Verlin stood still, staring at the golem in front of him. There was something familiar about it — something he should recognize — but the answer stayed just out of reach. After a few seconds, and no movement from the machine, he decided not to wait any longer.
He stepped forward and walked past it.
As he passed, a flicker of motion caught the edge of his vision. The golem's arm was lifting… reaching toward him.
Without even turning fully, Verlin shot his hand out and seized the golem's right arm mid-reach.
The construct immediately resisted, its metal frame straining as it tried to shove forward and break free. But Verlin's grip held firm. The arm didn't move an inch.
Then the golem's other arm began to shift. Plates slid and rotated with sharp mechanical clicks, the limb reshaping itself into a cannon. The barrel opened, and a bright glow built inside, energy gathering as it locked onto Verlin at point-blank range.
Verlin reacted instantly.
He twisted the captured arm hard.
The movement was instant and violent.
Verlin didn't just twist — he unleashed a burst of rotational force so fast and brutal that the construct had no chance to react. The hardened crystal that formed its body, material built to survive ages of war, couldn't handle the sudden torque ripping through it.
Unit Seven exploded.
It didn't crack or fall apart in pieces. It erupted. The force of the twist sent a shockwave racing through every surface, every joint, every internal support at the same time. Head, torso, legs, propulsion cores — all of it shattered together in one catastrophic chain reaction. Three and a half meters of advanced Draeknith engineering became a rapidly expanding cloud of glittering fragments.
Verlin remained at the center of it, frozen in the final position of his strike. Fine crystal dust drifted from his hand like falling snow.
He glanced down at the scattered remains, a faint frown crossing his face.
Then he bent his knees and launched himself upward toward the mothership.
The ice beneath his feet burst apart from the force of the takeoff. He soared through the air, the massive, split skull structure ahead growing larger by the second—
A flicker of motion took shape at the edge of his vision.
Projectiles. Dozens of them. Cutting through the air toward him from every direction.
Instinctively Verlin tried to shift his trajectory mid-flight—
Nothing happened.
His body continued on its ballistic path, helpless against momentum and gravity. The realization hit him with an almost absurd sense of frustration. He had forgotten, he couldn't fly anymore. Couldn't change direction in the air. Couldn't maneuver.
Just... falling with style.
'How Inconvenient.' he thought dryly.
With no other option, he crossed his arms over his chest and curled inward, bracing.
The first projectile slammed into his back.
The impact was tremendous—whatever these weapons were, they packed considerably more force than he'd expected. The blast knocked him off course, sending him spinning away from the mothership.
Then another hit.
And another.
Explosions burst against him from different angles, each strike precise and calculated. They weren't just attacking — they were redirecting him. Adjusting his path with ruthless efficiency.
By the tenth impact, he was nowhere near his original trajectory.
By the twentieth, the sky and ice blurred together. He had no idea which way was up.
He hit the ground hard.
The ice shattered beneath him, cracks racing outward in jagged lines for several meters. Steam hissed upward where his overheated body met the frozen surface.
He rolled once, then pushed himself up onto one knee.
More than fifty of the crystalline golems surrounded him in a perfect circle, each one roughly the same as Unit Seven had been. Their forms were bulky and heavily armored. Weapon systems were already deployed—cannons, crystal projectiles, things he didn't have names for.
They spoke at the same time.
Their voices merged into a layered harmonic tone that vibrated across the frozen landscape.
The language was completely unfamiliar.
Verlin sighed and stood up.
High Orbit - Arctic Region
"Unit Twelve, destroyed. Unit Nineteen, destroyed. Unit Twenty-Three—"
Zereth's voice was tight as he read off the casualty reports streaming across his displays. On the viewscreen, the battle, if it could even be called that, played out in real time.
The figure moved through their salvage units like they were made of glass. Every engagement ended the same way: a single touch, a twist, a grab—and another construct erupted into fragments.
"Forty-two units lost," Zereth said, "Commander, we can't—"
"I know," Drayen cut him off. He paused for a moment before continuing," Deploy Armada level 3."
Zereth's hands froze over the interface. "Commander, Level 3 deployment is reserved for—"
"I'm aware of the protocols," Drayen said with an undertone of annoyance. "Deploy them."
Zereth's fingers moved across the controls. "Deployment confirmed. Armada Level 3. Estimated time to surface: twenty minutes."
The light within Drayen dimmed slightly as he watched the figure on the screen systematically dismantle another wave of salvage units. "What are the rules of engagement?" Zereth questioned.
"Containment protocol first," Drayen said. "Capture if possible. The Coalition needs full aquisition of the mothership, we won't let a single entity hinder our mission. But if containment fails..."
He didn't finish the sentence.
Zereth understood anyway. "Neutralization authorized?"
"Neutralization authorized," Drayen confirmed quietly.
On the tactical display, hundreds of new signatures appeared in orbit, breaking away from the Talon's Edge. They descended into the atmosphere in perfect formation—streaks of light cutting through the sky like falling stars.
But these weren't salvage units.
These were war machines.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Verlin walked through the halls of the mothership.
It felt wrong.
Empty.
The corridors that had once thrummed with purposeful design were now hollow shells. The walls showed clear signs of systematic extraction—panels removed, conduits severed, systems gutted.
He recognized the layout despite the damage, but almost nothing remained of any realistic use.
The more he saw the more frustrated he got.
He continued deeper into the ship until he reached an area he'd been dreading— the habitat made for the Xylorings.
Verlin paused for a second before making his way into the holding area.
The door was already open or rather, removed entirely. He stepped through into the containment section.
And stopped.
Skeletons.
All 12 of them.
Scattered across the floor in various positions—some huddled in corners, some sprawled where they'd fallen, some by the sealed doors as if they'd died trying to escape.
The Xylorings he'd promised to help. All dead.
His hand moved to the pane separating the holding cell from the observation room—a thick transparent barrier designed to contain them. His fingers pressed against it.
The glass cracked under the pressure.
"Damn it," he whispered.
How long had he been underground?
Months? Years?
Had anyone else survived? Or was he really the only one alive.
Verlin pulled his hand away from the cracked glass and turned away from the holding area.
His steps had considerably less enthusiasm as he continued through the mothership, searching for anything useful. Any functional components.
Any semi-functioning miniature ship. Anything that could help him get off this planet and back to a sun.
But as he zigzagged through the corridors, the reality became increasingly clear: whatever those crystal golems were doing, they'd been busy. Thorough. Professional.
Even the massive purple crystal that once powered the mothership — etched with runes like those on the dagger, was absent
There was almost nothing of use left. If he wanted to create something it would have to be from scratch.
By the time he made his way back toward the exit, Verlin felt hollowed out. Empty.
He halted close to the exit, a hand covering his face as a tired sigh slipped out. He could check the other half of the mothership, but he had little hope in actually finding anything of use.
After a moment of contemplation, Verlin stepped out of the mothership, when he surveyed the surrounding, he froze.
Surrounding the exit of the mothership was an army of crystalline constructs in perfect formation across the ice and in the air. These ones looked different from the other ones, the previous constructs he had encountered were a pale blue colour.
These were dark red. Deep purple. Black.
And larger.
Much larger.
Verlin stood in the shadow of the bisected mothership and considered his options.
Two options flashed through his mind.
One, he could fight. Push through them, destroy as many as possible, use the scraps from the battle to cobble together something that might get him closer to the sun. Maybe win. Maybe.
The problem with that approach was obvious: every time he'd gone headfirst against extraterrestial beings with unknown abilities or technology, it had backfired. It had happened with the Coratians, it happened with Radae.
The second option was to comply. Follow them if they weren't going to outright kill him. Try to get to a sun somehow through cooperation rather than violence.
Right now, he was leaning heavily toward the latter.
For one, his current energy reserves were dubious. Two, from his eyeball estimate, there were more than five hundred seperate units in front of him and he wasn't sure if more were coming.
But most of all, above everything else, he just didn't have it in him to fight right now.
The people he'd tried to protect. The world he'd fought for. The promises he'd made. The plans he'd laid. His closest allies.
All of it. Gone.
All the bleak thoughts he had been pushing down, had piled up and finally resurfaced at once.
It was mentally exhausting.
Standing in the cold shadow of the broken ship, surrounded by an army he could probably still destroy…
Verlin had never felt more defeated.
Slowly, deliberately, he sat down on the ice.
Four dark red constructs broke formation simultaneously, Their weapon systems reconfigured—barrels retracting, new apertures opening in their torsos, glowing a deep, pulsing crimson.
They fired.
Four dark red crystals shot out and embedded themselves in the ice around him—one in front, one behind, one to his left, one to his right.
The Crystals erupted simultaneously, surging outward from all four points at once, racing across the ice and climbing into the air with violent speed. Walls shot into the air and slammed together above him, sealing in less than a second. The collision echoed across the frozen wasteland like a gunshot.
Verlin didn't move as the red crystal closed around him.
The outside world became warped and distorted through the crimson walls. Sound dulled. The biting Arctic air vanished, replaced by an unnatural stillness.
Moments later, the crystal lifted off the ground. The four red constructs rose with it, the rest of the army following behind.
They climbed into the sky.
The Constructs broke through the upper atmosphere and finally, Verlin got a good look of what Earth now looked like.
The planet was shrouded in thick, gray-brown clouds that choked the atmosphere like a funeral shroud. No blue. No white polar caps gleaming in the sunlight. No green landmasses.
Surrounding the planet was a field of debris. Millions of fragments tumbled through orbital space in chaotic trajectories. The debris created irregular, unstable rings around Earth, layers of destruction orbiting the corpse of the planet.
The crystalline constructs escorting him had to constantly adjust their flight paths. Some fired precise energy bursts to vaporize smaller pieces in their way. Others simply maneuvered around larger fragments with calculated efficiency. The escort formation broke and reformed continuously as they navigated through the orbital graveyard.
As the fleet climbed higher, finally breaking free of the worst debris fields, the sun came into view.
Verlin's gaze fixed on it immediately.
Yellow. Brilliant. Powerful.
Right there.
But he felt nothing.
No warmth. No radiation. No pull of solar energy that his cells desperately craved.
The crystal cage must be designed to shield against radiation and external disturbances. He couldn't feel the cold of space either—no temperature drop, no exposure to vacuum. The red crystal was completely isolating him from the environment.
For a second, the thought crossed his mind: break the crystal. Reach for the sun.
But there were too many unknowns.
He wasn't sure how his body would react to the vacuum of space. His Kryptonian physiology had handled it before—but that was when he had solar radiation powering him. Now, weakened, running on geothermal energy with a dagger still lodged in his heart?
And the distance. The sun was too far from here. Hundreds of millions of kilometers. Even if he could survive the vacuum, he had no way of controlling his movement. And he was sure the exposure from this distance wouldn't bring immediate changes. In all likelihood, he would either be recaptured or end up falling back towards the earth before he could get a glimpse of his former self.
It simply wasn't worth the effort or risk.
Verlin attention was drawn to the ship the constructs were taking him to. Similar to the Coratian mothership, the porportions were vast.
But the design was completely different.
Where the Coration vessel had been intimidating and skull-shaped, this ship was geometric and precise. It had the shape of a horizontal obelisk, made of metallic crystal. Its surface was faceted and reflective, scattering starlight in sharp angles.
The ship had to be at least fifty kilometers long, maybe ten kilometers wide and tall.
As the fleet of constructs approached the ship—a section of the obelisk's surface opened like an iris to reveal a vast interior.
They entered without slowing.
The docking bay was easily a few kilometers across. The scale made even the massive constructs look small. Hundreds of crystalline units moved through the space in organized patterns, some hovering, others walking across the polished floor.
But it was what filled the bay that caught Verlin's attention once his eyes adjusted.
Coration technology.
Everywhere.
Broken down weapon systems he recognized from the mothership, smaller ships the xylorings had piloted. In the distance Verlin could recognize the massive purple power crystal from the mothership.
All of it organized in precise sections, categorized and labeled with symbols he didn't understand.
It was obvious they'd been doing this for a while.
The escort carried him through the bay, past towering stacks of alien technology, past work stations where constructs were disassembling larger components, past containment fields holding what looked like smaller volatile power systems.
As Verlin watched the organized salvage operation, he began to wonder which force these constructs were part of.
He knew the Corations had enemies. The briefings from the mothership, the tactical data he'd reviewed when he first acquired it—they'd outlined the major powers in this region of space.
The Corations themselves—aggressive expansionists with their skull-shaped ships and impressive stealth systems
The Interstellar Alliance—a coalition of dozens of species, each contributing their own technology and military forces. Varied. Disorganized but numerous.
And the Draeknith Civilization.
Verlin's eyes fixed on the nearest construct as they passed it. The crystalline body. The geometric precision.
Draeknith.
That's why the constructs looked familiar. He had seen files on them—intelligence reports, tactical assessments of their military capabilities. The Coratians had considered them a serious threat, advanced technology, devastating energy weapons, constructs capable of operating in extreme conditions.
It irked him that it had taken him this long to recognize them. Back when he'd been powered by solar radiation, his mind had worked faster—processing information instantly, perfect recall of everything he'd seen or read. His eidetic memory had been flawless.
Now, It took him several minutes of observation to reach a conclusion he should have made immediately upon seeing the first construct.
The escort moved deeper into the ship. The docking bay gave way to corridors—crystalline passages that stretched in every direction. Verlin tried his best to commit the pathways to memory.
He cataloged what he could, trying to build a mental map.
But it was harder than it should have been. The information didn't stick the way it used to. He had to actively focus, consciously repeat the pattern to himself.
He noticed, gradually, the army was shrinking. The hundreds of constructs that had surrounded him on Earth's surface had dispersed along the way—breaking off at various corridors, returning to whatever duties they'd been pulled from. The formation thinned with each junction they passed.
By the time they reached the destination, only the four red constructs remained—the same ones that had encased him in crystal.
The four red constructs positioned him in the center of the room. Then, without ceremony, they turned and left.
For a few minutes, Verlin sat in silence waiting for a representative or someone, before the crystal that was holding him began to crack, before ultimately shattering and freeing him. The crystal shards didnt linger on the ground as it was seemlessly absorbed by the ship.
Verlin stayed seated, taking the moment to fully observe his surroundings. The room was eerily quiet, yet well-lit, its crystalline surfaces refracting the light in subtle patterns. It reminded him of the Xyloring holding cell, only on a grander, more alien scale.
Now, there really wasn't much he could do, so he continued in his sitting position and waited.