The explosion was immediate. A hemisphere of fire and force expanded outward at supersonic speed, vaporizing trees instantly while the shockwave ripped the ones further out from the ground, roots and all, tossing them like toothpicks.
Stone shattered as the ancient ruins closest to impact cracked and collapsed, structures that had stood for millennia reduced to rubble in half a second.
The heat was intense enough to turn sand into glass, creating a perfect circle thirty meters across, smooth and clear.
The sound carried for miles. In other parts of the forest, soldiers fighting the white clones stopped mid-swing and looked toward the noise. Birds five kilometers away took flight all at once.
When the fire cleared, there was a crater forty meters wide and six meters deep at the center.
The sphere was at the bottom, broken into large pieces with scarlet metal bent and peeled back like flower petals. Smoke rose from every surface while small fires burned where gel had spilled out and ignited.
In the center, partially buried in glass and dirt, was the woman.
Her right arm had been severed at the shoulder with blood seeping from the wound, slow but steady. Both legs had been cut off above the knees. A piece of metal stuck out from below her left collarbone, its jagged edge six inches long and dangerously close to her heart.
Blood soaked through her clothes and pooled under her, mixing with gel and dirt. Her chest moved up and down in barely visible breaths.
The clone appeared at the crater's edge. In its left hand, it held the core. The sphere of energy pulsed blue-white, casting light across the scorched ground. It stood there for five seconds watching, then started down the slope. Its feet crunched on broken glass, the sound loud in the silence.
It reached the bottom and stopped three meters from the woman.
Readings appeared in its vision, not on a screen but overlaid directly on what it saw:
[Unknown lifeform detected]
[Energy signature: foreign]
[Threat level: minimal]
[Protocol: Terminate anomaly]
The clone's right arm shifted as the skin rippled and bones underneath reshaped. In three seconds, the arm from elbow to hand was gone, replaced by a white blade, sharp and fourteen inches long.
The clone stepped forward until it was two meters from the woman, then one and a half.
Then the sky lit up.
A ship descended from above, two hundred feet up with engines roaring. The black iron hull had riveted plates with steam venting from ports along its sides. Cannons lined the underside, barrels swiveling and tracking targets below.
A bomb dropped and hit fifteen meters from where the clone stood, close enough.
A white flash erupted as the explosion ripped outward, tearing through air and ground with heat and force concentrated in a sphere that expanded fast. The shockwave caught the clone mid-step.
The clone's body lifted off the ground, thrown backward by the blast wave. It slammed into a jagged piece of the sphere's wreckage and the impact drove metal through its torso, pinning it there. The clone's legs kicked once, then twice, then went still.
The core slipped from its hand and fell. It hit the ground and rolled three meters before stopping.
The shockwave hit the woman half a second later.
Her body lifted weightless and flew backward, tumbling through the air. Her back slammed into something massive and white. The Giant's body.
She hit the ribcage hard and dropped, sliding down the smooth surface before landing in a heap at its base. Blood smeared the white skin where she'd struck, but she didn't move.
The core that had fallen from the clone's hand started glowing brighter, then cracked with a sharp sound like glass breaking. The sphere split into two uneven pieces.
One half, the larger piece, was thrown by the explosion's aftershock. It arced through the air and landed in a cluster of thick bushes thirty meters away.
The other half stayed near the clone's body, rolling slightly before coming to rest against exposed stone where it remained glowing and visible.
The ship descended.
A hatch opened on the underside. Metal stairs unfolded, clanking into place.
Six men descended.
Armor covered them completely. White metal plates, polished to a shine, with gold trim along the edges. The design was strange, mixing medieval elements like pauldrons, breastplates, and gauntlets with clearly advanced technology. The joints moved too smoothly. The helmet visors were solid without eye slits, only smooth curved surfaces that reflected light.
Each man carried a sword at his hip, long blades in white scabbards, but they also had pistols holstered on the other side. The guns were bulky and mechanical with visible chambers and gears.
On every chest plate was an engraved symbol: an eye with a spiral inside its pupil. The design was identical on all of them.
Around each neck hung a silver chain with a pendant bearing the same symbol of eye and spiral.
The men moved in formation down the stairs. Boots hit the ground in near-perfect sync, professional and disciplined.
The one in front, slightly taller than the others, raised a fist. The group stopped.
"Spread out," he said. His voice was muffled by the helmet but clear enough. "Find it. Fast."
"Sir." The others moved immediately, fanning out across the crater.
One of them spotted the core fragment almost instantly. "Here!"
The leader walked over and looked down at it. The half-core sat on the stone, pulsing faint blue light.
"Broken," one soldier said.
"Better than nothing." The leader crouched and pulled a cloth from his belt, wrapping it around the core carefully before lifting it. The glow showed through the fabric. "We take what we can. Other houses will be here soon."
"How long do we have?"
"Minutes. Maybe less. The barrier weakened when the administrator died. Every noble house with a ship is heading this way."
Another soldier called out from near the Giant's body. "Sir. Over here."
The leader stood, tucking the wrapped core under his arm. He walked over.
The woman lay crumpled against the Giant's ribs. Blood pooled beneath her with her right arm gone and both legs severed above the knees. A piece of jagged metal protruded from below her collarbone. Her chest barely moved.
The leader stared down at her for three seconds. "Alive?"
"Barely."
Another soldier approached. "Could be from another house. One of theirs got caught by a clone."
"Maybe." The leader tilted his head, examining her. "Doesn't matter."
"Sir?"
"We can't leave witnesses. Not even unconscious ones." He gestured to the wrapped core under his arm. "They'll know someone took this. Better they don't know who."
One of the soldiers shifted his weight. "She's... she's dying anyway."
"Then we give her peace." The leader's tone didn't change, remaining calm and matter-of-fact. "The Spiral shows mercy to those who suffer. We end it quickly. She won't feel it."
The soldier nearest to her drew his sword. The blade slid from its scabbard with a metallic ring. He positioned himself above her head and adjusted his grip. The blade lifted.
"By the Watching Eye," the leader said quietly, almost like a prayer, "we grant you rest."
Text flickered into existence above the destroyed sphere. Red letters. Urgent.
[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: ACTIVATED]
[MISSION 2: PROTECT PASSENGER - PRIORITY ABSOLUTE]
[POWER RESERVES: 1.8%]
[DEPLOYING DEFENSE SYSTEM]
[WARNING: FINAL COUNTERMEASURE]
The soldier angled the blade and aimed for her neck.
Then something moved in the wreckage.
A low hum. Faint at first. Growing louder.
The leader's head snapped toward the destroyed sphere. "What..."
From the torn metal, something emerged.
Small black spheres floated out of the wreckage, six of them each the size of a fist. They looked like holes cut into reality itself, absorbing light rather than reflecting it, silent except for the hum.
One of the soldiers stepped back. "What are those?"
The spheres hung in the air for half a second. Then they moved.
Fast.
The first one shot toward the soldier standing over the woman, the one with the raised sword. It moved in a straight line, accelerating. Ten meters, then five, then two.
Then it expanded.
The sphere grew from the size of a fist to the size of a person in an instant. It engulfed the soldier's torso without sound or explosion, just absence.
The soldier looked down.
His torso was gone, everything from his ribs to his pelvis simply erased. The upper half of his body teetered for a moment, still standing on legs that no longer connected to anything.
Then he fell, top half in one direction and legs in the other.
The black sphere shrank and waited.
"Defensive positions!" the leader shouted.
The other soldiers drew their weapons with pistols coming up while swords stayed sheathed. They aimed at the remaining spheres floating near the wreckage.
The spheres didn't wait and launched immediately.
One went for the soldier on the left. He fired three shots. The bullets passed straight through the sphere without slowing it. It expanded mid-flight and took his head cleanly. The body stood for a second, neck stump smooth like it had been carved, then collapsed.
Another sphere went for two soldiers standing close together. It grew and swept between them, cutting both in half at the waist. They dropped.
The leader backed toward the ship, still holding the core. "You!" He pointed at the soldier nearest to him, the one who hadn't engaged. "Get to the ship! Now!"
The soldier ran with boots pounding on glass and stone. A sphere started to chase him but stopped halfway, hovering. It turned back toward the others.
The leader raised his pistol and aimed at the closest sphere. It was five feet from his face.
He fired.
The bullet went through.
The sphere expanded.
His head vanished. Then his shoulders. The core fragment dropped from his arms, still wrapped in cloth, and hit the ground. His body followed, crumpling.
The soldier who'd run reached the stairs. He made it to the hatch, dove through, and slammed a control panel.
"Go! GO!"
The engines roared and the ship lifted fast. Landing gear retracted mid-ascent. Steam poured from the vents. The ship's nose tilted up and it accelerated, climbing rapidly.
In ten seconds it was a black dot against the clouds.
The black spheres didn't follow. They disappeared after their task was completed.
The core fragment the leader had dropped lay on the ground, cloth partially unwrapped. Thirty meters away, hidden in the bushes, the other half rested among dead leaves and roots.
Both pieces started to glow brighter at the same time.
Then they began to sink.
The stone underneath the first piece remained intact while the soil underneath the second stayed undisturbed. The cores just... passed through like the ground was water. In five seconds, both were gone, absorbed into the earth.
The forest floor trembled.
Faint lines of light appeared in the dirt, blue-white and thin as threads. They spread outward from where the core had disappeared, branching and splitting into three main paths: one heading north, one east, and one west. They moved fast, racing through the soil like roots growing in fast-forward.
The ancient structures responded.
Ruins that had been dark for centuries lit up. Carvings on stone pillars began to glow. Blue light filled channels carved into roads, spreading like veins. Broken archways hummed while collapsed buildings flickered.
The activation spread across the entire forest in seconds.
Then the dome snapped shut.
The barrier that had weakened when the Giant died surged back to full strength, stronger than before. The shimmer in the air became visible now, a faint blue wall that followed the forest's edge where nothing could enter or leave.
And then text appeared.
The text wasn't on a screen or projected anywhere, just hanging in the air above the ruins, visible from everywhere in the forest.
[TRIAL SEQUENCE: INITIATED]
[PROVING GROUNDS: ACTIVE]
[PARTICIPANTS: REGISTERING...]
The words stayed for five seconds. Then faded.
Near the Giant's body, the woman hadn't moved. Her chest still rose and fell, barely. Blood soaked into the moss beneath her.
The ground next to her cracked.
A structure pushed up from below with a smooth white surface like the Giant's skin. The rectangular form stood four feet tall and rose until it was level with the ground, then stopped. A seam appeared down its center. The two halves split apart.
Something crawled out: a spider.
Mechanical and organic, fused together. Its body was roughly one meter long. The front half looked alive, covered in black chitin with eight legs that had too many joints. Eyes clustered on its head, each one a different size.
The back half was pure machine, made of silver metal with gears visible through transparent panels. Blue lights pulsed along conduits while thin mechanical limbs extended from its rear, each tipped with different tools: blades, clamps, and nozzles.
The spider approached the woman. Its legs moved in perfect coordination, silent on the stone. It stopped beside her and lowered its head.
A blue light swept over her body. Scanning.
Text appeared in the air above the spider, small and precise.
[LIFEFORM DETECTED]
[STATUS: CRITICAL]
[TIME REMAINING: 1 MINUTE 47 SECONDS]
[ANALYSIS: ELIGIBLE FOR TRIAL PARTICIPATION]
[DECISION: AFFIRMATIVE]
[INITIATING EMERGENCY RECONSTRUCTION]
The spider's abdomen split open and dozens of smaller spiders poured out, each one the size of a hand. They swarmed over the woman's body, moving to her injuries: the stumps of her legs, her missing arm, and the wounds in her side.
More text appeared.
[PRINTING: BONE STRUCTURE]
[PRINTING: MUSCLE TISSUE]
[PRINTING: EPIDERMIS]
The small spiders opened their mouths and thin streams of material came out, pale and slightly translucent. It looked organic but moved like liquid. The spiders layered it precisely, building from the inside out.
White bone structures formed first, growing from the stumps, then red tissue wrapped around them before skin stretched over everything. The color was off, too pale, but the shape was human and functional.
The woman's right arm reformed with fingers, wrist, elbow, and shoulder. The small spiders worked in perfect sync, never stopping.
Both legs grew back the same way with knees, ankles, feet, and toes.
The large spider moved to her chest. It scanned the metal fragment embedded near her heart. The blue light focused on it for several seconds.
[OBSTRUCTION DETECTED]
[FOREIGN OBJECT: EMBEDDED IN CARDIAC TISSUE]
[REMOVAL: INADVISABLE]
[REGENERATION: IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT FATALITY]
[SEARCHING ALTERNATIVE...]
The spider's head turned and scanned the ground. It found something near where the core had sunk into the earth, a tiny speck glowing faint blue.
A core fragment, tiny and smaller than sand.
One of the small spiders scurried over, picked it up delicately with its mandibles, and brought it back.
The large spider positioned itself directly over the woman's chest. One of its mechanical limbs extended, a thin and precise blade. It cut a small opening around the metal fragment. Blood welled up.
Then the spider gripped the metal with a clamp and pulled.
The fragment came free. Six inches of jagged metal, covered in blood. The spider discarded it.
The small spider placed the grain where the metal had been. Directly against the woman's heart.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then her entire body convulsed hard. Her back arched off the ground. Every muscle locked.
Her heart stuttered, stopped, then started again.
The grain began to glow brighter. Threads of blue light spread from it, connecting to the damaged tissue. The torn muscle fibers reached toward the grain like they were being pulled and fused to it while cells regenerated around it, incorporating it.
Her heartbeat steadied, becoming stronger and regular at sixty-two beats per minute.
The small spiders resumed their work. They sealed the opening in her chest, layering tissue and skin until there was no trace of the wound except for a faint scar.
They finished and crawled back to the large spider, disappearing into its abdomen. The opening closed.
The large spider's abdomen opened and a mechanical limb pulled out a collar made of thin black metal. It placed the collar around the woman's neck. The device latched on and secured itself to her skin seamlessly.
A panel on the device lit up with a faint blue glow.
Then a projection appeared.
Directly in front of the woman's face, a translucent screen hovered in the air. Text scrolled across it with alien characters made of geometric shapes, lines and curves that didn't match any human language. The woman's eyelids twitched.
Her fingers moved slightly.
Her chest rose with a deeper breath than before.
Then her eyes opened.
[USER RECOGNIZED]
[CORE LINK ESTABLISHED]
[TRIAL SYSTEM: ACTIVATING ROLE ASSIGNMENT PROTOCOLS]