Far from the chaos of Evolto City, in the deepest sector of the Xerathian Dominion a realm of blackened stars and dying suns the Throne of Continuum pulsed with cold, alien light. Upon it sat the Xerathian King, a being woven from jagged silver bone and translucent membranes that shimmered with galaxies. His crown was no ornament it was a living halo of wormholes, opening and closing as if breathing.
He was motionless. Silent. Still processing the loss of one Leviathan-class bio-titan. Still reviewing the evolution telemetry of the last two days.
And then everything changed.
The air rippled.
The throne room went silent.
Then came a sound like screaming glass.
A ripple of nothing tore space above the King's head, and from the void oozed the presence of something far older, deeper, and crueler than even the Xerathian species could comprehend.
A spiraling form a rotating mass of eyes and tongues locked in unseen chains pushed through the vision-stream, visible only to the King. It didn't speak with a mouth. It didn't need to.
Its voice echoed directly into the King's layered mind, in tones not made for physical ears:
"You have forgotten my gift."
The King's eyes flickered with ultraviolet fury.
"The invasion continues. The plan proceeds."
The entity coiled tighter.
"No. They move to silence your mind. To cut your eyes from your hands, your ears from your swarm."
The King leaned forward slightly an imperceptible movement to most, but for him, a signal of concern.
"Explain."
"The doctor, the mad god, the shadow beast. They have devised a field an infection of silence. One that will unravel your unity."
Scenes flickered across the King's vision Dr. Wagner's lab, Vidarath's swirling chaos, Nyxia's summoned legions all standing over a restrained Xerathian, its mind severed from the hive.
"If they succeed, your soldiers will fall alone. They will forget evolution. They will forget you."
A deep, reverberating hum escaped the King. A low note of fury.
"What must be done?"
The entity shivered with glee, its prison in Evolto City reacting with a soft pulse.
"Unleash your Dreamweavers. Let them corrupt the relay towers. Pierce the minds of the scientists. Let their plans rot inside their skulls before they bloom."
The Xerathian King stood for the first time in centuries, the Throne of Continuum folding in upon itself.
"So be it. This... city of defiance shall drown not in fire, but in madness."
"As promised, O King. Just remember who told you they existed."
And with that, the vision snapped away, leaving behind only the hollow sound of celestial breath and the flickering dread of what was to come.
Back in the war-torn remnants of Evolto City, the air was thick with tension. The hum of machinery and the clang of battle had slowed, but the uneasy quiet didn't last long. Dr. Wagner, Vidarath, and Nyxia had their hands full. A brief ceasefire had been called, and now the final test of their boldest strategy was about to unfold.
They stood at the edge of a concealed lab nestled deep within the heart of the city. Dr. Wagner was already preparing the devices' dampeners, the key to cutting off the Xerathians from their telepathic network. Vidarath, ever unpredictable, floated lazily by, tapping his fingers on his chin as if bored, while Nyxia remained silent, his eyes narrowed, calculating.
"The dampeners are active, and we have a small group of scouts for testing," Dr. Wagner muttered in his usual German accent, adjusting the settings on the device in front of him. The air shimmered briefly as the dampener emitted a low-frequency hum. "Now we see if it works."
Nyxia cracked his knuckles. "It'll work. The question is whether they'll even notice it before we strike."
Vidarath, grinning, waved a hand. "Oh, they'll notice. Trust me, once the mind-bond is severed, they'll start to panic like ants in a jar." He tilted his head and threw a playful glance at Dr. Wagner. "If we're lucky, we'll get to watch them squirm first."
Wagner shot him a withering look. "I am not here for amusement, Vidarath."
"Who said I was?" Vidarath grinned mischievously.
The dampener clicked to life, sending ripples through the air. On the other side of the facility, a group of Xerathian scouts, small, agile, and dangerous, stood tethered by their collective telepathic bond. These were not the massive Leviathans or elite warriors, but they were still formidable in numbers. Now, they were on their own, cut off from their hive-mind.
As soon as the signal went live, a ripple of confusion spread through the scouts. Their leader a slender, humanoid Xerathian with shimmering scales, paused mid-step, eyes wide. The flickering bond that usually allowed them to communicate was gone.
"What…?" the leader hissed, instinctively reaching for their helmet, but the connection remained severed. "The bond… it's broken."
One of the other scouts, a larger brute with elongated limbs, turned to the leader. "What do we do now? We're "
Before he could finish, the leader's gaze snapped back, already processing what was happening. Without the constant guidance of their hive-mind, they were disoriented, their thoughts fragmented. It was like being alone for the first time in their existence.
"No orders?" the brute murmured in panic, but there was no response, only silence.
The dampener's effects were instantaneous, like a psychic chokehold. Their coordinated attacks turned clumsy, unsure. The scouts' once seamless unity was now a mess of individual thought, with each soldier struggling to stay on course.
Vidarath, bouncing on his heels, clapped his hands together. "Oh, this is glorious. Look at them fall apart." He teleported behind the disoriented group, casually summoning a chaotic weapon, a massive, cartoonish hammer that hummed with unearthly energy.
"Let's see how long they last when they can't talk to each other," he quipped, swinging the hammer with a childlike glee.
Nyxia, however, wasn't in the mood for games. With a single hand outstretched, shadows seemed to pulse around him, forming into a massive army of shadowy warriors. They appeared without warning, moving swiftly toward the disoriented Xerathians.
"We have them at a disadvantage," Nyxia muttered, his voice low but cutting. "Keep them occupied. I'll make sure they don't escape."
With the scouts reeling, the shadow armies descended on them. The Xerathians attempted to regroup, but without their hive-mind synchronization, it was hopeless. One by one, they were incapacitated or rendered unconscious as Nyxia's shadows overwhelmed them with force, their once-sharp movements slowed and uncertain.
Dr. Wagner watched the scene unfold with an air of clinical detachment. "It is working. They are unraveling at the seams," he noted, adjusting his glasses. "But we need more tests. The real fight is still to come."
Vidarath tilted his head, watching the spectacle with a grin. "Oh, there's more, huh? Can't wait to see what's next."
Meanwhile, one of the scouts, a particularly sharp one, began to regain some semblance of clarity. It wasn't much, but it was enough to trigger a response from the creature. With a desperate screech, the scout attempted to communicate with the others, but all it received was confusion and static. The leader, no longer the calm, collected strategist, was now panicking.
"We… we have to fall back!" the leader hissed to no one in particular. "We can't… we can't think."
But it was too late. Nyxia's shadows closed in, and with Vidarath's chaos weaving through the air, the scouts' disarrayed state meant their final stand would be short-lived.
As the last of the group fell, Dr. Wagner turned to his team. "It is confirmed," he said, his voice filled with a rare sense of satisfaction. "The dampeners work."
Vidarath's grin turned a little sharper. "And the Xerathians are already on the backfoot. Guess we'll need a few more toys to really bring them down."
Nyxia, arms crossed, gave a curt nod. "We're ready for whatever they throw at us next."
But Dr. Wagner's eyes narrowed. "Do not grow too confident. The real war has just begun. These scouts are a small fraction of what's coming."
As the battle raged on outside, one thing was certain: the Xerathians had felt the first tremors of their unraveling.
The aftermath of the test was both a victory and a warning. As the last of the Xerathian scouts fell, the city lay eerily quiet almost too quiet after the chaos. The streets were still, the remnants of battle scattered like shattered glass, but within the hidden lab, Dr. Wagner, Vidarath, and Nyxia stood, catching their breath after their brief but decisive victory.
Dr. Wagner was the first to speak, his tone both pleased and calculating. "The dampeners work," he said, his voice echoing slightly in the lab's high-tech interior. "We've successfully severed their hive-mind, even for a brief moment. This disruption alone is enough to leave them vulnerable."
Vidarath, still bouncing on his heels, threw a playful glance at the fallen Xerathian scouts, his eyes flashing with chaotic glee. "A beautiful mess, really. Chaos in motion. Just what I like to see," he said, flicking his wrist and conjuring another bizarre weapon—a swirling mass of geometric shapes. "But that was just a test. We need to hit them harder next time."
Nyxia, ever stoic, stepped forward, his eyes narrowing as he considered the next move. "The dampeners were effective, but we need a way to keep them cut off for good. The scouts we captured won't be the last. The Xerathians will adapt again unless we force their hand."
Dr. Wagner adjusted his glasses, his mind already racing with possibilities. "Yes. But we can't rely on dampeners alone. The Xerathian hive-mind is resilient. What we need is a method to disrupt it on a larger scale something that affects their entire network."
A dangerous idea began to form, and Dr. Wagner's lips curled into a tight, thoughtful smile.
"The Traversal Pylons," he said, almost as an afterthought, as if the answer had been in front of him all along.
Vidarath blinked. "Wait, the Pylons? Those massive, city-sized things that allow for multiversal travel?"
"Exactly," Wagner replied, the gleam in his eye growing brighter. "The Traversal Pylons can act as a massive signal relay. We use their energy already attuned to the multiverse and hijack it to broadcast a pulse that interferes with their telepathic connections."
Nyxia tilted his head, considering the implications. "So, instead of just blocking one scout at a time, we could sever the link across entire swathes of their forces."
Wagner nodded sharply. "Precisely. The pylons are designed to connect dimensions. We can use their power to transmit a signal that would scramble their telepathic communication across an entire region, forcing the Xerathians to function independently."
Vidarath let out an exaggerated whoop of delight. "That sounds delicious. I'm in. Let's make some noise."
But Nyxia remained cautious, his expression unreadable. "What's the catch? The Pylons are heavily protected."
Dr. Wagner's smile widened, though it was colder now. "The Pylons are powerful, yes. But they were designed for travel, not combat. If we can tap into the energy already flowing through them and harness it, the power surge should be enough to disrupt the hive-mind at a grand scale."
"But there are risks?" Nyxia pressed.
"Many," Dr. Wagner admitted, his tone shifting to one of deep focus. "It will draw their attention. The Xerathians will know something is wrong as soon as we initiate the signal. And there's no telling how they will adapt, but we need to take the risk."
Vidarath spun a finger lazily through the air, summoning a chaotic construct that flickered with energy. "They've already adapted to almost everything we've thrown at them. I say we give them something new to not adapt to." He laughed, his whimsical nature evident as his voice echoed off the walls.
"Besides, what's the worst that can happen?" He grinned at the others, mischief dancing in his eyes.
Nyxia sighed, shaking his head. "Let's not find out the hard way. We need to get moving. Every second counts. If we don't act fast enough, we risk losing the advantage we just gained."
Dr. Wagner quickly turned to his terminal and began inputting data, bringing up blueprints of the Traversal Pylons that sat scattered around Evolto City. "We have to set up a network of dampeners near the pylons to amplify the signal. We'll need teams to secure the pylons' core nodes while I work on activating the broadcast system."
Vidarath clapped his hands, his eyes gleaming with excitement. "I'll handle the distraction," he said with a grin. "I'm really good at distractions."
Nyxia gave a small, knowing smirk. "Just make sure the Xerathians don't get wise before we strike."
Dr. Wagner's fingers flew across the terminal's keyboard, bringing up detailed maps of Evolto City's layout. "The pylons are heavily guarded, but I've located a few weak points. If we hit them fast enough and secure the perimeter, we can activate the system without drawing too much attention."
He paused, his eyes narrowing as he glanced up at Vidarath. "You're sure you can draw their fire away?"
Vidarath waved a hand dismissively. "Leave it to me. I'll have them chasing me in circles while you two work your science magic."
Nyxia nodded, stepping forward. "Let's make it quick."
With that, the plan was set in motion.
Meanwhile, deep in Xerathian space, the Xerathian King sat on his throne, eyes narrowed in deep thought as a strange vision flickered in front of him. It was a message from the imprisoned Eldritch God, who had once revealed the location of Evolto City to the Xerathians.
"You think you have them cornered?" the Eldritch God's voice boomed in the King's mind, a dark, foreboding presence filling the space. "Dr. Wagner, Vidarath, and Nyxia they seek to cut you off from your soldiers, your power. You must act quickly, or all will be lost."
The Xerathian King's eyes flashed red with fury. "How dare they attempt this. They are playing with powers they cannot comprehend."
The Eldritch God's voice hummed with a sense of inevitability. "They have already begun. The Traversal Pylons are key to their plan. Disrupt them before the signal can spread, or your entire empire will crumble."
The King clenched his fists, his scales shimmering in the dim light. He knew the urgency of the situation his hive-mind was their strength. Without it, they were nothing.
"I will not allow this," the King hissed, rising to his full height. "Prepare the forces. We move now."
The calm before the storm shattered.
A sound like a thousand thunderclaps rolled across the sky, shaking the very foundations of Evolto City. The air crackled with energy, and for a split second, the city felt as though it were caught between realities too real to be a dream, but too surreal to be true.
Then came the boom an ear-splitting, overwhelming sound, like 300 sonic booms crashing into one another at once, reverberating through every street, every corner, every building.
It wasn't just a sound; it was a wave. A pulse of raw fury that made the skies tremble. The city itself seemed to hold its breath.
At the epicenter of this cataclysmic noise, Cavian stood, her silhouette a figure of pure rage against the darkened sky. Her hands were clenched into fists, her body trembling not from fear, but from an anger that had been brewing for days. She had heard the stories, seen the fear in the children's eyes, and the whispers that echoed through the daycare's halls. The nightmares. The restless nights. The children were terrified haunted by visions of the war, the Xerathians, and the chaos sweeping through Evolto City.
But it wasn't just the children that had been affected. Cavian had felt the weight of it too. Every day, every night, she had watched helplessly as her world bled into despair, the shadows of battle creeping ever closer.
Her children. Her family.
They were her everything. And as the war waged on and their world crumbled, a line had been crossed.
It started small the anxiety, the fear that gnawed at the edges of her thoughts but then it escalated. Day by day, she saw how the conflict was taking its toll. The children's tears, their fright-filled stares, the nightmares that plagued them like ghosts.
And now, the breaking point had arrived.
Cavian's once calm demeanor was now shattered, replaced by something primal and fierce. Her eyes burned with an intensity that could have seared through metal. Her chest heaved as she took in a long breath, her entire body vibrating with energy.
The sky above her crackled with electric fury as her power surged, causing the clouds to churn and twist in chaotic patterns. The city around her shuddered under the weight of her emotion. She was done. Done being patient, done being cautious.
The Xerathians had gone too far.
Cavian's voice was low at first, but it quickly rose to a roaring crescendo, amplified by the sky itself. "No more," she whispered through gritted teeth, her words laced with a venomous promise. "No more nightmares. No more fear. I will end this."
In an instant, the ground beneath her feet cracked, and a blast of energy surged from her body, a wave of raw, untamed power that rippled through the city.
The Xerathians, even those within their warships, would hear her message.
"Enough!"
With a surge of might, Cavian's form began to glow, light and dark swirling around her as she summoned every ounce of power she had her energy mixing with the very forces of nature that had shaped Evolto City itself.
Back in the lab, Dr. Wagner, Vidarath, and Nyxia had just finished finalizing their plans for the Traversal Pylon operation when they felt it. The air grew thick with tension, like the calm before a storm.
Vidarath stopped mid-sentence, his head tilting toward the distant horizon, sensing something was off. "Did anyone else feel that?"
Nyxia frowned, his brow furrowing as he turned to look outside. "That energy… it's not from us."
Dr. Wagner's eyes widened as he quickly accessed the city's monitoring systems, checking for any anomalies in the atmosphere. What he saw made his heart race. "That… that's Cavian."
Cavian's presence was unmistakable especially when it surged like this. Her power had always been formidable, but never had he felt it unleashed like this.
"It's happening…" Wagner muttered under his breath, looking from Vidarath to Nyxia. "She's reached her breaking point."
In the sky above, Cavian's energy rippled outward, the blast of power reaching all corners of Evolto City. The Xerathian forces, who had been pushing forward with relentless aggression, froze as a new, alien presence filled the air. A force unlike anything they had faced before something they could not comprehend, a raw, primal fury that felt like nature itself was rebelling.
The Xerathian King, seated upon his throne in his warship, could feel the disturbance. He growled, his claws tightening into fists. "What is this… force?"
His advisor, one of the ancient Eldritch beings, flared with dark energy beside him, a foreboding aura cloaking the room. "It is her. The one who protects this city."
The King turned toward the advisor, his eyes narrowing. "We've heard of her the mother of the city, the one who holds dominion over this realm's children. But her power…"
The Eldritch being's eyes burned with an eerie light. "It is something the Xerathians do not understand. It is a force older than even your hive-mind. It will be a challenge to control."
Back on the battlefield, the Xerathians started to retreat, unsure of the source of this overwhelming force, but clearly terrified of the sheer might radiating from Cavian's position.
The pilots in the Jaegers, sensing a shift in the tide of battle, exchanged uneasy glances. They had never seen their enemies so visibly rattled.
Dr. Wagner, his voice tense, spoke quickly. "We need to capitalize on this. The enemy's shaken. We can use this energy to push them back."
Vidarath's grin spread across his face. "Oh, I do love a good disruption. Let's make sure the Xerathians know that Evolto is not a place they can conquer."
Nyxia nodded, his gaze sharpening. "We move now."
But above it all, Cavian stood, her rage only intensifying. She was done standing by. No longer would she watch as her children, her city, and her world bled. Her voice rose once again, a roar of defiance that carried across the heavens.
Her message was clear:
"I WILL NOT LET YOU WIN."
Her fury unleashed, unstoppable became the final signal to the Xerathians that the heart of Evolto City had just been awakened.
The world shifted once more.
The ground rumbled not from the advance of Xerathian leviathans or the impact of another Jaeger but from something Far larger. Echoes of forgotten wars returned as hundreds of Titans, bearing marks of every Sector of Evolto City, descended in coordinated drops. Their chassis slammed into the earth, hydraulic limbs locking as auto-loaders armed their weapons.
From the skies, drop pods rained down like meteor showers, embedding into the ground with sonic force. Titans burst from their enclosures, Ogre-class brutes, Stryder-class speedsters, and custom-fitted Monarchs, each one bearing warpaint and crests unique to their Sectors. Some had evolved armaments crafted by Metallurges, others carried Dendrite-grown armor, and some even shimmered with void-infused plating from the Obsidian District.
The battlefield became a storm of mechanical and alien might.
Every Jaeger rallied to meet their long-standing allies, Evolto's Titan regiments. Together, they formed a wall, moving in tandem like a massive war choir.
Then, the impossible happened.
Above the chaos, a Xerathian warship, miles long and brimming with weapon batteries, began to tilt. Its frame distorted, pulled into a rippling fracture in space itself—cut clean through as if by an unseen blade. The ship screamed as it split in half, its internal reactors imploding. Flames and metal rained down.
Zalthorion had arrived.
He stood, floating high above the warzone, his cloak trailing like shadowfire behind him. His form pulsed with layered dimensions armor forged by the Smith himself, haloed by reality-tearing rings. In one hand, he held a weapon no one had ever seen, yet all felt its weight. Time, space, and will bent in its presence.
His eyes twin stars surveyed the battlefield with cold fury. "You dare bring this war to my city?" he asked, voice echoing through every mind. "Then suffer the true defenders of Evolto."
From the opposite end of the field, a tidal surge of molten lava and razor-edged ice swept across the Xerathian forces.
Azura, the dual-aspected elemental guardian of Evolto, soared through the clouds, wings of crystal and fire fanned wide. Her screech was pure elemental wrath. The lava burst from her left talon, scouring the earth of Xerathian roots, while the ice shattered into lances, freezing even aerial Xerathians mid-flight.
The ground steamed beneath her. Entire phalanxes of Xerathians were incinerated or encased before they could adapt.
And then
The broken, exhausted agents and soldiers of Evolto City fatigued beyond breaking, energy reserves nearly gone felt something rush through them.
A wave of warmth.
Their vision cleared. Their limbs no longer ached. Power surged through them like light piercing through a storm.
Floating above a massive crystalline spire was Marisov, arms raised, tiny palms glowing. The child of limitless potential had finally awakened another sliver of his power. His face, still innocent, still boyish, now shone with determined kindness.
From his body poured ethereal threads of radiant energy. Every allied warrior, Titan pilot, Warframe agent, Metallurge veteran, and even Cecilian warcasters felt it.
Boosts to power output. Sharpened reflexes. Mind clarity.
Zalthorion glanced over at the child his son pride flashing briefly in his otherwise stoic gaze.
This was the moment Evolto stood as one.
The battlefield transformed.
With Titans engaging Xerathians toe-to-toe, Jaegers flanking with crushing force, and agents weaving war-magics, reality twists, and precise gunplay, the Xerathians were finally, truly on the back foot.
Even their hive-adapted troops struggled to evolve fast enough. The Traversal Pylon dampeners were humming in the distance, deployed behind the new frontline. Disconnecting units from the hive, fragmenting their instincts.
Zalthorion, Azura, Marisov.
Each one a force of nature. Each one declaring:
Evolto City does not fall.
The battlefield once a churning hellscape of plasma fire, organic artillery, and biomechanical monstrosities had reached a rare and precarious stalemate.
The sudden unified onslaught Zalthorion's ship-splitting arrival, Azura's elemental devastation, Marisov's empowering light, and the thunderous arrival of Titans had shattered the Xerathian momentum.
Now, the alien invaders found themselves fractured across Sector-14, scattered between broken buildings, frozen trenches, molten craters, and carved-up city blocks.
They had evolved to counter every biological weapon.They had adapted to countless combatants.But now they were isolated.
Cut off from perfect coordination.Struggling to regenerate under constant pressure.Reeling from an unrelenting retaliation.
Still, they fought fierce, intelligent, relentless but the cracks were forming.
And the trio Nyxia, Virdarath, and Dr. Wagner saw the window.
Beneath the battered skyline of Evolto, within a hardened command chamber guarded by metallurge armor golems and cloaked Cecilian phasers, the three stood before the first repurposed Traversal Pylon.
It hummed with quiet energy.
"We're nearly there," said Dr. Wagner, fingers racing across his datapad. "The amplification network is holding. I just need a few more links to cascade the full telepathic interference."
"And once it goes live?" Nyxia asked, his eyes glowing beneath the shadow crown.
"Any Xerathian within range will have their hivemind connection forcibly silenced. No adaptation. No coordination. No evolution."
Virdarath, leaning upside-down from a rafter, giggled. "It'll be like dropping a god into a room full of ants with no way to scream for help. Delightfully tragic!"
Nyxia glanced upward. "Can you take this seriously for once?"
Virdarath blinked. In an instant, his body shimmered and stiffened the colorful hue draining. The cold personality emerged. "I am. That's why I modified the broadcast frequency to ripple between fourth and fifth-dimensional harmonics. It will pierce all Xerathian layers."
Wagner paused, impressed. "…That's actually useful."
"Don't get used to it."
Outside, Cecilian and Dendrite engineers connected thick cables and refractor crystals into the Pylon's central core. Arcane power and science-bound signals flowed together Evolto's greatest hybrid technology.
The plan was simple, but dangerous.
Step 1: Finish converting ten Traversal Pylons to act as psionic scramblers.Step 2: Activate them simultaneously across all affected sectors.Step 3: Sever the hive. Strip the Xerathians of their greatest weapon.
And turn a stalemate into a rout.
But time was short.
The Xerathians were gathering again clustered deep behind their warships. New portals shimmered in the sky, suggesting reinforcements may arrive soon.
The signal needed to go live.
Virdarath tapped a crystalline interface, his shadow flickering.
"I'll buy you the time," he said coldly. "Let them come. We'll break their minds before we break their bodies."
Nyxia unsheathed his blade its edge black as the void. "Let's end this."
Dr. Wagner raised his arm, a holographic countdown ticking.
Ten pylons. One chance.
Two days after the successful deployment of the Pylon Signal, Sector-14 and neighboring warfronts entered a fragile state of peace.
With the Xerathian hivemind fractured, the invaders had retreated deeper into their warships, unable to coordinate efficiently. Patrols now reported scattered skirmishes at best, many of which were easily handled by Cecilian scouts, Exo-Guards, or a single passing Jaeger.
For the first time in weeks, Evolto City exhaled.
The streets scarred but standing filled with music and murmurs.Agents who'd lived on caffeine and combat found time to sit, breathe, and remember how silence felt.Children played by reinforced gardens, watched over by titans acting as jungle gyms.Even Dr. Wagner allowed himself a full three-hour sleep cycle.
Some agents held small celebrations.
Others Nyxia included, retreated into meditation or quiet reading.
And many more simply collapsed in bunks, exhausted and trusting the peace would last.
That's when the Dreamweavers struck.
They arrived not with ships or screams, but with silken thoughts and whispers laced in nightmares.
A Xerathian subspecies, rarely seen, the Dreamweavers were bred not for war but for corruption.Each one a being of psionic filaments, coalesced from the psychic detritus of broken minds across the Xerathian empire.
The hivemind didn't need to speak commands they were emotion parasites.Feeding on fear.Amplifying doubt.Twisting identity.
They slipped into the minds of sleeping agents one by one.
In a barracks on the edge of Sector-13, a Metallurge technician named Solen dreamt of his late brother.But the memory turned bitter. The brother blamed him for his death. "You let them die for this city of monsters."
In a Cecilian rest nest, a scout floated in a dream ocean, only to be dragged into black waters by chains shaped like their old regrets.
Even in Titan Hangar-07, a pilot dreamed of crashing into friendly troops. Over and over.
They woke... disoriented.Not possessed just… shifted.
Whispers followed them. Suggestions. Rationalizations.
Soon, supplies were misplaced.Shield generators were "accidentally" disconnected.One Exo-Guard's neural drive was found wiped clean with no memory of who ordered it.
And all of it... by design.
Atop a still-damaged rooftop near the main pylon, Virdarath's comedic form was juggling levitating bricks when he paused mid-air.
His eyes narrowed. "...Something's off."
Nyxia stepped into view, dark cloak flowing. "You feel it too?"
Virdarath's aura flickered cold personality phasing through.
"Dreamweavers. Manipulators. We broke their spine, so they came for the soul instead."
Dr. Wagner burst into the scene, datapad glowing red. "Confirmed sabotage across five sectors. Unrelated units. No psychic residue. But all targeted key assets."
"Psionic, not chemical," muttered Nyxia. "Mental rewiring."
"We need to root them out before they take someone critical," Wagner said grimly. "And I know just the mind to send in."
Two days after the successful deployment of the Pylon Signal, Sector-14 and neighboring warfronts entered a fragile state of peace.
With the Xerathian hivemind fractured, the invaders had retreated deeper into their warships, unable to coordinate efficiently. Patrols now reported scattered skirmishes at best, many of which were easily handled by Cecilian scouts, Exo-Guards, or a single passing Jaeger.
For the first time in weeks, Evolto City exhaled.
The streets—scarred but standing—filled with music and murmurs.Agents who'd lived on caffeine and combat found time to sit, breathe, and remember how silence felt.Children played by reinforced gardens, watched over by titans acting as jungle gyms.Even Dr. Wagner allowed himself a full three-hour sleep cycle.
Some agents held small celebrations.
Others—Nyxia included—retreated into meditation or quiet reading.
And many more simply collapsed in bunks, exhausted and trusting the peace would last.
That's when the Dreamweavers struck.
They arrived not with ships or screams, but with silken thoughts and whispers laced in nightmares.
A Xerathian subspecies, rarely seen, the Dreamweavers were bred not for war, but for corruption.Each one a being of psionic filaments, coalesced from the psychic detritus of broken minds across the Xerathian empire.
The hivemind didn't need to speak commands they were emotion parasites.Feeding on fear.Amplifying doubt.Twisting identity.
They slipped into the minds of sleeping agents, one by one.
In a barracks on the edge of Sector-13, a metallurge technician named Solen dreamt of his late brother.But the memory turned bitter. The brother blamed him for his death. "You let them die for this city of monsters."
In a Cecilian rest nest, a scout floated in a dream ocean, only to be dragged into black waters by chains shaped like their old regrets.
Even in Titan Hangar-07, a pilot dreamed of crashing into friendly troops. Over and over.
They woke... disoriented.Not possessed just… shifted.
Whispers followed them. Suggestions. Rationalizations.
Soon, supplies were misplaced.Shield generators were "accidentally" disconnected.One Exo-Guard's neural drive was found wiped clean with no memory of who ordered it.
Skepticism crept into command. Paranoia stirred.
And all of it... by design.
Atop a still-damaged rooftop near the main pylon, Virdarath's comedic form was juggling levitating bricks when he paused mid-air.
His eyes narrowed. "...Something's off."
Nyxia stepped into view, dark cloak flowing. "You feel it too?"
Virdarath's aura flickered—cold personality phasing through.
"Dreamweavers. Manipulators. We broke their spine, so they came for the soul instead."
Dr. Wagner burst into the scene, datapad glowing red. "Confirmed sabotage across five sectors. Unrelated units. No psychic residue. But all targeted key assets."
"Psionic, not chemical," muttered Nyxia. "Mental rewiring."
"We need to root them out before they take someone critical," Wagner said grimly. "And I know just the mind to send in."
They chose Agent Renn Halvek.
A psionic operative and veteran of the Divide Wars, Renn had survived mind-breaking realities and void-induced hallucinations. He had walked through the dreams of monsters and returned.
He was the best candidate to go in.
Strapped to a reclining chair in the Dream Anchor Room beneath Evolto's central tower, Renn's mind was tethered to a Neuro-Phase Stabilizer. Nyxia stood nearby, arms crossed, while Dr. Wagner monitored the psychic relay.
"Once inside," Wagner warned, "you'll be walking into a reality the Dreamweaver constructed. It'll feel real. But it's a lie built from stolen memories and doubt."
"Good," Renn replied. "I've got plenty of both."
With a hum, his mind fell inward
The dreamscape shimmered.
Renn stood in a warped version of Evolto City familiar buildings twisted into spirals of impossible angles, floating pieces of history woven into the skyline.
The sky was bleeding ink.
And the voices began.
"You're tired, Renn."
"You've been nothing but a weapon."
"They'll leave you behind like the others."
He ignored them and moved forward.
The streets were littered with symbols, memories of past failures, some real, others false. He saw the face of an agent he once failed to protect, twisted into a puppet on strings, whispering, "You could've saved me."
"No," he muttered. "You died fighting beside me, not blaming me."
The world shivered.
Cracks formed.
Suddenly, from the sky descended a Dreamweaver, an arachnid-like entity made of translucent threads and mirrored eyes. Its voice was layered, speaking in all the regrets he ever felt.
"You belong here, Renn. Stay. Drown in truth."
But Renn activated the Psychic Burn Protocol a focused surge of clarity that lit his inner world with fire.
"No more lies," he said, striking the ground with raw psionic will.
The dream fractured.
Behind the Dreamweaver, he saw them other agents, trapped in dream cocoons, feeding illusions to their minds.
He reached out and began waking them, one by one.
In the real world, lights flashed.Dr. Wagner saw neural patterns stabilizing.And then... Renn's eyes opened.
"Found them," he gasped. "They're not invincible. But they're clever. We'll need more than brute force."
The operation was in full swing.
Renn, barely recovering from his own encounter, was now leading a psychic strike team, composed of agents who had honed their abilities to the edge of their limits. They were about to breach the heart of the Dreamweaver's network, where illusion and reality blurred into a maddening maze of nightmares.
However, the field commander for this operation Virdarath was not what anyone had expected.
He strutted into the briefing room, his chaotic energy infecting the air.
"Alright, alright, time to wake up the dreamers!" Virdarath spun on his heels, arms wide. "You've been told not to wake the sleeping giants, but who's gonna stop me? Me! That's who!"
Nyxia rubbed his temples in irritation. He'd been through this before.
"Virdarath, focus. These Dreamweavers are manipulating the mind's very fabric. Don't get distracted," he warned, voice heavy with the weight of battle.
"Oh, I won't!" Virdarath grinned, adjusting his ridiculous star-shaped sunglasses. "I've had my fair share of mind trips, my friend. Time for me to become the ultimate lucid dreamer."
Renn shook his head, but his grin matched Virdarath's absurd confidence. "Let's do this."
Within the dreamscape.
The team's entry was met with instant resistance. The Dreamweavers attacked with dreams turned into nightmares phantom versions of agents twisted into corrupted forms, echoes of past battles meant to shatter resolve.
But Renn, leading the charge, threw up a barrier of pure psychic force, pushing back the illusions. "Focus, people! They feed on doubt and regret. Don't give them that."
Virdarath, on the other hand, was doing something... unexpected.
He was dancing.
Not in any usual sense. His body warped in space, as his chaotic energy turned the dream into a whirlwind of madness. He summoned bizarre weapons a sword made of lightning, an oversized hammer with a giant smiley face on it and started bashing through dream constructs, all the while laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world.
"You think you can trap me? Well, not today, nightmare fiends!" he shouted, taking a wild swing that shattered the distorted world around him.
The Dreamweavers, initially caught off guard by the sheer absurdity, regrouped quickly, summoning horrific avatars of shadow and fear. But Virdarath didn't pause. He teleported in flashes of neon light, cutting down one Dreamweaver after another with a barrage of nonsensical weapons.
"Bring it on! I've got infinite possibilities! Who needs sleep, anyway?!"
Meanwhile, in the real world.
Dr. Wagner, alongside Nyxia, worked furiously to configure the signal dampeners within the Traversal Pylons. The dream invasion could only be stopped by severing the connection to the hivemind an intricate web of shared consciousness that the Dreamweavers used to sustain their manipulations.
Nyxia was less patient than Wagner, his clawed fingers tapping on the console. "Are we almost there?" he asked, his eyes flicking between the pylons and the growing wave of psychedelic disruptions on the monitor.
"Zis technology has never been tested, Nyxia," Wagner replied, fingers flying over the interface with meticulous care. "But if it works, we will sever their connection to the hivemind. Zat is our only chance."
Suddenly, the pylon hummed with energy.
"Almost," Wagner muttered. "Just need to sync ze signal output with the local quantum frequency "
But before he could finish, the ground shuddered with a low vibration. An emergency alarm blared.
"Something's happening," Nyxia said. "They're reacting to the pylons."
Back inside the dreamscape, the Dreamweavers had begun to adapt. As Virdarath and his team pushed forward, more of their nightmarish avatars appeared, distorted forms of those they'd once been, whispering terrible truths in the agents' ears, calling on their greatest fears.
Renn held firm, pushing his way forward. "We're almost there! Just a little longer!"
Virdarath, still laughing like a madman, stood at the center of it all. "Okay, okay! Time for a little dream ender! Let's turn up the chaos!"
With a wave of his hand, the landscape shattered like glass, and the Dreamweavers were suddenly surrounded by chaotic visions of their own fears. As Virdarath summoned one final psychic upheaval, the dreamscape fractured beyond repair, taking the Dreamweavers with it.
But in the real world, Wagner's pylon system was fully activated. The signal dampeners kicked in, creating a resonance pulse that swept across the entire battlefield. The Dreamweavers' hivemind their link to the Xerathian forces was severed.
The dream collapsed.
The remaining Dreamweavers, caught in the psychic backlash, were left without coordination. They staggered, unable to hold onto the nightmares they had created.
The agents, free from manipulation, began rallying. Virdarath's chaotic energy turned from playful to fierce, slashing through the now-vulnerable enemies with savage grace.
"We got 'em," Renn said, breathing heavily. "Let's finish this."
Back in Evolto City, the agents rallied. Dr. Wagner and Nyxia knew the war wasn't over but they had broken the Dreamweaver's hold.
And as the battlefield became less chaotic, the agents prepared for the final strike.
The silence was unnatural.
For the first time since the war began, the Xerathian army stood in confusion. Their once-synchronized formations faltered. Soldiers twitched, looked around, staggered, their eyes dull, their movements uncoordinated.
The hivemind was gone severed by the Traversal Pylon signal dampeners.
The battlefield had become a broken symphony, the perfect chorus of evolution and strategy now reduced to scattered solos of panic and confusion.
And that's when the strike came.
Renn, still fatigued from the dreamscape battle, stood at the front lines beside Virdarath and Nyxia, the trio now accompanied by strike teams, Jaeger support, and squads of Warframe agents.
"All units, now!" Renn called.
From behind them, the Yaegers surged forward experimental, battered, yet blazing with fury. The once-coordinated Xerathians now scrambled, their formations collapsing under the sheer force of the synchronized assault.
One Leviathan, disoriented and lumbering, attempted to call for reinforcements only to be impaled by a glowing pylon spear from the glass-cannon Yaeger "Furnace Pike-09", which ignited the creature in a chain reaction of burning plasma.
"Without their hivemind, they're just beasts with instincts," Nyxia growled as he sprinted through a cluster of foot soldiers, blades in a blur. "Time to teach them fear."
Virdarath, back in his cold personality, gave precise commands.
"Flank the right wing. Hit the disrupted nodes. Do not give them a chance to rebuild any patterns," he said, calmly observing a scattered battalion of Xerathians trying to regroup near a collapsed Leviathan.
His arm transformed into a blade of black-glass energy. "No mercy."
He dove in, cutting through with surgical precision.
Above, Cavian descended like a thunderstorm made flesh, smashing into the central formation with a devastating hammer blow that leveled a kilometer of terrain.
"This is for the children," she snarled.
Behind her, Marisov's wave of energy radiated through the battlefield, renewing tired spirits and enhancing reflexes and strength. His eyes glowed faintly as he floated in mid-air, wrapped in light, a beacon of hope.
Chaos. Total chaos.
The Xerathians tried to use pheromone signaling, mimic cries, instinctual gestures but nothing could replace the instantaneous, full-spectrum communication of the hivemind.
They turned on each other, misinterpreting signals. Leviathans stumbled and crushed their own. Warships began to retreat into low orbit, trying to establish new command hierarchies.
But Evolto City's forces were unrelenting.
Dr. Wagner monitored the energy readings from the pylons, sweat pouring down his face.
"Zey're unraveling faster than anticipated," he said. "But we must be vigilant. Chaos does not mean victory."
Renn looked across the burning battlefield, breath ragged. "We've taken their voice. Now we take their will."
Virdarath turned, his expression still cold. "No. Let them keep their will… just not the means to share it."
He raised his hand.
"End them."
The battle had turned.
For the first time, Evolto City wasn't just surviving. It was winning.
Far across the void, within a massive, pulsing fortress of flesh and metal seated atop a dead star, the Xerathian King sat still as a statue. His throne, grown from bone and woven with the nerves of consumed worlds rippled beneath him.
His eyes, once blank with absolute calm, now glowed a deep, seething crimson.
He could feel it.
A thousand minds... silent.
Not dead. Not severed by war or failure.
Disconnected.
A deliberate silence unnatural and blasphemous to the Xerathian way of existence.
The Dreamweaver emissary a floating, pulsing web of tendrils and faces, drifted into his throne chamber.
"They have struck your voice, my King," the Dreamweaver whispered, its many mouths humming in sync. "They seek to isolate you from your future."
The King rose, his elongated form stretching into impossible heights. He spoke without words, a projection of thought that cracked the stone around him.
"This was foretold by the god… the one bound in their city. The one who whispered of Evolto's arrogance."
He clenched one clawed hand.
"They silence the legion… so I will speak louder."
Back in Evolto City, a ruined command center within Sector-14 had been converted into a war room. Massive holograms danced in the air, projections of potential strike zones, signal ranges, and multiversal breach points.
Nyxia, arms crossed, watched as streams of data poured in from the Traversal Pylons.
"He hasn't left his universe. We're not dealing with just strategy anymore we're dealing with a monarch whose pride is wounded."
Virdarath balanced on a floating chair upside-down, hands gesturing wildly.
"We could just use the MTD and waltz right into his throne room. Surprise party! Confetti made of antimatter! Maybe steal his favorite mug!"
Nyxia rolled his eyes. "We're not walking into a trap."
Dr. Wagner tapped a screen.
"Ve could destabilize ze border of zeir universe. Tear a hole and force him to respond. Pull him through like dragging a spider out of its nest."
"That could collapse both realms if miscalculated," Nyxia said. "Too many civilians still here."
That's when a slow, steady pressure filled the room.
The light dimmed.
Reality folded inward and out stepped Zalthorion Veilstryx.
Radiant, composed, and cold as the space between stars.
"You've done well."
Everyone turned. Even Virdarath stopped spinning.
Zalthorion walked to the center of the room. "The King must be lured… not with violence, but with his own ego."
He raised his hand. A rune-carved shard of the Multiversal Transition Device appeared, pulsing with unstable energy.
"We offer him a target he cannot ignore. Not a war… but a challenge. Something that would force a king to answer in person."
Virdarath's smile widened. "Oh I like where this is going."
Dr. Wagner blinked. "Are you suggesting we bait him… vith access to a new multiverse?"
Zalthorion gave a slight nod.
"Exactly. We offer him a window one he believes he can break. But it's a cage. And when he steps through… we cut him off."
Nyxia narrowed his eyes.
"And who's going to stand in the center of that window when he looks through?"
Zalthorion's gaze passed over all of them.
"I will."
The core chamber of Traversal Pylon Zero, deep beneath Evolto City's heart, glowed like a star trying to be born. Engineers, agents, and technomancers moved in sync, overseen by Dr. Wagner, Nyxia, and Zalthorion.
The shard of an MTD floated in a containment prism, rotating slowly, each pulse sending ripples of unstable energy through the room.
"This thing is dangerous," Nyxia said, watching its chaotic waveforms. "One misstep and we tear a hole to something we can't close."
Dr. Wagner nodded, adjusting dials. "Ve've contained rifts before. But zis time… ve guide it. Shape it. Make it a lure."
Zalthorion placed his palm over the device, and with a whisper in an ancient language, a projection of a new multiversal stream began forming one that mirrored Evolto City, but empty… artificial.
A false reality meant to bait the Xerathian King.
Virdarath, now in his cold personality, examined the readings.
"It'll need emotional resonance. A signal the King recognizes… something familiar yet threatening. The Hive-Mind pulse signature."
Nyxia raised a brow. "You're suggesting we use the disconnected Xerathians?"
Virdarath nodded. "We let the King see his children calling to him... from a place he believes he can conquer."
Back in the Xerathian Universe, the King knelt in a chamber of crystalline silence.
Before him stood the Eldritch God, only visible through a swirling mass of impossible geometry.
"They fear your unity," the god said, voice dripping with venom and hunger. "They build cages in the dark and whisper lies in the night."
"But they do not understand what comes from a true hive. Cut a limb… and the body adapts."
The King watched simulations of his forces failing to evolve, disconnected, helpless.
Then the vision changed, showing a pulse across space-time: an artificial call, laced with hive frequencies.
"A door, King… they've opened a door," the god whispered. "But they are fools. For a door swings both ways."
The King stood.
His armor cracked, reshaping itself into a war-form unseen since his species conquered the Four Dying Universes.
"If they wish to challenge me… I will walk through their trap."
He turned to his Warlords.
"Prepare the Legion Ascendant. We breach the false multiverse."
Back in Evolto, Nyxia felt a chill as the Pylons hummed louder.
"He took the bait," he whispered.
Zalthorion's eyes narrowed.
"Then the real war begins."
The artificial realm constructed by Zalthorion, Wagner, and Nyxia shimmered in the void beyond Evolto City an empty mirror of reality. Every tower stood still, every breeze was synthetic, every echo a fabricated lie designed to provoke the Xerathian King.
The Traversal Pylons began surging with energy. From afar, satellites observed a spatial tear forming twisting and shrieking as something massive approached.
And then, through it stepped the Xerathian King, clad in his terrifying warform: obsidian chitin lined with cosmic sinew, a mantle of black flame trailing behind him, eyes like collapsing stars.
Behind him, Ascendant Warlords, evolved beyond measure, followed in lockstep. But something felt off…
"This world… it breathes deception," the King muttered, sensing the falseness of the realm. "Where are the minds? Where is the unity?"
And then the trap triggered.
Dampener nodes, disguised as buildings, exploded to life. Antihive pulses rippled through the false multiverse. For a moment, silence and then chaos.
The Xerathian Warlords screamed, convulsing in place as their link to the King was severed by harmonic interference. Their biological evolution began breaking down, no longer guided.
"No," the King growled, "You dare sever me from my own?"
He slammed his fist into the synthetic ground, trying to override the signal—but this world wasn't real.
Back in Evolto City, Wagner grinned as he monitored the readings.
"It vorked. Their King is inside… but now, ve collapse the trap."
Zalthorion placed his hand on the panel.
"Begin the phase fold inversion. Make the cage permanent."
In orbit, orbital platforms armed with Chrono-Fold Emitters and Gravity Wells began redirecting power.
A voice from the command deck:
"Phase-lock initiating… locking him inside the synthetic multiverse!"
Zalthorion whispered ancient phrases as reality knit itself into a sphere, closing around the King like a tomb.
Back inside, the King roared.
"You think you can bury me in falsehood?! I am evolution made will!"
But his voice echoed unheard. His Warlords collapsed around him.
The trap was sealed.
Back in Evolto City, the Xerathian army halted.
With their King cut off, evolution stalled. Some began retreating. Others simply… stopped.
For the first time, true disunity echoed among the hive-born.
Nyxia slumped down in the control room, exhausted.
"We did it…"
But Zalthorion remained tense. "No. We delayed the end. But there's one problem."
Wagner looked up. "What is it?"
Zalthorion turned, eyes burning.
"The Eldritch God who helped them… still watches. And it won't be long before it opens a door of its own."
Within the sealed false multiverse, the Xerathian King stood amidst a crumbling dream. His once-loyal Warlords spasmed across the broken cityscape, no longer driven by unified instinct. The Dampeners continued to pulse, shredding his connection to the hive with every second.
Alone.
Abandoned.
He gazed upward, sensing the reality threads weakening, sensing... detonation.
"So this is your final tactic, Zalthorion… You mean to make this world my grave."
But he wasn't done yet.
The King gathered what remained of his evolving essence, warping his body ripping his limbs into spears of dark matter, readying to breach the dimensional veil through sheer force.
Back in Evolto City, Dr. Wagner, Nyxia, and Zalthorion stood before the final command panel. The False Multiverse Reactor, pulsing in deep purples and reds, neared critical overload.
"He's trying to rip his way out," Nyxia said, sensing a sudden rift spike. "We have seconds."
Zalthorion placed his hand on the command matrix. "Then let's make sure he only breaks into oblivion."
Wagner keyed in the final codes.
"All that evolution… all that pride. In the end, it couldn't save him from a lie."
Inside the false universe, the Xerathian King screamed, launching toward the wall of unrealityhis body glowing, distorting, evolving faster than time itself.
ThenThe Collapse Began.
The sky tore like paper.The ground unstitched itself.Causality inverted.
Every atom of the synthetic multiverse turned against itself, folding inward.
"I AM THE PERFECT!"
Fwoom.
Silence.
Not even ash remained. The Xerathian King unwritten from reality.
In Evolto City, the lights of the pylon arrays dimmed.
All signals ceased.
On the battlefield, the remaining Xerathians fell into complete disarray. Without their King and his evolutionary guidance, they were nothing but scattered cells in the shape of warriors.
Some collapsed. Others ran.
And from above, the sky cleared for the first time in weeks.
Somewhere under Evolto City
Zalthorion stepped deeper into the shadowy, cavernous expanse beneath Evolto City, his boots echoing against the stone as the air grew thick with the distorted cries of imprisoned beings. Echoes of power too ancient, too primal rippled through the darkness. Eldritch Gods, some writhing in their endless prisons, some howling in rage at the walls that held them in check, their voices an unholy symphony of despair and fury.
This was the Abyssal Prison, a creation Zalthorion and Dr. Wagner had constructed in secrecy a place to house those too dangerous for the multiverse, beyond the reach of time and space.
One particular cell, however, stood at the end of the hall, deeper than the others. It was different. The whispers here were more insidious, the presence behind it more suffocating. As Zalthorion approached, the shadows seemed to move, bending unnaturally in the presence of something more powerful than even the twisted prisons around them.
A voice broke the silence, dripping with ancient malice.
"Well, well, well... Zalthorion. What do you want from me?" The voice echoed through the void, unsettling, yet too composed for a being of its nature.
Zalthorion paused before the cell, his eyes narrowing as he stared into the black void. The God an eldritch creature of incomprehensible form, a being that should never have existed in any universe sat comfortably within the confines of its prison, though it barely fit within its cage. Tendrils of shifting reality coiled around it, and an endless shifting mass of eyes seemed to follow Zalthorion's every movement.
"You told them about Evolto," Zalthorion said, his tone ice-cold. "You set in motion a chain of events that nearly destroyed everything I've built. The Xerathians, the chaos... all of it. Your machinations led those fools to us."
The God laughed, the sound like the scraping of a thousand nails across a blackboard.
"Foolish mortal, do you think I regret it?" It scoffed, its voice echoing through the space like a thunderclap. "You think I care for your fragile city and your people? I've seen universes burn, watched empires crumble like dust in the wind. What is Evolto City to me?"
Zalthorion's eyes hardened as he stepped forward, the ground beneath him cracking slightly with the pressure of his presence.
"You've caused chaos in my world," he said, his voice low but cutting through the air like a blade. "And nobody harms my people."
The God's laughter faded, and for the first time, it felt… uncertain.
"What will you do to a God?" it sneered, arrogant, as if mocking Zalthorion's every move. "You can't kill me. I am eternal. Even your greatest powers can't reach me."
Zalthorion's eyes narrowed, and he raised his hand, the air around him humming with energy.
"You are nothing but a newborn god," he said, his voice gaining strength, power. "We never killed you because you had use, but now you've overstepped your bounds. What you did wasn't just reckless. It was personal."
The God scoffed, its tendrils shifting in a strange, unsettling pattern as if preparing for something.
"You're nothing more than a cagekeeper, Zalthorion. A shepherd to your people. You think you can contain me? You've already failed. Even now, your universe quakes. It's only a matter of time before the void takes you, too."
But Zalthorion wasn't listening. His gaze sharpened like the edge of a blade as he clenched his fist, a pulse of energy surging through the air.
"You may be new to this form of existence, but you'll learn the hard way," Zalthorion said coldly. "I didn't just imprison you. I'm not simply keeping you here for some cruel amusement. I'm going to make an example of you. I'll show your kind what happens when they cross me."
With a flick of his wrist, the shadows around the prison cell began to warp. The God shrieked as the walls of its cell began to shift, bending and snapping into new, grotesque forms.
"No… no! You can't!" the God howled, its form writhing as it fought against the restraints. "You dare deny me my freedom? I'll tear your city apart, Zalthorion! You'll regret this!"
Zalthorion's eyes glowed with a fierce light as the air thickened with raw, controlled power.
"You wanted to create chaos. You wanted to see the universe burn. But you underestimated one thing," Zalthorion's voice grew colder with each word. "The people of Evolto are mine. And you just made a fatal mistake."
The Eldritch God, too proud and too arrogant to see it coming, could only let out a final, desperate scream as the boundaries of its existence began to break apart. The walls of the cell shattered like glass, and the reality around it began to distort, unraveling like a fading dream.
Outside the Abyssal Prison, Zalthorion stood still, his face unreadable. The echoes of the God's last cries reverberated through the void, fading into nothingness.
He had sent a message.
Not just to the imprisoned Eldritch Gods, but to any who might dare threaten his city or his people. Evolto was under his protection. And any who sought to destroy it, any who dared disturb its peace, would face consequences far beyond their comprehension.
He took a deep breath, looking over the horizon as the sun began to rise over Evolto City, the Cerian Sun shining brightly in the distance.
"Let the others come," Zalthorion murmured softly. "They'll learn. One way or another."
And with that, he vanished into the shadows, returning to his people, his world his city where they were safe once again.
When Zalthorion ended the newborn eldritch god, he didn't just kill a being he shifted the multiversal balance.
Somewhere beyond the Divide, past the known strings of realities, a realm without shape or color The Veil of Madness shivered. Ancient things stirred. Beings without names, forms, or even concepts blinked open eyes that hadn't opened since the Multiversal Big Bang.
And they saw.
They saw what Zalthorion had done.
In the City of Leng, whose towers were made of dreams, Nyarlathotep laughed a sharp, delighted, inhuman sound that echoed through the mindscapes of cultists and prophets alike.
"So... the Shepherd still remembers how to bite," the Crawling Chaos whispered, smiling with a thousand masks. "How fascinating."
In the court of Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God did not notice, but those that danced madly around him the servitors of impossible madness, stilled for a moment. A silence not heard since time's birth fell. Even the pipers held their breath.
Cthulhu, dreaming dead beneath the oceans of a long-lost world, stirred in his sleep. And for the first time in aeons, a sense of unease crept into the sleeper's dreams.
"Zalthorion walks the edge again," whispered one of the Deep Ones gathered around the great beast's tomb. "And the void remembers."
Yog-Sothoth, the All-in-One and One-in-All, observed without emotion, but it adjusted. Gate, Key, and Guardian felt the resonance of the act ripple through time's bloodstream. The death of an eldritch being by a mortal hand even one as powerful as Zalthorion was a variable worth noting. Not feared, but respected. Calculated.
And so, across the unknowable court of the Outer Gods, consensus stirred:
Zalthorion Veilstryx was not to be trifled with.
Even they, born of higher dimensions and ancient chaos, recognized something terrifying in his resolve. Not power alone, but conviction the will to burn the sky if it meant protecting even one soul under his care.
They didn't see him as one of them.
They didn't see him as beneath them.
They saw him as other.
Back in Evolto, far above the imprisoned depths, a few sensitive beings psychics, prophets, and ancient species felt the eldritch eyes withdraw from their city.
Some dropped to their knees, weeping from sheer relief.
Others dared to whisper...
"He made them blink."