The Dominion sirens roared through the ruined corridors, each pulse a declaration that the ancient machinery was not as dormant as they had believed. Kael, Iria, and Rai sprinted through the shadowed tunnels, the ghostly echoes of alarms overlapping with the rush of rising steam and shifting walls.
"I thought this place was abandoned!" Rai shouted over the din, lightning sparking involuntarily from his fingertips as adrenaline surged.
"It was," Kael replied, his silver eyes flickering with residual Void energy. "But whatever was sealed down here… it woke up when I stepped in. It knows me."
Iria's voice was tight, focused. "Not just you. It was waiting for you."
They burst into a decaying atrium where broken statues of Dominion founders loomed with cracked visages and shattered arms. Behind them, doors began to seal shut—massive vaults slamming one after another, sealing off alternate routes.
"We're being funneled," Iria growled, blades already forming in her hands.
"Toward what?" Rai spat.
Kael clenched his fists. "A test. They're trying to see if I'm worthy."
Before either could respond, the far end of the atrium hissed open, revealing a platoon of Dominion Sentinels—sleek, black-armored operatives with glowing visors and Aether-infused weaponry. They moved with precision, rifles raised, formation unbreakable.
"Target: Subject 000 located. Engagement protocol active," their commander announced.
Kael stepped forward before the others could react. His voice was steady. "You're too late. The Prototype already woke."
The commander tilted his head. "Protocol mandates containment. The anomaly must be reset."
Kael's brow furrowed. "I'm not your experiment."
"No. You are a deviation."
The Sentinels opened fire.
Energy blasts lit up the atrium. Iria vanished in a shimmer, appearing mid-air above one of the guards. Her blade pierced through the visor before the Sentinel collapsed in a shower of sparks. Rai hurled a bolt of chain lightning into the group, causing a pulse of electromagnetic disruption that sent several skidding.
Kael moved like a phantom.
He flowed through the ranks, blades materializing and vanishing with each swing. He wasn't just fighting—he was evolving. Each strike was faster, each dodge more precise. The Nexus was awakening further within him, and he could feel it—code interlacing his thoughts, unlocking fragments of old knowledge buried in his blood.
But it came with risk.
As he struck down the last Sentinel, Kael stumbled, gripping his head. Visions slammed into him.
A lab. Screams. Metal restraints. Children crying. A glass tank. His own face, younger, distorted by agony as Void energy surged into him.
Kael dropped to one knee. His breathing faltered.
"Kael!" Iria knelt beside him. "What happened?"
"I saw it," he whispered. "The moment I was… made."
Rai glanced around warily. "This isn't the place to unpack trauma. We've got company."
A low, mechanical rumble echoed from the passage ahead. The walls shook. Something massive approached.
From the dark emerged a towering Dominion War Titan—a relic from the Aetherian Wars. Nearly twenty feet tall, with an armored chassis and a pulsating Aether core at its center, it bore multiple plasma cannons and an experimental stabilizer—designed to suppress Aether usage in the vicinity.
Kael stood shakily. "They brought a Titan to stop me?"
Rai grimaced. "How flattered do you feel?"
Iria narrowed her eyes. "We don't have the firepower to take that down conventionally."
The Titan's core surged, and a dome of suppression energy expanded from its chest, instantly dimming Iria's blade and interrupting Kael's connection to the Void Nexus.
Kael gritted his teeth. "It's jamming the Aetherflow."
The Titan raised its arm and fired a concussion beam. Kael dove, narrowly dodging the blast as it shattered what remained of the atrium's floor. Chunks of debris rained down.
Kael and Rai dropped into the lower level.
Rai groaned. "We can't outrun that thing."
Kael's eyes flared. "Then we don't run."
He slammed his palm into the floor, channeling what remained of his connection into the ground. It was weak—disrupted—but he focused harder, reaching deep into the Nexus signature within his core.
From the rubble, the Void responded.
A shadow pulsed from beneath his feet. The runes from earlier—the ancient Dominion symbols—flared to life again, bending the suppression field slightly.
"I'm overriding it," Kael growled. "Just… need… more time."
Rai grunted. "Buy you time? Yeah, I got you."
He rose to his feet and charged the Titan, his cybernetic arm overloading until sparks shot from the joints. "Hey! Tin can! Over here!"
The Titan responded, tracking him and launching micro-missiles. Rai twisted, agile, dodging between blasts while hurling shock bombs and grenades.
Above them, Iria leapt between crumbling supports, slicing down secondary drones deployed by the Titan. "Rai! Left flank!"
"Got it!"
Kael's fingers traced the air as glyphs formed around him, ancient language coalescing into command lines. His mind raced. He didn't fully understand how he knew what to do, but the Nexus guided him—feeding knowledge into his brain like data streams into a server.
A word slipped from his lips: "Unseal."
The Void exploded outward.
A burst of pure Null Aether shot from his body, disrupting the suppression field entirely. The Titan staggered, its stabilizer core blinking erratically. Kael rose, surrounded by a corona of black lightning and silver mist.
His form shifted.
Briefly, his outline fractured—glitching—revealing something ancient underneath. Not just Kael. Something more. Something born at the heart of the first Aether rift.
He raised his blade. "Your time is over."
With a single motion, he dashed forward—faster than sight. The Titan's armor buckled as Kael sliced through its core, and a deafening roar filled the chamber as the behemoth fell in pieces.
Silence returned.
Rai limped toward Kael, blinking. "Okay. That was new."
Kael's aura flickered, then vanished. He stumbled, drained, as Iria caught him.
"You're changing," she whispered. "Faster than expected."
"I don't know if that's good or bad," Kael muttered.
A comms ping echoed through Rai's gauntlet. He tapped it.
"Transmission from Tessa," he said. "She decoded the last Nexus relic. Says there's a hidden layer in the data logs from the Dominion servers."
Kael looked up. "Location?"
"An island off the coast of Veylin Reach. Sealed under old Dominion quarantine. She says it holds the original schematics for the Nexus Seed Project."
Kael's eyes darkened. "Then that's where we go."
Iria nodded. "If they built more like the Prototype, we need to know."
Rai glanced around. "Then let's get out of this damn tomb."
As they ascended, none of them noticed the lingering shadow on the wall behind the shattered Titan.
A silhouette detached from the stone—hooded, cloaked in a living fabric of absence. No face. No presence.
Cipher had watched everything.
The Nameless Shadow turned and vanished, already relaying the data to forces far beyond Dominion reach.
And far beneath the ruins, the Prototype smiled inside its prison.
"The cycle turns. The pawns align. Let the Nexus awaken fully."