Kruger

The warning came too late.

"Viora instability spike detected—energy coil at Class Six.All personnel evacuate Spires. I repeat: this is not a drill—"

Then the sky fell.

A scream rolled out across the atmosphere — not sound, but a psychic shockwave. The Mage raised both arms above its head, and the clouds peeled open like a wound. Lightning crackled sideways, black rain poured upward, and the Voidstorm finally let go.

A sphere of dark energy burst from the Mage like a heart detonation.

Everything broke.

Outpost Spires vanished in the blink of a pulse.

The west towers crumbled. Shield pylons melted from the inside. Riftsteel bulkheads screamed as their own mass turned against them. Drones spiraled into the sky and exploded like dying stars.

Kaiell barely had time to grab Joran before the ground vanished beneath them.

Then — silence.

Ash drifted where command decks once stood.

Craters glowed with residual Riftfire. Mangled bodies littered the broken jungle basin. What remained of the facility was a twisted skeleton of jagged towers and collapsed platforms.

Somehow, a few lived.

Commander Seth was pulled from rubble by a wounded Kruger squad leader with one arm. Mira had a collapsed lung and half her armor torn off but crawled her way into a shelter pod. Joran had a gash across his chest and a dislocated shoulder — but he was breathing.

Kaiell…

Kaiell had survived the storm in the center of it.

His Viora had flared so violently at the impact point that it repelled the initial force — burning his body with residual feedback but shielding him in a cocoon of radiant pressure.

He awoke coughing blood, armor cracked, fingers trembling.

The storm was still active, but now it covered half the planet — an unrelenting cyclone of Void energy tearing through everything in its path.

The Mage stood at the edge of a canyon formed by its blast, watching the survivors through burning eyes. It didn't attack.

Not yet.

It waited.

As if to say:

"Now we begin."

Kaiell limped through the wreckage, finding Joran dragging a plasma carbine from under a collapsed comms tower.

"You alive?" Joran rasped.

"Not sure yet," Kaiell said.

He looked up.

Smoke.Lightning.Voidborn shadows gathering in the mist.

Kruger survivors: 14 confirmed.Voidlings: hundreds. Evolving. Organizing.Leonida's: preparing orbital drop teams. ETA: 6 minutes.

Kaiell picked up a blade from a fallen Kruger's body. Viora hummed through it.

He turned to the last line of soldiers — scarred, burned, broken — and raised his voice.

"Spires is gone.""The test is over.""Now we make them bleed."

The survivors readied their weapons.

No fear.

No retreat.

Just resolve.

And when the next wave of Voidlings charged, screaming through the storm, the last Krugers met them head-on.