The desert wind screamed like a beast awoken from slumber.
Nam and Lan stood on the edge of the Wastes of Sira'an, where the world itself seemed to resist their presence. Sandstorms tore through the skies. Lightning in unnatural hues cracked open the air. Every step forward was a battle—not against the elements, but against time itself.
Nam's communicator fizzled and sparked. "All signals jammed," he muttered. "The Eye's presence is distorting reality. The Pillar must be manipulating dimensional layers."
Lan scanned the horizon with her modified lens. "Six energy signatures. Big ones. Heading straight for us."
Stone guardians.
They moved with the weight of millennia in their limbs, each one carved from a single block of obsidian etched with glowing runes. Their eyes shone crimson, in sync with the awakening Eye.
Nam tapped into the fusion core embedded in his chest. "No more hiding."
His body surged with light. The relics he had collected began to vibrate—responding not only to his will, but to the Eye's call.
Lan stepped forward, blades unsheathed. "You take three. I'll dance with the rest."
The first wave clashed like titans.
Nam met the nearest guardian with a blast of concentrated energy—only to be knocked back by an anti-matter shield the construct conjured mid-strike.
"These things learn," Nam grunted.
Lan sliced through another, her speed a blur. But the guardian split apart into fragments—each fragment regenerating a smaller version of itself.
She cursed. "They're evolving on the fly."
As they fought, the sky above twisted.
A red rift opened in the clouds.
And from it descended… a figure.
Clad in robes of torn starlight, with skin like burnished silver and a mask of mirrored glass, the being floated above them. No aura. No sound. Just presence.
Nam stopped. "Who…"
"I am the Arbiter."
"Bearer of Judgement. Watcher of the Eye."
"You have trespassed beyond the veil."
"The Trial begins."
With a flick of the Arbiter's hand, time warped.
Nam and Lan froze mid-motion—conscious, but trapped in a moment that no longer belonged to them.
And the world shattered around them like glass—revealing the battlefield beneath memory itself.
They now stood on scorched ground.
A battlefield lost to history.
Thousands of warriors—human, machine, and other—locked in eternal war. None noticed Nam or Lan. They were watching a memory unfold.
Lan whispered, "This… this is the Forgotten War."
Nam's heart pounded. "The one erased from every archive…"
And then they saw it.
At the heart of the chaos: the Crimson Eye. Towering, radiant, surrounded by beings made of light and darkness, locked in battle over its fate.
"You must remember what was hidden," the Arbiter's voice echoed.
"For only the remembered can reclaim what was lost."