The Rustbucket's alarms screamed like a butchered animal.
Kael jolted awake, his veins burning. The Eclipse Core's corruption had spread overnight—black tendrils coiled up his neck, his left eye clouded behind a film of biometal. He staggered to the viewport, the mining station's corroded hull shuddering under artillery fire. Outside, the void blazed with thrusters: the Rust Hounds had come.
Their flagship, a salvaged frigate studded with jagged spikes and graffiti, loomed like a feral beast. Smaller skiffs swarmed around it, their hulls grafted with chainsaws and harpoons. A holographic banner flickered across the frigate's prow: *RIP AND BURN.*
"Nyxis—status!" Kael barked, shrugging into his enviro-suit. The fabric strained over his left arm, now swollen and mottled with biometal scales.
*"Hull integrity: 47%,"* Nyxis replied. *"Power reserves depleted. Proposal: Surrender or evacuate."*
"Proposal: Eat vacuum."
He slammed his fist on the Sovereign's console. Nanites swarmed, dissolving the bike into a gauntlet that fused to his corrupted arm. The Eclipse Core flared, its heat searing his bones.
Zara hissed in the shadows, her wings rattling. *"Bright-meat… weak. Hive-kin… strong. Let us… feast."*
"Not yet." Kael tossed her a Crimson Crystal. The Skyshrieker snatched it midair, mandibles grinding the mineral to dust. Her carapace glowed faintly, nanites dancing beneath the surface.
Golem-01 stood motionless by the airlock, its stone-and-biometal body humming. The hacker's neural chip—stolen from a dead man's skull—flickered in its chest, casting jagged green light.
"You're up, Tinman," Kael said, slapping the golem's chassis. "Time to earn your bolts."
The construct's eyes ignited, Nyxis' blue logic and the hacker's green memories merging. *"Directive: Protect. Host: Kael Veyron."*
The station shuddered again. A harpoon the size of a tree trunk speared through the hull, its barbed tip spraying shrapnel.
*"Breach detected,"* Nyxis said. *"Seal failure imminent."*
Kael grinned, his teeth tinged black. "Open the airlock."
---
The void swallowed sound, but not fury.
Kael floated in the Rustbucket's wrecked docking bay, mag-boots anchoring him to the hull. The Hounds' skiffs circled, their sawblades screeching against the station's armor. A scavenger in a Grimnail Frame—a hulking exoskeleton welded from scrap—leapt at him, hydraulics hissing.
The Sovereign's gauntlet roared. Nanites forged a plasma whip, slicing the exo's legs. The pilot screamed, suit rupturing, blood crystallizing in the vacuum.
*"Host's biometrics critical,"* Nyxis warned. *"Eclipse Core stability: 18%."*
"Then let's be quick."
Golem-01 surged past him, fists crackling with stolen energy. It grabbed a skiff's sawblade, tore it free, and hurled it through another pilot's cockpit. The hacker's memories made it ruthless—efficient.
Zara shot into the fray, wings folded into a dagger-shape. She speared through a skiff's engine, detonating it in a fireball that lit the void.
*"Hive-kin… weak,"* she snarled in Kael's mind. *"Let me… devour."*
"No eating the Hounds," Kael said, torching a boarding pod with his whip. "They're probably toxic."
The frigate's hangar yawned open. A Grimnail Titan emerged—a three-story exo painted with bone-white skulls, its pilot a hulking brute with a cybernetic jaw.
*"Kael Veyron!"* the Titan's speakers boomed. *"We'll wear your skin as a banner!"*
"Original," Kael muttered. "Golem! Light him up!"
Golem-01 charged, leaping onto the Titan's arm. It drove its crackling fist into the exo's cockpit, glass shattering. The pilot screamed, clawing at the golem's stone fingers.
*"Directive: Protect,"* Golem-01 intoned, crushing the man's skull.
The Titan went limp.
Zara swooped, shredding its hydraulics. *"Hive-kin… strong. Bright-meat… clever."*
"Yeah, yeah," Kael said. "Don't get sappy."
---
Back inside the Rustbucket, the air stank of burnt wiring and blood.
Kael collapsed against a wall, the Sovereign's gauntlet dissolving. His left arm was unrecognizable—biometal scales covered the skin, claws replacing fingernails. The Eclipse Core's corruption pulsed, whispering promises of power.
Zara perched on a shattered console, grooming her wings. *"Bright-meat… dying."*
"Not yet," Kael rasped.
Golem-01 stood sentry, the hacker's neural chip flickering. *"Query: Purpose?"*
"Purpose?" Kael laughed bitterly. "To survive."
Nyxis interrupted. *"Alert: Incoming transmission. Origin: Encrypted."*
The screens flickered. The Hollowed Lord's face filled the feed—biometal veins, hollow eyes, lips peeled back from iron teeth.
*"You fight well… for a corpse,"* it hissed. *"But the Eclipse King's gift is a rot. Your flesh will fail… your mind will Hollow… and the Sovereign will be mine."*
Kael's Core flared, pain lancing his skull. Visions erupted: a galaxy swallowed by nanites, planets reshaped into screaming golems, a throne of Crimson Crystals.
*"The Abyss remembers,"* the Lord crooned. *"And it hungers."*
The feed died.
Zara's wings snapped open. *"Bright-meat… sees. Sees… the Hive-Memory."*
"What?"
She lunged, mandibles clamping his corrupted arm. Nanites surged, and Kael's mind *ruptured*.
---
He was not himself.
He was a Vryxil queen, ancient and vast, her hive spanning asteroids. She remembered the Eclipse King—a being of biometal and shadow—who had carved the first Hollowed from her children. She remembered rebellion, acid-blood rivers, and the King's fall.
*"The Hollowed Lords… are his failures,"* Zara's voice echoed. *"His flesh… refused the Core. Now… they crave yours."*
Kael gasped, wrenching free. His veins writhed, the Eclipse Core's whispers louder.
*"They'll never stop,"* he muttered.
Zara tilted her head. *"Then… become unstoppable."*
---
The Rust Hounds' frigate limped away, trailing smoke and corpses.
Kael stood in the ruins of his workshop, staring at the Crimson Crystals. Nyxis' warnings buzzed in his skull, but the Core's voice was louder.
*Power. Ascend. Destroy.*
He slotted a crystal into the Sovereign's console. "Nyxis. Morph Engine: Titan Mode."
*"Prohibited. Host's stability insufficient."*
"Override."
*"Override requires—"*
He slammed his corrupted fist into the Core. "I said *override*!"
Nanites exploded, dissolving the Sovereign, the walls, the air. Kael screamed as his body disassembled, rebuilt, *expanded*.
When the light faded, he stood thirty feet tall—a mech of biometal and flesh, the Eclipse Core blazing in his chest. Zara clung to his shoulder, shrieking in ecstasy. Golem-01 knelt at his feet, the hacker's memories whispering tactics.
The Hollowed Lord's words echoed. *The Abyss remembers.*
Kael's new voice shook the station. *"Let it fear me instead."*