The return to Station Zero was not a parade. It was a crash landing.
The stolen Union cargo drone, smoking from an overheated engine and piloted by a manic rat-mutant, screamed down the main ventilation shaft leading to the subterranean lake.
"Hold on!" Rix shrieked over the comms, wrestling with the joystick. "Heavy! Too heavy!"
The drone carried a payload it was never designed for: four humans and a seven-foot suit of Emperor-Rank armor made of super-dense shadow matter.
SCREEEE-CRASH.
The drone clipped the edge of the stone quay, spinning out of control. It skipped across the water like a stone, spraying black sludge everywhere, before slamming into the tiled platform of the metro station.
Sparks flew. Metal groaned.
The Iron Legion guards—Gorgon's vanguard—rushed forward, weapons raised.
"Hold fire!" Gorgon's voice boomed from the wreckage.
The giant kicked the drone's bay door open. He stumbled out, coughing, his gray paint disguise flaking off to reveal his true stone skin. He helped Lady Venom out, who looked disheveled but unharmed.
But the guards didn't look at them. They stared at what came next.
From the smoke, a figure emerged.
It was tall, clad in jagged, obsidian-black armor that seemed to absorb the light of the moss-lamps. A tattered cape of shadow-stuff swirled around it, defying the still air of the station.
It carried a limp body in its arms.
"The Sovereign!" a mutant guard gasped, dropping his spear.
The Abyssal Knight walked silently. It didn't look at the guards. It didn't look at the drone. Its empty visor was fixed on the path ahead. It walked straight to the center of the station platform and gently—tenderly—laid Varian onto a pile of supply crates.
Then, the Knight knelt.
It went rigid. The shadows swirled inward, solidifying. It became a statue, standing vigil over its master.
Silence stretched across the station. Three thousand refugees watched in terrified awe. They had seen monsters before. But this... this thing radiated a cold so deep it made their teeth ache.
"Medical!" Venom snapped, breaking the trance. "Get him to the office! He's in shock!"
The Black Hole in the Stomach
Varian dreamed of eating the sun.
He was floating in a void, and a star was in front of him. He opened his mouth and swallowed it. It burned. It burned so good. But it wasn't enough. He needed more. He needed iron. He needed flesh. He needed the world.
"Varian!"
He gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He was lying on the metal desk in the Station Master's office. Elian was standing over him, holding a damp rag to his forehead. Echo stood in the corner, her hands over her bat-ears, humming to block out some noise Varian couldn't hear.
[System Reboot.][Caloric Debt: 4,000 (Reducing).][Status: Extreme Malnutrition.]
Pain.
His stomach felt like it had collapsed in on itself. The usage of the Void Essence to escape the penthouse had drained not just his energy, but his very biomass. His skin was tight against his skull. His ribs were visible through his shirt.
"Food," Varian rasped. It wasn't a request. It was a primal demand.
"It's here," Lady Venom said.
She pushed a cart forward. It was piled high. Roasted Rust-Roach legs. Loaves of bread made from fungal flour. Cans of pre-war beans scavenged from the ruins. And three pitchers of Glow-Ale (a nutrient-dense, sugary alcohol brewed from luminescent moss).
Varian didn't use utensils.
He sat up, his hands trembling, and grabbed a roach leg. He bit through the shell and the meat in one crunch.
Chew. Swallow.
[Biomass Acquired.]
He drank a pitcher of ale in one breath.
Gulp.
[Glucose Levels Rising.]
For twenty minutes, the only sound in the room was the terrifying tearing of food. Varian ate enough to feed a squad of ten men. His Symbiote, the black tattoo on his arm, pulsed rhythmically with every bite, distributing the nutrients instantly to repair muscle fibers and replenish the Solar Core.
Finally, Varian slumped back, panting. Color was returning to his cheeks.
"I thought you were going to eat the plate," Gorgon rumbled from the doorway.
Varian wiped his mouth. "I felt like... I was hollow."
"You were," Venom said, checking a datapad. "When you linked with that Armor, your vitals dropped to near-death. It drinks life, Varian. It's a vampire."
Varian looked at his left hand. He could still feel the cold echo of the Abyssal Knight.
"Where is it?" Varian asked.
"Platform 1," Iron-Jaw buzzed. "And we have a problem. You need to see this."
The Withering Garden
Varian walked out of the office. He felt stronger, though still heavy.
He looked down at the platform.
The Abyssal Knight was exactly where he had left it. Kneeling. Silent. A monument of dark metal.
But around it, the world was dying.
The beautiful, glowing fungal gardens that lined the tracks near the Knight had turned gray. The mushrooms were shriveled, crumbling into ash. The moss on the floor was black. Even the steel rails of the train tracks looked brittle, rusted not by water, but by entropy.
A circle of death, ten meters wide, surrounded the armor.
"It leaks," Iron-Jaw explained, standing well back from the perimeter. "It radiates Void Energy. It's not radioactive, but it's... anti-life. It sucks the vitality out of the air. If we leave it there, it will kill the gardens. Then it will kill the kids."
Varian stepped into the circle.
The temperature dropped twenty degrees. The air tasted metallic.
He walked up to the armor. It didn't move.
[Genetic Archivist Scan.][Subject: The Abyssal Knight.][Status: Starving.][Note: Without a Host, the Symbiote leaks energy to maintain its physical form. It is consuming the environment to survive.]
"It's hungry," Varian whispered. "Just like me."
He placed his hand on the Knight's shoulder pauldron. It felt like touching dry ice.
"I can't wear you yet," Varian admitted softly. "You'd eat me in five minutes."
He turned to Scrap-Jack, who was hiding behind a pillar.
"Jack! Can we contain it?"
The Warlord of the Forge stepped out nervously. "Contain Emperor-Rank bio-matter? With what? Steel? It will rust it. Lead? It will eat it."
Varian thought. He remembered the Sovereign's Vault. The weapons there were kept in stasis.
"We need a material that is dense enough to block the radiation," Varian said. "And something biologically inert."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial he had looted from the Vault weeks ago.
[Item: Titan Blood Serum.]
"Titan Blood," Varian said. "It increases bone density. It makes things unbreakable."
He tossed the vial to Scrap-Jack.
"Mix this with the highest-grade steel we have. Melt down the blast doors if you have to. Build a sarcophagus. A coffin."
Scrap-Jack caught the vial. "You want to bury it?"
"We put it to sleep," Varian corrected. "Until I'm strong enough to wake it up properly."
The Memory of the War
It took the Forge team twelve hours to build the box.
Using the Titan Blood as a catalyst in the smelting process, Scrap-Jack created a metal alloy that was dark gray and incredibly heavy. A simple box, lined with lead and inscribed with runic seals Rix had copied from the Vault door.
They dragged the heavy coffin to the center of the platform.
"It's ready," Gorgon said.
Varian stood before the Abyssal Knight.
"Time to sleep," Varian commanded.
The armor stood up. The movement was stiff, jerky. It was weakening.
It stepped into the coffin.
Before Varian closed the heavy lid, he reached out. He wanted to know.
What are you?
He placed his hand on the Knight's helmet.
ZAP.
The world dissolved.
[Memory Synchronization Initiated][Date: Year 0 (The Great Rejection)][Location: Surface Layer - City of Light]
Varian wasn't in the station anymore.
He was standing on a battlefield. The sky was burning. Not from smog, but from orbital lasers.
He was looking through the visor of the Abyssal Knight. He was the Knight.
He felt tall. Powerful. His body was filled with a dark, endless ocean of Void energy.
In front of him, a city of white marble was crumbling.
And descending from the clouds were the enemy.
Angels.
But they weren't beautiful. They were biomechanical horrors. Their wings were made of solar panels and feathers of razor-steel. Their faces were porcelain masks that didn't move. They wielded lances of pure plasma.
"PURGE THE UNCLEAN," the Angels broadcasted, a sound that shattered glass.
"Hold the line!" A voice shouted beside him.
Varian/The Knight turned.
Standing next to him was a man in a white lab coat, wielding a golden spear. Arthur Vance. The Solar Sovereign. He looked young, desperate, covered in blood.
"We have to buy time for the Ark to launch!" Vance screamed. "Knight! The Shield!"
Varian felt the Knight's instinct. He raised his hands. The shadows around him exploded upward, forming a massive dome of darkness over the fleeing civilians.
The Angels fired. Beams of light slammed into the shadow-shield.
Pain.
The Knight felt the pain of a thousand burns. But it didn't buckle.
I am the shadow that protects the light, the Knight's thought echoed in Varian's mind. I am the Abyss that swallows the fire.
"Sovereign!" The Knight shouted—a voice that sounded like tearing metal. "Go! I will hold them!"
Vance looked at him. "I will come back for you, old friend. I promise."
Vance ran. The Knight stayed.
The Angels descended. One... ten... a hundred.
The Knight drew a sword made of void. And laughed.
[Synchronization End]
Varian gasped, stumbling back into the reality of Station Zero.
Gorgon caught him. "Boss?"
Varian looked at the armor lying in the coffin.
It wasn't a monster. It was a hero. A soldier left behind by a General who never came back.
"It fought the Church," Varian whispered. "It fought the Angels."
He looked at the empty visor.
"Vance didn't come back," Varian said softly to the armor. "But I did."
He slammed the heavy lid of the sarcophagus shut.
CLANG.
Scrap-Jack's welders moved in, sealing the seams with the Titan-Alloy.
The temperature in the station began to rise immediately. The oppressive dread vanished. The fungal gardens, though damaged, seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.
Varian turned to his council.
"The Knight is secure," Varian said. "But we have a target on our backs now. Valerius saw my face. He knows I have the Spear. He knows I have the Armor."
"The Cog-Lords put a bounty on us," Rix chirped, checking a stolen datapad. "Fifty Million Credits. Biggest bounty ever."
"Good," Varian smiled, a cold, dangerous expression. "Let them come."
He walked to the edge of the platform, looking at the dark tunnel leading back to the Industrial Belt.
"We need to get stronger before they find us. I need to advance my Rank. Soul Disciple isn't enough."
He looked at Lady Venom.
"Venom, you said there are 'Beast Emperors' in the Wilds. The Sovereign said they hold a Key."
"There are," Venom nodded. "But the Wilds are suicide."
"Not for us," Varian said. "We're the Parasite Monarchs. The Wilds are just a buffet."
He raised the Sun-Piercer.
"Iron Legion! Prepare for expansion! We aren't hiding in the dark anymore. We're going to hunt."