Chapter Five – Operation Cinderline
---
The dropships screamed across the burning horizon.
From the sky, Sector 40 looked like a carcass — blackened ruins covered in ash, fractured towers jutting from the earth like jagged teeth. Lightning tore through clouds heavy with red mist.
Inside the lead aircraft, Lady Eve and Samurai stood side by side as mission data flickered across their visors.
> "Thermal readings… impossible," Samurai muttered. "There's movement everywhere."
"How bad?" Lady Eve asked.
"More than two hundred hostiles. At least fifty are B-class. The rest… unknown."
Lady Eve's eyes hardened. "Then we clear it."
The dropships opened their ramps. The night screamed as fifty Slayers leapt into the chaos.
---
⚙️ Descent Into Hell
They hit the ground running — exosuit thrusters burning blue as the squads spread across the dead streets.
The first wave came immediately.
Dozens of C-class demons, all claws and teeth, surged from the fog, shrieking with mindless hunger. The Slayers opened fire in perfect synchrony — rail bolts, plasma arcs, and crossfire explosions tearing the creatures apart.
> "Left flank! Push them into the choke point!" shouted one squad leader.
Flames lit the ruins. Demons screamed and burned.
But then the temperature dropped.
Ice began to creep along the ground — slow at first, then racing outward in jagged veins.
The mist parted.
And something enormous stepped forward.
---
❄️ URZA, THE FROSTWING
He was a nightmare stitched from human and beast — a tall, muscular figure with leathery bat wings, jagged horns, and pale, glass-blue eyes. His breath misted like winter air.
When he spoke, his voice carried through the blizzard forming around him.
> "Humans… still crawling."
He spread his wings, and an avalanche of ice shards erupted outward. Several Slayers were frozen mid-movement, their armor crackling as frost devoured them.
> "Frost signature! It's an A-class!" shouted the comms officer.
Lady Eve leapt forward, slicing through the frozen air, her katanas glowing blue. But Urza was fast — frighteningly fast — weaving between her slashes with animal agility.
She struck again, but he countered with a wave of frost that encased her feet.
> "Impressive reflexes for a mortal," Urza hissed.
Before he could finish the spell, a swarm of Cross Bits — small hovering drones — whirred into the air above him. Their ports opened, unleashing a rain of bullets and plasma bursts.
Urza screamed, wings wrapping around his body like a shield. Bullets shattered against ice. He spun, releasing razor shards from his wings — half the drones exploded instantly.
> "Cross Bits Alpha, deploy suppressant gas!"
The remaining drones released a fine mist of Blue Rose gas — shimmering particles that sparkled in the frozen light.
Urza staggered. The gas corroded his wings, the frost cracking and melting around him.
> "No…" he snarled, "that cursed scent—"
A final barrage of iron bullets slammed into him, piercing through the weakened armor of ice. The impact sent him crashing through a collapsed building, blue ichor splattering across the ruins.
When the dust settled, Urza lay motionless — impaled by twisted rebar, his icy breath fading to steam.
> "Target neutralized," reported a Slayer.
But Lady Eve's eyes were already on the next surge of movement.
---
💀 ZENN, THE BONE DEVOURER
The ground trembled.
Then, something ripped through the street — a blur of pale blue and bone.
Zenn emerged like a hurricane: humanoid, lean yet monstrous, his blue hair flowing like liquid flame. Four bone tentacles unfurled from his back, each tipped with serrated blades that gleamed under the firelight.
He grinned — sharp, feral teeth glinting.
> "Now this… this looks fun."
He vanished.
A sonic boom followed.
Samurai barely turned in time as a bone spear whistled past his head, slamming into a wall and detonating with raw kinetic force.
> "Speed demon hybrid!" Samurai shouted, drawing his short sword.
Zenn reappeared behind him, his tentacles snapping like whips. Samurai blocked, but each strike sent shockwaves down his armor.
> "You're strong," Zenn sneered, "but your rhythm is predictable."
Samurai's rail rifle came up in an instant, muzzle flashing. Zenn darted aside, the bullets carving trails through the air but missing entirely.
> "Tch—too slow."
He spun, driving a bone blade toward Samurai's chest — the impact sent the Slayer flying backward, armor cracking.
Lady Eve landed between them, blades crossing in a flash of light.
> "You fight like a wild dog," she said coldly.
"You'll bark too," Zenn smirked, "when I start breaking bones."
Their clash ignited the air.
Zenn's tentacles spun like a shield, blocking her flurry of slashes, then countered with a sweeping kick that cracked the ground. Samurai joined the fray again, firing bursts of plasma as Lady Eve's katanas whirled in streaks of blue light.
The three combatants moved so fast the other Slayers could barely track them.
Zenn laughed between blows. "Yes… this is living!"
But then, something shifted.
Above, the Cross Bits returned, hovering silently — their ports glowing brighter this time.
> "Gas, now!" Lady Eve commanded.
A storm of Blue Rose vapor erupted from the drones, surrounding Zenn in a shimmering haze.
He staggered, coughing, the glow in his veins flickering.
> "What— what is this—"
Samurai charged, sword raised, slashing through the smoke. Zenn parried with his tentacles, but his movements slowed.
Lady Eve dashed in behind him, her blades crossing in a fatal X.
> "Iron bites deepest when forged in purpose," she whispered.
She slashed.
The twin katanas cut cleanly through Zenn's chest. Blue ichor sprayed across the rubble.
The explosion of gas and plasma consumed him in a blinding flash.
When the smoke cleared, only scorched bone fragments remained.
---
🐍 MIRA, THE SERPENT OF DESIRE
Elsewhere, the last of the B-class demons fell beneath the Slayers' guns. But the air shimmered again — and the soldiers froze.
She emerged from the haze, gliding across the corpses like a phantom.
Mira, the Gorgon. Her beauty was almost human — flowing hair, smooth skin, perfect symmetry — except for her serpentine pink eyes that pulsed with lethal energy.
> "Why destroy beauty?" she whispered. "Let me make you eternal."
A Slayer met her gaze — and screamed as his armor and skin turned to stone.
> "Don't look into her eyes!" shouted Lady Eve, turning away.
Mira smiled faintly. "You can't fight what you can't face."
Her gaze swept again, turning weapons and walls to brittle gray.
Lady Eve closed her eyes, relying purely on her other senses. She heard the faint hiss of serpents — the whisper of shifting stone. She moved like water.
> "You're fast," Mira cooed, "but not fast enough."
Her hand brushed Lady Eve's arm — frost crawled up Eve's sleeve, spreading petrification.
But Eve didn't panic. She shifted her stance, flipping one katana to reflect the ambient light.
> "You like your own reflection?" she murmured.
Mira blinked — and met her own gaze in the mirrored blade.
The petrification rebounded instantly. Mira gasped, her body hardening, her scream freezing in her throat as she turned into a perfect marble statue — eyes wide in horror.
Eve exhaled softly. "Beauty is fragile."
---
⚙️ Aftermath
By dawn, the battlefield was silent. The once-swarming Sector 40 now lay dead — littered with shattered corpses and frozen ruins.
Samurai stood among the wreckage, surveying the devastation.
> "That bone one…" he muttered. "Zenn. His speed — his power — I've never seen anything like it."
Lady Eve cleaned her blades, the Blue Rose extract still hissing faintly.
> "Don't mention his dual affinity in your report," she said quietly.
"Why?"
"Because if Command finds out demons can evolve like that… panic will spread faster than the infection."
Samurai nodded grimly. "Understood."
They boarded their aircrafts. Engines roared as the Iron Veil Slayers departed Sector 40 — victorious, but wary.
From her seat, Lady Eve opened a secure channel.
> "Director Voss, mission complete. Sector 40 cleared."
"Casualties?"
"Minimal. All A-class threats neutralized."
"Excellent work, Eve. The Iron Veil stands."
The transmission cut. But Eve's expression didn't ease. She looked out the window, at the smoking wasteland below.
> "Something about him…" she whispered. "It felt like he wanted to die."
---
⚫ After-Scene
Silence. Smoke. Ruins.
Then — movement.
A broken hand burst from beneath the rubble. Bone shards fell away.
Zenn pulled himself free, his body a silhouette against the embers. His skin glowed faintly — white cracks pulsing with energy. His eyes burned crimson. The tentacles behind him had evolved — sleeker, deadlier, now tipped with blades that shimmered like obsidian.
He looked up at the dawn sky.
> "Pain…" he growled. "No — rebirth."
A shockwave rippled from his body, shattering the stone around him.
Zenn stood tall, smiling — a god among corpses.
> "S-class… at last."
His laughter echoed through the ruins, long after the Slayers' aircraft disappeared into the clouds.
And somewhere deep in the mist of Sector 41, other eyes opened — awakened by the ascension of one of their own.
The war had just evolved.