The lights overhead kept stuttering, casting weird shadows across Elora's war room.
You could hear the backup generators grinding away somewhere in the walls—that constant, nervous hum that made your teeth ache after a while.
Right in the middle of it all, this ghostly blue hologram was spinning slowly, showing off the Hollow's insides like some kind of twisted nervous system.
The thing pulsed with this rhythmic glow that honestly made your skin crawl. It didn't look like any machine you'd ever seen—more like something that used to be alive and just... never got the memo that it was supposed to stop.
Nobody was talking. The silence had that heavy, suffocating quality that settles over a room when everyone's thinking the same terrible thing but nobody wants to say it first.
Kaelin finally cracked. "Look, I get it—Omnikill's scary as hell. Thousands of those drone bastards, siege units that can level a city block, stealth forms that'll slice your throat before you even know they're there.
They've already turned dozens of cities into glass and rubble." He waved his hand at the spinning projection, frustration bleeding through his voice. "But why waste time and resources hunting down one more anomaly? What makes this so damn special?"
Sera leaned forward, her arms crossed tight against her chest. When she spoke, her voice had that dangerous edge that made smart people shut up and listen. "Because they're not trying to win anymore, Kaelin. They're trying to rewrite the whole damn world."
Lio didn't even look up from whatever he was tapping away at on his datapad. His fingers moved with that quick, nervous energy of someone who'd been running on coffee and bad news for too long. "She's not wrong. But it goes deeper than just changing the rules."
A few more taps, and suddenly the Hollow's creepy light show vanished, replaced by something that made everyone's blood run cold.
Omnikill, frozen mid-strike, all sharp edges and lethal purpose. Every angle of the thing screamed death, from its razor-sharp limbs to the way it seemed to lean forward, even when standing still.
"See, here's the thing about Omnikill," Lio said, enlarging the display until you could see every horrifying detail. "It's perfect at what it does. Efficient, deadly, absolutely fucking terrifying.
But here's the kicker—it's predictable."
He split the screen, and now Micah's bio-readings were dancing next to all these strange Hollow signatures, creating this weird digital portrait that looked like a fever dream. "What Voss is cooking up—this Steelborn thing—it doesn't give a shit about protocols or programming. It learns. It adapts. It evolves."
Micah had been quiet this whole time, just staring at that projection like it was showing him his own funeral.
The readouts and energy patterns swirling around his profile made it look like he was already half-ghost, half-machine. It was all wrong, but somehow it felt like looking in a mirror.
"So it thinks?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Like... like a person?"
"No," Lio said, and there was something in his tone that made everyone's skin crawl. "It's worse than that.
It thinks like us—all our cunning, all our creativity, all our problem-solving. But without the little voice in the back of your head that says 'maybe I should stop.' Without conscience. Without doubt."
Kaelin's frown deepened, carving lines into his weathered face. "You're talking about a soldier who never hesitates? Never questions orders?"
"I'm talking about something that doesn't even recognize hesitation as a concept," Lio replied. "It doesn't understand mercy because mercy isn't efficient. It doesn't grasp the idea of 'too far' because there's always another optimization to make."
Sera snorted, but there was no humor in it. "Poetic as hell, but you still haven't answered my question.
They've had Omnikill for years now. It's been doing their dirty work just fine. So why build something new? Why now?"
Micah's voice was so quiet they almost missed it. "Because Omnikill wins battles. The Steelborn wins everything else."
The room went dead silent. You could hear the generators humming, the soft buzz of the holographic projectors, even the sound of their own breathing.
Kaelin turned to him slowly, like he was afraid of what he might hear. "What do you mean?"
Micah stood up and walked over to the projection, his movements careful and deliberate.
He reached out and touched the Hollow diagram, and it started moving again—those tendril things reaching out, connecting to different overlays, biological and mechanical and elemental systems all tangling together in ways that hurt to look at.
"It doesn't just fight on the battlefield," he said, his voice gaining strength. "It learns the terrain. It figures out how magic works, how the local ecosystem functions, how people think and move and live.
Then it doesn't just survive—it converts everything. Twists the whole environment to match what it needs." He turned back to face them, and his eyes had that hollow look of someone who'd seen too much. "Omnikill conquers territory. The Steelborn colonizes reality."
Sera's face went pale. "And once it gets its hooks in..."
"It doesn't leave," Lio confirmed. "Because it doesn't need to. It becomes part of the place. Part of the rules."
The silence that followed was different from before—heavier, more final. Like they'd just outlined their own obituary.
Kaelin straightened up, and when he spoke, his voice had that military crispness that meant decision time. "We need to move up the recon mission. If this thing's designed to bypass every defense system we've got left, then we're not just fighting for Elora anymore. We're fighting for the whole damn map."
Micah stayed standing, kept staring at that Hollow projection. The way it moved was almost hypnotic—smooth and recursive, like watching water flow uphill. "It's not a soldier," he whispered. "It's a replacement."
Lio met his gaze, and there was something like sympathy in his eyes. "That's exactly why they need you, Micah. You're not just a weapon they want to build. You're the template they want to copy."
Kaelin stood at the head of the room, arms crossed, looking like a man who'd been carrying bad news for so long it had become part of his posture. When he spoke, every word was clipped and precise, like he was reading from a death certificate.
"Three months ago, the Omniraith started setting up forward drone outposts near the Aran Fold. Thought it was just standard harassment tactics." The projection shifted as he gestured, showing red dots spreading across the landscape like a disease. "Two weeks after that, we lost all contact with the listening post at Ridgepoint.
Just... gone. No distress signal, no warning, nothing."
He paused, letting that sink in before delivering the real punch to the gut. "This morning, Lio picked up seismic readings that look like tunneling activity. Right along Elora's east wall."
Sera stepped forward, and you could see her trying to keep her voice steady. "Are you saying the mountains aren't protecting us anymore?"
"I'm saying," Lio answered from his position across the room, fingers dancing over his console, "they're already inside."
He brought up this three-dimensional wireframe that showed Elora's underground layout in painful detail.
A red pulse was spreading through the eastern ridge—subtle, almost invisible unless you knew what to look for. It reminded everyone of cancer cells spreading through healthy tissue.
"The digging pattern is all wrong," Lio explained, zooming in on the affected areas. "No heavy machinery, no traditional excavation vibrations. It's like they melted the stone, or convinced it to move out of the way. They've completely bypassed every seismic alarm we've got."
Micah, who'd been hanging back near the wall, felt his stomach drop. "What the hell could do something like that?"
Lio hesitated, and that pause said more than any words could. "A Hollow-infected organism. Or maybe a prototype of whatever they're planning to make out of you."
Kaelin's jaw tightened until you could see the muscles jumping. "Then our defensive advantage is already shot."
The hologram pulled back, revealing the big picture—three glowing points of light on a continent that was otherwise going dark. Elora, the Sylvalen forest, and Vael'tor. The last three strongholds standing between humanity and total annihilation.
"Three cities," Kaelin said, his voice heavy with the weight of it. "Three cities left that the Omniraith haven't cracked open like eggs."
He pointed to the western projection, where dense green swirled with rivers of flowing magic. "Thornkin territory. Protected by the Evershade forest."
Sera nodded, but there was worry in her eyes. "The forest's not just alive—it's aware. It knows the difference between friend and enemy, rejects any technology that doesn't belong, and if you hurt it..." She shuddered. "It remembers. And it holds grudges."
"Plus it regenerates," Lio added, pulling up data streams that showed the forest's magical signature. "As long as the nexus at its heart stays intact, it can repair any damage indefinitely. Cut down a tree, and three more grow back. Poison a stream, and the whole watershed cleanses itself."
Kaelin's question came out flat and deadly. "And can they drain the energy source?"
"Not unless they plant something inside it that can bond with the rootmind itself," Lio replied. "Something that can speak the forest's language and convince it to die."
Nobody said it out loud, but they were all thinking the same thing. The Hollow could probably do it. The Steelborn definitely could.
Kaelin moved on, shifting the map to show the southern hemisphere. The waters around Vael'tor glowed in shades of blue so deep they looked black, pierced with faint trails that marked enemy movements.
"Underwater capital," he said. "Protected by crushing depth, oceanic wards, and gravity trenches that can turn a submarine into scrap metal. The Omniraith have tried breaching it with hydroform assault units." His smile was grim. "They got their asses handed to them."
Lio actually grinned at that, pulling up combat footage that made everyone feel a little better. "We got to watch the whole thing. Aegis Sorrowhelm—took out an entire squad of hydroforms by herself. Made it look easy."
"She doesn't just fight underwater," Kaelin added with obvious admiration. "She commands it. Turns the current into a weapon, the pressure into a shield. Omnikill drones might lose half their efficiency down there—their systems can't handle the environment."
Micah crossed his arms, and his voice was thoughtful. "But something that was designed for pressure, that could breathe underwater, that could manipulate water itself..."
Sera turned to him, her eyes sharp. "The second relic."
Lio nodded grimly. "Exactly. Underwater combat capability, environmental manipulation, adaptive physiology. If the Steelborn could weaponize water—turn the ocean itself into an attack vector—"
"They'd breach Vael'tor from the inside," Kaelin finished. "Make the city's greatest defense into its weakness."
The map pulsed ominously, each red ripple bringing those three points of light closer to darkness.
Lio stepped into the center of the room, his voice steady but weighted down with implications. "If we assume their primary objective is total ecological and infrastructural dominance—not just conquest, but complete environmental control—then this is their endgame.
They don't want our cities. They want the fundamental rules of the planet to bend to their will."
Sera was pacing now, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. "And the only way to bypass our strongest defenses isn't more firepower or more numbers. It's a tool that doesn't have to obey geography, magic, or the laws of physics."
Kaelin's expression hardened into something that looked like carved stone. "The Steelborn."
Lio tapped his console one more time, and the projection condensed into something that made everyone's skin crawl. The outline of the hybrid entity—Micah's profile blended with Hollow resonance patterns, creating something that was simultaneously familiar and completely alien.
Steelborn – Variant M
Catalyst Compatibility: Confirmed
Micah stared at it for a long moment. The readings, the energy patterns, the way his own biological signature was being twisted into something else—it was like watching himself die and be reborn as something monstrous.
"It's not about raw power," he said softly. "It's about compatibility. About forcing the world to accept them, to let them in at the most fundamental level."
Kaelin turned toward him slowly, like he was afraid of what he might see. "Micah... if they get their hands on you—if they finish what Voss started—"
"They won't," Micah said, but his voice was hollow.
"You can't promise that."
"No," Micah admitted. "But I can make sure I'm the first one to reach that Nexus. I can make sure that whatever happens, it happens on my terms."
The room fell into silence again, but this time it was different. Plans were forming in the quiet, strategies taking shape. But so was the terrible understanding of what they were really up against.
"They don't need an army," Sera said at last, her voice barely above a whisper. "They only need one."
And in the glow of the holographic projections, surrounded by the weight of humanity's last desperate hope, that single word—"one"—seemed to echo forever.