After the Guardian's blow had impacted Dorian, shattering the energy shield he had created into shards of blue hexagonal pieces—and in the process, sending Dorian flying several meters before crashing down hard—he was in very bad shape. The blow had been too much for him, even with the energy shield activated.
Dorian coughed. Something hot and metallic filled his mouth. Blood. His blood. Dripping onto the black surface, now rubble from the impact.
He tried to get up. But his right arm hung useless, a flare of pain shooting up to his shoulder. At least two ribs ached with every shallow breath he took.
Through blurred vision and the dust still settling, he saw the Primordial Guardian advancing. Slow. Relentless. Like a glacier made of nightmare. Each step sent shards of black rock flying like shrapnel. The fragment embedded in its chest pulsed with a triumphant rhythm, a war drum resonating in Dorian's bones.
The swarm of Cenzontlis, recovered from the interference, gathered above once more. But they no longer attacked. They only watched. Circling in a slow, ceremonial pattern, blocking the sun, plunging the battlefield into a deep purple twilight. They were the audience present at the invader's execution.
Omega spoke, his voice distorted, broken by damage to the suit's auditory systems and Dorian's own hearing.
—"T-tactical options… all exhausted. Jump drive… inoperable. Primary weapon… destroyed. Structural integrity… critical. Probability of survival against another direct attack… 0.3%."
Dorian spat a bloody clot onto the dusty ground. It tasted of iron and defeat.
—"0.3%?" he managed to say, with a hoarse laugh that turned into another coughing fit. "That's more than I had when they sent me to this damned planet called 'Mue' as a kid. I didn't even know I could activate that thing back then, so that percentage is way too high."
The Guardian stopped fifty-five meters away. It wasn't just distance. It was a sigh for a creature of its size. The eyeless crest vibrated, studying Dorian. He felt the psionic pressure again, but now it was different. It wasn't an attack. It was… interrogation. An echo of the fragment's visions: tunnels, networks, a void that watches.
After that interrogation, the beast raised one of its main tentacles, as wide as a tree trunk or a great column, lifting it slowly. It wasn't for striking at high speed. It was to crush with the solemnity of a falling mountain.
A blow launched in that manner only when one is certain of victory and knows their prey won't even be able to dodge, let alone mount any powerful counterattack.
—"Impact imminent in 5 seconds," announced Omega, his tone flat, resigned. "No evasion route available. It has been an honor to serve you, sir Dorian Astra."
Honor. Duty. Helion. It all sounded hollow and distant. The only real things were the shadow of the tentacle growing over him, the deep hum of air being displaced, the pulse of the fragment he now felt in his molars.
Five.—Announced Omega, the countdown.
He thought of the Sigma-12 crew. Of the captain whose last advice had been "don't touch it." Of the crew members whose names he would never know, absorbed by the planet. Though he hadn't touched the fragment. But Dorian had wanted to destroy it, and that had provoked it. And now the planet prepared to collect the debt.
Four.
He thought of the bioluminescent river. Of the creature that climbed on his boot, of the builder crabs. Of the trees that sang with the wind. Of the amber fruit that had healed his body. Not everything here was death. There was a fierce, indifferent beauty. And he, in his arrogance—however justified—had brought war to its doorstep.
Three.
The tentacle began its descent. An almost infinite, gravitational, inevitable fall. The air compressed, becoming dense as water. Dorian couldn't move. Not just from his injuries. The psionic pressure immobilized him, gripping every muscle, every tendon, like shackles of pure energy.
Two.
—"Omega…" he whispered, his cracked lips barely moving.
—"Yes, sir."
—"The non-interference protocols… the suppression…" Each word cost air, cost life.
There was an infinitesimal pause. Omega processing.
—"Protocol 'Cradle' active. Helion signature suppression levels maintained at 73% despite suit damage. Confirm."
A spark of rage, pure, instinctive, and fleeting, flared in Dorian's chest. He wasn't afraid. It was indignation. The indignation and rebellion of a king before a mountain.
—"Override."
The word wasn't a whisper. It was an internal roar that echoed in the silence of his mind.
—"Confirmation required. Overriding the 'Cradle' Protocol will release your native, unattenuated energy signature. Consequences in a psionically-sensitive ecosystem are unpredictable. Possibility of a massive-scale chain reaction. Confirm override: yes or no."
The tentacle was ten meters away. Five. The shadow completely covered him. The air was lead.
Dorian closed his eyes. Not to accept death. But to search within. In a place he hadn't visited since arriving on this planet. A place that burned with a cold blue deeper than the space between galaxies.
There it was. Sleeping. Suppressed. And contained.
His inheritance. His power. His blessing. His innate system. And his true name.
Helion.
—"Sir. Confirmation."
Dorian opened his eyes. They were no longer just green. In their depths, like stars being born in an abyss, flashed a cold, ancient blue that belonged to no sun in this world.
—"Yes," he said, and the word carried the weight of a cosmic oath.
One.
The Primordial Guardian's tentacle crushed the spot where Dorian had been.
The black rock, polished over millennia, burst like glass under an iron hammer. A sonic shockwave swept across the plain, raising a curtain of dust and shards that reached the edge of the distant forest. The roar was so monumental that for several seconds, there was no other sound in the world. The Cenzontlis in the sky fell silent. The wind stopped.
The Guardian kept its tentacle pressed into the newly formed crater, grinding the rubble into fine sand. The fragment in its chest glowed with an intense pulse, like a satisfied heart after fulfilling its deepest desire.
Then, it began to withdraw the tentacle.
But it stopped.
Something was wrong.
The pulverized rock beneath its limb… was glowing. Not with the purple light of the sun, nor the corrupt blue of the fragment. It glowed with an electric blue, pure and icy, seeping through the cracks in the dust like the breath of a glacier under the moon.
The Primordial Guardian took a step back. Its whole body vibrated with a frequency of bewilderment.
The psionic pressure that had immobilized the entire battlefield… shattered in an instant. Like glass struck by a note too high.
From the depths of the crushing crater, a light rose.
Not a flash. A presence. A silent pillar of icy blue energy rising toward the darkened sky, scattering the swarm of Cenzontlis like leaves before a hurricane. The creatures fled in terror, their cries of fear replacing their war songs.
The dust dissipated, swept away by an energy that didn't warm, but ordered the chaos around it.
And in the center of the crater, standing on a mound of pulverized rubble, was Dorian.
Or… something wearing his form.
His suit was in tatters. Large tears revealed the black compression suit he wore underneath, covered in dirt and cuts. But through those tears, and especially around his eyes, his hands, his open wounds on his face, light emanated. The same icy blue light, stable, imperturbable.
The blue hadn't torn the compression suit. It passed through it, as if the material were a sieve. The light flowed outward in geometric streams, forming patterns that resembled circuits or constellations around his body. It wasn't fire. It was frozen order made visible.
He raised his head. His eyes no longer held a trace of green. They were wells of that same stellar blue, without pupil, without white. Pure conscious energy.
Dorian breathed. Blue vapor.
He looked at his dislocated arm, the same one that had hung useless. Beneath the skin, he saw the bones lighting up from within with the icy blue.
There were no violent snaps. There was a silent realignment. Torn tissues rewove themselves, severed muscle fibers reconnected as if time ran backward just for them. The pain vanished, replaced by a sensation of electric fullness.
The same with his fractured ribs. He felt the healing warmth of Helion from within, welding bone to bone, leaving them not just repaired but temporarily reinforced with traces of blue energy in their microscopic structure.
The open wounds on his skin closed without scars, leaving only new skin and a faint residual glow that faded.
It took seconds. Complete restoration.
Now, a perfect body, housing an innate power.
He didn't look at the Primordial Guardian. He comprehended it. And the Guardian, in turn, comprehended him.
The eyeless crest of the colossus vibrated frantically, emitting a cacophony of psionic waves: interrogation, recognition, ancestral terror.
Because what stood before it was no longer an intruder with technology, frightened by a discovery. It was something analogous. Something that spoke the same silent language of pure power, but from a different, older, colder source.
Dorian opened his mouth. And breathed out blue valor. Not to speak. To emit.
The sound wasn't just any roar. It was a note. A single frequency, so low it made the atoms of the rock tremble, so high it tore the veil of perceptible reality. It was the primordial word of Helion.
And upon hearing it, upon feeling it, the fragment in the Guardian's chest…
Flickered violently.
For an instant, there was only silence and blue light.
Then Dorian spoke to it. —With a calm voice and a smile.
"Let the 2nd Round begin."