The moment the craft descended over Forge Front, Kaelren smelled war.
Smoke. Blood. Sweat thick in the air like fog. The scent of burning marrow and metal.
The aircraft hissed and groaned as it touched down on the outer platform of the largest forward base on the Eastern Front — Forge Front, the last place you could sleep without waking up half-eaten. Runes flared along the landing claws as they sank into blood-soaked gravel. The hatch cracked open.
Kaelren stepped into a world carved from desperation.
Tents sprawled across the scorched earth like the remnants of a torn banner. Hundreds of Gene Warriors moved between them — some limping, others armored and tense, their eyes hollow from nights without peace. Sentries stood atop spiked barricades. Siege towers lined the distant ridges. Every face he passed bore scars, tattoos, or both.
His communicator pulsed.
> > ASHWALKER. REPORT TO MAIN COMMAND.
He moved through the camp like a shadow. Men stepped aside. Conversations stilled. The whispers came fast and low:
"Another Ashwalker."
"They sent one here?"
"Blood Point must really be falling."
Ashwalker.
The word carried weight. Not reverence. Not fear. Something heavier — expectation.
Kaelren kept walking.
Forge Front pulsed with urgency. Couriers darted between tents. Supply crates rattled across runic lifts. Some warriors knelt, praying to old gods. Others sharpened weapons that had already split too much bone.
He reached the command tent. A mountain of stitched beast-hide and reinforced alloy ribs. Two guards in crimson cloaks stood at attention outside, each bearing the triple-fang insignia of the Bloodfang upper command.
Kaelren entered without hesitation.
The air inside was cooler, filtered through rune-coils. A large war table dominated the center, covered in shifting glyph-maps, enemy markers, and flashing red zones that bled further east with every breath.
Behind it stood a man who seemed carved from the battlefield itself.
War Commander Zorakh Vann.
Third-highest authority in the entire Bloodfang Clan. His armor was scorched black, shoulder pauldron formed from the skull of a beast. His left eye glowed softly from an implanted rune-core. He didn't look up as Kaelren approached — simply slid a metal brief across the table.
"Blood Point's been devastated. You're going to hold the line till I can get a full battalion there for reinforcements."
Kaelren opened the brief.
MISSION OBJECTIVE: — Deploy immediately to Blood Point. — hold the line. — Prevent beastline breach into central east trench zone. Failure will cut off Forge Front's supplies to distance front line camps
LOCATION: Blood Point — an outpost carved into the shattered cliffs northeast of Forge Front. Designed as a bottleneck fortress to contain advancing beast herds. Recently overrun. Reinforcements failed. Loss imminent.
HIGHEST CONFIRMED THREAT: — Class: Beast-Tide Alpha — Strength: Stage 2 of the Second Realm — Threat Equivalent: Stage 2 of Gene Ascension Realm
Kaelren closed the file.
Zorakh finally looked up. His voice was gravel dragged across a blade.
"Hold the line till reinforcements arrive, Ashwalker. If Blood Point falls — supplies will be cut off for camps lined on the Easter front, if that happens they will fall like dominoes.
Kaelren nodded once.
He turned and walked out.
The war had begun.
The transport that carried Kaelren to Blood Point wasn't elegant.
It was an open-bed skyrig — half-hovercraft, half-battering ram — built more for speed than safety. No cockpit glass. No shielding. Just exposed alloy rails, runic stabilizers, and a wide platform for standing troops. The engine screamed like a beast being flayed alive.
He rode alone.
Winds howled around him as the vehicle shot northeast, soaring low over war-carved terrain — scorched trenches, broken towers, and skeletal beast remains. The sky above boiled with clouds the color of old ash. Lightning flickered far ahead. East.
Toward Blood Point.
The cliffs rose like teeth in the distance — jagged and black, straining skyward with the anger of old gods. At their base, he saw it: a fortress not built, but gouged from the stone. Defensive spikes jutted out in all directions, many shattered. Crimson flares marked the walls, some guttering out mid-air.
Beast corpses littered the perimeter. And so did humans.
The craft shuddered as it landed. Kaelren leapt off.
No guards greeted him.
No officers. No welcome.
Just the stink of burning fur, the distant roar of battle, and a silence that felt like it came before extinction.
His boots sank into blood-stained soil. The walls were cracked. One tower had already collapsed. Corpses twitched — not all of them dead.
He moved forward, scanning.
His communicator pulsed.
> > PRIORITY ZONE: SOUTHERN RIDGE — CONTACT IMMINENT.
He sprinted.
The southern ridge was halfway collapsed. A single barricade stood between the inner trench and the advancing horde. Ten Gene Warriors manned it — six injured, four dead. The ones alived turned and saw him.
"Ashwalker?" one gasped.
Kaelren didn't respond. He vaulted the barricade.
From the fog below, it came.
A roar.
And then — something massive.
A Beast-Tide Alpha rose from the haze, twelve feet tall, plated in thick, spiked bone, eyes glowing with ember-hate. Behind it surged smaller creatures — fang-hounds, marrow-rats, spine-lizards.
Kaelren cracked his neck once.
Then he charged.
The beasts came like a tide of living nightmares.
They crashed against Blood Point's southern ridge in waves — fang-hounds with frothing jaws, marrow-rats scurrying beneath the mud, scale-backs that snapped bone with every step. And behind them, the real monsters: spike-tusks, thunder-limbs, and corpse-lanterns that howled through the mist with voices stolen from the dead.
Kaelren didn't hesitate.
He met the first wave head-on.
Flesh tore. Bone shattered. Claws broke on his body.
Kaelren's fists blurred, each strike a lesson in violence. A marrow-rat lunged — he crushed it midair with an elbow. A fang-hound snapped at his throat — he drove a boot-blade into its skull, twisting as its body spasmed. Three spine-lizards leapt from the ridge. He turned his body into a whirling storm — knee, elbow, fist, fist, boot — and their bodies hit the dirt in pieces.
The Alpha watched from the fog.
It didn't rush.
Intelligence flashing in its eyes.
Kaelren fought for hours.
His world narrowed to the rhythm of violence. The burn of muscle. The scream of the wind. The sticky heat of blood clinging to his skin. The bracers locked and shielded him from one beast's claws, then shattered its ribs with a spinning backfist. His toe-blades danced between tendon and throat. His Gene Refinement sutra burning hot— it made every move heavier, sharper, deadlier.
He didn't stop.
By the time the sun rose rose a 2nd time behind the clouds, the southern trench was painted in beast blood. The other Gene Warriors had collapsed. Some died. One crawled behind a rock to breathe and whispered, "He's still going…"
The warrior yanked up his communicator — a scout-grade model with live-record and transmission runes embedded in its core. , the scout activated the record function.
The screen lit up, locking onto Kaelren's silhouette through the smoke.
Some fights needed to be seen to be believed. The scout thought
The remaining Warriors watched Kaelren fight with broken knuckles and a fractured rib — neither of which slowed him. He tore a spike-tusk's jaw free and used it as a head spike. He headbutted through chitin. He roared back at creatures that knew no fear… and made them hesitate.
By nightfall, the Alpha sent in a fresh swarm.
And Kaelren welcomed it.
He was no longer man or Gene Warrior. He was the war given flesh — an engine of punishment forged in the camps, sharpened in the Cull, and released into blood.
Beasts tried to flee.
He hunted them through the trenches.
The night sky was dimly lit by stars, but kaelren atainment in Qi cultivation gave him a 6th sense.
His armor regenerated slowly between assaults. Cuts sealed. Dents smoothed. But his body? That healed even faster. The gene refinment sutra welcomed it.
By the third day, his eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with veins of black. His body started to produce blood Qi it swirled in his limbs, coiling tighter with every kill, feeding his Gene Refinement Sutra in silence. He didn't notice. He just fought.
The ridge held.
Because Kaelren didn't move.
He stood where others had fallen — knee-deep in corpses, half his own blood, half theirs. His muscles trembled between surges of force. The Alpha still watched, half-shrouded in haze, calculating, waiting.
Kaelren pointed at it.
Kaelren felt something well up from deep inside him . It started in his stomach then moved to the chest then finally a roar broke out from his mouth.
The ground shook, stones raised into the air from the pure power kaelren's body was generating,beasts trembled in fear.
He had partially broken through to the Gene Ascension Realm.
His body had started generating blood Qi . If he fully wanted to break though all he had to do was push the blood Qi into is genes refining them with the blood Qi enhancing his animalistic traits.
For three full days kaelren didn't stop fighting
He buried hundreds of beasts. Crushed some. Tore others. Slammed one creature so hard into the stone turned to dust.
By the dawn of the fourth day, the trenches were quiet.
The Gene Warriors who'd survived couldn't believe it. Reinforcements had arrived,a full battalion. They stopped dead when they saw the ridge.
And the man standing alone at the center.
Kaelren.
Blood-drenched. Eyes feral. Breathing steady. Surrounded by a field of silence and death.
One young recruit in the battalion whispered, "He can't be human."
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