The Bastion's core thrummed with a deep, slow heartbeat.
It was no longer just a fortress — it was a weapon.
Kael sat atop his Throne of Chains, the Severance Blade resting casually against the blackened armrest. His eyes, twin abysses of will, surveyed the gathered war council.
Before him stood the architects of the next age:
Lady Ardyn, wrapped in shimmering mourning silks that shifted with phantom memories.
General Kaelen Vey, his black armor veined with molten crimson.
Seraphina, her once-golden aura now tinged with the deeper, hungrier shade of Kael's dominion.
Behind them, lesser captains and magisters waited in tense silence.
Tonight, they would not defend.
Tonight, they would strike.
Kael gestured lazily, and a spectral map unfolded midair — not a map of land or seas, but of cosmic territories.
Fractured realms, broken fortresses, forgotten sanctuaries.
Among them, pulsing like a wound, floated the Rift Court of Vael'shar — one of the Eidolon satellites.
A place where stolen possibilities were siphoned and refined.
Kael's voice was a silken blade:
"Vael'shar will be the first to fall."
Murmurs spread through the council. Even seasoned commanders stiffened.
Vael'shar was not defenseless. It was fortified by ancient defenses — wards older than empires, shielded by Riftborn sentinels whose bodies were half-unmade.
Lady Ardyn tilted her head.
"A bold move," she said approvingly.
General Vey frowned slightly.
"They will retaliate. The Eidolons will not ignore a direct assault."
Kael's lips curved in a smile that was almost gentle.
"Good."
He rose, each movement carrying the inevitable certainty of a collapsing star.
"Fear is a weapon best sharpened by blood."
For three days and three nights, preparations consumed the Bastion.
The Sovereign's Blades disappeared into folded realms, sabotaging hidden beacons that would warn Vael'shar.
Magisters of the Shardfold wove silence spells deep into the Rift currents.
Forgemasters crafted new siege devices: black obelisks that could anchor collapsing realities for brief windows.
At the heart of it all, Kael directed every strand of preparation like a master weaver.
He did not delegate.
He commanded.
Seraphina approached him as the final hour neared, her crimson-trimmed armor gleaming like bloodied sunlight.
"When we break them," she said softly, "will you claim their Heartstone?"
The Heartstone of a Rift Court was no mere treasure.
It was a seed of possibility — the crystallized essence of a realm's existence.
Kael touched the Severance Blade lightly.
"I will not merely claim it," he said. "I will rewrite it."
At the appointed hour, the assault force assembled at the Bastion's edge — not atop stones, but standing before a yawning Rift.
The boundary between worlds thinned to a gossamer veil under Kael's influence.
He stood at the vanguard, Severance Blade drawn, the Throne's echoes wrapped around him like a cloak.
Without a word, he stepped forward — and the Rift parted.
A wound torn across reality.
The army followed — a tide of blackened steel and crimson banners bearing Kael's new sigil: a broken crown wrapped in chains.
Through the Rift, the world twisted.
Space buckled.
Time wept.
They emerged into the skies above Vael'shar — an impossible city suspended across a storm of dying stars.
The defenders of Vael'shar reacted swiftly.
Silver fire lanced from bastions floating amidst the void.
Riftborn sentinels, towering abominations of flesh and thought, launched themselves toward the invaders.
But Kael had foreseen it all.
At his signal, the Obelisks of Severance were cast down.
Each black monolith stabbed into the city's fragmented platforms, emitting pulses that froze localized space.
Riftborn froze mid-leap, their forms cracking.
Silver fire guttered and died before reaching Kael's forces.
General Vey bellowed a war cry that shook the Rift.
Sovereign's Blades descended like reapers.
Lady Ardyn led the assault on the eastern bastions, her mourn-silk unraveling into spears of memory that impaled Riftborn captains.
Seraphina tore through the central defenses, her greatblade alight with sunfire stolen from dying stars.
Kael walked the path of annihilation.
Every step he took unmade the world around him.
Walls crumbled.
Wards unraveled.
Sentinels fled before his presence, their thoughts shattering into mindless babble.
At the center of Vael'shar floated the Heartstone — a radiant jewel the size of a mountain, pulsing with unborn realities.
Guarding it stood the Court's Warden — Vaesh-Tor, a being crafted from twenty sundered souls, woven into a warform of incandescent agony.
It towered above Kael, wielding a blade forged from a thousand regrets.
It spoke — not with a voice, but with the collapse of dreams:
"You cannot unmake what was never truly made."
Kael answered with a single gesture.
The Severance Blade sang.
And reality split.
Vaesh-Tor struck first — a blow that should have annihilated entire armies.
Kael caught the blow on his blade — and fed it back into the Warden.
The creature staggered, shrieking, its own power devouring it from within.
Kael advanced.
Each swing of Severance stripped layers of possibility from Vaesh-Tor, unraveling its existence thread by agonized thread.
Until, at last, the Warden collapsed into dust that never was.
Kael turned to the Heartstone.
He approached the Heartstone, Severance Blade humming with restrained hunger.
The stone pulsed, resisting.
Within it, trapped possibilities screamed — unborn futures, discarded pasts, broken timelines.
Kael placed his hand against its surface.
The Bastion answered across the Rift, its Throne of Chains resonating.
"You will be my instrument," Kael whispered.
With a thought, he rewrote the Heartstone.
Not a mere conquest — a remaking.
He embedded his will into its core, crafting a seed that would feed on other realities, growing stronger with each conquest.
Vael'shar was no longer a Court.
It was now a citadel of Kael's dominion, anchored to his Throne by chains unseen by mortal eyes.
The Sovereign's banners were planted atop the ruins of Vael'shar.
Survivors knelt before Kael, bound by oaths enforced by the rewritten Heartstone.
The Rift itself twisted, realigning — carving new paths for Kael's future campaigns.
Lady Ardyn approached him, blood splattered across her silks, eyes alight with reverence.
"It is done, Sovereign," she said.
Kael nodded once.
"The first of many."
Behind him, Seraphina stood silently, watching him with something between awe and hunger.
Kael felt the Bastion stir in response — sensing the conquest, absorbing it.
He was no longer merely holding ground.
He was expanding.
The Sovereign's war had truly begun.
To be continued…