Kruger

The lift to the upper command level of Outpost Spires rose like a coffin built from silence.

Kaiell stood still in the center, flanked by two Kruger specialists—each armored in reinforced Riftsteel, their weapons set to kill, not contain. But the tension wasn't aimed at Kaiell.

It was aimed at what was watching through him.

The lift hissed open.

Before him spread the heart of Spires: a chamber ringed with holographic war maps, planetary scans, and Riftstorm monitors. Commanders, tacticians, and psych-techs moved like nerves in a brain—coordinated, quick, anxious.

One turned.

Commander Seth.

He stepped down from the holoplatform, eyes like pale glass beneath his hood.

"You're awake," he said.

"I didn't sleep."

"Good," Seth replied flatly. "You're not allowed to, not anymore."

He led Kaiell toward a smaller chamber—a globe-shaped data war room with real-time feeds flickering across the walls.

"This is where we predict Voidling movement. Normally, we fail. You've given us a new tool. A neural vantage point."

Kaiell narrowed his eyes. "You're going to use me as a sensor."

"As a compass," Seth corrected. "If the Mage keeps using the Rift neural field to coordinate its swarm, and if your Index stays crosslinked, we'll see what it sees."

Kaiell clenched his jaw. "And when it sees me back?"

Seth didn't answer.

But that night, Kaiell felt it.

It began as a flicker—an ache behind the eyes, like a migraine made of thoughts. Then his mind slid sideways into the stream.

He didn't resist.

The jungle bloomed around him in ghostlight: vast, warped, unnatural. Voidlings clustered in cells like insects—no longer aimless beasts. Soldiers. Moving in cadence. Waiting.

And at the center—

The Mage.

It stood on a rise of stone—arms out, head tilted back—two smaller Voidlings writhing at its feet. Not dead. Not resisting.

Offering.

Kaiell tried to back out of the vision, but the bond pulled tight, yanking him closer, forcing him to witness.

The Mage raised one hand.

A crack of force split the sky.

The two Voidlings screamed—their flesh and energy unraveling into threads of shimmering black-violet plasma, drawn upward into the Mage's mouthless form.

He consumed them completely.

The jungle darkened.

Kaiell choked in real space. His eyes glowed, palms shaking.

And in the vision, the Mage's body convulsed, expanded. Plates of metallic armor grew over its limbs, curved and seamless. Its previous shifting, unformed skin solidified into silver-grey alloy laced with scars of molten red.

When the transformation stopped, its new form stood twice as tall—less spectral, more war machine. Eyes like forge-fires. Fingers like spears.

A voice bloomed into Kaiell's mind:

"**Ascension requires sacrifice.I am no longer shadow.I am **Metal.I am Rank Five.I am what your world called 'Myth.'"

"And now, you carry a thread of my becoming."

Kaiell gasped and snapped back to reality.

Sirens were already blaring in Outpost Spires.

He collapsed onto the floor of the command center, convulsing. Seth was already at his side, shouting for containment and psychic dampeners.

Kaiell gritted his teeth. "It… it evolved. Two of its own. Absorbed. Rank Five now. Metal-class. I saw it."

One of the officers cursed under his breath. "That's a city-killer."

"No," Seth said. "That's a planet-breaker if we let it mature any further."

Kaiell wiped blood from his nose.

"It knows I'm watching," he said. "And now I think it's using the connection on purpose."

Seth turned to his command team. "Contact all off-world Kruger fleets. Prepare Voidstorm counter-bombardment plans. But until we get visual confirmation on that Metal-class, this outpost's survival depends on one thing—"

He looked directly at Kaiell.

"Keep watching."