Everything was chaos.
Ash knelt over the trooper, the wakizashi buried deep in the man's chest. The soldier twitched a few times before his eyes went blank. Ash didn't move until the voice came.
"[Vanquished.]"
It rang in the air in his own voice, stripped bare of warmth, like someone had recorded him and drained out everything human.
Ash pulled the blade free, slow enough that the scrape of steel against bone almost drowned beneath the battlefield noise. He stood and took in the wreckage.
The mine had been a quiet pit a few hours ago. Now it was a pit all right, but an open grave. Blood soaked the ground. Troopers in black and violet uniforms lay everywhere, rifles half-buried in dirt and ash like children had thrown them away. Fire clawed at the edges of the horizon, belching smoke until the sky gave up pretending it was still day. Most of the dead had his hand in it. The rest belonged to someone who enjoyed this circus far more than he ever would.
Ash looked up.
Tyson floated above the ruins, flames streaming from him like broken wings. Behind him an Apex ship was coming apart, burning as it fell, pieces scattering like shrapnel across the sky.
And through all of it, Ty smiled. Not relief or pride but something sharper. He wore the face of a man who found joy in the screams, as though every death only confirmed his view that the world had finally started making sense.
Ash exhaled slowly, his voice too low for anyone but himself.
"Of course you're smiling."
He turned his head toward the miners. Some had fled. Some were crushed under debris from the falling ship. Others were caught in stray fire. And yes, a few had been killed by Ty, though Ash knew his brother's rules well enough. Ty never killed for sport. Only when pushed. The miners who had picked up arms after losing their jobs to Team Vortex's payday had found out what that meant.
The sky cracked open with a roar. Ash's head snapped toward the sound. In the distance three Apex ships swarmed a lone vessel, tearing into it with laser fire. One went down in flames, but the lone ship did not escape clean. It managed to unleash a storm of missiles, shredding one opponent, but the last two had struck true. The ship lurched, burning as it spiraled toward the far horizon.
Ash's detached stare shattered. His eyes widened. His voice tore raw from his throat.
"Shit—Max!"
Ty touched down beside him, with the calmest expression Ash had ever seen.
"Stop screaming. Max isn't dead. He wouldn't have picked that fight if he couldn't win."
Ash ignored him. He gripped the wakizashi tighter and started forward. He didn't get far. Three Apex ships dropped in front of them, blocking the way. Ramps clanged down and troopers poured out, rifles raised.
Ash cursed under his breath and shifted his stance. Ty's hand tapped his shoulder. Ash turned. That damned grin was back on his brother's face, almost mocking.
"Leave them to me," Ty said. "I'll carve a path. Go find Max."
Ash gave a tight nod. Ty stepped ahead of him, eyes locked on the line of troopers who had already taken aim. Just as their rifles lit up, a wall of fire roared to life, swallowing the front line and cooking the weapons in their hands until they cracked apart.
Ty raised his glowing palm. His voice carried like a casual joke.
"You saw what we did here. And still you lined up to die."
Some of the troopers faltered. Too late. The fire in Ty's hand surged forward, not a single massive blast but a wave that rolled and twisted like a living thing. It ripped through the ranks, setting uniforms ablaze, chewing gaps into their formation. Those who didn't burn outright dove for cover, leaving a corridor scorched open across the field.
Ash ran. He didn't look back. With anyone else, maybe he would have hesitated. But the one he left behind was Ty, and Ty was the strongest of the three.
Not just because of his tier six vessel, though that alone put him above almost anyone else alive. His soul had reached the fifth stage. That made him an Ascended few could rival. In a world already cracking under the weight of monsters like the Apex, Ty was one of the rare men people whispered about as unstoppable.
Ash kept running. His lungs burned, but that wasn't what slowed him — it was the wall that rose in front of him. Not the kind you build to keep people out, but the kind the earth made when someone decided digging a pit the size of a small city was a good idea.
The open-pit mine stretched out like a crater carved by a god too bored to care about symmetry. Jagged walls, layers of stone peeled back into ugly terraces. Dust clung to everything. The kind of place where machines bigger than houses crawled around while miners sweated their lives away. Or used to. Now the machines were smoking carcasses and the miners were scattered, half running, half clawing at the walls like rats in a barrel.
'Running where?' Ash wondered.
There was nowhere to run. This wasn't home, this was some nameless rock floating in space. No ports, no settlements. Just the Apex, their ships, and the miners who'd just had their one excuse for living blown apart. Did they really think the Apex would lend out their warships for a quick getaway?
Ash ignored them. He had his own problem.
When he reached the wall, the scale hit him harder than he expected. The miners had been digging here for a long, long time. Too long. And climbing that height? For most of them, that height looks almost impossible.
Ash crouched, then launched himself upward. The ground cracked under his boots like it was offended he dared to leave it behind. Miners scrambling on the wall froze. Some just gawked at him like they'd never seen a man jump in their lives. Others pretended not to see him, clinging harder to the stone as if that would keep their world normal.
'Yeah, good luck with that.'
People like him weren't normal. Everyone knew it. Humans came in tiers, and whether they liked it or not. most never even scraped past Tier 0 — the ordinary folk, who were soft as clay. The kind of people who broke bones tripping over rocks. Tier 1s double that. They were walking warnings, they could crush a man's bones with their bare hands. Tier 2s double that again.
And so on, up the ladder of strength and speed and everything else that made life unfair. And Ash… Ash was Tier 5. That meant he could laugh at gravity and still feel the pain afterward. A blessing and a curse, mostly a curse.
The air ripped past his ears, cold and sharp. For a second, it felt good. Like maybe he could outrun all this blood and screaming if he just jumped high enough. Then reality reminded him it had teeth.
He slammed into the ground. Stone buckled. Dust shot up. Pain carved through his leg like fire. He grit his teeth, swallowed it down, and kept running. Pain didn't matter. Pain never mattered. Not compared to Max.
Smoke painted the horizon black. That was his path. That was where answers were, where his brother had to be.
Then came the shapes.
At first, one figure. Then two. Then dozens. By the time he slowed, it was a forest of silhouettes.
Men, his mind told him. Survivors maybe. But hope was a cruel comedian. Up close, the joke became clear.
The thing ahead had the body of a man, sure, if you squinted hard and ignored the nightmare parts. Its skin was stone, cracked and jagged, like a statue someone carved while blindfolded. Faint light pulsed inside those cracks, a sick ember glow. Its head had no face, only a smooth, empty surface, like someone had started sculpting features, got bored, and threw it into the fire.
It breathed.
The sound was wrong. Not human breath, but a cavern groaning, air dragging itself through hollow tunnels.
And there were hundreds of them just standing there.
'Great. Statues that breathe. Because that's not unsettling at all.' Ash thought.
He didn't stop. He didn't even try to look back. The smoke was closer, the crash site looming large, black against black.
If Max wasn't there, then Ash didn't want to think about where he was.