The air in the lower guts of the Deepstream territory didn't just feel damp; it felt heavy, like a wet blanket being pressed against the lungs. Zayn moved through the darkness with a predator's silence, his red eyes the only things cutting through the thick, bioluminescent haze of the sewer-arteries. Beside him, Sariel was a blur of silver and violet, her footsteps making no sound on the slime-coated iron grates. They were moving toward the heart of the machine, the place where the biological "purity" of Metamorphia was forged and maintained: The Metamorphosis Chambers.
Sariel whispered that the Deepstream didn't just govern the water; they governed the flow of life itself. The five clans relied on these chambers to filter out the "impurities" of their bloodlines, effectively using the life force of the shunned humans to stabilize their own volatile transformations. It was a cycle of parasitic evolution that had lasted for a millennium. Zayn's grip tightened on the hilt of his jagged blade. To the High Council, he was a glitch, but to the people trapped in these vats, he was the only chance they had at a world that didn't see them as fuel.
They reached a massive circular bulkhead door, inscribed with the writhing serpent sigil of the Abyssal Trench faction—the most fanatical protectors of the Deepstream's secrets. The door wasn't just metal; it was alive, a semi-organic barrier that pulsed with a dull, blue light. It required a genetic signature to open, a key that neither of them possessed.
Step back, Zayn growled. He didn't have time for codes or keys. He channeled the Abyssal energy into his right arm, the black flames spiraling around his fist until the air began to hum with a terrifying, low-frequency vibration. He slammed his fist into the center of the living door. The impact didn't just break the lock; it shattered the molecular bonds of the organic metal. The bulkhead shrieked—a high, piercing sound like a dying animal—before buckling inward and collapsing into a pile of smoking, grey ash.
Beyond the door lay a cathedral of horror. The chamber was vast, filled with thousands of vertical glass tubes glowing with a sickly emerald light. Inside each tube, a human or a "low-tier" metamorph floated in a suspension of thick, nutrient-rich fluid. Wires and translucent tubes were grafted into their spines, siphoning away their raw mana and feeding it into a massive, central spire that pulsed with a blinding, golden radiance. This was the source of the Crownstar's "divine" glow and the Earthcrown's "unbreakable" strength. It was a factory of stolen potential.
The guards didn't wait to be greeted. From the shadows of the catwalks, the Trench-Guardians descended. They were massive, multi-limbed beings with the slick, rubbery skin of deep-sea predators and eyes that glowed with an eerie, white light. They wielded harpoon-like lances that crackled with bio-electric current. They moved with a strange, fluid momentum, gliding across the floor as if they were still underwater.
Sariel reacted instantly. She leapt into the air, her Luna-Wing silks unfurling like the wings of a predatory moth. She didn't just fight; she danced. With every spin, she sent out ripples of pressurized air that acted like invisible scythes, cutting through the Guardians' rubbery armor as if it were paper. She was a whirlwind of violet light, distracting the bulk of the forces while Zayn focused on the central spire.
The leader of the Trench-Guardians, a beast twice the size of the others with a crown of jagged fins, stepped into Zayn's path. He didn't hiss or growl; he spoke in a voice that sounded like grinding coral. He told Zayn that he was too late, that the "Total Blackout" had already signaled the final harvest. He claimed that the Abyssal King was nothing more than a failed experiment, a scrap of discarded data that thought it was a man.
Zayn didn't argue. He moved. He was a blur of black lightning, closing the distance before the Guardian could even raise his lance. The beast swung, a massive, overhead strike that would have crushed a normal man's skull. Zayn caught the lance with one hand, the bio-electricity dancing harmlessly across his Abyssal skin. He felt the Primal Rage bubbling in his chest—a hot, dark hunger that demanded the destruction of everything that held his people in chains.
With a roar that shattered the glass tubes nearest to him, Zayn wrenched the lance from the Guardian's grip and snapped it over his knee. He grabbed the creature by its finned throat and hoisted it off the ground. He looked into its cold, white eyes and told the beast that if he was a ghost, he was the kind that haunted empires until there was nothing left but dust. He slammed his free hand into the Guardian's chest, releasing a focused burst of Abyssal energy that vaporized the creature's core in a flash of dark violet light.
As the leader's body slumped to the floor, the other Guardians hesitated. They had never seen a human—or any being—handle the Deepstream's elite with such casual brutality. Zayn turned his gaze toward the central spire. The golden light was intensifying, the machine sensing the intrusion and accelerating the harvest. The screams of the people in the tubes were silent, muffled by the fluid, but their pain was a physical weight in the room.
Sariel landed beside him, her silver hair disheveled and her violet eyes wide with the enormity of the room. She told him that if he destroyed the spire, the feedback would kill everyone still connected to it. But if he didn't, the Five Clans would gain enough power to wipe the Under-Sector off the map forever. It was a choice between a localized massacre and a total genocide.
Zayn walked toward the spire, his boots clicking on the metal floor. He looked at the faces in the tubes—the old, the young, the broken. He realized that the Five Clans had spent a thousand years making everyone believe there were only two choices: serve or die. They had built a world where "purity" was bought with the blood of the "impure."
There is a third way, Zayn whispered. He didn't strike the spire. Instead, he placed both hands on its glowing surface. He didn't try to break it; he tried to become it. He opened the floodgates of his Abyssal soul, acting as a bridge between the stolen mana in the spire and the people it was being drained from. He wasn't just destroying the machine; he was reversing the flow.
The golden light turned a violent, bruised purple as Zayn's dark energy surged into the system. The machine groaned, the gears and bio-organic components screaming under the strain of the Abyssal contamination. Slowly, the emerald fluid in the tubes began to clear. The people inside began to twitch, their eyes snapping open as their stolen life force was pumped back into their bodies.
The spire began to crack. Spiders-webs of black energy raced up its sides, shattering the golden crystalline core. A massive shockwave erupted from the center of the room, throwing Sariel back and knocking the remaining Trench-Guardians unconscious. The glass tubes shattered simultaneously, a rain of crystal shards falling into the rising water on the floor.
Zayn stood at the center of the wreckage, his clothes torn and his skin glowing with a faint, receding purple light. Hundreds of people were stumbling out of the broken tubes, gasping for air, their bodies weak but their spirits finally their own. They looked at the man in the center of the ruin—the human with the red eyes and the Abyssal crown.
You've done it, Sariel said, standing up and brushing the glass from her silks. You've broken the heart of the Deepstream. But the other Clans... they'll feel this. The Crownstar King will know the moment his 'divinity' starts to fade.
Zayn didn't look at her. He looked at the survivors. He told them to take the weapons from the fallen Guardians. He told them that the blackout was their cover and the sewers were their tunnels. He declared that the time for hiding was over. The Metamorphosis Chambers were no longer a factory for the elite; they were the birthplace of a new army.
As the first of the survivors began to pick up the harpoons and lances, a low, rhythmic thumping started to echo from the pipes above. It wasn't the sound of machinery. It was the sound of the miners in the Mire-Market, miles away, sensing the shift in the world's energy. The heartbeat of the revolution was growing louder.
Zayn looked toward the exit, his eyes fixed on the distant, invisible peak of the Apex Spire. He had taken their water and their purity. Now, he was going for their heads.
The silence that followed the destruction of the central spire was heavier than the noise of the explosion. In the heart of the Deepstream's sanctum, the emerald glow of the vats had been replaced by a flickering, bruised violet hue—the signature of Zayn's Abyssal contamination. Water, now clear and stripped of its parasitic enchantments, swirled around Zayn's boots, carrying the broken shards of glass and the discarded shackles of a thousand years.
Hundreds of survivors were pulling themselves from the wreckage. They weren't just humans; they were the "low-tier" rejects of the Five Clans—lizards with dull scales, birds with clipped wings, and bears whose strength had been bled dry to fuel the Earthcrown elite. They stood shivering, their lungs burning as they tasted untainted air for the first time in decades. They looked at Zayn, not with the terror people usually reserved for the Abyssal King, but with a desperate, burgeoning hope.
Zayn didn't give them a moment to mourn their lost years. He stepped onto a pile of rubble, his silhouette cast long and jagged by the dying light of the room. He told them that the Deepstream would not let this go unanswered. He explained that the "Blackout" was a double-edged sword; while the city was dark, the High Council couldn't track their movements, but it also meant no help was coming for the wounded. He commanded them to take the bio-electric lances from the fallen Trench-Guardians. He told them that today, they stopped being fuel and started being a fire.
Sariel moved among the crowd, her violet eyes scanning the survivors with a cold, analytical precision. She found the "imperfect" Skymantle scouts among them and whispered orders in their native tongue, organizing them into a makeshift vanguard. She turned to Zayn, her silver hair shimmering in the dark. She warned him that the Crownstar King would have felt the feedback the moment the spire shattered. Their "divinity"—the shimmering light that made them seem like gods—was tied to this machine. Right now, in the high palaces, the High-Humans were literally losing their glow. They would be coming for the Under-Sector with everything they had left.
If they want their power back, they'll have to come and take it from the furnace, Zayn replied, his voice a low, dangerous vibration. He pointed toward the massive, steaming ventilation shafts that led upward and eastward. He told the army that their next stop wasn't the safety of the slums. It was the Earthcrown Foundries.
The crowd stirred. The Earthcrown Clan—the steadfast bears and the heavy-hitters of Metamorphia—controlled the foundries where the city's weapons and armor were forged. To attack them was to walk into the jaws of a mountain. But Zayn knew that a revolution fought with sticks and stones would be short-lived. To take down the Five Clans, they needed the very steel the Clans used to opress them.
They began their ascent through the Deepstream's arterial pipes, a ghost army moving through the dark. The "Total Blackout" had turned the upper city into a labyrinth of shadows, but for the "shunned," the dark was home. As they moved, Zayn felt his Abyssal Aura expanding. It wasn't just his own power anymore; he was feeding on the collective rage of the hundreds of people behind him. Every step toward the Earthcrown territory felt like a hammer blow against the foundation of Metamorphia.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the Industrial Zone, the air had changed from damp salt to scorching iron and soot. Massive chimneys belched thick, black smoke into the starless sky, and the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the great forge-hammers echoed through the earth like a titan's heartbeat. This was the territory of the Iron-Fang Faction, the most brutal sub-clan of the Earthcrown.
Zayn signaled for the army to halt in the shadow of a massive cooling tower. Ahead lay the Foundry Gates—a wall of reinforced obsidian manned by warriors who looked like they were carved from granite. They were the Earthcrown elite, their bodies augmented with cybernetic plates and their hands replaced with massive, hydraulic crushing-claws.
Sariel whispered that a direct assault would be suicide, even with Zayn's power. She suggested she take her Luna-Wing scouts through the vents to disable the automated turrets. But Zayn shook his head. He told her that the time for sneaking was over. He wanted the Earthcrown to see him coming. He wanted the Warlord to know that the "human glitch" was at his door.
Zayn stepped out from the shadows, walking alone toward the gates. The automated spotlights of the foundry swung toward him, their beams cutting through the smoke. The Earthcrown guards raised their heavy rail-cannons, their deep, guttural voices demanding he halt.
I am Zayn of the Swiftfang, he shouted, his voice amplified by the Abyssal Rage until it drowned out the sound of the forge-hammers. I am the man who broke the Viper's Crest. I am the man who poisoned the Deepstream. And I am the man who is going to melt your crowns into scrap metal.
The guards didn't hesitate. They opened fire. A hail of high-velocity slugs tore through the air, but Zayn didn't dodge. He raised his hands, and the Abyssal energy solidified into a jagged, black shield that hissed as the bullets disintegrated against it. He lunged forward, a streak of violet lightning. He didn't hit the gates; he hit the ground beneath them.
With a roar that shook the entire industrial district, Zayn released a massive surge of Abyssal power directly into the bedrock. The earth buckled. The obsidian gates, designed to withstand a nuclear blast, were ripped from their hinges as the ground beneath them simply ceased to exist.
The "Shunned Army" didn't wait for a command. Seeing their King tear the gates apart with his bare hands, they charged. They were a tide of grey and brown and black, a wave of forgotten people screaming a thousand years of repressed fury. The Earthcrown warriors, caught off guard by the sheer brutality of the assault, were swamped.
Zayn moved through the chaos like a god of war. He didn't use a blade; he used his fists, each strike shattering the cybernetic armor of the Earthcrown giants as if it were glass. He was heading for the Central Forge, the place where the legendary "Void-Steel" was kept.
Inside the forge, the heat was unbearable, the molten metal glowing like a trapped sun. Standing in the center was the Earthcrown Warlord himself, a monstrosity of muscle and machine, holding a hammer that pulsed with a dull, orange light. He looked at Zayn, his eyes burning with a primal, animalistic hatred. He told Zayn that he might have broken the serpents, but the earth does not bend.
Zayn stood before the Warlord, his red eyes reflecting the molten fire of the forge. He told the giant that mountains don't need to bend; they just need to be broken.
As the two titans clashed, the shockwave of their first blow shattered every window in the foundry. The battle for the steel of Metamorphia had begun, and the "Total Blackout" was finally being lit—not by the light of the Clans, but by the fires of a revolution that could no longer be contained.