The fires of the Viper's Crest one of the thirty iron-fisted factions serving the Crownstar Clan refused to die. They fed on the high-octane fuel of shattered tanks and the oily bio-fluid leaking from the twisted carcass of the Chimera-Shell. Zayn stood at the epicenter of the graveyard he had built, his chest heaving with a rhythmic, heavy thud that sounded like a war drum in the silence. His human blood, once considered a mark of weakness by the elite, was boiling. It surged through his veins, filtered through the dark, oily power of his Abyssal awakening, turning him into a storm wrapped in skin. His boots were submerged in a mixture of industrial oil and the neon-blue blood of the Crownstar soldiers who had dared to stand in his way. Around him lay the shattered remains of the gate-guardians, their titanium skulls crushed inward as if struck by a falling star.
He didn't feel like a hero. He felt like a predator who had finally found the jugular of the world that hated him. He reached down and grabbed a surviving officer by the throat, hoisting the man into the air. The officer was a high-tier Crownstar, his skin shimmering with gold-tinted scales that marked his clan's supposedly divine lineage. Zayn's fingers sank into the man's neck, the Abyssal energy humming with a hunger that wanted to swallow the officer whole.
Where is the Apex key, Zayn demanded, his voice a jagged growl that vibrated through the humid, smoky air. He didn't care about the gold or the status. He wanted the records. He wanted to know which of the thirty factions held the details of the 20th Sector purge that had taken his family. The officer merely spat blue blood onto Zayn's cheek, grinning through broken teeth as he gasped for air. He told Zayn that he was nothing but a ghost, a glitch in a system that had already moved to replace the dead. He claimed the Masters of Camouflage would skin Zayn before he even reached the mid-levels, insisting that breaking one faction was like throwing a pebble at a mountain. Zayn didn't let him finish the sentence. With a sickening crack, the silence returned to the courtyard.
The Abyssal King stands amidst his handiwork, a voice purred from the upper balconies, vibrating with a mocking sweetness. It was a voice that didn't belong in the mud and the blood of the lower sectors. Zayn spun around, his Abyssal Aura flaring into a crown of black flames that licked the air. Standing on a precipice of jagged glass was a woman who looked like she was carved from moonlight and spite. This was Sariel. She wore the combat-silks of the Luna-Wing, the elite shadow-faction of the Skymantle Clan. Her silver hair was pulled back in a high, aggressive braid, and her piercing violet eyes held a look of predatory curiosity.
Zayn noted her presence with a hiss. He knew her reputation as the Disgraced Princess of the Skymantle. He had heard the rumors that her sister, the Matriarch, had stripped her of her status and tossed her to the lower winds. Sariel descended toward him, not by jumping, but by gliding on the air itself as if the laws of gravity were merely suggestions she chose to ignore. She stopped ten paces away, the scent of winter jasmine clashing sharply with the smell of burning metal and death. She explained that she wasn't there to fight, but to witness his evolution. Her sister was currently screaming for his head, terrified that a shunned human had the strength to crush a Crownstar fortress.
She tossed a heavy, obsidian data-cube at his feet. It contained the troop movements for the Earthcrown factions and the Deepstream patrols. She warned him that the Five Clans were currently meeting at the Apex Spire to initiate the Total Blackout Order. They intended to erase his victory from public memory and tell the world he never existed. Zayn picked up the cube, his red eyes burning with a dark intensity. He welcomed the challenge, stating that if they wanted to turn off the lights, he would make the darkness so loud they wouldn't be able to hear themselves think. Sariel warned him that he needed to move fast because the Masters of Camouflage had already dispatched their Stalkers—hunters who didn't come to fight, but to erase.
High above the smog, inside the pressurized, diamond-glass sanctum of the Apex Spire, the air was thick with the smell of expensive ozone and concentrated panic. Five holographic projectors cast the images of the Clan Leaders into the center of the darkened chamber. The Crownstar King, radiant and golden, was trembling with a fury he couldn't contain. The Sovereign of the Masters of Camouflage, a massive reptilian with eyes that moved independently, hissed about the shift in ambient mana. The Earthcrown Warlord, a hulking beast-man covered in cybernetic plates, demanded permission to level the entire South District.
The Deepstream Oracle, a fluid being made of living water, warned that Zayn was tapping into the Primal Source. If he reached the Metamorphosis Chambers, he could rewrite the genetic code of the entire city. The Skymantle Matriarch snapped that the solution was silence. She moved for the Total Blackout Order, declaring that a ghost cannot lead a revolution. They decided to wipe him from the history books by morning. They sat in their ivory tower, confident in their control, unaware that miles below, Zayn was listening to their every heartbeat through the stolen frequency, a cold smile spreading across his face.
Zayn didn't head for the high-sectors to hide. He went deeper into the Mire-Market, the heart of the human slums where the broken and the rejected lived in the shadows of the Five Clans. As he walked, the crowds parted. They had seen the broadcast before the screens went black. They had seen a human tear the gates of their oppressors apart. A group of miners, their bodies stunted by years of labor for the Earthcrown foundries, stood in his path. They were the people the High Council had just voted to ignore.
Zayn stopped and looked at their tired, grey faces. He felt the weight of the obsidian cube in his hand and the responsibility of the power he now carried. He shouted to the crowd that the Five Clans thought they could make him disappear, but they were wrong. He slammed his fist into the ground, cracking the concrete and sending spirals of black lightning outward. He declared himself the nightmare they tried to breed out of existence. One by one, the people began to stand taller. A young girl stepped forward and offered a piece of red cloth, which Zayn tied around his arm like a banner. He told them that since the Clans wanted to live in the dark, they would show them what lived in the shadows. To every person shunned by the Five, he announced that the hunt had begun. Tonight, they would eat the Crowns.
The heavy iron scent of the Under-Sector grew thicker as Zayn moved deeper into the labyrinthine tunnels of the Deepstream. The "Total Blackout" had already begun. Overhead, the holographic billboards that usually blared Crownstar propaganda were dead, flickering with a hollow, grey static. The city was a tomb of glass and steel, but beneath the surface, the heart of Metamorphia was beating with a new, frantic pulse.
Sariel trailed behind him like a ghost made of violet silk. She didn't make a sound as her feet brushed the grime-slicked floor, her eyes constantly scanning the upper pipes. She knew better than anyone that the Masters of Camouflage didn't attack from the front. They were the architects of the "Deeper Clans," creatures who had perfected the art of biological invisibility. They were the reason the human slums stayed quiet for so many generations—because those who spoke out simply vanished into the humid dark, leaving nothing behind but a lingering scent of swamp water.
Suddenly, Zayn stopped. The Abyssal Aura around his shoulders flared, the black flames licking the air as if they were tasting it. The silence in the tunnel was too perfect. Even the dripping of the overhead coolant pipes had ceased.
They're here, Zayn whispered, his hand dropping to the hilt of a jagged blade he'd scavenged from the Viper's ruins.
From the shadows of the ceiling, the air itself seemed to ripple. It looked like heat haze on a desert road, a shimmering distortion that moved with predatory grace. These were the Stalkers of the Jade-Scale faction. They didn't wear armor; their skin was a masterpiece of bio-engineering, shifting colors and textures to match the rusted copper and damp stone of the tunnels.
A tongue, long and dripping with a translucent paralytic neurotoxin, lashed out from the darkness. Zayn didn't turn; he leaned back, the tip of the tongue whistling past his throat and melting a hole in the metal wall behind him. With a roar that vibrated through his very marrow, Zayn swung his arm in a wide arc. A wave of black, abyssal energy erupted from his palm, acting like a flare in the darkness. The light didn't just illuminate the tunnels; it burned through the Stalkers' camouflage.
Four massive reptilian humanoids were revealed, clinging to the walls with splayed, clawed hands. Their eyes were huge, rotating independently in their sockets, glowing with a sickly yellow light. They hissed in unison, a sound like steam escaping a pressurized valve. They weren't just soldiers; they were the biological enforcers of the Lizard Clan, sent to retrieve the "specimen" that had dared to defy the Crownstar.
Sariel didn't wait for them to recover. She blurred into motion, her Luna-Wing silks snapping like whips. She moved through the air with the jagged speed of a lightning strike, her silver hair trailing behind her like a comet's tail. She didn't use a sword; she used pressurized wind, sharpened into invisible blades that she threw with flickers of her wrists. One Stalker tried to leap at her, but she caught it mid-air with a gust that sent the creature crashing into the high-voltage lines, turning it into a screaming pyre of blue sparks.
Zayn, meanwhile, was a mountain of raw violence. He didn't care about finesse. He lunged at the largest Stalker, catching it by the snout. The creature's scales were cold and slimy, but Zayn's hands were burning with a demonic heat. He slammed the reptilian into the ground with enough force to crack the foundation of the sector. The ground groaned under the pressure of his Abyssal power.
Is this all your Sovereign has to offer? Zayn barked, his voice echoing through the pipes. He stood over the broken Stalker, his red eyes glowing so brightly they cast long, terrifying shadows against the tunnel walls. He realized then that the "Blackout" wasn't just a defensive move by the Five Clans. It was an invitation. They wanted him in the dark because they thought they owned the shadows.
But they had forgotten one thing about the Swiftfang lineage. Wolves hunt best when the lights go out.
Sariel landed softly beside him, her breathing barely elevated. She looked at the obsidian data-cube Zayn still clutched. The information inside was more than just troop movements; it was a map of the city's biological heart. She told him that the Masters of Camouflage were guarding the primary Metamorphosis Chamber—the place where the "purity" of the Five Clans was maintained through stolen human essence. If he wanted to truly break the system, he didn't need to kill every soldier; he needed to kill the machine that made them.
Zayn looked up through the grates of the ceiling toward the distant, glowing spire of the Apex. The revolution wasn't just a riot in the streets anymore. It was a descent into the very DNA of Metamorphia. He felt the red cloth tied to his arm—the banner of the shunned—and he knew the miners and the outcasts were watching the shadows, waiting for his signal.
The blackout hadn't silenced the city. It had given it a new language, written in the blood of the oppressors and the fire of the Abyssal King. Zayn turned to Sariel, his expression hard and unyielding. He told her they weren't going to wait for the next hunt. They were going to the Metamorphosis Chambers. He was going to show the Five Clans what happens when a "glitch" decides to rewrite the entire program.
As they disappeared deeper into the Deepstream tunnels, the only sound left was the distant, rhythmic clanging of the human dregs hitting the pipes—a heartbeat of rebellion that the Council of the Five couldn't turn off, no matter how many screens they wiped.