The flames bloomed—vast flowers of fire opening across the sky in slow, terrible grace. Each petal unfurled from ruptures torn in the heavens, dropping embers like seeds into the bones of the world. Debris scythed down in hissing arcs, and the light should have been orange, should have been familiar, but instead it burned violet: a bruise-colored radiance that sickened the horizon.
Nothing alive could stop what was coming.
The world burned in an eclipsing explosion that swallowed the sun. Mortar-comets drifted down through the haze—unsteady, hunting—and wherever they kissed the earth, streets folded, roofs collapsed, and people who had been running a breath ago became still shapes beneath falling ash. Cities had already fallen. Towns were fields of wreckage and silence. The violet mist threaded everything, muting chaos, and devouring sound
At the charred heart of one city, a tower still stood. Ivory, once. Glass and steel bones raised like a crown over the skyline. Its dome was gone now, sheared off in one clean bite, and what remained leaned, windows shedding like scales. Through the jagged crown, the violet mist poured in coils, humming with an electric whisper. To those who looked up from the ruined streets, it might have seemed a trick—smoke shaped into patterns too deliberate to be storm. But there was more than storm inside. Blue arcs strobed in the upper floors. Screens spasmed, died, then woke again. Something whirled in the heart of the damage, a presence the eye tried to avoid and could not.
A figure stood at its center.
Black armor swallowed him, scarred and dulled by impact. Seals blistered, plates dented, visor dark enough to drink the light. Boots sank into powdered concrete. His hand shook once, then stilled against a ruined console. Each breath left his mask as a faint white cloud, shredded instantly by the mist's hungry curl.
"...nghh..."
The sound came from the far corner.
Xavier turned his head, muscles stiff as stone, and found himself slumped against the wall. Dark skin streaked with ash, long hair frizzed loose from a braid, beard stiff with dried blood. Tattooed fingers clutched a weapon that wasn't whole—a pistol disassembled into floating fragments, pieces orbiting a glowing blue core like planets bound by a surgeon's precision.
His armor matched Xavier's make but wore worse for the years: glassy plating fractured into spiderwebs, veins of soft azure pulsing faintly through seams, all feeding into the hollow circle at his chest. Within that circle, a gear shivered—never spinning cleanly, only quivering in place, its hum syncing with the failing power around them.
The man in black broke the silence. His voice cut straight, soft as a knife laid flat across a throat.
"You're the last... Maven. Why still fight it?"
Xavier raised his head. His visor fed him data, numbers, warnings, irrelevant. He ignored it all and let his eyes do the work: the other's stance, the tilt of his head, the hitch in his right shoulder. He filed them away. He smiled without humor.
"For the same reason you claim this war is for..."
"My mission isn't yours, boy," the man answered, voice steady, merciless. "You're a pebble in my path."
"And yet," Xavier rasped, his throat raw, "here you are—bleeding."
The visor caught the angle just right. There: a ragged wound cutting across Silas's face, skin peeled back, untreated. The kind of injury that should have ended a life. Silas stood as if it meant nothing. His hand, when he thought no one was watching, trembled.
He stilled it by force of will.
"I've killed everyone you ever loved," he said, and the tower seemed to echo him—cables groaning, ribs creaking. "Your governments. Your cities. Your peacemakers. All ash. And you mock me with scars?"
His voice rolled against the broken dome and fell back heavy with ash. Dust sifted from the open crown, a slow gray snow.
Xavier coughed, spat blood onto cracked stone. His mouth was pennies and smoke.
"T...tone it down," he wheezed. "Let me die in fucking peace, bastard."
The visor turned. His own reflection stared back: hair matted, eyes bloodshot, lips crusted with red. He could see the suit's veins pulsing too fast, the gear in his chest ticking like a clock that had forgotten how to keep time.
His voice came steady despite it.
"We will fix this," he said. "No matter what you've taken."
The brace at his knee protested when he shifted. A warm wetness crept up his thigh where the armor's seal had failed. The blue glow at his seams faltered red, ashamed, then fought its way back.
"Ever since you showed up," he said, breath shallow. "Everything's gone left. You've been pulling the strings all along."
Silas tilted his head—a serpent pretending curiosity.
"You speak like a child," he said. "Think like one. Move like one. For someone as clever as you."
Xavier's jaw tightened. The visor's edge had cut his cheek; the blood was drying, tacky against his mouth.
"Half right," he said. "Completely wrong."
Silas lifted his left hand and pressed it into the air.
The world tore open. Not like fabric—like flesh. Violet light bled out of the wound. The sky answered: every ribbon of mist bent inward, as if the heavens themselves had inhaled.
Silas pulled something from the rupture.
A head.
Clean severed at the neck. Vertebrae clattered against one another like teeth. The skin was ash-gray, the hair frizzed with soot. The mouth hung open—not in scream, not in awe, but in shock.
Xavier's body broke first. His lungs forgot air. His chest locked. The HUD muttered about pulse spikes, temperature drops, things that meant nothing. His vision narrowed to the shape in Silas's grip.
Hunter.
His brother in everything but blood. The one who had been there since the start—loud, reckless, unbreakable in all the ways Xavier never was. Hunter had been the laugh that carried through barracks walls, the dumb joke in the middle of gunfire, the first hand up whenever Xavier stumbled. If G.H.O.S.T. was a machine, Hunter was the gear that made it bearable.
And now there was only the echo of him.
Xavier's mind rebelled against it, clawed for something—anything—other than that final crack of bone. And what surfaced was memory.
HQ, years ago.
Hunter leaning in the corridor, beer in hand, watching with a grin as Xavier came out of his quarters half-dressed, hair a wreck, his other half Toya's nails still traced on his neck. Toya herself had appeared behind him in his hoodie, smirking like she wanted to be caught.
Hunter had pointed with the bottle, his laugh loud enough to rattle the glass.
"Goddamn, bro. You finally did it. You let somebody get past your walls."
Xavier muttered something sharp, tried to brush past, but Hunter didn't let it drop. He never did. He grabbed Xavier by the shoulders, grin wide as hell, and said the words that stuck harder than any lecture Grim had ever given:
"Don't fuck this up. You get me? 'Cause you might walk like a weapon, but even weapons need someone to carry 'em home."
That was Hunter—cutting straight to the core with a joke, then twisting it into something true. The brother who teased him, pushed him, but always believed in him.
And now Xavier would never hear that laugh again. Never hear the stupid jokes, never feel that hand on his shoulder, never hear him say "I got you" before charging headfirst into hell.
The silence left in its place was louder than war.
Now it was gone—replaced by the wet crunch of Silas's fist closing.
The sound was obscene. Bone cracked. Flesh tore. Fragments slid to the floor, leaving a spreading black stain across the concrete. The last link of spine swung once, twice, then fell like a string cut loose.
"NO!"
It tore out of Xavier without thought, without permission. Raw anger. The tower threw it back, echoing the grief. The violet mist pulsed—once, twice—like it had learned his pain.
Outside, something vast burned and fell. Inside, a screen cracked into a starburst and died. The gear in Xavier's chest lurched, then spun so fast it blurred into a halo.
Silas watched him. Patient as the tides.
The violet wind poured down through the broken dome like breath being drawn.
And the devil smiled, without showing teeth.
The violet mist thickened, curling at Xavier's boots like a living thing.
Fear had burned out miles ago, somewhere between the first body and the forty-seventh floor. What was left wasn't fear, wasn't even rage. It was leaner, heavier. A hot coal buried deep behind the breastbone—measured, merciless, the kind of fire that never went out until it ate everything in the room.
His lips parted. His voice was raw iron.
"Orion Protocol."
Not a shout. A command. A kinked trigger finally pulled.
The suit listened.
The hollow gear in his chest spun once, juddered, then blurred into a ring of white fire. Plates locked into place with sharp kisses of steel. Blue vein-light bled red, arterial and angry, racing through conduits under the armor. Nanofiber crept up his throat, sealed his jaw, spread across his face until it was a visor sleek as a guillotine blade.
HUD cascaded alive. Enemy vitals. Kill trajectories. Collision forecasts. The arithmetic of murder.
Thrusters purred—low, leashed thunder, begging to be loosed.
CRACKLE.
POOMF. POOMF.
BOOM.
Pain flared through his ruined knee, bright and obscene. Anger shoved it down, sat in the driver's seat.
The pistol hummed alive in his right hand, full-auto ready. In his left, a blade whispered free from its gauntlet housing—Latin etched along its steel caught by the cracked roof's light.
Across the rubble, Silas cocked his head. His visor gave nothing back.
"Come," he said. The word was a dare and a promise.
Xavier went.
Thrusters kicked. The world dissolved into velocity. His boots hammered the floor twice before he became a streak of black and heat ripping through violet haze.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Blue tracer-fire spat murder in syllables. Each bullet etched a neat word in the air: kill.
Silas slid through them like smoke had hands. The air tore open at his flanks—raw wounds leaking violet—and from one he pulled an axe. Double-headed. Black as volcanic glass, veins of molten red throbbing at the edges. It hummed the same wrong note as the mist—a bass growl that lived in your teeth.
When steel met steel, it wasn't a sound. It was a fracture. The world cracked around them. Sparks sheeted bright, showering the floor. The tower groaned like an animal trying not to die.
A cable snapped above. It came down like a whip, missed Xavier's head by inches, and split a console clean in two.
Debris sheared off the ceiling, chunks plummeting into the violet fog. The mist licked at the edges of every impact like an audience pressing closer, hungry for blood.
Hunter's voice slid into Xavier's skull. A memory.
You think too much when you fight, Xav. Let the body move. The brain's too slow for seconds like this.
Then why do I always beat you?
Because I let you.
Xavier buried the ache with the other fallen and filed it in the fire.
Warnings blinked in his HUD:
MIST INTERFERENCE — CRITICAL.
AMMUNITION — 64%.
STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY — COMPROMISED.
He looked through them.
Feint high. Drop low. Knee to chest.
CRACK.
His strike lifted Silas. Launched him through two floors, then another four. Each impact snapped steel ribs like matchsticks. Xavier's knee screamed. Thrusters kicked. He dove, turning the fall into a guided descent through collapsing architecture.
Rebar clawed his armor. Glass carved sparks from his plates. The city rushed closer.
Silas braced on a column mid-fall. Axe already swinging.
Too late to dodge. The obsidian edge bit deep, carving an ugly smile across Xavier's ribs. Heat and pressure exploded under the armor. He grunted and kept moving.
The tower gave way above them. Something load-bearing gave up on bearing. The room shook, then vomited dust and concrete.
Silas's axe came down. Xavier caught it with his blade. The shock punched electricity up his arms, rattled his teeth. Glass shattered against his feet.
He spat blood into his visor, and roared through it.
"Fuck your axe."
Instinct took over.
His palm slammed the floor. Thrusters ignited. He surged up under Silas's guard, blade low and merciless. The edge chewed through the axe haft in a scream of metal, and kept going. Three fingers spun away into the mist like black dice tossed by a cruel dealer.
"GAHHH—!"
The phantom staggered, clutching the ruin of his hand. For a flicker, rage or shock flared behind that visor—something human, ugly, alive.
Xavier's HUD chimed: TARGET FLOOR—CLOSE PROXIMITY.
He didn't wait. He speared forward, shoulder driving Silas back, thrusters burning white-hot. Each impact shook the building's bones.
"This—" BOOM.
"...is for—" BOOM.
"...the fallen!"
The last strike sent Silas to the edge. His mask fractured like a cracked skull. Blood traced a line down his jaw, red and real.
Then the floor itself surrendered. Steel screamed, concrete split. They dropped.
They fell.
Xavier rode the fall with short thruster bursts.
Controlled chaos. Keep it vertical. Don't tumble. Don't black out.
Dust bloomed thick. Rebar stabbed down like spears. A corpse of someone's research drone spun past and shattered against the next level.
He hit the R&D floor hard. Knees bent. Brace howled. Armor took the edge, left him shaking and awake.
The lab was a graveyard. Once: polished floors with neon veins, benches alive with miracles, machines purring with possibility. Now: crushed girders, gutted prototypes, dreams spilled in wire and glass. The air stank of ozone, hot metal, blood.
Silas landed two beats after. Axe gone. Rage not so much.
Xavier limped toward the control core, dragging pain behind him. Blood left a slick trail in pale dust. He didn't stop moving. Didn't dare.
His fingers danced over cracked screens. Old codes opened. A name bloomed across his HUD like a curse.
PROJECT: ECLIPSE.
The floor split. Something vast rose from the lab's belly. An alloy ring, twenty meters across. Its rim crawled with lightning. Inside: the air convulsed, angles bent, reality boiled.
The gate.
It hummed in his teeth.
He reached into a broken bench. Fingers found the latch by memory. A scatter of metallic cubes waited inside. One touch, and they snapped together, hungry, forming a block that pulsed with red veins. Warm. Alive.
He turned back.
Silas was gone.
No wound in the air. No ripple. No trace. One moment he existed. The next: edited out.
Xavier's HUD screamed zeros. Heat scans. EM residue. Nothing.
The cube pulsed in his hand, keeping time with the gate.
The room ticked as it cooled. The violet mist slithered down through the gap above, testing the charge, recoiling, then returning—because hunger always returns.
Xavier slid the cube into a mag-pocket at his hip. It thudded like a second heart.
The gate whispered with its hum. The city tore itself down above. The mist learned new ways to breathe.
He said Hunter's name once, silently, and shut the door on it.
Then Xavier Bridger stood with the cube in his pocket, blood in his mouth, and the violet gate alive before him.
The fight was over.
The nightmare wasn't.
Xavier stood very still in a room that had forgotten how and listened to the hum until it mapped itself onto his heartbeat.
He didn't move.
He didn't speak.
He simply waited with the gate in slight fear as it regulated while the city tore itself down and the mist learned to accustom itself to a new sphere shape.
The cube beat in Xavier's palm, hot and alive like a heart ripped fresh from a chest.
He stared at it, and the world fell away. No violet mist. No ruined tower. No dead friends. Just her.
Toya.
Sitting on his workbench that night before this hell, curls falling loose over her flushed face, the glow of half-dead monitors painting bronze shadows on her smooth skin. Her thighs wrapped tight around his waist, ankles locked at the small of his back, as if she could hold him inside her forever.
He remembered the way she gasped when he pushed into her—tight, wet, perfect. The way her nails dug crescents into his shoulders, dragging down hard enough to sting.
"Xav," she moaned, the sound pitched high, half-broken, half-daring him to ruin her.
He fucked her like he was trying to. Like he was trying to leave fingerprints on her bones. His hips slammed against hers, rough enough to rattle tools and scatter screws across the bench. The slap of skin on skin echoed in the little lab, drowned only by her cries.
She clawed at his locs, yanked his head back, forced him to look at her—eyes glassy, mouth open, lips swollen from his teeth. Her sweat slicked his chest; he bent to lick a line up her throat, tasting salt, tasting her.
"Harder," she begged, her voice breaking. "Fuck me harder."
And he did. Every thrust drove her back on the bench until it squealed under them, her tits bouncing against his chest, her cunt squeezing him tighter the closer she got. She screamed when she came, body bowing off the bench, legs clamped around him like she could drag him down into her. He felt her gush against him, soaking his cock, and that pushed him over the edge.
He came inside her with a ragged groan, hips jerking, cock twitching deep. His whole body shuddered as he spilled into her, tears hot on his face, mixing with sweat as he held her like a man who didn't want to ever let go.
Toya's nails softened to strokes, her lips brushing his neck as she panted against his skin. "I love you," she whispered into the dark, her voice small but sure.
He'd wanted to say it back. The words had been right there, heavy on his tongue, but they felt too fragile. Too small. So he just held her tighter, rocking them both, trying to memorize the weight of her trembling body on top of him.
Now she was gone.
Ash. A whisper.
All that remained was the cube, pulsing in his palm like a second heart.
Xavier clenched it so hard the edges bit his skin.
The violet haze curled at the edges of the portal's ring like an animal scenting prey, tendrils dragging through the air in slow, deliberate sweeps.
The shimmer inside wasn't steady—glass-clear one moment, crawling with static the next, warping the wreckage beyond as if reality itself wasn't sure it wanted this thing here.
Xavier pushed himself toward it, every step limping, armor scorched and battered, HUD coughing scrambled symbols across his vision. The cube beat in his palm like it wanted out.
Then pain detonated across his jaw.
The strike came from his blind side, hard enough to dent the cheek plate of his helmet. His ears rang. The HUD dissolved into static snow. His teeth clicked together like a trigger.
He staggered two paces, boots grinding glass. A shadow resolved in the glow of the gate.
Silas.
The axe was gone. In its place, a violet-black blade slick as glass and patient as a butcher's grin. Three fingers missing on the off-hand, but the stance didn't care.
"I was facing gods for a minute," Silas rasped, blood in his teeth. "I'll grant you that small victory. Helox-infused, wasn't it? How did you know it would work?"
Xavier spat blood. "I didn't."
The phantom came low, blade angled for the artery behind Xavier's brace. Xavier twisted with it—metal screamed, pain lit white up his leg—but his pistol was already at Silas's chest.
Two pulls.
BANG. BANG.
Blue-white muzzle flash cracked the haze. Armor shivered, staggered, but Silas didn't fold. He advanced.
The HUD coughed back three icons, faint but pulsing. Beacons. One in the wall. One near the ring. One half-buried in debris. The net. Waiting.
Silas lunged again, fast as a whip. Xavier gave ground, deliberate, measured, keeping him inside the perimeter.
That was the opening.
His gauntlet snapped. The Helox blade shot free from its forearm cradle, magnetic launch hurling it wide—past Silas, into the far-wall beacon.
The field snapped shut.
Steel curved midair, pulled by math and malice, and buried itself in Silas's chest. The sound was a bell soaked in blood. Purple light bled from the wound, ran the armor's veins, evaporated before it touched the floor.
"You'll fail," Silas hissed, teeth pink. "I'll kill them all again."
The crack across Xavier's visor caught the gate's glow, fracturing it into shards.
"I know," Xavier said. "That's why this whole place is wired to blow."
Silas's face twitched. Rage, realization—maybe both.
Xavier palmed the cube. Its vein hammered frantic against his skin. He hurled it into the gate.
No ripple. The portal swallowed it whole.
The room answered with explosions of blue light. Heat surged. Air ionized sharp with ozone, sweet with insulation burning. The pull reversed—sucking inward now, violent as a collapsing star. Armor plates tore loose. Tools rose like birds. Mist leaned, peeled away in long ribbons, dragged into the shimmer.
Silas braced, hand clamped around the Helox wound. Xavier let the pull take him two steps from the console. Every crunch underfoot was whisper-small compared to the gate's thunder.
Silas moved.
The violet blade flashed, an inch from Xavier's throat.
Instinct. Xavier caught the wrist with his left hand, servos howling, and fired his right-side thrusters at full burn. Heat folded the air between them. Armor ground on armor. The stink of seared plating filled his helm.
He slammed his helmet into Silas's visor. Glass spiderwebbed. The blade faltered. Xavier ripped free, kicked the wound with his heel. The phantom rocked back, grunting.
The floor buckled overhead. The lights died. Only the gate burned now—blue fever and storms of sparks.
"Still you cling," Silas growled.
"Go to hell."
Xavier let the pull take him, sliding sideways, firing as he went. Single shots. Precise. The phantom advanced through them, slower now, armor bleeding violet light.
The pull dragged them both down a stairwell. Xavier landed on a catwalk that groaned under him. Silas hit a heartbeat later, graceful, sparks peeling off his armor. The walkway bucked, chains snapping. The generator bay yawned beneath them, coolant shimmering like liquid mirrors.
They ran. The catwalk bounced with every stride. Xavier's knee threatened mutiny. Silas stalked, never hurrying, always there.
"Why here?" Xavier shouted. "Why my people?"
"Because the bones were already laid," Silas said, blade trailing sparks along the rail. "Easier to break a world someone else already paid for."
"You sound proud."
"I am efficient."
Xavier jumped the failing catwalk. His knee screamed. He rolled, came up hard under a dead light bar. Silas followed in one clean step.
They fought through wreckage—shelves turned barricades, drive cores rolling like dice. Xavier stole seconds where he could: three tight rounds, a feint, a shoulder-check that nearly ripped the blade free. Silas gave ground like a tide—never because he had to.
They crashed through into a corridor strangled in cables, sparks spitting white. The ring pulled at everything. Mist crawled like veins.
Then the balcony above the lab.
The gate filled the room below like a second sun. Pull stronger now. Dust orbited. Broken glass hummed like it wanted to be music.
Silas came at his flank. They fought close, dirty—headbutts, elbow digs, wrist locks. The balcony rails gave way, one by one, snapping down like brittle bones.
"Do you ever wonder what you're saving?" Silas hissed.
"Every day," Xavier spat—and smashed his helmet into his visor again. The crack widened. He saw the violet eye behind—wrong, burning. It took something out of him just to look at it.
They went over.
Xavier hit the floor shoulder-first, rolling. Pistol up. Silas landed on his feet, floor buckling under him. The lab was weather now—screws flowing like filings, neon lines flashing, mist recoiling and returning.
The beacons pulsed. The net tugged at the Helox in Silas's chest. He felt it. Xavier felt him feel it. Their intent met in the air like a blade crossing.
They sprinted for the console. Xavier's path jagged, Silas's straight. They met there—Xavier firing upward, rounds sparking off armor and blade, shattering more of the visor. Silas hit him like a thrown engine block. The blow dented his helmet, scrambled the HUD again.
The blade hovered at his throat. Frostbite-cold. One slip and he was done.
Xavier fired his hip thrusters, twisted them off-balance, drove his boot into Silas's knee. Something cracked but didn't give.
The gate boomed. The light changed, ocean-deep and alive.
"You've been played," Silas said, voice almost joyous. "You're clueless."
"No," Xavier gritted, wrenching the wrist down, blade scraping his collar. "I just don't know who the fuck you are."
He stabbed upward. The blade kissed armor, left a bright scar. Not enough.
The pull became a gale. Debris lifted, spiraled into the shimmer. A drone spun and vanished. A crate skidded, then flew. The broken visor sliver over Silas's eye caught the light and promised death.
The far beacon flickered. The net wavered.
"Stay," Xavier snarled. The machines didn't hear.
One chance. He let the pull sling him sideways, into the overlap of the beacons. The Helox wound hated it—Silas shifted, guard tightening.
"Come on," Xavier grinned through blood. "You wanted me. Have me."
Silas obliged. He came clean, blade writing death in the air. Xavier sidestepped at the last instant, shoulder slammed into the wound, thrusters ignited point-blank. Heat howled. The net tugged.
The blade wavered. Xavier took the inch and made it a mile. He smashed his helmet into the visor again. Third time. The crack became a hole.
He saw the eye full: violet, inhuman, old. Contempt burned in it.
"Little ghost," Silas hissed. He ripped the Helox from his chest. The wound screamed. The blade changed in his grip, becoming something stranger.
The gate roared alive. The beacons faltered. The room bent around them.
Xavier didn't flinch. He charged through the distortion, pistol raised. Point-blank.
"You know you'll fail," Silas said, calm as a grave.
BANG.
The visor shattered. Purple sprayed and died midair. Silas rocked back. Xavier shot again. BANG. The body sagged. The blade jittered, lost faith, fell.
Silence. Except for a building deciding it was finished.
Xavier tore the helmet free. Saw the face.
And flinched like he'd been hit again.
All the equations he'd ever written rearranged into an answer he wished he hadn't asked.
"No," he whispered.
The air folded. A slit widened into a door. Violet at the edges, darker where it mattered. A figure stepped through—armor black and grey, visor mirroring Xavier's own battered face.
"...Are you the real one?" Xavier breathed.
"Yes," the figure said.
The building answered with fire. The R&D sins stood up all at once, explosions chaining. The lab's spine cracked. The tower remembered gravity.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.
Walls became smoke. Floors became a distance. Xavier moved on instinct, toward a floor hatch that wasn't there anymore. The world picked him up and carried him into the collapse.
The tower burst out loud. What was left was ash, mist, and flames.
Among the wreckage, a single shard of metal burned with letters incomplete.
"G.H.O.—"
And then nothing but violet haze, learning the new shape of the world.
A console somewhere flickered, its last words:
"G.H.O.S.T. rebirth protocol activated..."