that comes when the world holds its breath. The Titan's carcass smoldered in the shallows, its metal bones groaning as the tide pulled it apart. The awakened children moved through the wreckage like ghosts, their bare feet leaving no prints in the wet sand.
Yuchen watched them from the broken cliffs, his hands still shaking.
They weren't just freeing the captive children from the pods.
They were talking to them.
Not with words.
With something else.
Xing pressed against his leg, his fur standing on end.
"You feel it too," Yuchen murmured.
The pup's golden eyes reflected the dying firelight—and something deeper, something older.
A shadow fell across them.
Song Lihua stood at the cliff's edge, her silver hair whipping in the salt wind. She wasn't looking at the ruin below.
She was looking beyond.
"They're coming," she said.
Yuchen followed her gaze.
The horizon was empty.
For now.
The war room was chaos.
Holograms flickered with damage reports, casualty lists, intercepted Wei-Xing transmissions. Vera stabbed a finger at the Pacific map, where red markers clustered like open wounds.
"Their remaining fleet's regrouping here, here, and here." She snarled. "They're not retreating. They're redirecting."
Jiang leaned over the table, his good eye scanning the data. "Toward what?"
Lucien's peacock let out a piercing cry.
The answer came from the door.
Dr. Lin stood framed in the light, her arms wrapped around a gaunt girl no older than twelve. The child's silver eyes burned with fever-bright intensity.
"The Source," the girl whispered.
The room stilled.
"The what?" Vera demanded.
Dr. Lin's grip tightened. "Where it all began. The first facility. The first experiments."
Yuchen's blood turned to ice.
He knew.
Before the hologram resolved, before the coordinates locked in—
He knew.
The image that flickered to life wasn't a modern complex.
It was a ruin.
A crumbling pre-Collapse lab, half-sunk into the Pacific depths.
And it was active.
The Abyss had been waiting.
Its presence curled through the water beneath the Sutherland flagship, a shadow so vast it dwarfed the vessel. Yuchen stood at the rail, staring down into the dark.
He didn't need to call it.
It already knew.
The water parted—just enough to reveal a single, massive eye.
"You knew," Yuchen said.
The Abyss's voice was the tide pulling at his bones.
"I REMEMBERED."
The memory hit like a tidal wave.
2025. A lab buried beneath the waves. Scientists in Wei-Xing uniforms crowding around a tank. Inside, a creature thrashed—part whale, part something older. Wires pierced its flesh, machines forcing its evolution.
A console flashed red.
The creature screamed.
And the ocean answered.
Yuchen gasped, wrenching free.
The Abyss's eye held him.
"THEY AWOKE US TOO SOON. TOO CRUEL."
A shudder ran through the ship.
Not from the Abyss.
From the girl.
The one Dr. Lin had brought.
She stood at Yuchen's side now, her small hand gripping the rail.
"They're doing it again," she whispered.
The Abyss's rage was a living thing.
"NOT WHILE I BREATHE."
They gathered at dawn—what remained of the coalition. Sutherland warships. Valois stealth craft. Luo skimmers. And at the center, bobbing gently on the waves, the small fleet of liberated children.
They needed no vessels.
The sea carried them.
Jiang checked his rifle with methodical precision. "This is suicide."
Vera grinned, all teeth. "Yeah."
Lucien adjusted Versailles' neural-linked harness. The peacock's eyes gleamed with unnatural intelligence. "The Valois Council wants it on record that they strongly disapprove."
"Noted," Yuchen said.
He looked to the horizon.
To the storm gathering over the ruin.
To the children waiting, silent and still.
Xing pressed against his leg.
"Let's finish this."
The ruin wasn't dead.
It breathed.
Pumps wheezed in the flooded corridors. Flickering lights illuminated tanks where shapes still floated. And at its heart—
A Titan.
Not like the others.
This one was alive.
Flesh and metal woven together, its chest rising and falling in a grotesque mockery of sleep. Wires fed into its spine, into its skull, into the dozens of pods embedded in its ribs.
Each one held a child.
Each one was awake.
Their silver eyes tracked Yuchen as he entered.
Their voices whispered in his skull.
"You came."
The control room was a shrine to madness. Screens flickered with decades of data—experiments, dissections, progress. And at the center, strapped to a chair, a withered figure in a Wei-Xing uniform.
The scientist looked up.
His eyes were silver.
"You're too late," he rasped.
The Titan moved.
The battle was short.
Brutal.
The awakened children didn't fight.
They sang.
A soundless hymn that shook the ruin, that made the Titan stumble. Its flesh peeled back, revealing the core—not machine, not beast, but something in between.
Something suffering.
Yuchen raised his pistol.
The scientist laughed.
"You think this ends with me? With them?" He spat blood. "We're in every faction. In every lab. You'll never—"
Xing's teeth found his throat.
Silence.
The Titan shuddered.
Then collapsed.
The pods burst open.
The children stepped free.
And from the depths, the Abyss answered.
Its voice was the last thing Yuchen heard before the world went white.
"SLEEP NOW, LITTLE BROTHERS. I WILL KEEP YOU SAFE."
Consciousness returned in fragments.
Sunlight on water.
The smell of salt and burning metal.
Xing's weight across his chest.
Yuchen opened his eyes.
The ruin was gone.
Only the sea remained.
And the children.
They stood at the water's edge, their hands linked, their silver eyes bright.
Waiting.
Song Lihua knelt beside him, her smile softer now.
"It's over," she said.
Yuchen knew it wasn't true.
Knew the war would rage on in shadows, in secrets.
But for now—
For this moment—
The waves were calm.
The children were free.
And the Abyss watched over them all.