Vael'Tris – Day Zero
The skies didn't split from thunder. They didn't churn from storms.
They peeled open—torn by fire and steel raining from orbit.
Null Sanctum drop pods tore through the upper atmosphere, friction screaming against their hulls.They fell in columns—perfect formations that blotted out the sun like iron eclipses.
They didn't land. They struck. And where they struck, the world went silent.
Entire sectors—gone in seconds. Fusion anomalies vaporized mid-transformation. Warlord enclaves reduced to craters. Cyber-mutants burned into shadows stamped onto the walls behind them.
Some fought back. Some even won—briefly.
But it didn't matter.
Because they never stopped coming.
The Ghost Soldiers
They did not shout. They did not signal.
They moved as if the same heartbeat drove every limb—except they had no heartbeat.
Silent. Synchronized. Surgical.
Blades grew like bone tumors from forearms mid-charge. Ribs split and reknit around shattered plating as they advanced. Heads rotated 180 degrees with a wet, grinding click when flanked.
Sever a limb? They fought harder. Crush their spine? They crawled for your throat.
No heat signatures to track. No adrenal spikes to anticipate. No fear to exploit.
Vael'Tris was a planet of survivors—freaks of failed experiments, scavenger kings, black-market war-machines—And still, they were being erased.
The defenders fought like hell. Not for victory. Not for themselves.
They fought to buy time.
Time for Damien Thorne and Sera to reach the evac ridge.
Sera watched the battlefield from the craggy cliffside. Below, the Ghosts were swarming over the ruins of three districts at once.
Her voice was low. "This isn't war. This is a system purge."
Damien's fists clenched—skin tightening over scarred knuckles. His jaw worked once before he answered.
"It's worse. It's a message."
Then the Air Shifted
No sound. No warning.
Just weight.
The wind slowed. The dust suspended in the air refused to fall. The gravity pressed heavier, bending knees without consent.
A capsule crater smoldered below them—black glass stretching out from the impact like spiderweb fractures.
And from its heart… he rose.
GOD-KILLER
No mask. No armor.
Bare skin, pale as scorched bone, traced with ridged neural conduits like roots beneath flesh. Each one pulsed faint red—as if molten iron had been poured into his veins.
His eyes weren't white. They weren't empty.
They were calculating.
His gaze locked on Damien. His head tilted—almost curious.
"Starborn."
The voice was wrong. Too smooth. Like a child imitating human speech for the first time.
Damien rolled his shoulders, cracking his knuckles. "You must be the welcome committee."
Sera didn't look away from him. Her whisper was a warning. "Damien… that's not just another fighter."
"I know."
The Clash
He moved first.
Not faster than light—but faster than thought.
No shift in stance. No tell in the shoulders. Just there.
Damien caught the strike by instinct—Forearm to forearm—The impact detonated a shockwave that flattened trees for miles.
They traded ten blows in the space of a single breath.
Damien ducked under a blade-arm, came up with an uppercut—God-Killer bent mid-air like his spine had no limits, countered with a horizontal kick.
Damien caught the heel, hurled him—The killer twisted in-flight, landed in a sliding crouch, surged forward without pause.
Every strike Damien threw—dodged by centimeters too perfect to be human instinct. Every counter that landed—perfect inversions of Damien's own fighting rhythm, as though the killer had learned his entire style before the fight even began.
But the X-01 armor responded.
It pulsed with heat. Muscles synched tighter. The rhythm shifted—Damien broke free of all known styles.
The fight slowed to a razor's edge.
Damien: stance solid, breathing even.
God-Killer: no stance, no visible breath. Just waiting.
"You're not fighting to win," Damien said. "You're fighting to end something."
God-Killer blinked once. "You are anomaly. I am correction."
They launched.
And the world fractured.
Stone split from the pressure. The ridge itself groaned under the force.
It wouldn't end here—because Sera's emergency beacon blared, and the evac ship screamed overhead.
"The ship's ready! We stay, we die!"
Damien planted his feet, wound up, and put every ounce of momentum into one final blow—His fist cracked against God-Killer's jaw.
It staggered him. Didn't break him. Didn't bleed him.
But it made him pause.
Damien stepped back. "We'll finish this."
God-Killer didn't follow. He just watched. Recording.
As the siblings lifted off, Vael'Tris burning beneath them, Sera gripped the armrest. Damien kept staring out the viewport.
"We need to warn Earth."
"About what?" she asked.
His eyes stayed on the stars.
"That something worse than evolution is coming."