The skyline bled.
From the gaping rift above Manhattan, the colossal Draconian loomed like a god of extinction — tendrils writhing, gravity trembling in its wake. It had no face. No eyes. Just a wreath of seething serpents where a head should be, each one thrashing and coiling in defiance of physics.
And then… it's "head" began to molt.
Live on every screen.
Drones from VoxNex Global — the dominant news net of the western hemisphere — swarmed overhead like digital vultures, capturing every angle in high-definition panic. Holograms bloomed across Times Square, broadcasting the unfolding horror:
"BREAKING — CODE OMEGA. THE FOURTH COLOSSUS HAS BREACHED. THE ENTITY HAS BEEN DESIGNATED: THE MEDUSA."
Its tendrils peeled open one by one — not shedding, but spawning.
Thousands of throbbing, black-veined eggs unfurled from the slithering vestiges and billowed skyward like spores from a ruptured bloom. They fell across the city in streaks of violet heat, embedding into concrete, rooftops, and steel.
And then they hatched.
The streets screamed.
From each shell burst something feral — human-sized serpents clad in slick black scales, their jaws unhinged to reveal rows of hooked teeth. Clawed limbs tore through wreckage. Acid sprayed in arcs, melting steel beams, Solborn wings, and human flesh alike.
But they weren't feeding on blood.
They were hunting power.
Electric junctions. Transit hubs. Generators.
Anything alive with heat or charge.
They moved in swarms — chaos with purpose.
Drawn by power, by current, by soul.
They fed not only on infrastructure, but on life.
Humans screamed as their bodies were flayed by acid, then torn apart in frenzied maws. Solborns, radiant and winged, fell from the sky as claws dragged them down, their resonance consumed like nectar. Wherever energy pulsed — whether machine or mortal — the beasts hunted it.
No distinction.
Only hunger.
A shadow dropped through the broken roof — fast, silent, predatory.
No warning. Just the rush of displaced air.
Then impact.
The floor buckled. Tatami mats flew like leaves. Shattered lanterns rained glass. A serpent-thing crouched where their table once stood, limbs splayed, tail coiled, acid hissing in smoking puddles. It rose slowly, revealing a grotesquely muscular form—arms bent in reverse at the elbows, ending in glistening blades instead of hands. Its head was nearly as massive as its torso, crowned with a folded, ridged forehead. Below, an unhinged jaw gaped open, leaking trails of green mucus that hissed where they touched the ground.
Its scaled head snapped toward them — six eyes glowing like furnace coals.
Across the ruined suite, two figures stood unflinching amid the ruin.
Jinhai raised his hand, palm glowing cold.
With a shimmer, Icefang formed — coalescing from a swirl of blue-white resonance. It stretched tall as he was, edges glowing with internal frost, humming with restrained violence.
Beside him, Soryn's eyes narrowed.
She touched the pendant at her throat — a dragon's fang etched with ancient glyphs. Her fingers pulsed with flame, and the glyphs ignited, glowing with gilded flame.
"Eclipse."
The air bent around her.
From fire and memory, her spear answered the call — a black-dragon glaive with an oil-slick sheen, crowned with a glowing flame-tassel that danced like a living sun. As she gripped it, the weapon ignited fully, casting her in a storm of smoldering gold and searing red.
Two warriors. One frozen in focus. The other burning with resolve.
And all around them, the serpents closed in.
Jinhai was already in motion — Icefang carving an arc of frostlight through the serpent's charge. The creature froze mid-lunge, its skull encased in crystalline ice, split clean through by the blade's edge.
Soryn followed a heartbeat later.
Her spear — Eclipse — glowed from within, its ebony shaft streaked with flickers of solar flame. She cleaved through the remains without pause, plumed fire trailing behind her like a comet's tail.
Another serpent burst through the sliding door. Two more crashed in behind it, writhing and snapping.
Jinhai raised his palm. Frost erupted in a shielded arc — a glimmering wall that caught a jet of acid midair, turning the liquid to harmless steam. "Left!" he shouted.
Soryn spun and drove Eclipse through the beast's throat, then pulled it free in a whirl of searing light. The floor hissed beneath their feet, boiling from contact. Jinhai stabbed low — Icefang cleaving through muscle and bone — then swept up, freezing the last serpent in mid-scream.
Their rhythm was unspoken. Fluid. Practiced.
Outside the shattered walls, chaos reigned. The swarm had spread.
Hundreds — no, thousands — of the serpent creatures filled the streets below, attacking anything alive with heat or current. Humans ran screaming. Solborns fell from the sky, limbs dissolving in bursts of steam.
But the air changed.
From above, dark shadows descended — angular, brutal shapes streaking through the clouds like iron fangs. UNEX carriers. Dozens of them, flanked by NEXUS-class drone wings and omega-trooper drop pods. The ground trembled as mechanized Cerberus units hit the pavement — each one a towering bipedal warframe powered by soul-reactor cores. Energy rifles locked to shoulders, their humming barrels tracked the target with surgical precision—sleek, midnight gray frames gleaming faintly beneath the HUD-glow of synchronized war helms.
No hesitation. No fear. The machines moved like predators unleashed.
And above them all, watching from the edge of a descending command vessel — a figure cloaked in polished steel, backlit by the smoldering sky.
Zevran Vale.
His face was hidden behind a mask of silver composite — no eye holes, no breath ports. Just a blank helm etched with Deepwell runes and UNEX sigils, gleaming with the light of his personal resonance field. His cloak swirled around him, stitched from armored mesh and filament lines.
He didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
The battlefield obeyed.
With a slow lift of his hand, Zevran Vale issued a silent command.
From his armored gauntlet, a wave of silver light rippled outward — invisible to most, but unmistakable to those in sync with UNEX systems. Below, the entire warfront shifted. Troopers changed formation. Drones angled their descent. The towering Cerberus warframes moved like trained hounds, locking step in perfect unison.
Zevran didn't shout orders. He didn't need to. His will flowed through the battlefield like current through wire — calm, cold, exact.
Below, chaos raged — acid screams, broken steel, bodies crumpling — but none of it reached him. Not truly. From his perch at the edge of the descending command ship, he watched it all in silence. His mask glinted in the firelight, smooth and featureless, polished like a silver mirror. There were no eye holes. No mouth. Just a gleam of unreadable metal, etched faintly with symbols no one outside UNEX understood.
Behind the mask, he saw everything.
"Lock down the arc conduits," he said, voice low and measured. "Sever their energy flow. Do not let them feed."
The Cerberus units responded instantly. Massive and brutal, they stormed through wreckage — smashing serpents underfoot, spraying fire from shoulder-mounted cannons. Omega drop troops landed behind them, rifles blazing, cutting down the swarm in coordinated arcs.
Above, swarms of NEXUS drones spiraled out in clouds — scanning, mapping, tagging. Every creature. Every body. Every source of heat or power.
Zevran adjusted the field with a small twitch of his hand.
Across the city, dozens of drones blinked in new formation. The battle was no longer chaos.
It was math.
"Sir," a voice crackled in his ear — a junior officer, uncertain. "Civilians are still scattered across sectors 3 through 5. Do we issue evacuation calls?"
Zevran didn't turn.
"If they haven't fled by now," he said, "they're part of the problem."
The officer swallowed hard and nodded.
Zevran raised his hand again — slower this time.
A single serpent lunged at a squad of UNEX soldiers, too fast for their shots to land.
Zevran clenched his fist.
The creature halted mid-air — suspended as if caught in glass.
It writhed, hissing.
He twisted his wrist.
The thing folded inward with a sickening crunch — collapsing like wet paper — and fell, limp, onto the ground.
"Proceed," Zevran said.
The voice of UNEX.
Unshaken. Absolute.
And from the rooftops, far above him, Jinhai watched the mask gleam — and felt something colder than the storm creeping through his veins.
—END CHAPTER 5—