Inside the Ironwatch quarantine room, time passed slowly for Milo.
He sat cross-legged on the bed, a half-assembled drone spread out in front of him. It had been two full days since he was locked in, with just one more to go. Most of his time went to eating, pacing, and tinkering—anything to keep busy.
He hummed as he worked. A low, disjointed melody—too steady to be random, too broken to be a song. Like static trying to remember music. Not quite a tune, not quite noise.
He often muttered too—but today, his voice slipped into something… different. The words weren't English, or anything that made sense. The syllables tangled and repeated in odd patterns, like a corrupted file trying to play itself aloud.
From the outside, Milo looked completely normal. Focused. Bored.
He adjusted a servo, twisted a wire, muttered again. Then paused.
His eyes drifted to his right hand. The one that touched the shard.
Burned, scarred… but no longer painful.
He flexed it once. Whispered under his breath, "I have to make more followers."
The room was monitored. Cameras tracked his movement. Microphones recorded everything. But the feed showed nothing unusual.
To the security team watching from Ironwatch control:
Just Milo. Sitting. Humming. Working. Complaining about being stuck in there for three days.
Business as usual.
But the feed didn't catch the flicker in his eye.
Or the strange rhythm in his voice.
Or the fact that his drone twitched—slightly, like it had heard him speak.
While Milo rested in silence, elsewhere in Ironwatch, the backup unit—codename: Iron Veil—was making final preparations.
Night had settled over the fortress, but the base was anything but quiet. Footsteps echoed through the halls. Lockers clanged shut. Final checks were called out in clipped voices. In the lower hangars, two military transports stood under pale floodlights:
HAV-5 "Warden" — a reinforced armored carrier, built for impact absorption and infantry deployment.
DRV-11 "Howler" — a recon-adapted support vehicle, with long-range sensors and onboard command links.
Inside the prep bay, Major Rix Harrow stood over a wide projection table, one gloved hand planted on the edge, the other adjusting the map's zoom. The light from the screen cast sharp shadows across his face—his one good eye tracking elevations, ridgelines, and fallback zones. The other eye, long gone, was hidden behind a worn, reinforced patch.
Beside him stood Colonel Yara Veltin, arms folded, expression hard as steel. Her voice cut through the room with the cold finality of someone used to being obeyed.
"Warden takes point. Howler trails sixty seconds back. No formation breaks unless we're under direct fire. If comms go dark, you follow fallback routes, not your gut. Understood?"
No one questioned her. Just a series of short, sharp nods.
In the corner, Captain Mera Dastin was crouched over a weapons crate, her sleeves rolled up. She ran a cloth down the barrel of her heavily modified marksman rifle—standard military issue, but with her signature tweaks: a recoil-dampening rig, twin-mount optics, and a folding shoulder brace that clicked with a satisfying hiss when locked. Close by was a belt of compact explosives and adhesive charges—non-lethal and lethal variants both. Her toolkit was open next to her, half-empty.
Lieutenant Asha Relin worked in silence at the mobile med station. She sorted syringes, sealed kits, pressure foam, bio-scanners, and a portable stabilizer unit into tight, labeled packs. Her movements were precise. Cold. She didn't speak. She rarely needed to.
Across the bay, Sergeant Dren "Ox" Kellen hoisted a crate nearly as wide as his chest into the back of Warden. It rattled with gear—extra ammo, shield plates, portable barriers. As he slammed it into place, he glanced over at Mera and chuckled.
"You pack like we're heading into a warzone."
Mera didn't look up.
"Maybe we are."
Ten more soldiers moved in quiet formation—each handpicked by Colonel Veltin from different units across the base. They weren't green. They weren't here to run drills. Their expressions said everything: this was serious. They'd been briefed—but not fully. Still, they followed orders.
And that order was clear: Ironwatch doesn't take chances anymore.
Veltin faced them all one last time.
"We roll out at dawn. No outside chatter. No engagement unless authorized. You see anything strange, you report it immediately. You do not investigate alone."
Then her tone dropped—quieter, but sharper.
"And no one says a word about this to Dr. Grant."
A few of the soldiers glanced around. Confused. Curious.
But no one asked questions.
Orders were orders.
The scout team set up their final camp, not far from where Nomad's signal last appeared.
Back in Ironwatch, Dr. Elias Grant slept silently under dim medical lights—still, unmoving.
In the village, the night deepened. Doors shut. Lights dimmed. And one by one, the townspeople surrendered to sleep.
So did Nero.
But his sleep, as always, was far from peaceful.
The dream began as it always did—silent and white.
Everything was white.
The ground. The sky. The air. No shadows. No edges. No depth.
Just white.
Nero was the only thing that didn't belong. He stood in this formless space, the only shape, the only color. The only fragment of reality.
He tried to move.
This time, he could.
His feet made no sound as he stepped across the empty world. The air didn't shift. There was no breeze, no sun, no warmth. Just endless, empty white. Stretched infinitely in all directions.
Then it began.
The white ground cracked.
Black fractures split beneath his feet—thin at first, like hairlines. But quickly, violently, they spread—ripping outward, devouring the purity of the world.
He turned to run.
The cracks chased him.
They weren't just on the ground now. The sky began to break too—splintering with deep, jagged fractures. The ceiling of the world peeled apart like glass under pressure. Shards of white space fell from above, dissolving before they hit the ground.
Everywhere Nero looked—cracks.
As if the entire dream was collapsing in on itself.
He kept running.
In the distance, a patch of untouched ground remained. No cracks. No tremors. Solid.
He sprinted.
Behind him, the world fell into ruin. The cracks weren't just breaking the white—they were consuming it. Chunks of sky vanished into black void. The edges of the world folded in.
Nero made it to the stable patch. He collapsed to his knees, gasping.
But the silence didn't last.
A presence loomed.
He looked up.
A figure stood ahead.
Pitch black. Humanoid. Faceless. Motionless.
It had no features, but it stared at him all the same.
Then it spoke.
In a thousand voices.
"This is not your soul."
The chorus rang deep, layered and distorted—like echoes from a hundred different realities.
The figure raised a hand and pointed behind him.
Nero turned.
The cracked ground was gone.
In its place was a pit. A gaping abyss of pure darkness. A bottomless, endless void.
"That is your soul."
Then the figure stepped forward—
And pushed him.
Nero fell.
Down.
Into the Void.