Within the territory of the Ishtar Federation, at the border fortress of Ironvale.
The air reeked of grease and overheated metal. The clatter of gears and the hurried rhythm of boots echoed through armored corridors. Soldiers marched in broken ranks, some flaunting artificial limbs of black alloy, others bearing organs reinforced with technocratic grafts. Their uniforms were always the same: black garb and armor, solid as carapaces, with details in red, blue, or purple distinguishing rank and division.
On the upper platform of the courtyard, a broad-shouldered soldier approached, a lieutenant, by the silver insignia on his collar. His right hand, made of polished metal, snapped up in a crisp salute, the metallic impact resounding against his own chest.
"Commander, all men in the fortress are at the ready. Artillery, riflemen, and scouts await your orders." The lieutenant's voice was firm, but the nervous tapping of his metal fingers against his leg betrayed a restless heartbeat.
Close behind him, the communications captain stepped forward with measured pace, his wrist-communicator still pulsing green signals. With almost ritual precision, he adjusted his ocular visor and reported:
"Contact with the capital and command center has been established. Reinforcements are expected to arrive within a week."
Silence hung for only a second before the lieutenant, stumbling over his words, blurted:"But… a week—"
The phrase died in the air. The captain did not look at him, did not falter, he simply raised his voice, trampling over the interruption: "However, these reinforcements consist solely of infantry. The teleportation system cannot support larger numbers. Only high-ranking soldiers, those with specific skills or proven usefulness, will have priority access to the TP."
The words fell like lead. The lieutenant swallowed hard, jaw clenched. He pretended to straighten his posture, eyes drifting toward the wall as if the runes carved there had suddenly become fascinating. Yet inside, the thought pulsed like venom: 'idiot… starts with that.'
The commander, motionless until then, broke the weight of the moment. He rose from the table with the precision of a drawn blade, every movement measured, his gaze sweeping over the men before him.
"Understood. Dismissed. Maintain the fortress at maximum alert." His tone was not loud, but it cut like steel, beyond dispute.
Both men saluted almost in unison before stepping back. The creak of boots echoed until the door closed, restoring silence.
Alone, the commander let out a breath, as though casting off an invisible armor. He sat, the chair groaning under the burden of decades. His fingers pressed the center of the command table, which sank with a metallic click. The surface opened, projecting a bluish screen; holograms leapt to life before his eyes.
To the left, a map of northern Astrekar glowed with vivid lines. Red points pulsed on the horizon, but one in particular, larger, moved like a breathing tumor.
"This is no place for an old man like me…" he murmured, hand dragging across his lined face. "And of all times… now, when the Archon is absent."
The commander leaned back, releasing a weary sigh. He turned to the central hologram. It shimmered unstable, flickering in blues and grays. The signal originated from the sealed region: the Forest of Souls. Amid static and tremors in the transmission, a colossal figure took shape. For fleeting moments, it was nothing more than a shadow stitched to the fog, the outline of something no man dared to name.
In the projection rose a tree unworthy of the title. To call it "large" or "immense" would profane it with words far too small. It was titanic.
Its trunk, bark pale as bleached bone, bore veins that pulsed with scarlet Vis, as if its sap were blood pumped by a heart that should not exist. From its crown cascaded crimson leaves, red as blood under a light that came from no sun. And where eyes should have been, there yawned hollow caverns glowing with a red radiance, like thousands of souls screaming in unison.
The very forest seemed to bow beneath its weight. Every root, every whisper, every shadow bent to its will. Erythros. The absolute sovereign of the Forest of Souls. Better known as the Crimsonveil Titan.
The commander remained frozen, the reflection of the projection washing his face in scarlet. His fingers, without realizing, dug into the arm of the chair. The silence in the room was as suffocating as the creature's presence; even through a hologram, its pressure was palpable, crushing.
That silence was torn apart by the dry crack of the door opening. A private, sweaty and trembling, raised his hand to his forehead before speaking, his voice faltering in the heavy air: "C-Commander…"
Without realizing it, the commander had let his Vis seep into the air, saturating the room with an invisible weight. The poor soldier trembled, nearly gasping for breath. A moment later, the veteran drew in deeply, pulling his energy back.
"Report."
The private swallowed hard and blurted, fast, as if eager to cast off the burden: "Reinforcements have arrived, sir. We were sent ten Judges, fifty Theurges, and one hundred Arbiters. No Scribes or Legislators."
The commander's jaw tightened. 'So little… not a single Legislator. What is command thinking? To discard us? To abandon the fortress?'
The private pressed on, unaware of the storm corroding his superior's thoughts: "Of the ten Judges, five carry arcane codices. The others bear equivalent artifacts."
A bitter relief escaped the commander's lips. "At least that much."
"And the mission has been classified under the objectives of: investigation, containment, and redirection. If not possible, to simply await for further commands"
His eyes rose slowly, the shadow of Erythros blazing behind the soldier in the hologram. Containment. Redirection. Against a sentient creature. Against that.
"Who, in all damnation, was the strategist of this mission?!" The words burst out louder than intended, seething with restrained fury.
"I don't know, sir!" the private answered, stiff and trembling, his quavering voice straining to mask his fear.
The commander blinked, startled, he had not expected an answer. He had made the mistake of letting his thoughts spill aloud. For an instant, silence weighed heavy in the chamber.
Ignoring the lapse, he straightened, muscles taut, his jaw marked by the throbbing vein of a man who had seen too many horrors. A veteran, yes, but nothing he had faced prepared him for what now loomed before them.
He strode to the panel. Drew a firm, grounding breath. And as he activated the transmitter, his voice resounded deep, like a war bell:
"Soldiers… no." His hand clenched into a fist. "Comrades. Rise."
A pause followed, the weight of each word hanging in the air.
"Today, we do not fight only for the fortress. We fight for those who live behind these walls, for those who depend on them remaining standing. What we face is not merely a beast, it is a crisis brushing the threshold of Apocalypsis, a monster of rank S. We do not march to slay it. Our duty is another: to defend our lands… and to turn it aside."
His gaze swept across the right hologram, halting on the indistinct shadow that stared back, legs crossed, as though seated in the memory of a chair. It made no sound, yet its mere existence weighed down the room. Silence pressed, suffocating, until he forced his breath steady and raised his chin. With that gesture, he lifted the spirit of all who heard him.
"Thus, by the power vested in me as Commander of the Fortress of Ironvale… I thus invoke Protocol Aegis." His voice echoed deep, each word falling like stone upon stone. "And I declare the commencement of the Mission: Codename -Turn Around."
✦ ✦ ✦
The Forest of Souls did not begin abruptly, it crept. At its fringes, the greenery was still tame, almost ordinary: wide-crowned trees, crooked trunks, the thin calls of birds that dared remain. The air smelled of moss and damp earth, heavy, but still bearable.
A single step deeper, however, and the world changed.
Light faltered, as if the very sun hesitated to pierce the canopy. The once-familiar trees stretched into shadowy silhouettes, their trunks thickening into blackened columns, upright like funeral guardians. The green of the leaves drained away, replaced by feverish hues, veins of crimson, green, or blue winding through them, pulsing as though blood flowed just beneath the wood.
With each step, the ground sighed muffled breaths, releasing odors of cloying rot. No wind stirred, only the murmur of something unseen, whispers that scraped the ears without forming words.
Further on, the trees revealed themselves. They were no longer mere trunks, but faces carved into wood: fissures like parted mouths; hollows like empty eye sockets; deep scars suggesting deformed expressions, some screaming, some weeping, some grinning in silent rictus. And as one passed, there lingered always the sensation that these faces turned, following with invisible eyes.
The air grew heavier, charged with a vibration that hummed in the bones, as though every breath taken was a debt owed to the forest itself.
And then, at its heart, She rose.
Not a tree, but a titan. Her trunk, white and withered like bone bleached by time, towered in sepulchral silence. Her roots dragged through the earth like slumbering serpents, ensnaring all around. From her crown spilled crimson leaves, and beneath the translucent bark coursed rivers of living blood, veins pulsing to their own rhythm, an ancient heart entombed within layers of wood.
The silence did not last.
From the innards of the colossus, a fissure opened slowly, wide as a heavy eye struggling to awaken. Soon others followed, spreading across the trunk in damp cracks, reminiscent of hollowed sockets. But within them was more than emptiness: there was awareness.
The Titan saw.The Titan heard.The Titan understood.
Then, the roar was born.
It was not sound, but substance. A deep fracture that issued not from any throat, but from the wood, the soil, the roots that wove the colossus's very soul. The air shuddered. The leaves quaked. The canopies themselves bowed beneath the invisible wave that rippled outward, carrying with it a dissonant chorus, stifled laments, the cries of children, chants of shame and anguish, all fused into a single outcry without language, but with one meaning only: a meaning understood solely by those of bark and leaf.
The entire forest answered. Not in reverence, nor in jubilation, but in suspension. A mineral silence, like the held breath before a lightning bolt shatters the heavens. The chaos from before, the distant thunder of battle, the howls of the ents, the weeping of the living, was strangled in an instant. Not even the wail of the regent's offspring dared to pierce that quiet.
And all understood the signal.
The Sovereign Tree of the Forest of Souls—A Behemoth, Class S, Consciousness Level: Apocalypsis—had awakened.