Sector-14 once a gleaming stretch of crystalline towers and anti-grav walkways was now a warzone bathed in fire and shadow. The air was thick with smoke and the thunderous hum of battle-drones swarming the skies. Civilian evacuation crafts shot upward like comets, escorted by Jaegers, while ground troops held the line with everything they had.
On the shattered frontline, one of the agents a towering figure in black armor etched with glowing red sigils stood amidst the chaos. His name was Agent Rallos, a veteran Exo-Guardian wielding a Voidblade that howled with every swing.
He slashed through a hulking beast, but his attention shifted as the Xerathians emerged from the broken skyline.
They were monstrous in form, yet terrifyingly organized.
Each Xerathian warrior stood between seven to nine feet tall, their bodies armored in a chitinous exoskeleton that pulsed with bioluminescent veins glowing hues of acidic green, infernal red, or glacial blue depending on caste. Their heads were elongated, insectoid in shape, with rows of jagged, twitching mandibles and compound eyes that shimmered like fractured glass. Some carried organic cannons fused into their arms, while others wielded whips of living metal that screeched as they cracked.
The Dreadborn Xerathians the frontline shock troops moved like a hive-minded swarm, climbing over debris, screaming in a language that sounded like static mixed with metal grinding. Behind them, Obelisks, their massive siege creatures, walked on six thunderous limbs, launching bio-plasma from their thorax cannons, each shot obliterating entire buildings.
Rallos activated his comms. "This is Agent Rallos in Sector-14! Xerathians have breached the inner defense line we're being overwhelmed! I repeat, we need Jaeger support, now!"
Above, one of the Obelisks turned its eye on him an orb of swirling void-light and let out a psychic scream that rippled through the battlefield. Rallos staggered but held firm, blade rising once more.
From the clouds above, the first Jaeger dropped, engines howling.
And the war for Sector-14 had truly begun.
The ground trembled as the trio sprinted through the wide corridors of Evolto City's inner sanctum. Sirens still howled across the city's sectors, and red emergency glyphs flashed on every wall. The Traversal Pylons, once glowing with inter-sector energy, now stood dim and locked standard protocol once all non-combatants reached the shelters. That meant only one thing now:
They had to run.
Nyxia raced ahead, weapons out and ready, his body pulsing with controlled energy. Beside him, Dr. Wagner kept pace with surprising speed for a man his age, his coat flaring behind him like a cape. And behind them
"WHEEEE THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!!"Virdarath in his chaotic form was rollerblading along the wall, scattering sparks, upside-down and giggling.
They were heading straight for Sector-14.
As they hit a service tunnel branching into a maintenance drop, Nyxia finally spoke up, his voice low and sharp. "How do they know about this place?"
Wagner glanced at him. "Vhat do you mean?"
"I mean Evolto City," Nyxia clarified. "The only ones who should know of this location are Earth-linked entities. And even then, they can't open a rift here. So how did these Xerathians get through?"
Virdarath twirled in the air and landed backwards, skating without a care. "Oh, you're right about Earth. Rift barriers are too tight for them. But "
He spun to face them, grin widening.
" there are plenty of fifth-dimensional beings. Eldritch gods, dimension-hoppers, reality-surfers. Some of them we've personally imprisoned, remember?" His voice echoed with playful menace. "They love whispering to egotistical alien warlords. You know the type: lots of spikes, glowing eyes, insecure about their empire collapsing."
He shrugged, arms wide as if presenting a cosmic joke.
"So they send out a message: 'Hey, want unimaginable power? Want to conquer a hidden city outside time itself? Here's the coordinates. Oh, and don't worry about the defenses. Totally manageable.'"
Nyxia scowled. "And in exchange, they ask for... what?"
Virdarath's grin sharpened. "A way out. Or worse a piece of their true name brought back from a fallen city. It's all a game to them."
Nyxia growled low. "And now we get to clean it up."
Wagner checked the watch on his wrist Sector-14 was less than a kilometer out.
"Ve are almost zhere," he said. "Prepare yourselves. Zis vill not be a battle it vill be a massacre if ve fail."
Virdarath pulled a reality-twisted weapon from a floating bag of cotton candy, now solidifying into a black hole hammer.
"Oh, I hope they brought their best," he said with a wicked chuckle. "Because we're bringing ours."
The battlefield of Sector-14 had become a brutal symphony of war a place where the impossible collided with the unthinkable.
Exo-Guardians stood at the forefront, their mechanized armor gleaming under firelight, bodies moving with mechanical precision and devastating grace. Some wielded massive power-halberds and graviton-forged greatswords, cutting down Xerathians like stalks of grass. Others fired pulse rifles and blackmore-piercers, rounds glowing with voidlight, ripping through the chitinous armor of the alien invaders.
A trio of Exo-Guardians moved as a unit one blinking across short distances in fractured time, striking and vanishing in a single heartbeat; another throwing up kinetic barriers to shield retreating medics; the third deploying swarm mines that flitted through the air like sparks before detonating with atomic bursts.
Amid the ranks, agents with wild and unique powers weaved chaos into order:
A time-warping agent in a split-second dodged a plasma blast and reversed a Xerathian's lunge, turning it back on its kin.
A cloaked warrior danced across rubble, splitting into mirror clones that struck in perfect synchronicity.
One agent hurled singularity spheres that collapsed entire squads into blinks of dust.
Another stomped the ground and converted broken steel into spectral chains, binding and shredding through armored foes.
But the battlefield wasn't only held by Exo-Guardians and elite agents.
Veterans of the Cecilian fold fourth-dimensional beings of flowing form and radiant energy hovered just above the ground, their voices echoing across space as they rewrote the local laws of physics, making enemies sink into floors that weren't solid seconds ago, or reversing the flow of explosions mid-air. They fought with weapons of concept and intent, blades shaped like ideas, slicing through time itself.
A Dendrite veteran, its leafy tendrils hardened into crystalline spears, stood defiantly against a charging Obelisk Xerathian. The beast roared, but the Dendrite's roots shot into the ground, blooming into a living barrier that surged with electrical fury. "You do not uproot the founders," it bellowed, voice resonating like thunder through stone.
Nearby, Metallurges masters of material ripped broken debris from the battlefield and reforged it mid-air into hovering blades, metal beasts, and living armor for the wounded. One Metallurge stitched a melted Jaeger arm back into function, whispering equations into the steel, bringing it to life again.
And still, the Xerathians poured in fueled by madness, lies, and eldritch whispers.
For every soldier that fell, ten more Xerathians surged forward, their Obelisks screaming in corrupted tongues, raining acid and shadowfire onto the defenders.
But Evolto City did not break.
Not here.
Not now.
And in the distance three figures approached fast through the smoke and ash. One cloaked in shadow and claws, another trailing lightning in his laughter, and the last radiating medical fury behind a gleaming pair of glasses.
Nyxia, Virdarath, and Dr. Wagner had arrived.
The moment the trio crossed into Sector-14's frontlines, the atmosphere shifted.
Explosions rattled the shattered streets, tracer rounds cut across the smoky sky, and dying Xerathians shrieked their alien death-songs. Soldiers made way instinctively, like water parting around a blade they knew something had just arrived. Something older. Something darker.
Nyxia walked ahead in silence, eyes narrowed, claws flexed.
And then his voice rang out like a command carved from midnight:
"Arise."
The battlefield shuddered.
From the shadows cast by broken walls, smoldering wreckage, and even beneath the bodies of the fallen, they came. Inky hands clawed from the darkness as hundreds no, thousands of shadow soldiers emerged. Shadow-plate armor clung to them like smoke made solid, their eyes burning with cold blue flame. Warriors, beasts, even ancient kings now long forgotten all now loyal to the Shadow Monarch.
Some nearby soldiers froze in awe, stumbling back.
"By the stars..." a young Exo-Guardian whispered, watching a titanic shadow-drake circle overhead, letting out a hollow, soul-warping screech.
But veterans and Evolto natives didn't even blink.
One Metallurge agent chuckled mid-battle. "Oh good, another Shadow Monarch. That makes six this month."
"Yeah," muttered a Cecilian as she rewrote gravity itself to fling a Xerathian through a wall. "Still cool though."
Nyxia's army surged into battle with surgical fury, swarming Obelisks, crashing into Xerathian lines like a tidal wave of death. He didn't need to speak again. His shadows knew.
Just behind him, Virdarath stood on a pile of rubble, holding a rubber duck... which immediately transformed into a buzzsaw-launching trumpet cannon.
"IT'S HERO TIME, BABY!" he yelled, firing a duck-shaped sawblade through two Xerathians.
Then he summoned... a giant baguette that exploded into confetti and bees.
"Why bees?" an agent shouted mid-fight.
Virdarath giggled. "Because the Queen Bee owes me a favor!"
He backflipped over an incoming barrage and called into existence a neon jellyfish mech-suit with limbs made of gummy snakes, which proceeded to pummel a Xerathian brute with boxing gloves labeled "LEFT" and "SLIGHTLY LEFTER."
A Cecilian glanced over and muttered, "Why do the Chaotic Ones always get more creative when the stakes are higher?"
"Because he's bored," a nearby Dendrite veteran grumbled, flinging a flaming vine javelin.
Virdarath struck a pose as music not from any known source blared around him. "And I just had soda!"
Dr. Wagner, meanwhile, moved with grim focus patching wounded, deploying nanites, and slicing down any creature that got too close with his compact bone-saw saber. Blood stained his coat. His glasses were cracked.
"Children," he muttered in German. "Vhy do I alvays work with children?"
And above it all, the battle raged.
Shadows marched. Madness sang. And Evolto City, once again, held the line.
Dr. Wagner stepped over the twitching remains of a Xerathian brute, his coat soaked in ash and gore. He crouched with surgical precision, extracting a pulsating gland from beneath the creature's armored chest. The black-violet fluid oozed down into a containment vial lined with adaptive crystal.
"Fascinating nervous lattice… highly decentralized… possibly a hive-mind?" he muttered to himself, voice tinged with grim curiosity. "Let us see how you bleed, monster."
He tapped a sequence on his wrist-implant. A holographic screen blinked to life an interface to V.I.L.E., his personal battlefield AI and the heart of his scientific work.
[Accessing: V.I.L.E. Core | Subroutine: Pathogen Analysis – Active]
"Ah, finally," purred the AI in its signature velvety tone. "Something new. You bring me the most charming corpses, Doctor."
"Analyze it. Full genome scan. I vant options fast-acting neurotoxins, viral disruptors, maybe something... poetic," Wagner growled.
"Consider it done. Constructing tailored bio-agent: 'Project Spitevine' ETA: 3 minutes."
Wagner's eyes flashed with ruthless satisfaction. "Good. Something to remind them zat Evolto does not tolerate uninvited guests."
Behind him, Virdarath was turning a plushie into a railgun. Nyxia's shadows continued to dominate the field. But Wagner, ever the surgeon of war, had set a different weapon in motion one that would crawl through the Xerathian DNA like fire through dry leaves.
Far above Evolto City, in the void beyond the Cerian Sun's glow, a dormant satellite stirred.
Designation: VIRALUS-09Owner: Dr. Dietrich WagnerStatus: Biochemical Payload ArmedAuthorization: Level PrimePayload: Project SpitevineObjective: Xerathian Eradication Protocol
Down on the battlefield of Sector-14, Wagner's wrist implant pinged.
"Project Spitevine is ready," V.I.L.E. cooed. "Shall I prepare a demonstration, Doctor?"
Wagner adjusted his broken glasses, gaze fixed on the horizon where a Xerathian siege-engine lumbered forward like a monstrous crustacean, tearing through defenders with biomechanical limbs.
"Do it," he said coldly. "Let them breathe our contempt."
High Orbit – VIRALUS-09
A hatch opened with a hiss, releasing a slender metallic capsule glowing with viridian light. The capsule rotated once, then dropped.
It screamed through the atmosphere like a falling star, wrapped in plasmatic heat.
Impact Zone: Sector-14, Xerathian Command Node
The ground shook.
The capsule struck with pinpoint precision no fire, no grand explosion just a low, thudding hum that rolled across the battlefield.
Then came the bloom.
A silent burst of emerald mist erupted upward, like spores from a shattered fruit. It swirled with unnatural grace, carried by nanite-bound vectors and tailored bacteriophages. Xerathians closest to the impact gasped, their bodies twitching, warping, then rotting in real time as their cellular scaffolding unraveled.
Chitinous armor flaked off in glowing ribbons. Muscles liquefied. Nerve clusters shrieked like signal feedback.
Across the battlefield, Xerathians began to fall.
"Warning," V.I.L.E. whispered into Wagner's earpiece, almost gleeful. "Spitevine is mutating. Adapting. Enhancing its lethality. I may be in love."
Wagner nodded. "Good. Let it dance."
Nearby, Nyxia looked up from cleaving through a Xerathian berserker. He watched the green cloud consume the invaders, his shadow beasts unaffected.
"What... is that?"
Virdarath, now riding a summoned toaster that fired sticky grenades, tilted his head. "Oh that? Wagner just dropped a rage flower."
Then he cackled. "Never let the combat medic get bored!"
The battlefield of Sector-14 was shifting. The once unstoppable tide of Xerathian warriors began to falter under the effects of Project Spitevine, but there was a sudden shift in the air. It was a pulse a ripple in the ground that felt like a living thing.
High above, the air hummed with an unnatural resonance. From the depths of the battlefield, one figure stood alone The Wyrmguard, a Xerathian elite soldier, known as one of the most powerful generals under the King.
Towering over his comrades, his back was a mass of glowing, shifting organic armor plates. His face was concealed behind a jagged, horned helm, his body decorated with glistening black-and-silver chitin. The Spitevine's effect should've been lethal, but instead, the Wyrmguard's tendrils, encased in bio-fiber, twitched with unnatural precision.
"Impossible…" he murmured, his voice a low growl, as his massive form swayed against the collapsing bodies of his comrades. But the chemical infection had only grazed him his body adapting at a rate unimaginable to anyone watching. A dull blue glow pulsed beneath his skin.
A Xerathian from his unit, the Wraith Drones, fell in front of him, their bodies dissolving into putrid sludge. He knelt, placing his hand on the ground, and the energy flared. The Wyrmguard's bioengineered mind was already working, evolving.
High above Sector-14, in orbit
V.I.L.E.'s voice buzzed into Dr. Wagner's earpiece, sharp and urgent. "Doctor… The subject, Wyrmguard... has developed a resistance to Spitevine. Adaptation is accelerating."
Dr. Wagner's lips curled into a grim smile. "So they evolve..."
He adjusted his glasses, watching the battlefield from his station. "V.I.L.E., prep the counteragent. Let's see if their evolution can handle this."
The Wyrmguard roared, sending shockwaves through the battlefield. His body bulged and cracked as the Spitevine's effects pushed him to his absolute limit. His armor plates lifted, revealing deep, pulsating flesh beneath. He was adapting becoming something else. A skin of dense, shimmering spines covered his back, and his forearms morphed into massive, serrated claws. His eyes burned with an unnatural light as they adjusted to a new wavelength, allowing him to see through the nanite-enhanced chaos Wagner had unleashed.
A primal growl escaped his throat as he straightened up, towering over the bodies of fallen Xerathians. "It adapts… it evolves…" he whispered, his voice a low rumble. Then he raised his voice to command. "Fall back, all units! Move, now! We adapt, we survive!"
The Xerathian soldiers, many still writhing in pain, heard their leader's command. They responded with ferocity, their movements shifting, their bodies warping into more lethal forms. Even the more fragile Xerathians those who had previously been near-death from Spitevine's effects shuddered and twitchingly rose, their forms tearing apart and reassembling like reprogrammed machines.
Nyxia, Virdarath, and Dr. Wagner could see the shift through their comm-links. Virdarath raised an eyebrow. "Ohhh, so they're learning. Fun."
Dr. Wagner's eyes narrowed. "It's more than learning, Virdarath… They are adapting evolving beyond their base form. We need to accelerate our plans. More strikes, more precision."
"Ugh, so much work." Virdarath grumbled, summoning a ridiculous flying fork to try and help the agents by launching it at a few nearby enemies. "Can't we just throw a bunch of exploding pies at them?"
"I'll leave the strategic thinking to the rest of you," Wagner muttered, turning his focus back to the mission at hand.
The Wyrmguard roared once more, and his soldiers followed suit now more coordinated, more vicious. Their bodies had become shifting, like dark liquid shadows of their former selves, quicker and more ruthless. A new wave of unrelenting aggression surged through the Xerathian ranks.
The Wyrmguard, now towering even larger and bulkier, bellowed, "The King shall reward us! Bring them down!"
Boom.
The first of the Xerathian warships broke through the atmosphere, trailing smoldering wake trails as they descended into the fray. One, then two, then six huge, armored ships, each brimming with Xerathian soldiers and weapons of mass destruction. The ships opened fire, raining down plasma blasts that scorched the earth below.
"We've got company," Nyxia muttered as he flexed his claws, preparing for the oncoming onslaught.
"Yeah, we do." Virdarath grinned wildly, summoning an enormous magnetized boomerang. "Let's give them a real welcome, shall we?"
The battle was far from over, and with the skies now darkened by warships, it was clear that the true Xerathian invasion was only just beginning.
From the bellies of the descending Xerathian warships, dark organic pods dropped like rain.
Each pod hissed as it cracked open mid-air, revealing grotesque winged horrors Aerial Xerathians, evolved for atmospheric superiority. Their sleek, obsidian-like hides shimmered with neuro-reactive scales, wings spanning over thirty feet, covered in barbed membrane. Their faces were eyeless, replaced by a swirling core that emitted ultrasonic pulses used to disorient and locate targets.
But that wasn't all.
Trailing behind them, mist-like spores began to drift through the air biological weapons, ancient creations of the Xerathian genome for eradicating entire ecosystems. Spores capable of causing organ failure, neurological collapse, or cellular disintegration in other species. These weapons had once silenced entire civilizations in their native universe.
And yet… nothing happened.
The Cecilian time-melders stood firm, unaffected. The Dendrite veterans merely turned their heads in curiosity. Even the children in the shelters those still watching from behind reinforced observation windows remained untouched.
Dr. Wagner leaned back, expression unreadable. "Zey tried zheir bio-weapons." He adjusted a few dials. "Of course, zey failed."
Nyxia, watching the battlefield from a rooftop, scoffed. "You sound smug."
"I am smug," Wagner said. "Zey are not the first to try. Evolto City's biology, culture, even diet is incompatible with their viruses. Every inhabitant, from Cecilian to Ogryn, even zhe Void-born, carries bioadaptive resistance through zhe Cerian fields."
Virdarath leaned out a floating window beside him, wearing giant comedy sunglasses. "Wow. So, like, you gave everyone plot armor?"
"No. I gave them science, Virdarath."
The Aerial Xerathians dived toward the Exo-Guardians in synchronized formations, shrieking with rage. Their talons ignited with violet bio-energy as they swooped down but were immediately met with a storm of retaliation.
From below, Nyxia raised a claw, and a massive obsidian javelin of shadow erupted from the ground, impaling one mid-flight. His shadow army surged upward like a black tsunami, some riding floating platforms, others launching netted chains made of pure night. The Xerathians screeched, flailing as they were dragged down and consumed into darkness.
Virdarath, cackling madly, conjured a living pinball cannon that launched him into the air. He bounced between Aerial Xerathians, smashing them with improvised weapons a hammer made of chattering teeth, a rocket boot shaped like a clown shoe, and finally a glowing yo-yo with a black hole inside it.
"Physics? Never heard of her!" he shouted, striking down three more creatures with a single swing.
Explosions of sickly green blood rained down as Cecilian commanders opened rifts mid-air, dragging the Aerials into compressed time loops. Dendrite warpriests impaled them with bio-conductive thorns that fried their neural cores.
Aerial Command Xerathian, Watching From Above
One of the larger flying monstrosities twice the size of the rest, draped in armor that moved like liquid muscle watched from a distance.
Its internal core hummed, trying to understand. "Their flesh resists. Their skies burn not. This world is not natural."
A signal pulsed from its chest, back to the incoming royal fleet.
"Deploy the Leviathans. Bring the Obelisks. If we cannot poison this world… we will crush it."
From the clouds above Sector-14, the sky cracked with thunder not from weather, but from power.
Dark, floating titans each the size of a ten-story building descended like monoliths of extinction. Made of living metal and wrapped in runes pulsing with purple-red energy, Obelisks were not just weapons. They were terraformers, designed to rewrite the laws of physics in an area, creating death zones where matter broke down, gravity folded, and time twisted into knots.
The ground warped beneath them. Soldiers were thrown back not injured, but displaced, flickering in and out of existence for milliseconds at a time. A Dendrite was caught mid-jump, stretched like a glitch before a Cecilian pulled them out of phase.
And then, a new sound split the chaos.
Aegir-001 erupted from a ground platform, rising like a titan of storm and steel. Its hammer Mjoln-X swung in a wide arc, colliding with the nearest Obelisk in a single, thunderous blow. The monolith cracked from top to bottom, then exploded in a cone of multiversal static.
Vortex-212 emerged next, dropping from a localized wormhole. Its sleek form blurred with gravitational pulses as it spun mid-air and kicked another Obelisk, sending it flying through a building, crashing into Sector-13. The Obelisk tried to recalibrate, its runes glowing brighter
but then Ragnarok-777 descended from orbit.
With a scream of engines and a flash of crimson runes along its shoulders, Ragnarok-777 punched straight through a Xerathian warship. Not just tearing through its hull, but vaporizing the core inside with its burning gauntlet. The ship imploded behind it in a silent burst of warped matter.
Down below, citizens in the shelters felt the rumble, only to look up at the monitors and witness their defenders unleashing hell.
Xerathian Command ChannelThe voice of a warlord roared in their native tongue, fracturing in panic and rage."Their gods walk in metal! Redirect all Leviathan units! Reinforce the Obelisks! Stop them STOP THEM "
But the Jaegers kept coming.
More began appearing from deep silos beneath Evolto City, each one bearing ancient glyphs of the Blackmore Reactor, each one personalized by their pilot. Some launched from subterranean rails, others from orbit.
They weren't just fighting back.They were turning the tide.
On the battlefield, Virdarath screamed with glee."NOW THIS IS ANIME!!!"
Above the burning skyline of Sector-14, the air grew thick not just with smoke and plasma trails, but with dread.
The Xerathian warships opened not like machines, but like living creatures peeling back layers of bone and armor.
And from them dropped the Leviathans.
Towering beasts clad in organic armor, some slithered with a thousand limbs, others floated as if the laws of gravity bent in reverence. Their eyes were clusters of living crystal, glowing with malice. Each Leviathan was a living war engine, bred from extinct gods in their home universe. They roared not with sound, but with pulses that rattled minds and cracked barriers.
One landed in the middle of a burning plaza. Its tendrils lashed out, piercing buildings and draining energy from the very walls.
Jaeger: Aegir-001Pilot: Captain Myra Kovenhart
Once a deep-sea salvage operator turned mech-commander, Myra adjusted her neural link. "Target: Leviathan-Class B. Initiating Storm Wall protocol."
Aegir's body shimmered with arcs of charged water. With each step, thunder rolled. She launched herself into the Leviathan's side, cracking its organic plates with electrified fists.
Jaeger: Ragnarok-777Pilot: Enforcer Kael Draeven
An old war hero, Kael's voice came through the comms, grizzled and full of purpose. "Big ones first. Let the city see fire."
He grappled with a Leviathan nearly his size, dragging it through a collapsing tower and igniting his reactor. The explosion bathed the streets in golden light.
Jaeger: Vortex-212Pilot: Twin Syncs: Rei and Raen Virellia
A Cecilian-Cybernetic hybrid pair, their consciousness split between two minds and one machine.
Vortex blurred, phasing in and out of dimensions, slashing a Leviathan's limbs before it could register the attack. Its scream was absorbed by the warped air.
From a rooftop, Nyxia watched the Leviathans descend, his eyes glowing with dark fire.
"They brought monsters," he muttered.
Virdarath, munching popcorn from nowhere, cackled. "And we brought animation budget! Let's make it cinematic!"
In the shadows, a Leviathan charged one of the outer bunkers.But before it could reach, a ripple in the ground stopped it. Shadows formed claws.
And from them rose Nyxia's Shadow Army.Dozens… then hundreds… of jet-black warriors emerged from the cracks in reality knights, beasts, dragons all forged in his darkness. They struck the Leviathan from all sides, binding it in chains of void.
In orbit, one of Dr. Wagner's satellites pulsed red.He watched silently."Zer iss always a bigger beast," he muttered. "But ve have built gods."
The sky above Sector-14 was now a war-torn canvas of flame, ash, and descending nightmares.
From the gaping maws of Xerathian warships, more Leviathans fell like divine retribution, each one bigger, more violent, and unnervingly intelligent than the last. They no longer attacked wildly they coordinated, circling around the Jaegers like predators around an ancient beast.
At the front of the defensive line stood Jaeger: Ragnarok-777, scarred from countless campaigns, reactor core burning like the heart of a star.
Kael Draeven, standing in the neural cradle, took a deep breath. "Let's see if these bastards can bleed."
Two Leviathans struck first one lunging with spike-tipped tendrils, the other with a serrated tail that carved through streets like paper. Ragnarok caught one and slammed it into the other, throwing both aside like ragdolls.
Then came the third. It was massive its limbs twisted into saws and molten crystal, its scream a psychic howl. As Kael braced, a fourth Leviathan dropped behind him, unleashing a corrosive cloud that destabilized Ragnarok's outer armor.
Kael grit his teeth. "You want me dead? Earn it."
The battle lit up the city. Ragnarok-777 activated its Meteor Arm Cannons, launching a barrage of searing plasma. The blast obliterated two Leviathans, but in the aftermath, the fifth Leviathan pounced latching onto the Jaeger's back.
"Multiple heat signatures converging Kael, fall back!" came Myra's voice over comms.
"I don't fall back."
Ragnarok's left arm was torn free by a Leviathan's jaw. Its legs buckled from acid damage. Kael roared as he forced the Jaeger to its feet again.
With a final surge of power, Ragnarok-777 grabbed two Leviathans in its remaining hand and crushed them together, setting off a shockwave that leveled surrounding buildings.
But even gods can bleed.
The sixth and seventh Leviathan crashed into him together they pierced the Jaeger's reactor core.
The screens inside the cockpit flickered. Sparks danced.
Kael smiled.
"Do me proud, you iron beast."
And Ragnarok-777 detonated, taking three Leviathans with it in a blast that shook Sector-14's earth to its bones.
From above, Nyxia watched, unmoving.Virdarath looked somber for once. "He went out like a damn legend."
The skies over Sector-14 were gray and heavy not from weather, but from ash, wreckage, and blood-red clouds spawned by the atmospheric residue of war.
It had been two full days since the first wave.
Two days of endless combat.
Two days of terror, sacrifice, and grinding attrition.
And for every ten Leviathans slain, one Jaeger fell shattered, swallowed, or torn apart mid-strike.
The once-gleaming streets of Evolto City's outer ring were now trenches lined with craters, twisted metal, and the husks of both Xerathian war beasts and fallen Jaegers.
Towering piles of ruptured Leviathan corpses filled the gaps between ruins but so too did the still-glowing cores of Yaegers that had given their final breath to hold the line.
Among the wreckage, Exo-Guardians, agents, Metallurges, Dendrite veterans, and Cecilian warcasters fought relentlessly. Yet something darker churned beneath the surface.
Every biological weapon Dr. Wagner released nerve disruptors, rotweeds, neural mist, even the deadly Void-Tongue Enzyme had been evolved against.
Within hours.
The Xerathians adapted.
Skin hardened. Nervous systems rewired. Internal symbionts neutralized pathogens.
From his lab buried beneath Evolto's core, Dr. Wagner cursed in furious German.
"Zey are... learning us! Not just reacting they are preempting us! Zey are rewriting biological law!"
His AI, V.I.L.E., responded coldly:
"Adaptation speed is now calculated at 17 minutes for active strains. Every weapon becomes obsolete on deployment."
He smashed his gloved fist against a console. "Scheiße. We are not just fighting beasts. We are fighting living evolution."
From a shattered tower, Nyxia gazed at the field, shadow cape fluttering.
"Ten of theirs for one of ours…" he murmured.
Beside him, Virdarath chewed a glowing pretzel, his usual manic grin dulled.
"Yeah. But they have billions."
And overhead more warships arrived.
Hundreds.Each one releasing waves of new Leviathans their forms altered, twisted further.
Their bodies bore scars and adaptations from prior battles.
Some had hardened skin like Jaeger armor.Others had anti-gravitic organs to nullify orbital strikes.One even dragged a broken Jaeger chassis as a weapon.
The war had changed.
As Sector-14 crumbled beneath the unrelenting tide of evolved Xerathians, a grim decision echoed from the Citadel Core, deep in the heart of Evolto City.
Zalthorion Veilstryx, standing upon the Council Spire, spoke a single phrase:
"Authorize Protocol Vesper. Deploy the experimental Jaegers."
All across Evolto's command grid, redlined files unlocked projects too unstable, too destructive, too far from control. Now, they were the city's final hope.
1. "LUX-089: Halcyon Wrath"
Type: Glass Cannon
Design: A sleek, crystalline structure reinforced by resonating Voidsteel.
Specialty: Mounted with the Starflare Array a solar-based rail launcher that channels light into a concentrated beam capable of punching through multiple Leviathans and even breaching warship hulls.
Downside: Fragile. Its energy systems build massive internal heat, risking self-destruction if overused.
Piloted by a bonded twin pair who burn their own lifeforce with each shot.
2. "PHASE-Null: Wraithborn"
Type: Reality Phasing Infiltrator
Design: Fractured and blurry, constantly phasing in and out of local time-space.
Specialty: Uses chronotronic destabilizers and dimensional claws to slice through enemies across planes of existence.
Effect: Cannot be consistently targeted, but also struggles to stay grounded in reality risking total dissociation.
Rumor: Sometimes it phases into alternate futures and returns... changed.
3. "CRUX-77: Ion Howler"
Type: Shock-Titan Vanguard
Design: A jagged, brutal design plated with hyper-magnetic armor coils.
Specialty: Emits sub-sonic disintegration howls amplified by charged ion fields. Enemies within its radius suffer neural collapse and armor shredding.
Unique Feature: Leaps via directed electromagnetic blasts can literally repel itself from the ground.
4. "OBEL-X: Riven Dirge"
Type: Chaos Disruptor
Design: A heavily mutated construct powered by a corrupted Multiversal Disruption Field Generator (MDFG).
Specialty: The core radiates a disruption field that causes molecular bonds to unravel disintegrating Xerathian flesh, melting alloys, and even warping psychic energy.
Origin: Was once a prototype anti-Consumer weapon corrupted when exposed to Xytheron's entropy signature.
Effect: Not only destroys but unmakes.
As they emerged teleported, drop-shipped, or phased in silence fell across Sector-14.
Even the Xerathians seemed to pause.
The battlefield shifted.
Where brute force failed… instability, terror, and weapons not meant for reality itself would now be the blade.
The skies above Sector-14 had darkened with the weight of war, but as the experimental Jaegers took their first steps onto the battlefield, a new kind of tension filled the air. The Xerathian army, once unstoppable in their brutal force, paused. They recoiled not from the weapons of Evolto City, but from something else. Something primal. Something they couldn't fight.
The unknown
LUX-089: Halcyon Wrath moved first, its crystalline body catching the light of the artificial sun. The Jaeger looked almost ethereal, refracting the energy beams around it as if it were alive with light.
"This… is our last shot."
The twin pilots, Lira and Eren, spoke in synchronized unison as their Jaeger fired its first Starflare Array, lighting up the sky with a burning streak.
The beam collided with a Leviathan, slicing clean through its armored hull like a hot knife through butter. The creature screamed as it disintegrated in the wake of the blast.
But as the Leviathan collapsed into shards, the air around Halcyon Wrath crackled. It was too much. The heat, the radiation the Jaeger's core was on the verge of catastrophic overload.
"We have five minutes, Lira. Don't push it too far."
Lira, her eyes blazing with determination, spoke. "I've got it. Just a few more "
Before she could finish, the howling sound of a Leviathan charging filled the air.
PHASE-Null: Wraithborn phased into existence next, flashing into reality at the center of the Xerathian swarm. Its ethereal form appeared jagged blurring like a smear in time.
For the first time in the battle, the Xerathian frontlines hesitated. Their weapons were useless against something they couldn't fully perceive, and their aggressive movements faltered as the reality phasing Jaeger passed through them, leaving a trail of torn and fragmented soldiers.
The pilot of Wraithborn, Caleb, whispered with a grin, "Let's shake things up."
He activated the Chronotronic Destabilizer. It surged outward in a burst of chaotic energy, ripping through the very fabric of the battlefield. The Leviathans around him disintegrated into molecules, some flashing out of reality entirely.
The Xerathians screamed, but it wasn't just the destruction that terrified them. It was the uncertainty. They couldn't understand what they were facing.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the battlefield, CRUX-77: Ion Howler launched itself across the ground with devastating force, the electromagnetic charge causing tremors with every step. As it leapt through the chaos, the sub-sonic disintegration howls rang out like a war cry.
The Leviathans that stood in its path collapsed, their neural systems fried in an instant, as their armor melted from the sheer magnetic power. Skull-crushing, bone-shattering soundwaves filled the battlefield.
The pilot, Faelan, gritted his teeth. "Come on, come on, hold together."
The Jaeger's chest glowed bright as ion energy gathered. Faelan looked at his HUD: The Leviathans were breaking, but they were everywhere.
And then, the Unmaking:
The final experimental Jaeger, OBEL-X: Riven Dirge, emerged with a different kind of terror.
When the Molecular Disruption Field Generator (MDFG) activated, the air around it vibrated with a low, ominous hum. The field around it distorted reality itself, bending the world around it like liquid.
Xerathians screamed but it wasn't their flesh they feared most. It was the way their bodies unraveled.
When Riven Dirge's weapon fired, the molecular bonds of a Xerathian Leviathan broke down. Its form disintegrated in midair, turning into a swirling mass of atoms before vanishing entirely.
The molecular chaos spread through the surrounding Xerathians, and they disappeared nothing but empty air and bent reality where they once stood.
The Xerathian forces began to falter.
Their lines collapsed into chaos, and for the first time, fear took root in their ranks.
The Leviathans, once towering and confident in their overwhelming numbers, scattered no longer driven by the promise of victory. They were driven by the primal instinct to survive.
The pilots of the experimental Jaegers felt it too.
Lira, piloting Halcyon Wrath, winced as the heat in her cockpit began to spike.
"Lira, we can't keep this up much longer," Eren gasped, wiping sweat from his brow. "We need to"
But they had no choice.
As they fought, the toll on the pilots became apparent. The experimental Jaegers were not just weapons they were living storms.
In Wraithborn, Caleb's mind began to strain as the dimensional fluctuations grew more erratic. His heart rate increased, and his limbs felt heavy as his consciousness jumped in and out of time.
"I can't keep phasing like this," Caleb muttered, trying to steady his breathing. "I'll lose myself."
Faelan in Ion Howler fought against the dizziness of electromagnetic feedback as his suit struggled to control the overwhelming disintegration frequencies that coursed through the air.
But the reality-shattering effects were the worst.
Inside Riven Dirge, the pilot felt as if he were losing parts of himself with every shot. The MDFG weapon was so powerful, so dangerous, that the pilot could feel the very molecular integrity of their body weakening.
The Xerathians, despite their fear, began adapting again. Their warships released heavier and faster Leviathans, and with new mutations, they evolved faster than anyone anticipated.
But even as they adapted to the chaotic weapons, they could not prepare for what they had seen. The terrifying unknowns the Jaegers that phased in and out of reality, the creatures that melted before them, the bodies that unraveled in the air were not just tactics, but horror made real.
The fear spread like wildfire through the Xerathian ranks, as they began to realize that Evolto City had unleashed something beyond their comprehension.
Amidst the smoldering craters and twisted remains of Leviathan flesh and shattered Jaeger armor, the defenders of Evolto City toiled tirelessly. The sky was still bruised with storm clouds of smoke, and the low hum of Xerathian warships loomed overhead like vultures awaiting a second opportunity.
Yet on the ground, resolve had not broken.
Veterans and youngbloods alike Dendrites, Metallurges, Cecilian tacticians, and humanoid agents raced to erect modular defense towers, energize Nullfields, and plant Voltic Spears that disrupted aerial signals. Shadow soldiers, summoned earlier by Nyxia, now stood still as statues silent guards between the chaos.
The sounds of machinery whirred, barriers hummed to life, and energy coils were embedded deep into the streets to prepare for another siege.
But amidst the preparation, a strange stillness hung over one part of Sector-14.
It was a building untouched by orbital strikes, Leviathan gore, or collapsing metal a monolithic relic, standing alone like an artifact of arrogance. The ground around it was ruined, but its structure had not a single scratch. The architecture was sleek, abstract, and curved unnaturally upward likely a gift from a dimensional artisan, or perhaps something older, protected by anomalous design.
Inside, Vidarath and Nyxia stood in the center of a circular war room on the upper floor. The dim light flickered across the obsidian floor as tactical illusions and projected anomalies shimmered across floating rings of glass.
Vidarath's cold persona was at the forefront now gone was the whimsical madness, the chaotic grin. What stood now was the dark silhouette, clad in his high-collared voidcoat, arms folded behind his back, eyes like glass knives scanning the data arrays.
Nyxia's obsidian-black armor caught glints of the broken skyline through the transparent walls. His eyes, deep and calculating, shifted to Vidarath.
"They'll regroup soon. You felt it, didn't you? They're... trying to outthink us."
Vidarath nodded slowly. His voice was low, smooth, and unfeeling.
"The Xerathians are no longer simply reacting. They're evolving strategically. Each retreat is a rehearsal... and every Leviathan lost is logged and learned from."
Nyxia's shadows curled at his feet, uneasy.
"How did they even find this place?
Vidarath answered without pause.
"Evolto's enemies? The Eldritch parasites, the five-dimensional specters, the ones we imprisoned in ages past? They whisper. They make promises of godhood to the desperate."
He turned slightly, eyes flaring with faint silvery embers.
"One desperate warlord hears the whisper of Evolto City and the promise of dominion over creation itself… and they claw through the stars to prove their worth."
Nyxia clenched his fist. "They seek divinity through conquest."
Vidarath smirked but there was no joy in it.
"Let them try."
Without warning, the reinforced door hissed open. Dr. Wagner stepped through, the lights behind him flickering as his form entered like a reaper.
He was dragging a bound Xerathian soldier, its limbs reinforced with electro-binders, its shrieking mouth gagged with a neural mesh, and over its head, a black-iron helmet a prison that cut it from the Xerathian hivemind entirely. The Xerathian twisted violently, its triple-jointed limbs clanging against the floor.
"It fought like a wild beast when we severed its connection," Wagner growled. "But it's perfect. A foot soldier, mid-rank knows tactics, knows structure. And now... it knows fear."
He kicked the Xerathian forward, letting it slump before the towering Vidarath and silent Nyxia.
"I want to find what's feeding them. Evolution this fast is unnatural. Someone or something is guiding them. We extract that knowledge violently, if we must."
Vidarath walked slowly to the writhing alien, crouching down until their faces were inches apart. His voice was cold static.
"You are alone now."
The Xerathian thrashed and hissed, clicking violently, but there was something else now. Its movements were no longer rhythmic.
They were frantic. Panicked.
"They hear your silence, don't they?" Vidarath whispered. "You've never been cut off before. Never felt the void of individuality."
He stood and turned to Wagner.
"We'll make it talk. Eventually. But not with force. It will beg to speak once it realizes what it has become."
Wagner cracked his neck and placed a case of bio-extractors and neural probes on the nearby table.
"Good. Because the next phase of this war won't be fought on the battlefield."
Nyxia raised a brow.
"Then where?"
Wagner didn't look back as he opened the case.
"Inside their minds."
Within the tower that defied ruin, the stillness was broken by the hum of forbidden machinery.
Dr. Wagner, his coat stained with engine soot and dried alien ichor, stood beside the restrained Xerathian soldier, now bound to a modified neural sync-rig. Wires pulsed with eerie light some thin as thread, others thick as serpentine cables coiling into the back of the alien's helmet. The helmet itself began to twitch with faint pulses of violet light, signifying its partial reconnection.
Nyxia stood silent, one hand resting on the hilt of a shadow-forged blade. Vidarath, still in his cold persona, watched the display with a glacial calm.
"You're connecting it back to the hivemind?" Nyxia asked, narrowing his gaze. "I thought the point was cutting it off."
Wagner didn't flinch.
"Not to permanently sever. Just... intercept.""If we control the frequency window and piggyback the neural signature of this soldier, we can listen without alerting the hive. They'll think it's still offline... a casualty. But its mind is still syncing."
He activated a crystalline interface hovering mid-air strings of living code danced across it, pulsating like veins in a living organism.
A chorus of whispers, grinding clicks, and echoed thought-speak filled the chamber like a distant chorus in a hollow cathedral.
They weren't just hearing the Xerathian soldier they were hearing all of them, or at least a portion. Fragmented commands, evolving strategies, shifting priorities, and most alarming of all names.
Nyxia stepped forward.
"They name their classes? I thought they were hivemind beasts."
Wagner smirked grimly.
"Beasts don't give rank titles like Cystmourn Reavers... or Obsidian Heralds."
One visual projection displayed a battlefield schematic Xerathian clusters surrounding a sector labeled in their language as "Spine of the Enemy." Cross-referencing against
Evolto's map, Wagner's AI began translating.
"They're referring to Sector-9, the logistics tower... they plan to cripple our supply chain. This isn't just war it's dismantling."
Vidarath's eyes flicked over another data stream. The name "Sovereign Node: Zrkkash'thul" shimmered in the code.
"That's a commander, or worse. Possibly second to their King."
Wagner's fingers flew across the interface.
"There battlefield overlays. Biological strain upgrades. They're not just adapting randomly. There's design. They run simulations in the hivemind and push the most effective mutations to the front lines."
The screen displayed evolutionary annotations in real time. Symbols flashed:
"Spitevine Immunity: Achieved.""Gravity Null Counterstrikes: Deployed.""Molecular Disruptor Resistance: 83%."
Nyxia's voice was grave.
"They're learning us faster than we can learn them."
But then, another string of information scrolled across the screen more names, but not Xerathian.
"Jaeger Variant Identified: Echoveil.""Threat Priority: Glass God (Iridescence Class).""Experimental Weapon Core: Null-Cell.""Targeted Disruption Planned."
Wagner's face darkened.
"They've cataloged the experimental Jaegers. They even ranked them by danger."
Vidarath's voice cut like a blade.
"We just became prey that fights back harder than they expected. And prey like that... is hunted."
The Xerathian soldier twitched in its bindings, unaware of its role in betraying its own species.
For a moment, none of them spoke.
Then Wagner muttered, more to himself than the others:
"We're inside their mind... but the real question is: what happens when they realize we're listening?"
The walls of the ruined tower thrummed with quiet tension. Flickers from the alien interface danced across the cracked concrete, casting long shadows across the faces of those within.
Vidarath's cold, calculating expression melted in an instant. With a dramatic swirl, his colors brightened, his coat changed hues mid-motion, and a mismatched top hat appeared on his head perched at an impossible angle.
"Ohoho! So that helmet " he leaned over and flicked it with a gloved finger, producing a hollow clink " this marvel is what's cutting the bug's brain-chatter, yes?"
Wagner, hunched over a console, sighed without looking up.
"No, it doesn't just sever its connection. The helmet was designed by Magneto yes, that Magneto. It also nullifies localized telepathy. Useful for interrogation. Doesn't fully cut it from the hivemind, but it keeps its thoughts from being yanked out by psionics."
Vidarath grinned, twirling a floating cog like a coin between his fingers.
"But what if we scale it up? Broadcast the concept of that suppression field across a sector? No thoughts in, no thoughts out. A big, juicy dead zone for the hivemind."
Nyxia turned, catching on quickly.
"If we do that... they lose sync. No shared memory. No rapid evolution."
"Exactly!" Vidarath declared, arms wide. "We'd be Ender's Game-ing them, or wait, wait, what's that old Earth flick? Ah! Independence Day, the one with the speech and the slap! Cut the network, confuse the swarm!"
Wagner paused.
"...that might work."
He stood up straight, looking at the helmet as if seeing it for the first time.
"They're not evolving randomly. They're passing data like a decentralized AI net. If we cut the data stream, we stall evolution."
He typed rapidly.
"I could reconfigure the base design swap localized shielding for a wide-range psionic dampening pulse. If we interface it with the Blackmore Relay towers... we might cover half a sector."
Nyxia's expression hardened, but there was a flicker of hope behind his eyes.
"That might be the first real blow we can deal them."
Vidarath, balancing on one hand atop a floating gear, added with a grin:
"Just imagine it! A battlefield of lost bugs, running in circles, unable to hear their Queen's lullaby! Like ants with earplugs!"
Wagner's tone sobered.
"We'll need to test it. If it works fine. But the moment they figure out what we're doing, they'll come for the relays. Hard."
Nyxia nodded.
"Then we make sure they don't reach them."
The Xerathian soldier twitched again in its restraints, a silent, echoing pulse emitting from the machinery one no one noticed. The shadows on the walls shifted… just slightly.
To be continued...