Kruger

The world had become noise.

Heat and steel. Screams and motion. The wet slap of flesh meeting flesh, of armor tearing, of the earth groaning beneath the weight of monsters.

Kaiell's boots struck the blood-soaked mud, his lungs burning, body screaming for reprieve he would not grant it. The jungle around him was no longer green—it was black with smoke, red with gore, and split apart by the pale arcs of Kruger weaponry. Viora lit the sky in streams and lances.

He barely registered the others anymore.

Not Joran, not Nelis, not even the terrifying presence of Vox looming like a stormhead in the distance.

Only the movement.

The next Voidling fell beneath his blade—Nightfell singing a short, perfect note as it cleaved through bone and voidchitin. Something deep in his arm flared—pain, then release. The glyph flickered again across his skin, now brighter, no longer cold.

[Ibex Cells: 10 Active][Viora Sync: 37%][System Alert: Combat Strain Threshold Crossed – Initiating Neural Mapping]

His muscles didn't ache. Not anymore. They were tightening, reshaping. The more he moved, the more he changed. Every attack, every dodge, every push of his Viora—something inside him responded, like a furnace catching its breath between bursts.

He didn't need a medic to tell him what was happening. The message had come through moments earlier—encrypted and delayed from the Spire's final uplink.

From Commander Seth.

A short file. Voice only. The last truth Kaiell had needed.

"If you're hearing this, you've survived long enough to start asking questions. So here's your answer. Viora isn't some gift from the stars. It's not magic. It's your body. Yours. You bleed it, you burn it, and if you survive the strain, it unlocks."

"There's a gene in you. We call it the Nai. Most people never trigger it. Not unless they're forced to. The exams—the fighting, the death, the madness—it's all a furnace. Pressure on your cells. Strain on your nerves. And if you're lucky, or cursed, the gene opens."

"That's what you're feeling. Those markers in your flesh? They're called Ibex Cells. They don't show up at birth. They're forged. Grown. And they're the only thing keeping you alive right now."

"Every time you push harder, more appear. They're your evolution. Your engine."

"Keep going. Or die screaming like the rest."

The message had ended with static.

And now, it echoed in Kaiell's bones with every breath.

He moved through the field like a man possessed. No—like something being born in real time. The interface flickered again as he unleashed another sweep of Viora through his system, extending his reflexes just long enough to pivot under a rift beast's claws and split its underbelly with one clean slice.

[Ibex Cells: 12 Active][Skeletal Density +14%][Metabolic Load Balanced][Viora Purity: Influx Rising]

He didn't understand it all. Not yet. But he understood enough.

He wasn't fighting to survive anymore. He was straining to awaken.

The power came not from victory. Not from rage. From pressure.

And pressure, right now, was a hurricane.

Kaiell's body was burning from the inside out. Not with fire—but with clarity. His heartbeat had aligned with the blade. His steps no longer belonged to the boy who had dug Quorite out of the mines. He wasn't running from Rust-12 anymore.

He was rising from it.

The battlefield stretched before him, endless and violent. The sky boiled above as orbital strikes cracked the horizon. Somewhere ahead, the Mage and Vox were rewriting the laws of the world.

But behind Kaiell, the jungle floor was littered with broken horrors.

He didn't feel fear anymore. He felt something far more dangerous.

Momentum.

A new line etched itself across his forearm, pulsing faintly.

[Ibex Cells: 14 Active][Neural Interface Stabilized][Viora Conduction Pathways: OPEN]

Kaiell didn't know what would happen when that number reached twenty.

But he had a feeling Vox would find out before he did.

He gripped Nightfell tighter, and kept running.