The Academy's reconstruction was a brutal reminder of the Federation's efficiency. Within days, the shattered walls were reforged, the bloodstains scrubbed away, and the training yards echoed once more with the sounds of combat drills. Life moved on—because the Federation demanded it.
Luke's knuckles split against the sparring dummy's reinforced plating. Pain flared up his arm, but he barely registered it. His brand—still fresh, still burning—thrummed beneath his skin, feeding energy into his muscles. He struck again. And again.
"Pathetic."
Instructor Rael's voice cut through the training hall like a shock-blade. The man was a walking slab of augmented muscle, his neck branded with the jagged insignia of a frontline veteran. He didn't teach—he broke. And Luke was his newest project.
"You fight like a gutter rat," Rael sneered, circling him. "All instinct, no discipline. The Federation doesn't need street brawlers. It needs soldiers."
Luke wiped blood from his lip. "I'll keep that in mind."
A fist slammed into his ribs. He hit the ground before he could blink, the wind knocked out of him.
"Stand."
Gritting his teeth, Luke forced himself up. His body screamed, but his mind—sharp, clear, focused—pushed through.
That was the first sign.
---
The discovery came in the middle of a memory crystal drill.
Liam's advanced array class was a nightmare of runic equations and neural conditioning. Most recruits struggled to retain even basic patterns. Luke didn't just remember them—he saw them, etched behind his eyelids like they'd always been there.
"Dead Sea Scroll Sequence," Liam murmured when Luke recited an entire page of runic syntax without error. The array master's mechanical eye whirred as it focused. "Memory retention, mental clarity, reaction speed. Rare in Federation ranks. Common in… other circles."
Luke didn't ask which circles. The way Liam's gaze flickered toward the sealed labs told him enough.
---
Military life was a meat grinder.
Dawn drills. Midnight endurance runs. Sparring sessions that left recruits bleeding on the mats. Veyd thrived, his Imperial Decree Sequence lending him an effortless command over the others. Kieran survived through sheer stubbornness, his Cinder Blossom adaptations letting him push past pain.
Luke? He endured.
The Dead Sea Scroll Sequence didn't make him stronger. It didn't make him faster. But when the others faltered—when their muscles failed, their minds fogged—Luke remembered. Every strike, every tactic, every mistake. And he didn't forget.
"Again," Rael barked, tossing him a shock-blade.
Luke caught it. Adjusted his grip. Exhaled.
Then he moved.
The blade was an extension of his will now, its arcs precise, its edge humming with controlled energy. He didn't overpower. He outlasted.
Rael's smirk was the closest thing to approval Luke would ever get. "Better."
---
Lira's absence was a wound no one acknowledged.
Kieran trained harder, his blows carrying a reckless edge. Veyd's arrogance grew sharper, his words laced with something darker. And Luke?
He remembered.
The Dead Sea Scroll Sequence didn't just preserve knowledge. It preserved moments. The way Lira's hands had trembled mid-seizure. The black veins spreading like cracks in glass. The silence afterward.
He wouldn't forget.
And when the time came, he'd make sure the Federation remembered too.
---
Beneath the Academy's polished halls, in a lab lit by the sterile glow of stasis pods, Neon sorted through the harvested Bio-Nano Cores of dead soldiers. Each one pulsed faintly in its containment unit—tiny, engineered organs ripped from spines and hearts, waiting to be recycled into the next generation of Federation weapons.
She picked one up, turning it over in her palm. The core was cold, its surface etched with the serial number of its previous host. Somewhere out there, a family still thought their son or daughter had died honorably in battle. They didn't know their child's corpse had been mined for parts.
"Lucky or unlucky?" she muttered to herself. The new recruits—kids like Luke, Veyd, and Kieran—had no idea what it meant to receive a core this young. Most soldiers earned theirs through years of service, if they survived long enough. But the Academy didn't have time to wait. The Federation needed blades, sharp and ready.
A holographic display flickered to life beside her, listing the latest batch of cadets approved for inscription. Three names stood out:
Luke Arlen – Dead Sea Scroll Sequence
Lira Seth – Black Ruin Sequence
Sydian de Virell – Crownmirror Edict
Neon's lips twisted. The Dead Sea Scroll was rare, a relic of old-world fanatics. The Black Ruin was worse—a volatile, unstable thing that had already started eating Lira alive. And the Crownmirror Edict? Sydian's family had paid a fortune to secure that lineage.
She moved to the serum racks, her fingers brushing over vials of shimmering liquid. Each one contained the genetic code of a Sequence, ready to be inscribed into bone and nerve. The process was agony. Some recruits shattered under it. Others came out wrong.
But the Federation didn't care.
A chime echoed through the lab. The system pinged—another batch of cadets had been flagged for inscription. Neon didn't bother reading the names.
They'd learn the truth soon enough.
---
Deep in the labs, Lira's body convulsed in a stasis pod, her veins blackening further.
The Black Ruin Sequence was spreading.
And no one was coming to save her.
---
The med-techs called it stabilization. Lira called it a cage.
Her body lay suspended in the stasis pod, blackened veins pulsing beneath her skin like corrupted circuitry. The Academy had stopped the spread—mostly. They'd hooked her to machines that whirred and hissed, pumping her full of inhibitors and control agents. They didn't understand her sequence, this Black Ruin anomaly that had nearly eaten her alive. But they'd recognized its potential.
A potential weapon.
The pod's glass reflected the lab's sterile lights—and the half-assembled mech frame beside it. They were building her a new body, one that could channel the corruption without letting it consume her. The engineers whispered about "controlled degradation fields" and "tech-plague vectors." Lira just stared at her hands through the glass, fingers twitching as the Black Ruin stirred in her bones.
She could feel it even now. A hunger. A need to spread.
The med-techs didn't notice when the monitors near her pod flickered. When the containment systems lagged for half a second.
Lira did.
And she smiled.
---
The void beyond the Helix Rift was a graveyard of dead ships and dying stars.
Federation battleships hung in perfect formation, their polished hulls gleaming under the ghost-light of a neutron star. The Iron Resolve, the Dawn's Edge, the Oath of Steel—each one a masterpiece of imperial engineering, their pulse cannons charged, their shield arrays humming.
Across from them, the Crucible Drift's fleet looked like scrap metal given sentience.
Junk freighters welded with stolen artillery. Pirate hulks strapped with reactor cores from dead mechs. And at their center, the Worldbreaker—a Drift flagship cobbled together from the carcasses of three Federation dreadnoughts, its hull painted with the scorch marks of a hundred battles.
No elegant formations here. No perfect discipline.
Just raw, snarling violence waiting to be unleashed.
Admiral Jareth Vosk of the Iron Resolve watched the enemy fleet through the bridge's viewport. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his shock-blade. "Open fire."
The first volley tore through the black.
Plasma lances streaked toward the Drift fleet—and then the Worldbreaker's shields flared to life. Not the clean blue hexagons of Federation tech, but a swirling, sickly green barrier that pulsed like a living thing.
The plasma bolts struck—
—and fizzled into nothing.
Vosk's tactical officer swore. "Sir, their shields just—"
"I see it," Vosk snapped.
Then the Worldbreaker returned fire.
Not with plasma. Not with missiles.
With people.
The boarding pods launched by the hundreds—jagged metal shells packed with Drift warriors. Most would burn up in the Federation point-defense fire. Most. Not all.
The first pod hit the Dawn's Edge like a meteor. The impact tore through three decks before the pod's occupants came screaming out—Drift berserkers clad in armor made from salvaged mech plating, their weapons crude, their eyes wild.
They moved like animals. Like monsters.
And they killed like nothing Vosk had ever seen.
---
Gunnery Sergeant Ryn of the Oath of Steel had fought pirates before. Had fought rebels and rogue mech pilots and even a few crazed cultists.
This was different.
The Drift warriors didn't fight like soldiers. They fought like forces of nature.
One—a giant of a woman with her spine fused to a stolen power core—tore through the Oath's security teams bare-handed. Her fists cratered bulkheads. Her laughter echoed through the halls.
Another, a wiry man with his nervous system wired into a dozen stolen Federation blades, moved faster than the targeting systems could track. He left a trail of bisected corpses in his wake.
Ryn fired. Her pulse rifle's shot hit the giant woman square in the chest—
—and did nothing.
The woman grinned, her teeth filed to points. Then she lunged.
Ryn barely dodged, rolling behind a support column as the woman's fist shattered the deck where she'd stood.
"Fall back!" Ryn shouted to her squad. "Fall back to—"
The column exploded.
Ryn hit the ground hard, her ears ringing. When her vision cleared, the giant woman was standing over her, one massive hand raised for the killing blow—
A blade erupted through her chest.
The woman looked down, confused, at the shock-sword protruding from her sternum. Then she toppled, revealing the figure behind her.
Admiral Jareth Vosk stood there, his Rank 6 brand burning along his jawline, his armor splattered with Drift blood. He yanked his blade free and turned to Ryn.
"Get your people to the escape pods," he said, voice flat. "This ship is lost."
Ryn stared past him. At the dozens—no, hundreds—of Drift warriors still pouring through the breaches.
She nodded.
---
On the bridge of the Iron Resolve, Vosk watched the Oath of Steel's reactor go critical.
The explosion lit up the void for half a second before the Worldbreaker's shadow swallowed it whole.
His tactical officer was screaming numbers—shield integrity, casualty reports, the Drift's boarding vectors. Vosk barely heard them.
He'd trained his whole life for war. For battle against worthy foes.
This wasn't battle.
This was slaughter.
The Worldbreaker's comms crackled to life. A single voice, rough with static and laughter:
"Ready to die, Federation?"
Vosk drew his shock-blade.
"Not today."
Then the Worldbreaker fired its main gun—a weapon ripped from a dead Federation titan, reforged with Drift runes—and the Iron Resolve's world turned to fire.
---
Back in the Academy's labs, the screens showing the battle feed flickered—once, twice—before going dark.
Lira's fingers twitched in her pod.
The Black Ruin stirred.
---
The training yard fell silent as Sydian de Virell stepped onto the sparring platform. His movements carried an effortless grace, the kind that came from generations of aristocratic breeding and combat training. The pale gold embroidery on his uniform caught the light with every step, marking him as part of the Virell bloodline—one of the Federation's oldest noble houses.
But it was the brand along his collarbone that drew the eye.
The Crownmirror Edict.
A rare variant of the Imperial Decree Sequence, whispered about in hushed tones among the cadets. Unlike the standard command-enhancing sequences, the Crownmirror didn't just amplify authority—it reflected power. Techniques, energy patterns, even cultivation methods could be mirrored and turned back against their wielder. It was said that a master of the Crownmirror Edict could dismantle an opponent's fighting style within minutes, adapting and countering with terrifying precision.
Sydian's cold gray eyes swept over the gathered cadets before settling on Luke. There was no sneer, no open disdain—just a calculating stillness, as if he were already measuring how best to break him.
Luke met his gaze and held it.
A flicker of something passed over Sydian's face—interest, perhaps. Then it was gone, smoothed back into aristocratic indifference.
---
Deep beneath the Academy, the interrogation chamber hummed with the low, persistent whine of active suppression arrays. The air smelled of ozone and blood.
The bishop hung suspended in the center of the room, his skeletal frame held upright by glowing energy bindings. His robes had been stripped away, revealing a body covered in scars—some old, some fresh. His breathing was ragged, his lips cracked and bleeding.
Caldrian circled him like a predator, his gloves stained dark. "You're wasting my time."
The bishop lifted his head with effort. His eyes, though sunken and bruised, still burned with defiance. "You think pain will make me betray my faith?"
Caldrian smiled. It wasn't a pleasant sight. "No. But I think time will." He tapped a finger against the bishop's branded wrist, where the man's own cultivation had been locked away. "Every hour you resist is another hour your body decays. Another hour your mind frays." He leaned in. "How long before you start begging for the mercy you deny others?"
The bishop spat blood at his feet.
Caldrian sighed. "We'll resume tomorrow."
---
Centurion Ramos di Nolan watched the sparring matches from the shadows of the observation deck, his arms crossed. He hadn't been assigned to the Academy—not officially. But after the Black Hand attack, someone high up had decided his presence was necessary.
His gaze lingered on Sydian as the noble effortlessly dismantled another cadet's technique, countering with near-perfect mimicry. The Crownmirror Edict was dangerous in the right hands.
More dangerous still in the wrong ones.
A chime echoed through the Academy's comm system—an incoming transmission, priority clearance. Ramos didn't move, but his jaw tightened.
They were coming.
And the Academy wasn't ready.
---
The ship descended at dusk, its matte-black hull absorbing the fading light. It wasn't large—no battleship, no command vessel—but the insignia etched into its side made even the instructors stiffen.
The ramp lowered.
Centurion Ramos and Caldrian stepped forward in unison, saluting as the figure emerged from the shadows.
"Welcome, High Marshal," they said.
The man who stepped onto the Academy's soil didn't wear armor. Didn't carry weapons. He didn't need to.
High Marshal Dain Veymar, the Butcher of Caltris, looked upon the assembled cadets with eyes that had seen empires burn.
Then he smiled.
And the world held its breath.