The skies wept fire.
From horizon to horizon, the canopy of the Vhalar world blazed like a dying god's crown. Explosions thundered through the forest as Orbital Scourers—drifting weapons platforms launched from the Giza Mtuji—unleashed controlled plasma infernos across sacred groves and ancient glades. The jungle, once an emerald labyrinth of life, writhed in agony. Creatures screamed in terror as flame and psionic storms tore them apart mid-flight. Rivers boiled. Soil turned to molten glass.
Kizito stood above it all, his eyes locked on the scorched map of the continent. He spoke no words. He did not need to.
Death answered him.
The March of Annihilation
Drop ships struck like iron fangs, slamming into valleys, mountainsides, and dense jungle clearings. Shadow Troopers poured forth by the tens of thousands—faceless, soul-bound to their commands. They moved with eerie coordination, weapons singing with energy drawn from the void. Civilians and warriors alike were slaughtered without pause.
No warning.
No mercy.
No survivors.
The Wailing Forest, once a living monument to Vhalar ancestry, was reduced to ash. The Lake of Light, a sacred site for spirit communion, was drained and replaced with an extractor array that ripped psionic frequencies from the earth like marrow from bone.
Refugee caravans—mothers cradling children, elders limping on twisted staffs—were caught in flame corridors or shredded by skittering enforcer drones. Some were dragged screaming into subjugation barges, their minds forcibly wiped in Memory Crucibles. Others died with prayers on their lips.
The forests, once alive with spirit chants, now groaned with the silence of the dead.
The Capital Under Siege
The Vhalar capital, once a sanctuary among the cliffs and the oldest stones, had become a tomb in waiting.
Smoke choked its halls. Fires raged through half-collapsed towers. Explosions rocked the fortified mountain city as the Mahasimu's Siege Titans—colossal four-legged machines bristling with psionic weapons—approached in unison. Their claws gouged through rock and steel. Their voices were low-frequency psychic screams that shattered bone and drove defenders mad.
Within, Kara and Moro fought like ghosts through the rubble. Their hands were numb from killing, their faces painted with soot and blood. For hours, they had led resistance bands through broken tunnels, striking from the shadows, bleeding for a land they had doomed.
"I never thought it would come to this," Kara muttered, plunging her spear into a trooper's throat joint, blood spraying like oil.
"We should never have taken that being," Moro spat, slicing a drone in half. "This is retribution… divine or otherwise. And it's justified."
They fought not for hope, but for the right to die with dignity.
The Last Stand
In the crumbling central hall, a handful of Vhalar prepared their final defense.
Lirak, the young scout, no longer trembled. His eyes were wild with defiance. He smeared mud and ash across his chest, turning prayers into warpaint.
Mara, binding her wounds, stood beside Zalor, both leaning on shattered relics of stone guardians now broken and desecrated.
Zalor, once the voice of wisdom, was now only rage.
"When the final gate falls," he growled, "we meet them in fire. And we do not fall until we stand in the heart of death itself."
Kara and Moro entered with the last band of bloodied warriors. None spoke. The silence between them said more than any chant or battle cry.
Outside, the Siege Titans raised their limbs. The final gates shuddered beneath the weight of impact.
Descent Into Oblivion
The walls cracked.
Psionic charges tore through the gates in a thunderous eruption. Shadow Troopers flooded into the citadel, their weapons glowing with dark light. The Vhalar met them head-on, blades drawn, screams erupting.
Kara impaled one trooper, only to be shot through the shoulder by another. Moro caught her before she fell, roaring in fury and desperation. Lirak jumped from the balcony above, a stone axe slamming into a trooper's helmet, killing them both in the impact.
Mara was the last to scream: "For the earth! For the spirits!" as a beam of black energy consumed her and three troopers in a single blast.
Zalor, bloodied and cornered, grabbed a fallen staff and jammed it into the foundation pillar, triggering the collapse protocol of the entire chamber. "Let them take rubble!" he shouted—and was buried in fire.
The stronghold caved in.
Extinction Declared
Above, the Giza Mtuji registered the capital's collapse.
"Confirmation?" Kizito asked.
A cold voice answered: "The last bastion is extinguished. Vhalar command hierarchy—terminated. Civilian resistance: reduced to statistical anomaly."
Kizito nodded once.
"Begin Phase Three. Harvest the land. Install suppression pylons. Prepare the slave pens."
Across the world, machinery groaned to life. Forests were flattened. Mountains gutted. Surviving Vhalar were shackled, herded into shadow fortresses, their identities erased, their spirits broken.
The world had been conquered.
Its culture erased.
Its defenders buried.
But far beneath the scorched surface, in forgotten caverns and memory hollows, something ancient stirred—something not Vhalar… and not Mahasimu.
The shadows had won the war.
But not the silence that followed.