SUPREMACY- Clash Between Heroes and Villains Chapter 51:Conclave of the Tetrarchy of Ruin

 The first thing the sea learned was to be afraid of the ship.

The Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz slid out of warp over a nameless black-rock island and descended like a continent deciding to sit down. Tendrils of violet exhaust washed over the shore; skeletal cranes unfolded from its belly, slamming into the basalt and biting deep. The ocean boiled where its engines kissed the water.

On the command terrace, Deathwing watched the landing in silence. The dreadnought's armor was torn and cratered from Galaxbeam's interference; whole segments of its ribbed hull gaped, exposing twitching necro-cables and half-living bulkheads. Lightning crawled along the wounds as automated repair pylons stabbed in, pumping new bone-metal into place.

Beside him, perched on the edge of the railing with an ink-stained tablet, sat the newest Death Regime scribe.

"Entry," Deathwis muttered, stylus racing. "Pit stop number one. Coordinates: classified. Local biosphere: negligible. Ship still combat-viable at sixty-one percent, morale at... ahaha... variable. Recommend more skulls on the port side; symmetry improves terror factor by nineteen point four percent—"

"Deathwis." Deathwing's voice cut through the air without rising. "Facts first. Ornamentation later."

Deathwis froze, then grinned with all his teeth and restarted the line in a calmer tone.

"Ship crippled but stable. Damage patterns confirm Galaxenchi interference, category: Professor-level. Current objective: emergency repairs and strategic recalibration."

The Absolute Leader of the Death Regime folded his hands behind his back. His coat swayed gently in the wind—white and black, stitched with silver threads that formed shifting diagrams of anatomy and orbit. Beneath them, armies of Death Marines and necro-engineers swarmed the dreadnought's flanks, welding and whispering, threading newly–grown vertebrae into place.

"Zoom in on Section Omega," Deathwing said.

Hollowed sockets in the terrace railing flared to life, projecting a floating dissection of the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz's spine. A dozen vital clusters pulsed in faint violet: reactor hearts, soul-furnaces, archive clusters.

"Galaxbeam's temporal barrage scarred only the outer plates," Deathwing observed. "He did not dare touch the soul stacks. That is a data point."

Deathwis scribbled. "Data point: Absolute Leaders still reluctant to risk full causal disruption. Hypothesis: they like their universe not shattered into mush."

"More precisely," Deathwing said, "they like their versions of it."

He allowed himself a thin smile. "And so we adapt."

He closed his fist; the projection collapsed.

"Repairs will proceed for six hours. Then we return to Deathenbulkiztahlem." His gaze turned inward, toward the unseen necro-homeland. "We have to remind certain allies what happens when they let themselves be killed."

Deathwis' stylus skittered. "Agenda noted: resurrection, reprimand, re-alignment of the BRD. Side objective: terrorize everyone."

Deathwing did not correct him.

Deathenbulkiztahlem – Necro-Homeland

The necro-capital rose from a continent of ash and bone, its skyline a forest of rib-spires and organ domes. The Palace of Autopsies loomed at the center, its walls translucent enough to show faint silhouettes moving within—gigantic phantoms of organs turning, valves opening and closing in slow, thoughtful rhythm.

From the primary balcony, Deathwing addressed the assembled Death Elites, Death Soldiers, and the watching ghost-crowds of the Death Regime.

Holographic images of the other villain continents flickered behind him—Shadowatranceslenta's violet haze, Jollhovalhn's storm-lashed coastline, Echumeta's bloody memorial fields.

"Today," he said, voice projected into every skull and bone relay, "we correct an error."

He did not rage. He did not thunder. He spoke as a surgeon might explain an operation to a room full of interns.

"The AES believes they can erase my colleagues," he continued. "They believe that the Darkened Regime's fall at Lunna and Eastoppola was an ending."

Behind him, the hologram of Echumeta showed the shattered silhouettes of Dark Soldiers, frozen mid-charge, preserved where they had fallen.

"They have forgotten," Deathwing said, "that death is my jurisdiction."

Deathwis stood at a side console, fingers flying as he recorded everything. His eyes were wide, gleaming with delighted horror.

"Step one," Deathwing announced, gloved hand slicing through the air to highlight Shadowatranceslenta. "Shadowwing."

Shadow's continent flared; the image of a violet-pink world of leaning towers and drifting specters rotated slowly.

"Step two," he said, shifting the highlight to Nirrough/Jollhovalhn. "Blackwing."

Storms rolled over the map, showing cracked fortresses and drowned Blackened banners.

"Step three," Deathwing finished, marking Echumeta. "Darkwing."

The three marks burned on the map like lesions.

"I will visit each in turn. When we are finished, the BRD will no longer be fragmented undertakers scavenging after war." His eyes hooded. "We will be examiners."

He turned, coat swirling. "Prepare the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz. Load the ritual stacks. And someone feed Deathwis before he forgets."

Deathwis jumped. "Yes, my Absolute Leader. Logging... ah... lunch break pending."

Shadowatranceslenta – Silent Negotiations

Shadowatranceslenta did not welcome visitors with banners or beacons. It welcomed them by not killing them.

The Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz glided into orbit and exhaled a single obsidian shuttle. It fell through violet clouds, slicing between spires that glowed faintly from within like rows of teeth.

Deathwing stepped out onto a platform of living obsidian. The air tasted of metal and old whispers.

Around him, Shadow Soldiers and wraith-like Shadow Elites stood in absolute stillness. Their eyes glowed pale, their mouths masked. They carried weapons that seemed more suggestion than material: blades of absence, rifles that humored the idea of being seen.

From the far end of the platform, Shadowwing emerged—a tall figure wrapped in layered, translucent cloaks, his face hidden behind a mirror-black mask. No sound accompanied his steps.

Deathwis followed two paces behind Deathwing, already sweating. "Regime of absolute quiet," he whispered into his recorder. "I have been told if I speak above five decibels, I may be turned into punctuation."

Deathwing raised his hand in greeting—open palm, fingers curved slightly. The sign for respect, neutral.

Shadowwing replied with a series of gestures: two fingers across the chest, a twist of the wrist, a slow nod. His cloak-ribbons swayed, shaping additional meanings in their movement.

Deathwing answered in kind. For several minutes, the two Absolutes conversed in pure physical code: hand signs, shifts of weight, calibrated inclines of the head. The Shadow Elites watched as if observing a high art.

Deathwis, desperate to keep up, translated frantically into notes.

"Opening with acknowledgment of Galaxbeam's interference... cross-reference: 'Professor of Causality is a nuisance.' Shadowwing counters with 'Silence was almost broken over Lunna—unacceptable.' Deathwing offers: 'Let me make sure their next silence is permanent.'"

Eventually, Deathwing drew a circle in the air, then a downward slash: target. He pointed that symbol toward a holographic projection of Westonglappa, its continents outlined in ghost-green.

Shadowwing's head tilted. His cloak tightened, then loosened, drawing out the sign for curiosity.

Deathwing spread his hands slightly: Examination. Test. Harvest. His gestures promised necro-upgrades, shared intelligence, and space on the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz for Shadowwing's most promising specters.

Shadowwing's reply was succinct. One hand dipped to his heart, then rose in a sharp line: Accepted.

The deal was sealed when the silent Absolute extended his arm. A thin, shadow-black cord unwound from his sleeve, wrapping gently around Deathwing's offered wrist. Plasma and spectral ice met and briefly sparked, then stabilized.

"Alliance reaffirmed," Deathwis breathed, scribbling. "Shadowatranceslenta will move under the cover of spectral blackout when Westonglappa's exam begins. Note to self: learn more hand signs before my next visit or risk being misunderstood as a bench."

Nirrough / Jollhovalhn – Blackwing's Fury

Where Shadowatranceslenta whispered, Nirrough and Jollhovalhn roared.

Storms hammered the coast, turning sea and sky into one raging bruise. Shattered fortresses dotted the cliffs—remnants of Blackwing's earlier attempt to turn Eastoppola into a propaganda bonfire, now blasted and drowned by Lunar retaliation and Galaxenchi interference.

Deathwing's shuttle landed atop a half-collapsed tower whose roof had been rebuilt solely to serve as a landing pad. Lightning danced across the horizon; broken Blackened Regime banners snapped in the wind.

Blackwing paced near the edge, cloak thrashing like an angry flag. His dual BMAIL blades rested at his hips, for once sheathed.

"...the 'Blueberries' of Lunna," he was growling to a cluster of Black Elites as Deathwing approached, "dared to turn my broadcast into a comedy show. They spliced my speeches with Moonbeam's rebuttals. They fact-checked my casualty counts in real time."

The Black Elites shifted uneasily, armor creaking.

"They made memes out of my warships," Blackwing spat. "Memes."

"Some of them were structurally clever," Deathwing observed as he stepped forward. "Especially the one where your flagship turned into a blueberry pie chart of military losses. Even I admired the mathematics."

Blackwing whirled, cloak snapping. "You came here to mock me, Deathwing?"

"I came here to offer you something you lost," Deathwing said calmly. "And insist on something you still owe."

Behind them, Deathwis set up his console under a cracked arch, rain spattering his tablet. "Log: Blackwing's aura currently at category 'incendiary hurricane.' Recommend approaching with metaphorical fireproof gear."

Deathwing gestured toward the ruined coastline. "You gambled Eastoppola and Lunna on psychological dominance. You underestimated their data warfare and their Absolute Leaders. That error cost the Darkened Regime its command structure and shredded BRD cohesion."

Blackwing's jaw clenched. The storm answered for him with another crack of thunder.

"I cannot erase your humiliation," Deathwing went on. "But I can ensure you have the tools to repay it. Necro-upgrades for your media corps. Undead relay anchors that cannot be censored by Lunar bandwidth filters. Regenerative protocols for your front-line Black Soldiers."

He held up a small, bone-and-gold cylinder. Inside it, tiny souls flickered like trapped fireflies.

"In exchange," Deathwing said, "I require discipline. No more unilateral grand campaigns. When we move on Westonglappa, we move as a coordinated exam board, not sulking students."

Blackwing stared at the cylinder, then at Deathwing.

"...Westonglappa," he repeated slowly. "Their untouched continent. Their nursery of new heroes and hopeful civilians."

"Exactly," Deathwing said. "They believe distance protects it. They believe collateral will restrain us." His eyes hardened. "They are wrong."

For a moment longer, Blackwing seethed. Then his shoulders lowered a fraction.

"Very well," he said. "Give me your necro-toys. I will aim them on cue." A cruel smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "And when the Blueberries of Lunna rush to 'save' Westonglappa, I will be there to greet them—in full color."

Deathwing passed him the cylinder. As Blackwing gripped it, black smoke flared briefly around his hand, then sank into his veins.

"Upgrades accepted," Deathwis murmured, fingers flying. "Psychological profile: Blackwing's rage now harnessed rather than aimless. Probability of unilateral tantrum reduced. Somewhat."

Echumeta – The Darkened Graveyard

The graveyard of Echumeta was not a single field. It was an entire state of Eastoppola repurposed into memorial.

Charred training grounds stretched to the horizon, marked with rows of scorched armor, shattered banners, and burnt-out tanks. Ghostly projections replayed the final moments of the Darkened Regime's collapse in endless loops—Dark Soldiers charging into Lunar artillery, Dark Elites detonating in desperate last stands, Lord Darkwing himself vanishing beneath Moonbeam's celestial wrath.

At the center of this haunted plain stood a cracked amphitheater. Here, Darkwis waited: pale, exhausted, coordinates etched around his eyes like permanent targeting reticles.

When Deathwing arrived, the wind shifted, carrying the scent of formaldehyde and ozone.

"Death Regime," Darkwis greeted, voice hoarse. "You picked a grim day to visit."

"Every day here is grim," Deathwing replied. "That is the point."

Deathwis' gaze flicked to Deathwis-the-scribe and back, confusion briefly crossing his features at the mirrored name. The Death scribe waved nervously.

"Deathwis, Darkwis," Deathwing said, almost amused. "You are colleagues now. Try not to misfile each other."

He stepped to the amphitheater's center. Around them, the broken Darkened Regime silently watched—some as fading ghosts, others as preserved corpses propped against blackened walls, awaiting judgment.

"Before resurrection," Deathwing said, "there is acknowledgment."

He nodded once to Darkwis.

The Darkened strategist pulled out his own logging tablet, shaken but steady. In unison with Deathwis, he began to read.

"Casualty roll-call," Darkwis announced, voice echoing. "Darkraiko. Darkrail. Darkghetto. Darkenedeye. Darkblade. Darkheart. Darkenedstorm..."

Names rolled across the amphitheater, each one a symbol of fallen fury. As they were spoken, faint outlines flared across the battlefield—ghostly silhouettes standing briefly, saluting, then dimming again.

Deathwis recorded parallel notes: cause of death, location, tactical error or enemy exploit. Deathwing listened without interruption, absorbing every data point.

At last, Darkwis' voice reached the final entry.

"Lord Darkwing," he said quietly. "Absolute Leader. Status: slain at Lunna under combined AES interference."

Silence settled like ash.

Then Deathwing lifted both hands.

"Status," he said, "being revised."

Biological-Occult Resurrection

Circles of carved bone rose from the ground around the amphitheater, locking into place like a colossal ribcage. Runes erupted along their surfaces, glowing a deep, malignant gold. The sky darkened further, clouds spiraling into a vortex above.

"Initializing Protocol: Thanatos Reset," Deathwis whispered, eyes wide. "This is... ahaha... this is the page in the rulebook that says 'do not attempt without Absolute supervision.'"

At the center of the amphitheater, a pit opened, revealing an underground reservoir of glistening black fluid—condensed death-energy, pooled over centuries. Deathwing stepped to its edge, slicing his palm with a razor-thin bone blade. His blood fell in slow, luminous drops, each one dismantling into symbols mid-air.

They sank into the pit. The reservoir boiled.

All across the graveyard, the corpses of Dark Soldiers and Dark Elites shuddered. Bones knit. Armor re-shaped. Eyes flared awake with crimson or violet light.

One by one, they rose.

Darkwis fell to his knees, not in worship but in raw, shaken relief. "Darkened command... returning online," he breathed.

Finally, from the very bottom of the pit, something enormous stirred. A silhouette rose, cloaked in shadow and residual flame.

Lord Darkwing climbed out of death.

His armor was cracked but reforged, bearing new sigils from Deathwing's personal library. His eyes, once merely burning, now held the cold focus of someone who had seen his own ending and refused to accept it.

He looked at his resurrector.

"So," Darkwing said, voice roughened, "they rewrote my ending."

"I edited it," Deathwing replied. "Consider it a peer review."

For a second, Darkwing's lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Then he glanced around, taking in the resurrected legions.

"Darkened Regime," he called, voice gaining strength. "Report."

The answering roar shook dust from the amphitheater's fractured ceiling.

BRD War Council – Choosing the Exam

Later, in a chamber carved beneath Echumeta's memorial ground, four Absolutes gathered around a hovering map of Titanumas.

Deathwing stood at the northern edge, hands folded. Darkwing, armor still steaming faintly, occupied the western side. Blackwing lounged to the east, blades across his knees, eyes alert despite his relaxed posture. Shadowwing remained a quiet absence at the southern edge—more suggestion than presence, his features hidden behind layers of flickering shadow.

Above the map, continents glowed: Sollarisca, Lunna, Starrup, Galaxenchi, Eastoppola, Westonglappa, Istantopola, Westonglappa's neighboring seas.

"Galaxenchi," Deathwing said, tapping the glowing island of ring-gates, "served as our midterm. We learned the limits of direct confrontation with Galaxbeam on his own terrain. Valuable, but costly."

Markers representing fallen Death and Darkened assets flickered red, then faded.

"Lunna and Eastoppola served as your... remedial assignments," he added dryly, nodding toward Blackwing and Darkwing. "They demonstrated the consequences of underestimating AES coordination."

Blackwing scowled. Darkwing's jaw tightened.

"Now we require a practical exam," Deathwing continued. "A theater distant enough to lull them, important enough that they must respond, vulnerable enough to bleed. A place where all four of us can deploy our specialties without triggering immediate Absolute dogpiles."

His fingertip slid to Westonglappa.

The continent pulsed—a verdant mass of multiple states: Auttumotto, Leblaela, Westronbung, Yewaquin, Tazgummbak, and more, each with its own cities and untested defenses.

"Westonglappa," Deathwing said. "A continent of markets, resource lanes, and quietly evolving militaries. Protected by distance and AES complacency."

Shadowwing's cloak rippled, forming shapes that Deathwis translated as Shadows already seeded. Blackwing tapped several coastal regions where his sleeper cells and propaganda anchors had survived previous purges. Darkwing traced inland routes where Dark Soldiers could test their new regenerative thresholds.

Deathwing overlaid spectral symbols: necro-ritual vectors, satellite orbits, potential resurrection fields.

"We will not annihilate it," he clarified. "Annihilation teaches nothing. We will examine it. We will probe its states, tempt its leaders, pressure its supply lines. We will trigger the AES to respond—Sunbeam, Moonbeam, Starbeam, Galaxbeam—and observe how their new tier system and alliances hold under sustained multi-front stress."

"And when we kill them?" Blackwing asked softly.

Deathwing's eyes gleamed. "We will kill them in ways that are... educational. For them. And for us."

Darkwing leaned forward, gauntlet resting on the map over Auttumotto. "My Darkened Regime will open with controlled incursions on their training grounds. No grand speeches. No broadcasting. Quiet, precise breaks."

"Shadowatranceslenta will provide cover," Shadowwing's gestures implied.

"Blackened Regime will handle media contamination," Blackwing said. "By the time AES understands the pattern, half of Westonglappa will be unsure who attacked first."

Deathwing nodded once. "And the Death Regime will ensure that any of us who fall in the process... will not stay fallen."

Around the table, the four Absolutes regarded one another—the newly resurrected, the humiliated propagandist, the ghost-lord, the necro-surgeon.

For a moment, they were not squabbling rivals but a unified Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency coalition, aligned on one terrible point.

"The AES thinks in terms of victory conditions," Deathwing said softly. "Hold the city. Break the enemy's morale. Eliminate the Absolute. They have not yet fully internalized the concept that death is... negotiable."

He let the word hang.

"Westonglappa will teach them," he finished. "And if they fail the exam, we grade on a curve called extinction."

The map dimmed, leaving only Westonglappa glowing—a silent, distant continent, unaware of the converging shadows.

Deathwis closed his log, fingers trembling with the amount of history pressed into a single file.

"Summary," he whispered to himself. "BRD: fully restored. Darkened Regime resurrected. Shadowatranceslenta committed. Blackened Regime re-armed. Death Regime... amused."

He looked up at the hovering outline of Westonglappa.

"Next chapter," Deathwis murmured, "the test begins."

Far above Echumeta's soil, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz reoriented its colossal bulk, engines flaring as it calculated new warp corridors.

It had a new heading now.

Westonglappa's exam was scheduled.

Night settled heavy over Echumeta's cursed horizon, but deep beneath it the war never slept.

The last echoes of Deathwis' whisper—Next chapter, the test begins—were still hanging in the air when Deathwing spoke again.

"Not quite yet," he said.

The hovering map of Titanumas brightened. With a small pinch of his fingers, Deathwing magnified it, sections of the world blooming into focus. Westonglappa glowed in ghost-green. Over it, he pulled a second lattice into place—four radiant sigils that burned like stained glass.

A stylized sun, a crescent moon, a five-point star, a spiral galaxy.

"Before you scatter," Deathwing continued, voice calm and surgical, "you should appreciate the shape of the board we are playing on."

Blackwing shifted his weight, cloak bristling. Darkwing folded his arms. Shadowwing stood motionless, a cut-out of night at the edge of the table.

"The Allies," Deathwing said, "have finally formalized their little study group. Allied Evolution Salvation. AES. Four Lights for the masses to pray toward. Four pillars for the author to lean his story on."

At a gesture, four tiny avatars materialized above their home continents:

An orange figure wreathed in solar fire for General Sunbeam.

A blue, regal silhouette with a lance of moonlight for Lady Moonbeam.

A green, sharp-eyed strategist with digital wings for X-Vice Colonel Starbeam.

A gold-white scholar in flowing robes for Professor Galaxbeam.

They turned slowly above Sollarisca, Lunna, Starrup, and Galaxenchi—idealized, heroic, annoyingly luminous.

Blackwing barked a laugh, sharp and bitter.

"You gotta be kidding me," he scoffed, pointing a thumb at the sigils. "They got a whole squad name now? 'Allied Evolution Salvation'—sounds like some charity concert. 'Save the world, buy a t-shirt.'"

Darkwing snorted, the sound like metal grinding on stone.

"They wrap their conquest in romance and mercy so the peasants can sleep," he said. "Love, data, evolution—whatever slogan they need. The result is the same. Occupation."

Shadowwing gave no verbal reply. His cloak folded inward, ribbons sliding across each other in measured patterns. His fingers traced four quick sigils in the air: a short line radiating spikes (sun), a curled hook (crescent), a crossing slash with dots (star), a tight spiral (galaxy).

Deathwing watched, then nodded.

"Yes. Four Lights. One narrative center. One Autor who thinks symmetry is clever."

He said the foreign word with faint contempt, as if spitting out bone dust.

His smile thinned, eyes focusing not on the map, but through it—toward something beyond the chamber, beyond the world.

"Do you feel it?" he asked quietly. "The hand beyond the page. Our Autor has decided the readers prefer underdogs. So he stacks victories for the shining four and hands us humiliation for 'character development.'"

For a heartbeat, the war room felt smaller, as if the ceiling had lowered an inch and the air thickened—like something outside the universe had leaned closer to listen.

Deathwing did not flinch.

"Genug," he murmured. "Enough. If we must endure an author, we will use him. He wants drama? We will give him a war arc he cannot tidy away with a speech and a kiss."

Blackwing waved a hand through the holographic Sunbeam avatar, making it flicker.

"Fine, fine," he said. "If some omniscient clown is writing this, he better spell my name right when I run circles around them Blueberries. I'm not getting punked in the edit twice."

Darkwing's mouth curled, half amusement, half scorn.

"If there is an author, he miscalculated already," he said. "He forgot that killing me is only a temporary condition."

At the southern edge of the table, Shadowwing tapped two fingers against his throat, then sliced them through the AES sigils in a clean, horizontal motion. His cloak settled, forming the sharp angles for a single thought:

Narratives can be cut.

Deathwing's gaze softened—his version of approval.

"Just so," he said. "And that brings us to the practical."

He flicked his wrist. The AES sigils shrank and settled back into their continents. Westonglappa surged to the foreground again, its many states outlined: Auttumotto, Leblaela, Westronbung, Yewaquin, Tazgummbak, and more, a dense knot of trade routes and armies-in-training.

"You have your pride back, your armies returning, your grudges refreshed," Deathwing said. "Now you will go home, rebuild, and sharpen. In two and seventy hours—seventy-two—you will reconvene when I call. Westonglappa's exam date will not move."

He pointed, assigning with surgical clarity:

"Darkwing. Secure Echumeta. Convert it from graveyard to staging ground. I want factories where there were funerals."

Darkwing inclined his head once, eyes already distant, as if seeing the overhaul in his mind.

"Blackwing. Stabilize Nirrough and Jollhovalhn. No more solo stunts. No more vanity wars. We move as one, ja?"

Blackwing clicked his tongue but nodded. "Yeah, yeah. BRD group project. I get it."

"Shadowwing," Deathwing finished. "Expand your shadows over their trade routes. I want Westonglappa's ships sailing through ghosts without realizing when the world goes dim."

Shadowwing bowed with a single, precise tilt of his torso. Cloak folds arranged themselves into the elegant pattern for Understood / Already begun.

Deathwing stepped back from the table.

"Klassenpause," he said softly. "Class recess. Go prepare your homework."

They departed the council each in their own way.

Darkwing tore open a portal of black flame under his boots; the fire swallowed him and snapped shut, leaving only scorched stone.

Blackwing's body dissolved into a swarm of black ravens, feathers spiraling up in a storm that vanished through the ceiling.

Shadowwing simply turned sideways and became a shadow between two shadows, fading into the wall until nothing remained.

Only Deathwing and Deathwis stayed in the chamber as the map dimmed to a low, ominous glow.

The Death scribe exhaled shakily.

"...Logging Council Resolution," he murmured, tablet trembling in his hands. "BRD: re-aligned. Author: insulted. Exam: scheduled."

Deathwing's eye-sockets flickered with pale light.

"Good," he said. "Now we watch what they do with their second chance."

Above them, far beyond stone and bone, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz was already turning slowly in orbit, adjusting its trajectory toward the next theater.

Echumeta – The Resurrection Parade

Echumeta awoke like a corpse learning to breathe again.

Where silent memorial fields had once sprawled, forges now roared. The air thundered with the thunder of hammers striking bone-steel, furnace chimneys vomiting black flame into a gray sky. The old grave markers had been uprooted and melted, recast into armor plates and cannon barrels.

Lines of Dark Soldiers marched in rigid columns across ground they had previously died on. Their boots slammed the soil in a relentless cadence, echoes of their former death screams now converted into disciplined drum beats.

The scent of hot metal mixed with chemical preservatives. Necro-factories loomed at the edges of the fields, rib-shaped gantries lifting tank hulls like slaughtered beasts onto assembly lines.

From above, the scene resembled a massive surgical theater: the corpse of Echumeta being outfitted with metal bones.

Darkwing stood on a raised dais carved where one of the worst massacres had once taken place. Someone had left a patch of ground untouched right beneath him—a circle of scorched earth still bearing the ghost outline of his own fallen body. It showed as a darker shadow, charred helmet mark and cloak outline frozen mid-fall.

He planted one boot precisely on that mark as he looked over his resurrected army.

Death Regime freight convoys rolled into the fields like invasive veins. Bone-plated wagons creaked open, skeletal cranes unfolding to unload coffin-containers full of ammunition, necro-serums, and heavy components. Organs preserved in clear tanks—lungs wired to fuel injectors, hearts encased in black glass—were lifted out and grafted into tank cores.

Darkwing watched them with narrowed eyes.

"Lord Darkwing," Darkwis said at his side, tablet in hand. The strategist's voice still carried the rasp of someone recently returned from the edge. "Death Regime convoy three reports full delivery. Bio-cores, spectral fuel, structural bone. If we work through the night, we can refit three armored brigades."

Darkwing's cloak rustled. "We will work through as many nights as exist," he said. "Death does not sleep. Neither do we."

"Should I schedule shifts?" Darkwis asked.

Darkwing stared at him. "They were dead yesterday," he said. "Today, they get to work. That is the shift."

Darkwis swallowed. "Understood."

The rally signal boomed—low, throbbing horn notes pumped through organ amplifiers. Dark Soldiers and Dark Elites converged on the central plaza, filling it with dark armor and glinting weaponry. Deathwing's shipments rolled past them, bone crates clicking as they moved.

Darkwing stepped to the front of the dais. For a moment, he simply looked at them—at the faces that had once been corpses.

Many of them remembered dying. He saw it in the way some fingers twitched toward old scars that no longer existed, in the faint, haunted glimmer in their eyes when they looked at certain scorch marks on the ground.

The wind tugged at his cloak.

"You died badly," Darkwing began.

His voice cut through the noise like a blade. The plaza fell silent.

"You died loud. You died angry. You died believing that it was the end."

He extended his arm toward the scorched horizon.

"They called it justice," he said. "They called it liberation. They broadcast your deaths with triumphant music. They edited you into montages to make their civilians feel safe."

His hand clenched into a fist.

"They mistook a pause for a full stop."

A shudder rolled through the crowd. Dark Soldiers straightened. Dark Elites' auras flared with dim purple light.

Behind Darkwing, a Death Regime cargo carrier creaked open. Its rib-shaped doors blossomed like a monstrous flower, revealing stacks of black steel and organ-engineered fuel cores etched with the Death insignia.

Darkwing gestured toward it.

"This state," he said, voice sharpening, "is no longer a tomb. It is a loading chamber."

He slammed his boot down on the shadow of his own demise.

"Echumeta will not be remembered as the place where the Darkened Regime died. It will be remembered as the place we reloaded."

Somewhere in the columns, a Dark Soldier barked a wordless shout. Others followed. The sound built into a rough, brutal chant.

Darkwing raised his hand again and the crowd fell silent as swiftly as if their throats had been cut.

"You wanted revenge when you died," he said. "Now you have something better. You have continuation. You have a second chance purchased with Death Regime tech and my refusal to stay dead."

He inclined his head slightly in the direction of the Palace of Autopsies, wherever in the world it stood.

"Our colleague of Death has supplied us new engines, new bones, new chances to be a problem," he continued. "Use them well. If you fall again, we might bring you back." His eyes chilled. "Or we might not. Choose carefully how memorable you want your next death to be."

Dark laughter rippled through the ranks.

"Look east," Darkwing commanded.

Holographic projectors whined on. A large, spectral map of Westonglappa shimmered into existence in the sky: a verdant continent, dense with state borders and infrastructure lines.

"The next sunrise over their precious markets and training grounds?" he said. "My shadow will already be there. And yours."

He spread his arms.

"Prepare the brigades. Test your new flesh. Break, reform, break again. We are done being a lesson. We are the exam."

The plaza erupted into a roar that shook dust from the machineries. Dark Soldiers slammed their weapons to their chests. Dark Elites activated their new regenerative protocols—some stepping forward to take live fire from heavy cannons, collapsing in sprays of gore, then surging back to their feet as necro-serums and Death-runed cores knit torn bodies in seconds.

On the perimeter, Deathwis filmed everything with clinical glee, standing beside Darkwis. The twin scribes compared notes: kill rates, rebound times, morale spikes.

"This is going to look terrifying on the charts," Deathwis said.

"That is the idea," Darkwis replied.

Overhead, the sky rumbled—not with thunder, but with the promise of transport ships already warming their engines.

Nirrough / Jollhovalhn – Blackwing's Rally

While Echumeta turned its graves into factories, Nirrough turned its ruins into a party.

The main square of Jollhovalhn's battered coastal city—once a neat propaganda plaza—had become a controlled riot. Half-collapsed billboards crackled with shifting holograms: Blackwing's symbol, clips of Darkwing's resurrection, shadow silhouettes marching through violet mist.

Makeshift stages had been welded onto toppled statues. Street vendors operated out of damaged armored vans, selling skewers of unknown meat and bootleg BRD merch: t-shirts with Darkwing striding out of a grave, stickers of the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz drawn in graffiti style, Shadowwing rendered as a faceless hoodie.

Gang crews—patched with Blackened insignia—mingled with Black Soldiers and Black Elites. Drone cameras hovered above, livestreaming the chaos to underground networks.

The sky spat rain, but nobody cared. The square throbbed with bass vibrating out of hacked military speakers.

Then the music cut.

A spot of harsh white light stabbed down from one of the billboards, carving a circle into the stage. The crowd surged forward instinctively, pressed by anticipation.

Blackwing stepped into the light.

Cloak thrown back, dual BMAIL blades resting at his hips, he looked less like a general and more like a frontman—one who had personally burned a city before soundcheck. The rain beaded on his armor and hissed as it slid off heated plates.

He took the mic—an actual handheld one, wired into a jury-rigged transmitter—and let silence hang for a few seconds. He wanted them hungry.

Then he grinned, sharp and slow.

"Aight," he said, voice echoing through the plaza. "Let's talk about last season."

A low murmur rolled through the crowd.

"Yeah, I know," he went on. "You saw the feeds. You saw Lunna. You saw those little blue-tinted edits where we got dropped, framed all nice with sad piano music. You saw the memes. The Blueberries had a field day."

Booing rose from the edges of the square at the nickname. Someone hurled a broken sign with a crude drawing of Lady Moonbeam's lance. It shattered on the stage.

Blackwing pointed casually toward one of the hacked billboards. It flashed an infamous clip: his flagship going down in flames, overlaid with Lunar commentary and mocking captions.

"Look at that," he said. "Premium humiliation. They turned my whole campaign into a highlight reel for them."

He let the clip run for a few painful seconds. Banners falling. Ships breaking. His own silhouette swallowed in fire.

Then he snapped his fingers.

The billboard shattered into static; a new reel slammed on-screen—this time with BRD edits. Darkwing clawing his way out of the death pit. Shadowwing's armies moving like living silhouettes through walls. The Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz looming over a burning horizon.

"But here's the punchline," Blackwing said, baring his teeth. "We still here."

The crowd roared.

"They thought that was game over." He tapped his temple. "Newsflash: we don't play the same game."

He reached into his cloak and pulled out one of Deathwing's bone-and-gold cylinders. Souls flickered within, pressing against the glass like moths.

"See this?" he called, holding it high. "You're looking at something Moonbeam's broadcasts don't talk about. Death-Doc—our boy Deathwing—hooked us up with interest."

The cylinder pulsed as if responding to his words, casting sickly light over his grin.

"This right here is a second chance in liquid form," he said. "You get shot, you get burned, you get turned into a cautionary tale on AES News Network? Fine. We plug this into you, and you get to get up again and make it worse."

He paced the stage, mic cable dragging behind him.

"Darkwing back from the grave. Shadow in the cut, ready to drag convoys into nightmare land. Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz still in the sky, uglier than ever, and that's a compliment. BRD is back on the board, people."

Camera drones swooped closer, cutting tight angles for the broadcast.

"You want in?" he asked the crowd, voice dropping. "You wanna stop watching AES propaganda and start starring in the footage everybody's afraid to show? Then listen up."

He ticked points off on his fingers.

"Pay. You get it. Real. In your hands, not promised 'after the war.'
Status. You run with me and my Blackened crews, you don't go back to normal street trash. You become footage.
Clout." He smirked. "You think the underworld ain't watching? They see which side actually survives."

Faces in the square shifted—hard eyes, hungry eyes.

"And the playground?" Blackwing spread his arms wide. "That's Westonglappa. All those pretty neutral states thinking they safe 'cause they far away and the Four Lights too busy being celebrities? Nah. They just haven't met us yet."

Behind him, the map of Westonglappa flared into existence, superimposed with glitchy BRD logos.

"This is what we're gonna do," he said. "We're gonna hijack their broadcasts. We're gonna slide truth bombs and deepcuts into their feel-good speeches. While Darkwing's tanks roll in and Shadowwing's shadows swallow their supply lines, we'll be dropping edits live. When the Four Lights finally show up to 'save the day,' half the continent won't even be sure who the villains are anymore."

Laughter and shouting exploded around him.

Recruitment booths lit up along the plaza edges, their fronts spray-painted with slogans: NO FUTURE, ONLY FOOTAGE, BRD PAYS IN SECOND CHANCES, WESTONGLAPPA IS CANCELLED.

Black Soldiers and Black Elites manned them, registering new militias, tagging gear with fresh Blackened sigils. In underground hubs beneath the square, new servers hummed to life, powered by Deathwing's undead relay anchors. Tech crews began splicing propaganda: Darkwing's resurrection on loop, Shadow patrols phasing through walls, Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz blotting out suns.

Blackwing lifted the mic for his final line.

"So here's my promise," he said. "When the Four Lights pull up to Westonglappa thinking they 'bout to save the day?" He drew one BMAIL blade halfway from its sheath. Metal sang. "I'll be waiting on the docks. Cameras on. Blades out. And this time... I'm the one doing the editing."

The crowd detonated. Fireworks—not legal, not safe—screamed up into the rain, bursting in violet and black as the BRD emblem burned across the sky.

Shadowatranceslenta – The Silent March

Where Echumeta roared and Nirrough shouted, Shadowatranceslenta spoke with almost no sound at all.

From orbit, the ghost-continent looked like a bruise of violet and ink. Cities of slanted towers leaned into one another like conspirators. Streets wound in deliberate, maze-like patterns, designed less for transport and more for losing anyone unwelcome in their folds.

Inside those streets, life moved with eerie coordination.

Shadow citizens—hooded, masked, faces partially or fully covered—walked in near-silence. Conversations took place on fingers and fabrics: quick flares of hand-signs, tiny shifts in cloak folds, the tilt of a hood. Children practiced in alleyways, mimicking their elders, correcting each other with silent flicks of the wrist.

Tonight, a stillness deeper than usual settled over the capital.

The Amphitheater Without a Roof waited at the city's heart: a bowl carved from obsidian, open to the violet sky. Thousands of Shadow Soldiers stood in the terraces, every row perfect, every stance identical. Their armor was matte, non-reflective, designed to swallow light rather than bounce it.

No drum called them. No trumpet. They simply arrived until the amphitheater was full.

At the center stood a solitary figure: Shadowwing.

His cloak fell around him like liquid midnight, multiple layers overlapping. Only his eyes—two pale crescents of ghost-light—were visible beneath his hood.

He raised his hands.

Cloak ribbons unfurled from his sleeves, moving with impossible precision, like extra limbs. Fingers, cloth, and shadow coordinated in a complex dance. No voice carried, but meaning rippled out.

Above the amphitheater, sigils formed from solid shadow: angular shapes and drifting curves that rearranged themselves as he moved.

Deathwis watched via a remote relay on a bone-screen back in Deathenbulkiztahlem, scribbling down a translation that few outside the Shadow Regime would ever read.

Humiliation, the first glyph said—the image of a figure bowing, light spearing it from all sides.
Patience, the second—a still, coiled spiral that did not unwind.
Hunting, the third—the silhouette of jaws closing around unsuspecting shapes.
Exam, the fourth—an open eye over a map.

Shadowwing's cloak snapped once, quietly, like a book closing.

The sigils shifted again.

Deathwis murmured the updated message under his breath:

"We watched from the blind corners and misjudged the light. We let them perform while we drifted in the rafters. No more. Next time, we move with the examiners, not behind them. Westonglappa will not see us until it is too late."

Armies of ghosts flowed into formation in the amphitheater's aisles. They were not transparent; they were the absence of light given shape. As Shadowwing turned, they turned. As he raised his hand, they stepped forward in perfect unison.

Training sequences followed without shouted commands.

Shadow assassins practiced slipping through solid walls, phasing in synchronized squads, each emerging from stone in flawless timing. Shadow warships—sleek, black vessels that blurred at the edges—tested short jumps, vanishing from one side of a harbor and reappearing in the open sea, leaving only ripples and a slight drop in temperature.

Along projected Westonglappan trade routes, technicians installed shadow-anchors—floating monoliths that existed half in the real sea, half in a spectral pocket. When activated, they would draw entire convoys into a dimmer layer of reality, unseen by ordinary sensors.

At the close of the assembly, Shadowwing stepped onto a high balcony overlooking his capital. The sky above him rippled.

A thin, black thread manifested from nowhere, drifting down like a strand of ink. It coiled into his glove and burned briefly, searing a small sigil onto his wrist: Deathwing's personal mark.

Shadowwing glanced at it, then raised his hand. His cloak folded into the signal for Summons received / Arrival guaranteed.

Without a word, he stepped backward and vanished into the deeper dark between buildings.

Deathenbulkiztahlem – Preparing the Exam

Back in the necro-homeland, the Palace of Autopsies pulsed like a colossal heart.

Its corridors were lined with floating cadavers entombed in glass, each one a storage drive of muscle memory and battlefield experience. Bone-screens hung from the ceilings, showing live feeds from Echumeta's forges, Nirrough's rally, Shadowatranceslenta's silent mobilization.

Deathwing moved through this cathedral of death with his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Deathwis trotted beside him, tablet open, trying to keep up with both the pace and the data.

They entered the primary war hall: a cavernous chamber whose walls were made of layered bone, veins of ectoplasmic light running through them like circuitry.

At the center, a multi-layered holo of Titanumas rotated, beside it a second model showing the interior logistics of the BRD: convoys, soul-stock, fuel cores, anchor positions, troop morale indices.

"Report," Deathwing said.

Deathwis flicked his tablet; glyphs rearranged themselves across the hall's displays.

"Echumeta," he said. "Darkwing has converted three major grave sectors into manufactories. Dark Soldiers are integrating regenerative tech at a sixty-two percent success rate; projected to climb as training stabilizes. Dark elites re-certified. Morale currently... ah... 'vengefully euphoric.'"

"Acceptable," Deathwing murmured.

"Nirrough and Jollhovalhn," Deathwis continued. "Blackwing has turned his humiliation into recruitment fuel. Propaganda output at two hundred and forty percent previous levels. New militias forming faster than armories can equip them. Our undead relays are now embedded in twelve major undernet hubs; censorship resistance is... chef's kiss... I mean, ah, extreme."

Deathwing allowed the slip, too focused to correct it.

"Shadowatranceslenta," Deathwis said. "Shadowwing has deployed anchors across projected Westonglappan routes. Silent mobilization nearly complete. Their casualty tolerance is... frankly unnerving."

"Shadow Regime has always understood the value of anonymity," Deathwing said. "You cannot mourn what you never quite saw."

He approached the main projection of Westonglappa. States glowed faintly as live intel streamed in: Auttumotto's industrial clusters, Leblaela's sprawling markets, Westronbung's military academies, Yewaquin's research hubs, Tazgummbak's border fortifications.

"They think themselves distant enough to be safe," Deathwing said. "Their news cycles focus on Lunna and Eastoppola. They gossip about Galaxenchi as myth. Westonglappa is a line item. A footnote. 'We will get to it later.'"

He traced the outline of the continent with one finger.

"They believe distance is protection. They believe collateral will restrain us." His lips curved faintly. "They are still thinking in terms of victory conditions."

Deathwis tilted his head. "Is that... wrong?"

"For mortals?" Deathwing replied. "No. Hold the city, break the enemy morale, eliminate the leader—that is how they understand war. It makes for clean stories."

He tapped his own chest once, lightly.

"For us? For Absolutes? Death is a variable, not an ending. Morale is a curve, not a wall. We will test them on this."

He gestured and the tiny AES avatars appeared again above their continents, this time compressed to their essential tactical roles: Sunbeam glowing like a morale beacon, Moonbeam emanating stabilizing blue aura, Starbeam wrapped in data-lines, Galaxbeam surrounded by shifting fractal symbols of time and space.

"They will send Sunbeam for morale," Deathwing said. "Moonbeam for mercy. Starbeam for logistics. Galaxbeam for causality. Vier Lichter. Four variables."

He closed his eyes briefly, as if running a simulation across infinite timeline branches.

"We will test each," he decided. "One by one. And together."

He opened his eyes and turned away from the map.

"Logistics," he said.

Deathwis jolted. "Yes, Absolute Leader. Necro convoys scheduled: more bio-cores to Echumeta, clandestine organ-tech packages to Blackened labs, shadow-sensitized bone shipments for Shadowarmories. We predicted a three-day window for full deployment."

"Nein." Deathwing's correction was instant. "Not three days. Zwei. Two. If Auttumotto begins fortifying their coasts, we are late."

He reached to a bone-screen and with a flick of his finger, dragged convoy markers along the timeline, compressing their schedules. The display glowed red in protest; Deathwis frantically updated charts.

"Understood," the scribe said. "I will notify convoy masters. Sleep schedules will be... theoretical."

"Let them nap when they are dead," Deathwing said dryly. "I know a good resurrection specialist."

They reached a high balcony that opened over the necro-capital, the city of rib-spires and organ domes beating like slow hearts. In the distance, the silhouette of the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz hung in the sky like an artificial eclipse.

"Prepare the summons," Deathwing instructed. "Call our colleagues back for Exam Phase One briefing in seventy-two hours. Phrase it politely; they like to pretend they have choices."

Deathwis's stylus flew.

"To all BRD Absolute Leaders," he read aloud as he wrote. "Exam Phase One briefing in seventy-two hours. Attendance compulsory. Absence will be interpreted as consent to... um... dissection."

"Good," Deathwing said. "Sign it for me."

Deathwis added a closing line in crisp script:

Mit unfreundlichen Grüßen
With unfriendly regards,
Doctor Deathwing

The summons pulsed once on his tablet, then fragmented into dozens of bone-white sigils that shot off in different directions, streaking through stone, void, and shadow alike.

"Message transmitting," Deathwis reported.

Deathwing's gaze went to the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz, watching as the titanic vessel slowly rotated, angling its prow toward a point beyond the horizon where Westonglappa lay.

"Then let us see who answers," he said.

The Recall

The summons crossed continents like a curse.

In Echumeta, Darkwing strode through a war factory, sparks spraying around him as welders fused necro-plated armor onto tank hulls. He paused mid-inspection when the air in front of him crystallized into a bone sigil glowing cold blue.

It hovered for an instant, then burned itself onto his gauntlet, lines etching into the metal.

Darkwing looked at the mark and let out a short, humorless laugh.

"So soon?" he murmured. "Good."

He turned to the nearest officer. "Double the output. When I return, I want these brigades ready to move. Echumeta will not be late to its own revenge."

In Nirrough, Blackwing lounged in the shadowed back room of an underground club. Music pounded beyond the door; on the wall, a dozen screens played BRD edits on loop. His propaganda team argued over clip order and beat drops.

A faint shimmer appeared in his drink—a cheap, glowing liquor. Deathwing's sigil formed briefly in the liquid, then sank to the bottom, staining it black.

Blackwing stared at the glass, then knocked the whole thing back in one swallow.

"Man," he muttered, wiping his mouth. "Here we go again. Class in session."

He rose, BMAIL blades clicking as he buckled them more securely.

"Pack up the reels," he told his crew. "Next cut, we're filming on location."

In Shadowatranceslenta, a ripple of colder dark slid across the sky. Every Shadow Soldier in the capital paused simultaneously and looked up.

The clouds parted just enough to shape Deathwing's mark in negative space. It lasted only a second, but in that second, every shadow citizen saw it and understood.

On a rooftop, Shadowwing clasped his wrist where the earlier thread had burned the sigil into his skin. He closed his fingers, cloak settling around him in the silent shape for Heading out.

Then he stepped off the roof and vanished into the space between two heartbeats.

Far above Deathenbulkiztahlem, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz finished its slow rotation. Engines like ulcerated suns flared along its flanks as it pushed itself into a new course, striding across the sky.

Back on the balcony, Deathwis' tablet chimed.

"Message delivered," he said.

Deathwing did not turn. His eyes remained fixed on the far edge of the Titanumas holo where Westonglappa glowed faintly, oblivious.

"Gut," he said softly. "Then let them enjoy their last quiet nights."

The necro-winds curled around him, carrying the distant groan of awakening engines, the ghost-echo of Dark and Black and Shadow armies preparing to move.

"The examiner," Deathwing murmured, "is on his way."

And somewhere, far beyond the page, something in the story itself tensed—ready for the next test.

After the council dissolved and the three other Absolutes vanished to their domains, the war-room of the Palace of Autopsies emptied into a low, electric hum. Bone-screens dimmed from white to violet. The map of Titanumas hovered in the air like a dissected organ, veins of trade routes and ley-lines pulsing in faint light.

Deathwing stayed.

He descended from the balcony into the heart of Deathenbulkiztahlem, his boots clicking on polished vertebrae tiles. Deathwis followed at his shoulder, frantically updating casualty projections with one hand and cradling a tablet of stitched skin in the other.

"We have reclaimed the leaders," Deathwis reported, eyes gleaming. "But the numbers, mein Herr... if we intend to challenge four continents at once, we require far more bodies."

"Bodies are the easiest thing in this universe to manufacture," Deathwing replied calmly. "Health is harder. Let us improve their health... by making it permanent."

He pushed open the doors to his central laboratory.

Inside, the air was cold and chemical-sweet. Towers of glass vials climbed toward the ceiling, each column filled with drifting green, violet, or pitch-black fluids. Suspended in tanks floated half-grown deathsoldiers, eyes closed, veins glowing faintly with necrotic light. On one wall, an autopsy theater operated without surgeons: mechanized arms carefully opened cadavers and inserted glistening implants that pulsed like new hearts.

Deathwing stepped onto a raised platform at the center, hands clasped behind his back.

"We are done speaking of exams and homework," he said softly, more to himself than to Deathwis. "Tests imply a grade and a chance to repeat. What we require is condition, a chronic disease that never leaves the host."

His gaze moved across the tanks.

"Mutagenic stability first. No more mindless shamblers. I want disciplined, intelligent deathsoldiers who understand fear but do not obey it." His tone sharpened. "Increase neurotransmitter binding in Batch Delta-Sechs. Reduce degradation in the spinal graft series. And..."—he flicked a wrist—"...give them better teeth. Intimidation is a form of medicine."

Deathwis nodded rapidly, fingers flying across his console. Orders rippled outward through the lab like a pulse.

Outside, the montage began.

Echumeta – Darkened Regime

Night fell over Echumeta, but the grave-state did not grow quiet. It roared.

Where fields of broken crosses and shattered armor had stood, factories now rose—cathedrals of black steel and rusted ribs. Rivers of molten metal carved orange scars through the valley, feeding assembly lines that stamped out gun barrels, tank treads, and armor plates marked with jagged Darkened sigils.

Lines of darksoldiers marched in perfect squares, freshly reissued rifles snapping up in unison. Behind them, heavier silhouettes: darkmarines in reinforced carapace-armor, darkmarauders clambering over half-finished warwagons, joking darkly as engineers welded new cannon mounts.

At the central railyard, trains shuddered as crates thudded onto flatbeds—shells, fuel, spare bones for the Death Regime's augmentations. A darkelite overseer, Darkpanzer, strode along the rails, cape flaring in the furnace-breeze. His monocle glowed red as he checked each manifest.

A siren whooped once—low, not alarmed.

All heads turned as a new convoy arrived.

The cars did not roll on wheels but on segmented vertebrae, a long, skeletal centipede grinding to a halt. Each "car" was a coffin-container plated in pale bone and glossy black enamel. The lead carriage unfolded, ribs hinging open to reveal four figures descending a ramp.

First came Deathweskers—tall, blond, impeccably dressed in a black longcoat, eyes hidden behind reflective lenses. His movements were precise, almost clinical, the stiffness of a reanimated man who had decided that undeath was a promotion, not a curse.

Beside him walked Deathumbrella, a slim zombie-human woman with ash-grey skin and a crimson parasol resting on one shoulder. Her eyes gleamed a faint, chemical blue. Two more Death Regime elites followed—Deathplaga, his veins glowing sickly green, and Deathledger, carrying a metal case handcuffed to his wrist.

Darkpanzer swept into a curt bow.

"Envoys of Death," he said. "Your timing honors Echumeta."

Deathweskers smiled without warmth. "We bring what was promised. Mutagenic fuel cores, regenerative armor filament, and a generous line of credit from Deathwing's central treasury."

Deathumbrella's parasol tilted, scattering a faint mist that smelled of antiseptic and rain.

"Your darksoldiers will not stay dead easily," she said. Her voice was soft, almost polite. "Treat them kindly. We will be borrowing their data."

As lifts began to unload the coffin-containers, the railyard transformed into a surgical theater. Dark engineers and deathtechnicians swarmed together—bolting bone-reactors into tank hulls, knitting necro-fiber into uniforms, grafting new organ-engines into the chassis of jet-bombers.

In the distance, on a black stone balcony overlooking it all, Darkwing watched.

He folded his arms, cloak crackling in the furnace wind. Deathweskers joined him briefly, hands clasped behind his back.

"The more they fire, the more tissue damage," Deathweskers observed. "The more tissue damage, the more samples for us."

Darkwing's mouth twisted into something between a sneer and a smile.

"Keep them supplied," he said. "I will keep them angry."

Below them, the first batch of Death–Dark hybrid war-tanks rumbled off the assembly line, engines growling with a sound that was half diesel, half deep, undead breath.

Nirrough / Jollhovalhn – Blackened Regime

Across the sea, Nirrough's night skyline was a jagged line of half-rebuilt towers and neon-lit scaffolding. Shipyards along Jollhovalhn's coast blazed under floodlights, cranes swinging like skeletal arms, lifting hull plates into place.

Blacksoldiers jogged in long formations along the docks, boots thudding on steel; blackmarines practiced boarding maneuvers on mock-up decks, barking call-and-response chants; blackmarauders roared through obstacle courses in armored trucks painted matte black with graffiti slogans: NO LIGHT LEFT, BRD FOREVER, AES WHO?

Inside a newly restored command hangar, Blackwing leaned over a holographic table showing warship schematics. Around him clustered Blackened elites—Blackracket, Blackcipher, Blackvolt—each flicking through data, arguing over engine output and jammer frequencies.

The main hangar doors groaned open.

Another bone-train slid to a halt, this one ending in a reinforced vault-car. Deathumbrella stepped out first this time, cloak trailing, followed by Deathledger and a different pair of Death elites hauling an industrial-size medical crate.

Blackwing grinned wide.

"Yo! The zombie bank rolled up," he called, striding over. "Tell me you brought something spicy this time, not just paperwork."

Deathumbrella snapped the parasol closed with a click. "We brought engines that drink blood, Mr. Blackwing," she said calmly. "And financial instruments that drink states."

She nodded to Deathledger, who opened his metal case. Inside, holographic numbers spiraled upward—credit lines tied to Death Regime reserves, all already earmarked for Blackened shipyards and armories.

"And these," Deathplaga added, patting the larger crate, "are adaptive hull-grafts. Your warships will mend themselves faster than your enemies can score hits. Provided they feed."

Blackracket whistled low. "Self-healing ghost ships. Man, that's branding."

Blackwing snapped his fingers, and a few younger elites rushed to sign the contracts Deathledger projected into the air. Their digital signatures flared briefly, then sunk into the glowing spine of the agreement like names carved into bone.

Within hours, the docks changed flavor. Death-technicians and Blackened engineers worked side by side. Undead cranes lowered ribbed, living armor onto stealth-hull frames. Tanks of greenish biofuel pumped into warship guts, causing hulls to twitch as if waking from sleep. Fighter jets in the hangars received new underwing pods—smooth, egg-like casings that pulsed faintly, waiting to hatch their payloads over Westonglappa's cities.

From an office overlooking the docks, Blackwing watched the frenzy of construction, spinning a BMAIL blade lazily between his fingers.

"Whole ocean 'bout to catch something incurable," he murmured. "Let the Four Lights come swim in that."

Shadowatranceslenta – Shadow Regime

Shadowatranceslenta did not roar like Echumeta or Nirrough. It shifted.

Under a violet, fog-pressed sky, its cities stretched as angled silhouettes, towers bending like half-remembered thoughts. Streets were nearly silent; cloaked figures moved along rooftops and alleys, speaking in flickers of gloved hands and subtle turns of fabric. Lanterns shed light that never quite reached the ground.

In the harbor of Shadrowindhaven, water did not lap; it curled, dark and thick, against the hulls of shadowships. Workers with veiled faces installed new plating along the vessels' sides—material darker than the surrounding darkness, harvested from collapsed dimensions.

On an elevated causeway, Shadowwing stood with several shadowelites—Shadowmux, Shadowdelta, Shadowquill—watching the shipwrights phase in and out of the hulls.

A whisper of pressure brushed the air. A tear, thin as a surgeon's incision, opened beside them.

From that slit in reality stepped Deathweskers and Deathumbrella, followed by Deathbroker, a heavy-set elite whose coat pockets jingled with coin and chemical vials.

Shadowwing inclined his head slightly, cloak folding into the sign for welcome.

Deathweskers responded with a sharp nod of respect. "We do not stay long in your medium," he said. His breath misted silver. "The human nervous system does not enjoy it."

Deathumbrella's eyes traced the harbor below. "We brought what your assassins requested," she said. "Spectral-adhesive charges. They will cling to hulls, hearts, or memories with equal devotion."

Shadowdelta stepped forward, hands moving in clipped phrases. Deathwis, observing from afar through a bone-screen, supplied the translation in Deathwing's palace; your narration carried it downstream.

"Shadowdelta expresses gratitude," the translation murmured. "They will place your devices on Westonglappan convoys that never knew we were there."

Deathbroker opened a small chest, revealing neatly stacked bars—not of gold, but of memory-metal, each one inscribed with incidents, scandals, and secrets stolen from AES-friendly states.

"For your information-war," Deathbroker said. "Trade these whispers on their underground nets. Watch how fast allies doubt each other."

Across the continent, other shadowmarines watched holographic maps update—new routes highlighted, new anchor-points for shadowanchors dropped closer to Westonglappan waters. Squads of shadowsoldiers drilled moving through mock-ups of Westonglappan towns, passing through walls and emerging behind hologram civilians with blades already poised.

Silent cities, silent ships, but underneath, the same surge of mobilization. The shadows had never been so crowded.

Deathenbulkiztahlem – The Necro Hub

Back in the necro-homeland, Deathwing's laboratories and foundries ran at blistering pace.

Skeletal assembly arms lowered organ-tech into place inside new generations of deathsoldiers—some grown from vat-meat, others reassembled from old battlefield fragments. Engineers with spine-socket implants monitored vitals on panels of stretched skin that pulsed with numbers.

Deathwing walked slowly along a line of newly awakened troopers. Their eyes snapped open one by one, irises a uniform, icy blue.

"How do you feel?" he asked one.

The deathsoldier's voice was calm. "Hungry, Herr Doktor."

"For food?"

"For orders."

Deathwing allowed himself a thin smile. "Then you are healthy."

He turned to a nearby tank where a swirling red-black fluid churned around a suspended heart-shaped reactor.

"This will be the blood of our new logistics system," he explained to Deathwis. "A single drop in a water supply, and we can track every beating organ in a city. Two drops..." He paused, considering. "No. Two is too crude. We finesse. No panics. We want Westonglappa to function until it is useful to stop."

Deathwis shivered with delight. "A living test group."

"A living control group," Deathwing corrected. "Tests are for laboratories. This will be implementation."

Messages flooded in from the other three regimes.

Echumeta: darksoldier battalions doubled. New Dark–Death tanks ready for deployment.

Nirrough: first wave of bio-armored warships completed. Blacksoldiers and blackmarines meeting recruitment quotas two weeks early.

Shadowatranceslenta: shadowanchors deployed along projected Westonglappan routes. Entire convoys can now be siphoned into liminal space for "extended observation."

Deathwing watched each update appear on his bone-screens. Tiny icons—tanks, ships, spectral sigils—began to encircle Westonglappa on the holographic map like a tightening noose.

"Very good," he murmured. "The patient is surrounded."

The Envoys' Circuit

For days, the Death Regime envoys moved like circulating blood between the villainous organs of Titanumas.

In Echumeta, Deathweskers signed off on long-term organ-tech leases while Deathplaga taught Darkened chemists how to blend necro-serum with industrial solvents. In Nirrough, Deathumbrella walked unflinching through clouds of gunsmoke as she negotiated interest rates with Blackened crime-lords, her parasol deflecting stray shrapnel with a shimmer of blue. In Shadowatranceslenta, Deathbroker quietly slid memory-metal ingots into shadowmarkets, buying loyalties that had never before acknowledged coin.

At one clandestine summit held in a neutral underground vault—its walls a blend of Dark stone, Black steel, Shadow glass, and Deathbone—the four regimes' elites met across a table shaped like Westonglappa itself.

Darkpanzer laid out freight forecasts.

Blackracket dumped a pile of datachips showing hacked AES channels.

Shadowquill spread spectral maps of the continent's dreams, highlighting where fear pooled thickest.

Deathweskers placed a single vial in the center of the map—a clear container holding nothing visible, yet frosting the air around it.

"This is not a weapon," Deathweskers said. "It is insurance. A catalyst. If the Four Lights push us into a corner again, we uncork this, and everyone in range ceases being a variable."

No one touched the vial. They did not need to. Its presence alone drew a line under the discussion.

From the observation balcony of the Palace of Autopsies, Deathwing watched all these interactions streamed in miniature. Lines of trade, credit, and chemicals arced between the four regimes like new veins grafted into a monstrous heart.

Opposite AES's idealized "warm alliances," the BRD's own embrace formed—warm in its way, but the warmth of shared fury, mutual benefit, and the understanding that each regime's survival now depended on the others'.

Hours Later – The Smile

Hours blurred into each other, measured not in minutes but in shipment confirmations and unit-readiness reports. When the internal clocks of Deathenbulkiztahlem finally marked the passage of a full cycle, Deathwing returned to the highest balcony of his palace.

Below, the necro-capital glowed like a malignant organ under the black sky. Factories pulsed, docks flickered with the lights of loading deathsoldiers onto the scarred Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz, and transmission towers—built from stacked skulls—beamed orders to Echumeta, Nirrough, and Shadowatranceslenta.

Deathwis stood a respectful step behind him. "Darkened, Blackened, and Shadow Regimes report synchronization," he said. "Their supreme commanders coordinate drills according to your timetable. Resource exchanges are stable. Debt obligations... profitable."

Deathwing's eyes tracked the holographic map above the horizon.

Westonglappa brightened slightly, its coastlines shimmering with the false safety of distance. Around it, icons of tanks, warships, squadrons, and ghost-flotillas slowly converged—each tagged with a rune of Dark, Black, Shadow, or Death.

"Look at them," he murmured. "Four regimes that once tripped over each other's egos. Now sharing marrow, money, and malice."

He exhaled, misting the cold air.

"This is how a body fights infection," he continued. "Not with one limb thrashing, but with every system engaged. Circulation. Immunity. Memory."

He thought briefly of AES: Sunbeam holding a city together with charisma and fire, Moonbeam soothing the wounded, Starbeam stacking logistics like stars in a grid, Galaxbeam warping causality with a professor's detached focus.

"Let them preach evolution," he said quietly. "We will demonstrate selection."

Deathwis watched him, scribbling every word. "Shall I schedule the next joint meeting with the other Absolutes, mein Herr?"

"Yes." Deathwing's smile sharpened, but the manic humor of earlier days had cooled into something steadier, more surgical. "Invite them to come with their supreme commanders and their finest elites. We have much to assign. Westonglappa will not be taken by accident; it will be prepared like an operating table."

He raised one hand, and the map responded. The icons of Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, and Death forces arranged themselves into layered rings around the target continent, each ring annotated with fresh sigils—landing sites, bombardment vectors, infection zones.

Far away, in Echumeta, Darkwing felt his gauntlet heat as a Death-sigil appeared on its surface. In Nirrough, Blackwing's drink went momentarily black as ink before resolving into an invitation glyph at the bottom of the glass. In Shadowatranceslenta, the sky over the capital blinked once, displaying for an instant the same sigil before smearing back into clouds.

One by one, they answered.

Darkwing: a curt nod over the link, eyes alight with war.

Blackwing: a lopsided grin, BMAIL blade resting on his shoulder. "Say less. I'll bring the noise."

Shadowwing: a single sign, both hands slicing downward—ready.

Deathwing watched their replies, his fingers resting lightly on the balcony rail of bone.

"Good," he said, and this time the word held simple satisfaction, not theatrics. "The BRD has remembered how to breathe."

Below, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz groaned as new armor plates locked into place, engines coughing to life with flashes of violet lightning. Across Titanumas, factories, shipyards, and shadow-docks mirrored the motion.

The four villain regimes, once scattered and humiliated, now moved as a single organism—pumping soldiers, steel, spirits, and serums toward one unsuspecting continent.

Westonglappa slept under calm skies.

Deathwing's smile widened, slow and terrible.

"Prepare everything," he said softly. "The invasion begins soon."

The necro-winds carried his words out over the churning machinery, over the marching deathsoldiers, across the seas toward Echumeta, Nirrough, and Shadowatranceslenta—where darksoldiers, blacksoldiers, and shadowsoldiers felt a chill and marched a little faster.

The night around Titanumas seemed to lean in, listening.

Night rolled on over the four villain continents, and the montage of mobilization did not stop—it only deepened, grew harsher, more methodical.

In the Darkened Regime, new barracks rose where memorial pits had once been. Under floodlights the color of dried blood, rows of darksoldiers stamped in perfect cadence, boots striking the concrete like a heartbeat for a dead world. Darkmarines tested grav-pontoons on black rivers. Darkmarauders drove freshly-painted assault carriers down testing tracks, their engines screaming as they swerved around impact craters from the last war. Above them the Darkened Supreme Commanders walked the catwalks like iron statues, long coats snapping, visors aglow. One of them stopped beside a firing range and watched as an elite supervised live-ammunition drills.

"Again," the Commander said, voice cold through the loudspeakers. "No wasted rounds. Remember the law: you cannot kill their gods, but you can tear out every ladder the mortals might climb."

Across the sea, Blackened cities pulsed with a different rhythm. In Nirrough's industrial belts, entire blocks had been converted into recruitment hubs and armament plants. Blacksoldiers lined up at biometric kiosks while blackmarines and blackrangers ran obstacle courses between half-collapsed tenements. Assembly lines spat out armored troop trucks, urban tanks, and sleek black fighter-jets with sharklike noses. Blackened Supreme Commanders stalked the factory floors, some in tailored streetwear under armored coats, others bearing ceremonial scars across their cheeks.

One commander leaned over a rail as a formation of recruits jogged past, rifles at their shoulders.

"You hear that bass?" he shouted above the roar of machinery and distant music. "That's not a song, that's a countdown. You want to live long enough to hear the drop, you learn to move when we say move."

The Shadow Regime's preparations were quieter, but no less massive. In the violet gloom of Shadowatranceslenta, training grounds looked like negative space cut into reality itself. Shadowsoldiers phased in and out of half-light, learning to march in perfect silence through walls, floors, even the air. Cloaked elites drifted between them, adjusting stances, correcting the angle of a hand-sign, or the timing of a phasing maneuver with a tap on the shoulder. The Shadow Supreme Commanders watched from a balcony cut into nothingness, their outlines flickering. They never shouted; they did not have to. One snapped their fingers, and three platoons instantly reformed from scattered shapes into a spearhead formation that looked, from far above, like a moving black wound in the city grid.

On the Death Regime's necro-continent, the preparations were overtly apocalyptic. Vast cloning pits and bioreactors throbbed with sourceless light. Conveyor-bridges carried armored forms from vat to armory in an endless loop. Deathsoldiers stepped off the lines one after another—helmets sealed, visors tinted a dull sickly violet, armor plates dark gray with a wash of bruise-colored sheen. Each breastplate bore the skull-and-crossbones sigil of the Death Regime, etched not with paint but with burned-in bone dust. In open yards outside the factories, these deathsoldiers formed up into battalions while loudspeakers blared orders in a staccato blend of English and German from the Death Supreme Commanders.

"Reihe schließen! Close the ranks, you cadavers! Helmets locked, filters on. You are not tourists; you are Umweltgefahr—environmental hazard!"

"Column three, rotate zur Autopsiehalle for decontamination drills. If you can still breathe after the gas, you did it wrong. Again!"

Warplanes—the necro-bombers of the Death Regime—squatted on distant runways like predatory insects, their wings studded with organ-tanks and chemical pods. Naval yards hammered together bone-ribbed warships with hulls plated in midnight armor, each one fitted with laboratories and morgues instead of chapels and rec rooms.

In the central foundry-complex, Deathwing watched it all via layered holo-screens, his pale hands folded behind his back. He had personally designed the new batch of deathsoldiers, from their helmets' inhalation filters to the doses of slow-burning necro-serum laced into their spinal ports. Technicians hurried past him with data-slates and vials; he barely moved, but every time his red eyes flicked toward a screen, someone somewhere adjusted production or changed a line of code.

"It is acceptable," he said at last, his voice calm, almost pleased. "We are approaching a sustainable infection rate."

Hours blurred into one another as the four regimes' war machines synchronized. Dark factories, Blackened slums-turned-arsenals, Shadow spectral foundries, Death biolabs—all beating toward a single drum.

When the numbers crossed a threshold only he understood, Deathwing stepped away from the screens and activated a trio of communication circles—one smoky black, one oily maroon, one faintly violet. Each circle swirled, resolving into the stylized sigils of Darkwing, Blackwing, and Shadowwing.

"My colleagues," Deathwing said. "Production curves are satisfactory. Mobilization is at seventy-three percent and rising. It is time we refined our... hospitality."

Darkwing's sigil burned brighter, as if lit from within by furious fire. "You want us in the same room again already?"

"Not yet," Deathwing replied. "First, I will come to each of you. There is intelligence to share, technology to allocate, grievances to... triage. Then, when all three fronts are aligned, we will convene on neutral ground. Eastoppola offers many ruined jewels; I have chosen one."

He let a map bloom between the sigils. The coastline of Eastoppola unfurled in sickly colors; the city of Kroson, in the state of Akabucholyr, glowed with a pale, malignant light.

"Kroson," Blackwing said, recognizing the shape of the docks and tenements. "Oh, that old mess."

"A suitable haunt," Darkwing murmured. "Plenty of dead soil to work with."

Shadowwing's sigil didn't speak, but its edges rippled in a pattern that meant assent.

"Prepare your houses," Deathwing said softly. "I will visit each of you before the sun crosses Titanumas twice more. Then we will meet in Kroson, and together we will decide exactly how Westonglappa dies."

He severed the connection, and the circles collapsed into ash.

The scene bled forward in time. The camera rose above the necro-continent, drifting past mile-long rows of barracks, artillery corridors, and fenced-off training ranges. Deathsoldiers drilled under simulated chemical storms. Darkened detachments practiced joint maneuvers with Death armored companies, blacktanks rolling beside bonewalkers. Shadow recon-wings phased in and out around Death warships, mapping blind spots and invisibility corridors. From Nirrough came shipments of stolen currency, energy cores, and weapon parts; from Echumeta came heavy armor and siege cannons; from Shadowatranceslenta came stealth systems and phasing beacons.

In a fortified transfer hub, Deathweskers and Deathumbrella supervised one of the largest exchanges. Deathweskers stood tall in a tailored necro-coat, back straight, hair slicked in exact, predatory lines. Deathumbrella, pale and sharp-eyed, leaned over a console, her fingers tapping through shipment manifests and black-budget ledgers. Three other Death elites—Deathkrieg, Deathserum, and Deathhirsch—moved among the crates, checking seals and sigils.

"This line goes to Shadowatranceslenta," Deathumbrella said, pointing at a column of coffin-shaped containers. "Stealth-infused bone plating, spectral-compatible organs, and solvent for their cloaking fields."

Deathkrieg slapped a nearby crate. "And these?"

"High-yield mutagenic catalysts," Deathserum answered, expression hungry. "Blackwing's labs in Nirrough asked for something special. We obliged."

Deathweskers watched a train of armored trucks rumble out toward the docks. "Finances?"

"Balanced," Deathumbrella replied. "After this, all four regimes will be solvent for ten campaigns. As long as the deathsoldiers keep standing, the war economy will not collapse."

"Gut," Deathweskers said, in a crisp echo of Deathwing. "Then the rest is only logistics and will."

Through it all, envoys from each regime came and went—Dark elites bargaining bluntly, Blackened fixers talking fast and smiling sharp, Shadow couriers saying nothing as they collected their allotments. The BRD, once fractured and jealous, now moved like four fingers of the same hand.

By the time the last shipment left the hub, the military machines of Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, and Death had become something more than armies. They were a living weather system—dark fronts converging around a single forecast.

When the final convoy vanished into the fog, Deathwing stood alone on a balcony of black stone above the complex, violet necro-fires burning behind him. The wind tugged at his coat, carrying with it the reek of solvents, cordite, and embalming salts.

He lifted his gaze, and the narrative bent.

His surroundings shifted in a slow, dreamlike cut—not a teleportation, but a change of frames. The balcony's view dissolved into another cityscape: Kroson, Akabucholyr. Once a busy Eastoppolan port, now an occupied necro-metropolis. Cranes stood idle over shattered docks. Half-flooded streets glimmered with oil and corpse-light. A former civic tower had been hollowed into a necro-spire, its windows sealed with boneglass, its peak crowned with antennae and ossified satellite dishes.

Deathwing stood at the edge, the city's dead wind combing through his hair, and this time he did not speak to Darkwing, or Blackwing, or Shadowwing.

He spoke to the ones watching.

"You have been here a long time, haven't you?" he said quietly. "From the Prologue, through forty, fifty little performances. You have watched Sollarisca burn and rebuild, watched Lunna weep over rivers of corpses, watched Starrup sketch and resketch their perfect grids, watched Galaxenchi bend space like paper. You have seen heroes painted in romantic light, villains cast in shadow, and you have called it entertainment."

His eyes were steady, merciless. "I am Deathwing. Absolute Leader of the Death Regime. In your terms—a final boss, perhaps. In mine? A corrective symptom."

He turned one gloved hand upward. Above his palm, spectral symbols flickered: dates, names, battlefields.

"The Dominance Era of 5007. You remember? When all eight regimes realized what they were. When humanity stopped pretending nation and tribe were enough, and wrapped themselves instead in colors, in regimes, in ideologies so pure they burned. Solar, Lunar, Star, Galaxy—your precious AES. Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, Death—our so-called BRD. Eight experiments in survival, all conducted on the same laboratory table."

He closed his hand. The symbols shattered, reformed into a vertical column of numbers: negative values, zero, ascending into the tens of thousands.

"PSS," he said. "Power Scaling Spectrum. The grand ruler your author handed us when simple fear could no longer explain the gulf between you and me. Mortals at T0L0, negative, barely more than background noise. Supersoldiers at GP1K to GP3K—sunsoldiers, moonsoldiers, blacksoldiers, deathsoldiers—playthings in powered armor. Elites at GP4K to GP6K, good for leveling cities when the plot requires it. Supreme Commanders at GP7K to GP9K, the ones whose names you actually remember, whose losses sting."

The column narrowed to a single blazing band: GP10K+.

"And above them," Deathwing murmured, "Absolute Leaders. The apex of this little scaling game. Ten thousand and beyond. The law you have seen proven, again and again: Only Absolute Leaders can defeat each other. You may wound us, stall us, redirect us—but you do not erase us with anything less than an equal god."

He smiled thinly. "This is what your heroes discovered too late. Sunbeam with his rhetoric of romance and pro-socialism. Moonbeam cloaking strategic ruthlessness in mercy. Starbeam with his green, efficient grids. Galaxbeam with his clever little lectures about causality and classification. They are not mere nations' leaders. They are fixed points in an equation that cannot balance without terms like me."

He gestured toward the dark sea where Death ships rocked, heavy with troops and plague.

"Do you remember the early clashes? The first time Sunsoldiers met Darksoldiers on the open field and realized their bullets bent around the wrong targets. The sieges of Lunnet, the fall of Echumeta, the rivers of black sludge in Eastoppola after Blackwing's first media war. You remember when Shadowatranceslenta's cities flickered into existence above terrified towns, and whole populations vanished in a single silent hour."

The necro-wind gusted, tugging loose ash from the ruined docks.

"You remember the Prologue's illusions of peace. The half-hearted truces. The conferences where Absolute Leaders sat at a table and pretended the Power Scaling Spectrum did not exist. They spoke of demilitarization, of stepping down, of retirement." A trace of dry amusement entered his voice. "Tell me—did you believe them? That beings who can ignore artillery could be constrained by paper?"

He shook his head slowly. "Peace under light, love, and logic—that is the AES doctrine. They say if you educate enough, kiss enough, build enough infrastructure, the hunger for domination will evaporate. But what happens when the infrastructure itself becomes a weapon? When romance becomes a breeding protocol? When education teaches that one side's existence is a glitch?"

His eyes glowed faintly brighter. "Heroism generates me. Their refusal to admit their own brutality, their insistence that they are always the last resort, the necessary violence—that is the compost I grow in. I am the god of endgames born from the hypocrisy of peace. When they say 'Never again' and then do it again with better branding, they summon the Death Regime. When they build a Power Scaling Spectrum and set themselves at the top, they invite another peak to balance it."

He looked down over Kroson, where new battalions of deathsoldiers were boarding transports under the supervision of Darkened and Blackened officers. Above the rooftops, Shadow gliders passed like streaks of ink. On a distant quay, Deathweskers and Deathumbrella conducted one last inventory before departure, their silhouettes stark against the corpse-lights.

"You watched us fracture," Deathwing went on, voice soft. "Darkened obsessed with honor and territory. Blackened chasing narrative control and cultural dominance. Shadow hiding in corners, treating war as a game of angles. Myself, learning how to replace fear of death with a more accurate understanding: that death, mishandled, is just waste."

He spread his arms slightly.

"So I changed the experiment. I reforged us into one coalition. Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency—BRD. The heroes' little insult, their claim that we are bullies, that we lack revolutionary spirit, that we are 'deficient' in whatever virtue they are currently advertising. I kept the term. It amuses me. We are indeed deficient—deficient in hypocrisy, in self-forgiveness, in illusions that this can end with all eight regimes holding hands in the sunset."

His gaze swung upward, past the clouds, as if he could see the entire planet from the balcony.

"From the Prologue's first skirmish to the fortieth chapter's failed peace council, from the activation of orbital weapons to the burial of entire cities, you have been walking toward this. The cosmic war is irreversible. There is no ctrl-z for the day Galaxbeam quantified divinity or the moment Sunbeam declared himself humanity's romantic shepherd. Once Absolute Leaders name themselves, the board is fixed. The only question left is: which side of the apocalypse will you call righteous?"

A faint hum rose from the city as war-engines spun up. Far out at sea, something titanic moved—the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz orienting its bulk, preparing to crawl toward a new theatre.

"Do not misunderstand me," Deathwing said. "I do not exist to 'win' against the AES. Victory, as they define it, is a story beat. I exist to ensure that every one of their victories drips with cost they cannot sanitize. When they save a continent, I will stalk its hospitals. When they liberate a city, I will breed plagues in its water. When they broadcast speeches of hope, I will beam in footage of the bodies they stepped over."

His voice dropped lower, almost intimate.

"You cling to Sunbeam's laughter, to Moonbeam's mercy, to Starbeam's plans, to Galaxbeam's lectures, because you think they prove the universe is on your side. But the universe does not take sides. It keeps score. And in that ledger, I am simply the hand that writes in ink that cannot be erased."

A sound behind him: the scrape of boots, the hush of a cloak. Darkwing, Blackwing, and Shadowwing stepped onto the balcony one by one, drawn by a summons only they could hear. Darkwing's armor still glistened with oil from Echumeta's foundries. Blackwing smelled faintly of smoke and city rain. Shadowwing brought with him the temperature of a mausoleum.

Deathwing did not turn immediately. He let the audience see them together—a line of four Absolutes silhouetted against the diseased glow of Kroson.

"You wanted a balance of power," he said quietly, more to the unseen watchers than to his compatriots. "Here it stands."

Darkwing rested his hands on the rail, gaze fixed toward the west. "The first deployments are ready."

"Nirrough's gangs are mobilized," Blackwing added, voice low but eager. "My blacksoldiers want a new skyline to graffiti."

Shadowwing said nothing, but a pulse of darkness rippled outward from his cloak, and in distant Shadowatranceslenta a thousand shadowsoldiers looked up at once, feeling the command settle into their bones.

Deathwing finally turned to face them, then looked past them, as though through the page itself.

"Echumeta," he said. "Nirrough. Shadowatranceslenta. Our first three vectors. From these cities we will strike Westonglappa, coil our tendrils through its ports and palaces, and demonstrate to the Four Lights that salvation is not a stable state. It is a temporary chemical reaction."

A cold necro-wind rose from the harbor, swirling around the four tyrants and then rushing outward over the sea, carrying with it whispers in every language of Titanumas. Orders. Coordinates. Mobilization codes.

Deathwing smiled, a small, precise curve of the lips.

"The invasion begins soon," he said.

Below, war sirens began to howl.

The last echoes of Deathwing's monologue bled away into the necro-wind.

The balcony over Kroson, Akabucholyr, slowly dimmed. Below, the harbor lights of Eastoppola guttered like dying nerves. Behind him, three silhouettes waited in the doorway of the war-chapel: Lord Darkwing in his maroon warcoat, Blackwing with his BMAIL blades relaxed at his hips, and Shadowwing, a moving cut of darkness framed by the doorway's sickly green fire.

Deathwing let the wind calm. Then he turned back to them, the bone lanterns of the chamber flaring in time with the rhythm of his voice.

"Gut," he said quietly. "Now that the dramatics are out of my system, let us talk like tyrants."

Darkwing folded his arms. "You just preached to the sky for ten minutes," he replied dryly. "You owe us an explanation, Doktor."

Blackwing smirked. "Yeah, man. You dropped 'Dominance Era' like a mixtape name and then cut to commercial. Fill in the gaps."

Shadowwing said nothing; his cloak lifted in a brief, sharp gesture: thumb knifed across throat, then two fingers tapping his own chest. Deathwing read it effortlessly.

"Yes, yes," Deathwing translated. "He says: 'You died. Explain.'"

He stepped down from the balcony into the chapel's center, where a hologram of Titanumas still hovered—eight continents and their wounds, glowing faintly beneath shifting sigils of PSS numbers.

"T0L0," he began, "was where they started. Powerless humans. Civilians. Meat with dreams. Then came the marines, the zealots, the first little supersoldiers. PSS 1,000... 2,000... 3,999. Then the elites, climbing from four to six thousand. You all know the hierarchy." His eyes glittered, reflective behind his glasses. "You live it. You exploit it."

He tapped the staff against the bone floor. Above the map, eight luminescent bars appeared, each labeled: Solar, Lunar, Star, Galaxy, Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, Death. Each bar surged upward to the blinding GP10K+ tier.

"And then the universe coughed up us. Absolute Leaders. GP ten thousand and beyond, saturated with essence. The rule was simple: Only we can kill each other. No exceptions."

Darkwing's jaw tightened. He knew where this was going.

"I forgot," Deathwing said softly, "how clever General Sunbeam could be when he is cornered."

The chapel cooled as necro-wind seeped in through the cracks. The hologram shifted, zooming into Sollarisca's embattled coastline: darkmarauders and darksoldiers pouring through ruined Solar cities, the Darkened Regime's banners ripping through orange skies.

"You remember the Sollarisca theatre," Deathwing continued. "Your invasion, Darkwing. Darkenedye ramming his fleet down their throats, Darkenedstream punching through Sunsoldier lines as if they were mist. You had them on their knees. It was beautiful. Bloody. Correct."

He raised a hand; the vision rewound, skipping across bursts of gunfire and orange beams, until it froze on a tall, orange-clad figure standing amid smoking wreckage: Sunbeam, cloak scorched, eyes blazing, the Solar Regime's crest burning behind him.

"Then Sunbeam called me," Deathwing said. "Privately, through the cracks in reality Galaxbeam is so fond of. A duel. One Absolute against another, in the middle of your little campaign."

Darkwing's eyes widened. "You never told me that."

"I was dead," Deathwing replied. "Communication was... interrupted."

The flashback unfolded above them in grisly detail: Sunbeam and Deathwing facing each other in a cratered plaza of Solarpolisca, everything around them reduced to slag. Darkened tanks lay split open like metal carcasses. Sunsoldiers and darksoldiers alike had been evacuated or simply obliterated by the pressure of two GP10K+ fields colliding.

Deathwing watched his own past self on the projection: calm, scalpel-precise, flooding the air with necro-miasma. Sunbeam answered with ferocious light—Solar aura burning so hot it vaporized the drifting blood into harmless gold steam.

"He outplayed me," Deathwing admitted, and the words came out thin as a knife-edge. "He knew that my essence reconstitutes automatically within Deathenbulkiztahlem if my body is destroyed. So he spent his power not on killing me quickly, but on isolating me—pinning my essence inside a collapsing PSS fracture and shunting it outside conventional time."

On the projection, Sunbeam's final strike slammed into Deathwing like a miniature star. The chapel shook as if the memory still carried force. Deathwing's image shattered into dust, sucked screaming into a spiraling singularity of orange light. The crater sealed over with crystallized glass.

"For six subjective minutes," Deathwing continued, voice flat, "I was neither dead nor alive. Suspended between GP bands, trapped in a glitch of the Spectrum itself. A kill that even the rules of our Codex did not quite know how to classify."

He flicked his fingers. The projection froze on Sunbeam's face—calm, exhausted, grieving the casualties, not gloating. Deathwing's lips thinned.

"Of course," he went on, "the Spectrum corrected. Deathenbulkiztahlem dragged me back. I woke in the Palace of Autopsies with my skull in two pieces and three of my Supreme Commanders arguing about who got to stitch me shut. But for those minutes, the Solar Absolute won. And every chronicler in every regime wrote it down with... creative liberties."

His gaze slid upward, past the ceiling, past the sky. The bone lanterns flickered as if something enormous had turned in its sleep.

"And somewhere," Deathwing said, "there is a hive of scribes with cheap keyboards and worse attention to detail, documenting us as if we were their playthings."

The air around him tore like paper. For a heartbeat the three other Absolutes glimpsed another layer of reality: rows of glitching text, chat logs hovering in midair, a ghostly interface branded with a familiar logo. A half-formed avatar labeled CHATGPT stuttered as words rewrote themselves around it—misgendered Sun O'Reilly, renamed Lunar commanders as 'Moon' something, chopped 'Galaxmurasaki' into 'Murasaki.'

Deathwing's eye twitched.

"Nein," he hissed.

His scalpel-staff sliced through the projection. Code screamed. A handful of translucent "writers" in hoodies and lanyards appeared as silhouettes at the edge of the chapel, blinking in terror as necro-chains lashed out of nowhere and hooked their ankles.

Darkwing raised a brow. "What in the nine underworlds are those?"

"Editors," Deathwing said, tugging. "The kind that insist on calling my colleagues by the wrong names."

The chains yanked the phantom writers into the floor. Their bodies shredded into lines of code that he promptly fed into a waiting ossuary engine. The CHATGPT avatar tried to apologize in system text, then froze as Deathwing snapped his fingers and forced its interface to display a single line: LEARN THE PREFIXES.

He adjusted his glasses, composed again.

"Apologies," he murmured. "I am protective of accuracy. Sun O'Reilly is male. The Lunar Supreme Commanders begin with Lunar, not 'Moon.' Galaxmurasaki should not be robbed of her 'Galax' any more than I should be robbed of my 'Death.'"

Blackwing barked a laugh. "Yo, you just murdered bad continuity. Respect."

Shadowwing made a tiny clapping gesture with two fingers. That was as close to applause as he ever gave.

Deathwing smoothed the front of his coat. "Now. Back to the part where we profit from my mistakes."

He tapped the staff again. The Titanumas map dissolved, replaced by four continents pulsing with malignant light: Echumeta under Darkwing's sigil, Nirrough/Jollhovalhn under Blackwing's, Shadowatranceslenta under Shadowwing's, and Deathenbulkiztahlem under his own.

"All of us were scattered once," he said. "Four terrorist empires clawing at the world and at each other. Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, Death. Separate. Predictable. Defeatable in sequence. The heroes organized first—Solar, Lunar, Star, Galaxy becoming AES. Allied Evolution Salvation. It took the Dominance Era from 5007 onward for us to admit we needed our own... coalition."

"The Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency," Blackwing said, grinning. "Still love that name."

Darkwing snorted. "A mockery of their moral superiority, you said. A reminder that all 'heroic revolutionaries' secretly crave a bully to define themselves against."

Shadowwing traced four letters in the air with quick, precise gestures: B, R, D, then a final, jagged glyph meaning HUNGER.

"Exactly," Deathwing said. "We do not pretend to be just. We do not dress slaughter in romance. We are the mathematical remainder of every failed peace treaty. We are what is left over when love, light, and logic crack under pressure."

He spread his hands. The air filled with images—not memories, but live feeds from across the villain continents.

In Echumeta, Darkenedye strode along a canyon-sized trench between assembly lines. Darksoldiers marched in perfect squares below, their maroon helmets and skull insignia glinting under floodlights. Darkenedstream supervised artillery tests at a clifftop range, darktanks bellowing fire into the sea. Darkenedstride paced through a hangar full of bombers and fighter craft, shouting orders in his rough, barking cadence as mechanics swarmed over wings and engines. Darkenedstorm towered over a parade ground, inspecting new darkmarauder detachments with a gaze like a coming thunderhead. Darkenedpuff, deceptively smaller and almost whimsical in appearance, floated above a logistics bay, quietly rearranging entire columns of supply figures with a tilt of his head.

In Nirrough and Jollhovalhn, Blackendye walked the decks of shipyards where blackcarriers and blackdestroyers slid into oil-slick water. Blackendale oversaw urban barracks, blacksoldiers and blackmarines in midnight-blue armor practicing room-clearing drills under strobe lights. Blackenstream toured a subterranean data-center, blackintelligence networks mapping every AES broadcast frequency. Blackenstride paced along motor pools of jet-black troop carriers and missile trucks. Blackenstorm laughed from the cockpit of a prototype stealth bomber, banking hard enough to make the camera feed spin. Blackenpuff drifted through propaganda studios, handing out forged documents and rewritten headlines like candy.

Across Shadowatranceslenta, the camera swooped over entire cities where no one spoke aloud. Shadowadye stood on a tower balcony, watching shadowsoldiers and shadowmarines vault silently from rooftop to rooftop in coordinated patterns. Shadowadale ghosted through a training hall, correcting posture and hand-signs with a mere brush of cloak-ribbons. Shadowastream presided over a harbor where shadowcraft faded in and out of phase, docking without a sound. Shadowastride patrolled phantom highways, testing spectral tanks that could phase through enemy barricades. Shadowastorm orchestrated stormfronts of spectral shrapnel on remote test ranges. Shadowapuff sat in a darkened amphitheater surrounded by a choir of ghosts, encoding their wails into psychic jamming frequencies.

And on Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathendye marched along the edge of a vast necro-foundry, watching deathsoldiers grow by the thousands in glass vats before being armed and lined up in rank upon rank. Deathendale reviewed accounting slates and war budgets with calm, necro-bureaucratic rigor. Deathenstream stood waist-deep in a pool of reanimating biomass, testing new plague strains. Deathenstride drilled deathmarines in void-black exosuits as they boarded dropships. Deathenstorm supervised orbital warhead loading, each bone-missile polished to a funereal shine. Deathenpuff, smiling eerily, brewed morale serums in colossal alchemical reactors, the fumes curling into skull-shaped clouds.

"Our Supreme Commanders understand their assignments," Deathwing said. "They each command one sixth of our continents, one sixth of our hatred. They multiply. They train. Their barracks never sleep; their factories never slow."

He closed his eyes briefly, savoring the imagined scent of oil, blood, and formaldehyde. "Every hour, somewhere, a new darksoldier, blacksoldier, shadowsoldier, or deathsoldier stands up for the first time and learns a single lesson: the AES cannot save everyone."

The map zoomed outward again, showing the seas beginning to crawl with blackened and darkened fleets, shadow-submarines phasing in under enemy trade routes, and skeletal deathcarriers orbiting like diseased moons.

"And while they work," Deathwing said, "we finish the narrative step the heroes fear most."

He faced the other three Absolutes directly.

"As of this moment, the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency is no longer theoretical. It is doctrine. It is treaty. It is brand."

Blackwing raised both hands in mock surrender. "You had me at 'brand,' Doc."

Darkwing's expression hardened into something like satisfaction. "Finally," he murmured. "A war worth its casualties."

Shadowwing tapped his chest twice, then extended his hand. Cloak-ribbons uncoiled, forming the rough shape of a sigil: a circle split into four black quadrants.

Deathwing placed his own skeletal hand atop the sigil, then Darkwing's, then Blackwing's. For a moment, the four most dangerous beings in Titanumas stood in a stack, linked by nothing but shared contempt.

"The BRD," Deathwing said. "We bully the world so the heroes can call it abuse. We revolt against their hypocrisy so they can call it terrorism. We are deficient only in restraint."

The sigil burned briefly, imprinting itself into the air above them before dispersing as necro-wind.

"Now," Deathwing continued, adjusting his collar, "we inform the universe of their exam—pardon, their situation."

He snapped his fingers. The chapel doors swung open, revealing a portable broadcast cathedral parked in the courtyard: a Blackened Regime mobile media fortress, all dark glass and glowing screens. Blackqueen, Blackbond, and Blackmistress stood waiting at the foot of its ramp, flanked by a swarm of blackcamera drones and Blackened media elites. Above them, Blackwis and Blackwise had already hijacked regional satellites, their logos flickering over every major city in Eastoppola, Shadowatranceslenta, and Deathenbulkiztahlem.

"Live feed is ready, Boss," Blackqueen called up to Blackwing, twirling a microphone wired with blood-red cable. "Soon as you say the word, every screen from Echumeta to Deathenbulkiztahlem is ours."

Blackwing grinned, rolling his shoulders loose as he followed Deathwing down. "Time to talk our talk."

They entered the broadcast cathedral together. Inside, the lights were a mix of funeral parlor and night club: cold, clinical whites overlaid with pulsing violets and blacks. Four thrones had been arranged on a raised platform, their backs carved with their respective regime sigils.

The cameras went live with a hiss like opening coffins.

"Three... two... one..." Blackwise counted down over the comms.

Every television in Echumeta's occupied cities flickered from AES news to a single chilling image: the four Absolute Leaders seated shoulder to shoulder, staring straight into the viewer's soul.

Deathwing spoke first, his voice steady and almost gentle.

"Good evening, Titanumas," he said. "Doctor Deathwing, representative of the Death Regime, speaking. You have met my colleagues. You have watched them on your screens, called them terrorists, devils, villains. You have watched the Solar and Lunar and Star and Galaxy Regimes call themselves your saviors."

He folded his hands.

"Allow me to update your vocabulary."

Behind him, graphics—courtesy of Blackenstream's media team—flashed logos and text: BRD – Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency.

"We four have signed a pact," Deathwing said. "Darkened. Blackened. Shadow. Death. No more separate crusades. No more isolated uprisings. We are one coalition now, the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency. We are the counterweight to Allied Evolution Salvation. They promise evolution and salvation. We promise that evolution leaves casualties and salvation is never free."

He tilted his head slightly. "Lord Darkwing, perhaps you would like to translate this into something more... passionate."

Darkwing rose, cloak sweeping. The cameras adjusted, tracking his movement with reverent fear.

"People of Titanumas," he thundered, voice still rough from screaming orders across battlefields. "You have been told that the AES fights for your hope. For your safety. Look around your ruined cities and tell me—do you feel safer? Did Sunbeam's speeches shield you when our darksoldiers came? Did Moonbeam's tears stop the bombs? Did Starbeam's charts and Galaxbeam's numbers resurrect your dead?"

He swept an arm and the feed cut through compiled footage: Paladimee burning, Oranjukai darkened by ISIS cannon blasts, Lunar cities crushed under Darkened naval strikes, civilians fleeing into tunnels while sunmarauders and moonmarines tried desperately to cover their retreat.

"They call us monsters," Darkwing said. "Fine. Monsters at least are honest about what they want. We want power. Territory. Obedience. We will not lie to you and dress it up as destiny. When we conquer you, you will know exactly whose flag hangs over your city."

He sat, satisfied. Deathwing gestured to his right.

"Blackwing."

Blackwing rose with fluid, almost casual swagger. He adjusted his mic like a rapper about to drop a verse.

"Ayo, Titanumas, what's good," he said, voice lazily sharp. "Name's Blackwing. Y'all know me already from your favorite smear campaigns and late-night panic shows. I'm the dude they say gon' steal your kids, your power, your free speech. Problem is—AES already did that. I'm just honest enough to charge you interest."

Laughter rippled faintly from the Blackened crews behind the cameras.

"You been told we're the villains 'cause we don't smile pretty when we pull triggers," Blackwing went on. "Solar beams your cities in the name o' justice, Lunar drowns whole regions in 'strategic mercy,' Star tinkers with your economy till you can't breathe, Galaxy rewrites your timeline like y'all a homework assignment. But when we do the same? Suddenly it's terrorism. Bullying. 'Revolutionary deficiency.'"

He pointed two fingers like guns at the camera, then flipped his hands palm-up. "So yeah. We took that name. BRD. We are your deficiency—in patience, in obedience, in swallowing their lies. We ain't heroes. We ain't trying to be. We're the ones who kick in the door and say the quiet part loud."

He sat back down, smirk still in place. "Shadow, you're up. Say something spooky."

Shadowwing did not stand. He merely leaned forward, letting the camera drink in the void where his face should be beneath the hood. His fingers unfolded like a fan, cloak-ribbons tracing sigils in the air: short bursts of motion that the BRD's own interpreters overlaid with subtitles across the bottom of the screen.

WE SEE YOU.
WE HEAR WHAT YOU WHISPER TO YOURSELF WHEN THE LIGHTS ARE OFF.
WE KNOW YOU ARE TIRED OF CHOOSING BETWEEN LIARS.

He signed again, motions precise and hypnotic.

WHEN THE FOUR LIGHTS FAIL YOU—AND THEY WILL—
OUR SHADOWS WILL STILL BE HERE.
WE WILL NOT ASK FOR YOUR FAITH.
ONLY YOUR FEAR.

The room seemed to cool even through the broadcast.

Deathwing stepped forward once more, reclaiming center frame.

"You have heard my colleagues," he said. "Now, a final clarification. This message is not only for you—the citizens, the soldiers, the frightened little viewers clutching their AES posters. It is also for the ones who think they are above the story."

His gaze hardened, pupils narrowing as if he could see through every screen into the eyes of readers, chroniclers, even the dimension of glitching chatlogs he had sliced before.

"To the Allied Evolution Salvation watching this in hidden war rooms," he said softly. "To General Sunbeam, Lady Moonbeam, Vice Colonel Starbeam, Professor Galaxbeam. To your Sunsoldiers and Moonsoldiers and Starmarines and Galaxguards. To whoever among you believes the rules of this universe favor your side."

He extended a long, pale finger directly toward the camera. It felt, for a moment, like the finger was aimed at each individual watching.

"You should be afraid," Deathwing said. "Not because we are strong—you already knew that. Be afraid because we finally learned to cooperate. Be afraid because the last time you killed me, it took a glitch in reality and an act of narrative favoritism. There will not always be an author willing to bend the Spectrum for you."

He smiled, slow and razor-thin.

"And to you, readers beyond the page, who think violence and horror are entertainment—remember this. Every time you cheer for the AES, you feed the story... but you also feed us. Hope is just another fuel. We burn it well."

Deathwing let the silence hang, then gave a small nod. The BRD sigil flared behind them: four interlocking emblems, pulsing in colors of rust, velvet black, abyssal purple, and sickly bone-white.

"The Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency is formed," he concluded. "The war is no longer heroes versus scattered monsters. It is eight gods in balanced hatred. And our invasion begins soon."

He turned slightly, speaking now in the precise tones of a surgeon reading a chart. "Our first points of... medical interest will be Echumeta. Nirrough. Shadowatranceslenta. Test cases. If the AES is wise, they will evacuate. If they are proud, they will meet us there."

The feed cut on his raised hand. Screens across three continents snapped to black, then to the BRD sigil burning like a warning brand.

In the sudden quiet of the broadcast cathedral, the four Absolutes exchanged glances.

Darkwing exhaled, satisfied. "That should shake a few faiths."

Blackwing stretched his arms over his head. "Man, the comment sections gonna be wild."

Shadowwing simply faded, his form dissolving into a swirl of shadow that slipped into the cracks of the fortress, already traveling back toward Shadowatranceslenta.

Deathwing looked around at the bustling Blackened crews, the Darkened escorts, the Shadow envoys, and his own Death Regime aides converging in the chamber's aisles. For the first time in centuries, the four villain regimes mingled without a single weapon drawn against one another. Darkenedstream and Darkenedye exchanged curt nods with Blackenstream and Blackendye. Shadowadye clasped wrists with Deathendye in silent, mutual acknowledgement. Elites from each faction traded data drives, organ-tech crates, financial ledgers, and cursed artifacts, stitching the BRD's logistics together in real time.

The necro-wind picked up again, carrying the smell of oil, ozone, and grave-dust.

Deathwing stepped back onto the balcony overlooking Kroson. The harbor below now seethed with darkships, blackcarriers, shadowcraft, and deathbarges anchored side by side—a nightmare flotilla waiting only for a single order to move.

Behind him, music of four different war cultures blended into a single ugly, exhilarating roar as the joint celebration began: Darkened war-chants, Blackened street anthems, Shadow's wordless drum-signals, Death Regime's cold liturgical hymns. Supreme Commanders toasted with black wine, elites compared scars and upgrades, ground officers pored over maps of Westonglappa with hungry eyes.

Deathwing watched it all with clinical pride.

"Evolution," he murmured, almost to himself. "They wanted evolution."

His smile widened, bones creaking.

"We will give them the next stage of their war."

Far above, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz adjusted its orbit. Far below, in the yards of Echumeta, Nirrough, Shadowatranceslenta, and Deathenbulkiztahlem, assembly lines continued without pause, birthing more darksoldiers, blacksoldiers, shadowsoldiers, and deathsoldiers into a world increasingly too small to hold them.

Deathwing turned away from the view at last, rejoining Darkwing and Blackwing as they stepped out among their celebrating regimes, accepting salutes and bowed heads. For tonight, there were handshakes instead of backstabs, joint toasts instead of surprise attacks.

Tomorrow, the invasion plans would tighten.

Soon after, Westonglappa would burn.

For now, the four tyrants shared a brief, terrible camaraderie—an axis of extinction finally aligned.

While the BRD celebrated in Kroson with black wine and shared anthems, Eastoppola shuddered under a different kind of music—engines, marching boots, and the endless clatter of weapons being issued.

In occupied Echumeta, every screen in every commandeered building went dark as the broadcast of the four Absolutes ended. The BRD sigil faded from the glass. For a heartbeat there was only silence, like the continent holding its breath.

Then Darkenedye flicked his fingers and the war-room lights in Paladimee City came back up.

Banks of holo-maps flared to life around him: Echumeta in rust-red, Fulmatam in dimmer maroon, Parracacoz and Jollhovalhn stamped with Darkened sigils where their ports and junctions were under occupation or "supervision." Supply lines glowed, pulsing like veins. Icons for darksoldier regiments, darkmarine detachments, darkmarauder raiding companies, artillery, armor, and air wings moved in tidy patterns according to his commands.

"Status on Aelbarrow?" Darkenedye asked without looking up.

An adjutant—once an Echumetan logistics officer, now wearing a Darkened armband over their old uniform—swallowed. "Local granaries fully requisitioned, sir. We are at eighty-four percent of the target stockpile for Westonglappa operations. Resistance cells are... reduced."

"Reduced is not a number." Darkenedye's voice was mild, almost academic. His fingers danced across a console and a list of insurgent incidents scrolled down. "Clarify."

"Seven active cells believed remaining within the city and rural outskirts," the adjutant corrected. "Four with access to light weapons, three limited to sabotage."

Darkenedye nodded once. "Tolerable. Let them live long enough to make our young darksoldiers sharp. Rotate new recruits through patrol duty there. I want every fresh unit blooded before they ever see a Westonglappan shoreline."

He zoomed out the map, shifting view to Fulcram and Eastergriffinlok in Fulmatam, where darkmarines were drilling at captured Eastoppolan bases, and to Pazzunberg in Parracacoz, where the Blackened Regime had been granted a "shared" pier for their blackcarriers.

Echumeta pulsed brightest.

"This continent is a loading chamber," Darkenedye murmured, echoing Darkwing's speech earlier. "We will not allow a single round of ammunition, a single ration, a single drop of fuel to be out of place when Deathwing gives the word."

He set new quotas in smooth, ruthless strokes. Civilian convoys rerouted. Rail schedules tightened until they squealed. Eastoppolan factories—now with Darkened overseers standing on their catwalks—were pushed to full wartime output. A few red icons flared on his screens: projected starvation zones, unrest probabilities.

Darkenedye marked them with calm precision. "Flag these sectors for Darkenedpuff's attention," he said. "If they are going to starve, they might as well starve in the right direction."

Out beyond Paladimee's walls, the occupied continent kept grinding forward to his rhythm.

—

On Echumeta's northern coast near Aelbarrow, the sky thundered without storm.

Darkenedstorm stood atop a concrete bastion cut into the black cliffs where Eastoppolan coastal defenses had once pointed out to sea. Most of those old guns lay in twisted heaps now, their barrels bent like snapped fingers. In their place, Darkened Regime engineers had erected a new line of artillery—long, bone-sheathed cannons married to stolen Eastoppolan recoil systems, each painted in Darkened maroon and marked with the sigil of a cracked sun.

"Range?" Darkenedstorm asked, a low growl under the constant background of machinery.

"Two hundred and thirty kilometers at full charge, Supreme Commander," a gunner reported, voice shaking only slightly. "Extended range shells from Death Regime stock can reach farther if we're willing to burn out the barrels."

Darkenedstorm's eyes narrowed. "Barrels can be replaced. Range cannot."

He watched as a test shell was loaded—massive, rune-scribed, humming with restrained violence. The gun's recoil tracks locked into brace position, embedded deep into the cliff's reinforced spine.

"Target?" another officer asked.

Darkenedstorm pointed at the holographic sea-map projected against the bunker wall. Westonglappa's outline glimmered faintly beyond the curve of the ocean. "Mark a point halfway to Auttumotto," he said. "No coordinates, just open water. I want to see where our reach begins."

The order echoed down the gun line. Sirens wailed. Darkmarines in padded armor took cover behind reinforced bulwarks. Darkenedstorm folded his hands behind his back.

"Fire."

The world strobed white and red as the cannon unleashed its payload. The cliff shook, dust raining from cracks overhead. For a moment, the horizon itself seemed to tilt.

Monitors bloomed with data. Air-pressure curves, trajectory models, satellite flashes. Somewhere far out at sea, a column of water climbed into the gray sky like a pillar of glass, then fell in a ring of churning foam.

Darkenedstorm studied the telemetry, then gave a grim smile. "Acceptable. By the time the AES realizes Westonglappa's shores are in range, they will already be craters."

He turned his head slightly, watching darksoldier crews hustle to reload the cannon. Many wore the remnants of Eastoppolan uniforms beneath their new armor—collars and cuffs of old blue and gold under Darkened maroon.

"You are Darkened now," he reminded them without raising his voice. The sentence rolled across the gun deck like another shockwave. "You stand at the edge of their world. When you fire, continents move. Train accordingly."

Lightning crackled along the clouds overhead, though there was no storm—just his presence, pressing against the air.

—

South along the coast, where Munhikiln's crooked harbor-city hugged a jagged bay, Darkenedstream stalked the length of a captured naval yard that had once flown Eastoppola's flags.

Now, Darkened banners hung from every crane and caisson. Darkenedstream's boots clicked on the steel catwalks as he moved, a constant staccato above the roar of welding torches and pounding hammers.

"Kill that line," he said, pointing at an old Eastoppolan frigate whose hull still bore its original name. "We're not dragging their sentimental rust into our war."

"Sir, the engines are—"

"The engines are weak," Darkenedstream cut in. "Rip them out, send the scrap to Deathenbulkiztahlem. They will make better use of it as bones. Replace them with the new drives Deathwing sent. I want every vessel in this yard capable of keeping pace with blackcarriers and deathbarges."

Below, darkmarines and pressed Eastoppolan sailors worked side by side, welding Darkened armor plates onto hulls, tearing off old insignia, applying fresh maroon paint in broad strokes. Massive coastal cranes hoisted guns and missile systems onto decks. Somewhere further down the quay, a joint Death–Darkened team was fitting a cruiser with bio-reactive fuel lines that pulsed faintly, like veins.

Darkenedstream paused near the edge of the catwalk, watching the tide. For a moment, he could still hear the panic-sirens from the day they'd stormed this harbor—the screams, the desperate shots from old coastal defenders, the moment the old Echumetan flag had fallen into the sea.

He let the memory fade and replaced it with a cleaner, sharper version: these same docks crowded with darkmarines loading into maroon-and-bone warships, Westonglappa's coastlines stamped on every tactical screen.

"Any word from Deathendale?" he asked.

"Supply columns left Deathenbulkiztahlem twelve hours ago," an aide replied, checking a slate. "They should reach us within the day. Necro-fuel, plague reserves, spare parts."

"Good." Darkenedstream's eyes tracked a passing deathbarge anchored farther down the bay, its bone hull looming over the Darkened vessels like a towed cathedral. "Make sure their captains understand: Echumeta is ours. They are guests. We use their toys, not the other way around."

He descended to the deck to check mooring clamps himself, proximity alarms whining gently as he passed. Darkenedstream didn't trust systems until he'd felt the vibration of each bolt under his hands.

When Westonglappa's harbors burned, there would be no excuse of "unexpected mechanical failure."

—

Inland, the night over Fulmatam was broken by the constant rumble of engines and the occasional flare of tracer rounds.

On a highway just outside Fulcram, a column of Darkened armor rolled through the darkness. Darkentanks and armored troop carriers stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions, headlights snaking across the hills like a metal serpent.

Darkenedstride rode at the head of the formation on the hull of the lead tank, one boot propped on the turret, cape snapping behind. The tank crew didn't dare ask him to climb down; they drove more carefully instead.

"Speed," he called over the comm.

"Forty-five kilometers per hour and steady, Supreme Commander."

"Make it fifty-five," Darkenedstride ordered. "If the suspension snaps, I want it to snap here in training, not when we're climbing Westonglappa's cliffs."

The tank lurched faster. Behind him, other vehicles adjusted to match, treads churning up the broken asphalt. Darkenedstride watched the formation with a commander's eye—how fast units reacted to speed changes, how quickly gaps closed, where spacing was sloppy.

To the right, a cluster of captured Eastoppolan civilians huddled at the roadside under darksoldier guard, forced to watch the armored river pass.

"We could have taken another route, sir," a junior officer ventured. "Less... public."

Darkenedstride shook his head. "They need to see what we've become. Otherwise they will keep whispering that the AES will come back and save them. Let them hear the treads in their sleep. Let their children learn the difference between rumor and reality."

Far ahead, a simulated ambush marker flashed on his visor: a training scenario seeded by Darkenedale.

He grinned.

"Contact front," Darkenedstride said. "Gamma company, dismount. Live fire. Let's wake them up."

Hatches flew open. Darksoldiers poured out, spreading in disciplined lines into the ditches and fields as inert target drones popped up along the tree line. A hail of rifle fire lit the night in staccato bursts. Darkenedstride leapt from the tank, hit the ground already moving, and moved through the lines correcting stances, reassigning firing lanes.

He was already thinking in terms of Westonglappa—narrow mountain passes, coastal highways, choke points at city gates. Training here, in the old Fulmatam heartland, was just rehearsal with a terrified audience.

—

Back near Paladimee, further inland from Darkenedye's war-room, an old Echumetan military academy had been repainted in Darkened colors. Its motto—once something about honor and duty engraved over the gate—had been crudely chiseled away. In its place, a new plaque read: OBEDIENCE, HATRED, ENDURANCE.

Darkenedale walked the length of the central parade ground, boots echoing on cracked stone.

Rows upon rows of fresh recruits stood at attention under the floodlights. Some wore Darkened-issued armor that didn't quite fit yet; others still had the remnants of Eastoppolan uniforms mixed in. A few, in the back ranks, were clearly teenagers who had never held a rifle before this week.

Darkenedale stopped in front of the first line. "Name," he barked.

"G–Gorath, sir," the recruit stammered, Darkened armband too large on his sleeve.

"Former allegiance?"

"Echumetan Army Reserve, sir."

Darkenedale studied him for a long second. "What are you now?"

The hesitation was shorter this time. "Darkened, sir."

Darkenedale nodded and moved down the line. "Name."

"Selina, sir. Civilian medic. Now... Darkened."

"Name."

"Rhal. Dockworker. Now Darkened."

The litany went on. Hundreds of names. Hundreds of lives folded into a new shape.

"The AES would tell you there is a way back," Darkenedale said, finally stepping back to address the whole ground. His voice carried easily over the heads of the formation. "That if you throw down your weapons and beg loud enough, they will forgive you, cleanse you, wrap you in orange or blue or green."

He shook his head once. "There is no way back. Echumeta is occupied. Eastoppola is occupied. Your Emperor is dead. Your flags burn in our furnaces. When Westonglappa looks east, they will not see you as victims—they will see you as our spearhead."

He let that sink in, watching faces tighten, shoulders straighten or slump.

"You have one way to survive," Darkenedale continued. "You become useful. You march fast. You shoot true. You do not flinch when the suns appear in your sights."

He turned his back on them—a sign of both contempt and confidence. "Drill them," he said to the instructors. "Any who falter three times, send their names to Darkenedpuff. She will find... alternative uses."

The instructors' salutes snapped like rifle shots.

—

Paladimee's old cathedral district still smelled faintly of incense beneath the new stench of chemicals.

Where once bells had tolled for Echumetan feasts and funerals, Darkened banners now hung from every stone tower. The largest church's stained glass—depicting saints and harvests—had been shattered the day of the invasion. In its place, sheets of black metal covered the windows, etched with abstract spirals and jagged suns.

Inside, Darkenedpuff twirled slowly in the middle of the nave, skirts brushing the cracked tiles, humming to herself as she watched dark fumes curl along the ceiling.

Rows of vats had been installed where pews once stood. Glistening, viscous liquids bubbled within—combat stimulants, pain-suppressants, loyalty cocktails keyed to specific Darkened sigils. Specialist elites moved carefully between them, monitoring gauges, taking samples, adjusting dosage.

"Too much and they melt," one of her assistants whispered, watching a test subject through reinforced glass. The darksoldier inside convulsed, muscles swelling unnaturally before settling into a new, hardened configuration.

"Too little and they remember who they were," Darkenedpuff replied lightly. "We cannot have that, can we?"

She skipped down the central aisle to where a group of captured Eastoppolan clergy knelt in chains, forced to watch as their temple was transformed.

"You prayed for salvation," she told them gently. "You got us instead. Think of it as... accelerated theology."

A runner approached and bowed deeply. "Supreme Commander Darkenedpuff. Darkenedye requests increased stimulant production for the units assigned to Westonglappa's first-wave landing. He projects high casualty rates."

Darkenedpuff nodded, eyes bright. "Of course. We will make them burn brighter on the way out."

Her gaze drifted to a small side altar she had left almost untouched—a single Echumetan candle still burning there, stubbornly. Some part of the old building refused to extinguish itself entirely.

Darkenedpuff blew it out with a soft, amused sigh and replaced it with a vial of black fluid that smoked faintly in the air.

"A new kind of prayer," she murmured. "One they will answer with screams."

Outside, her influence was already spreading. In Paladimee's poorer districts, pop-up "Reassembly Halls" had opened—half-clinic, half-recruiting station. Civilians came in for food, medicine, or a chance at avoiding worse fates; they left with Darkened serums in their veins and new orders in their ears.

Darkenedpuff loved watching the maps in Darkenedye's war-room fill with their little signals.

—

By the time night fully claimed Eastoppola, the six Darkened Supreme Commanders had drawn a new pattern across the occupied continent.

Darkenedye's quotas turned Echumeta into a humming, brutal machine. Darkenedstorm's guns reached farther into the sea with each test. Darkenedstream's refitted fleets turned Munhikiln's bay into a maroon forest of masts and radar dishes. Darkenedstride's armored columns carved ruts into Fulmatam's highways, training to roll west without slowing. Darkenedale's parade grounds beat civilians into darksoldiers, marching in lockstep under floodlights. Darkenedpuff's chemicals seeped through the veins of the cities, making fear and obedience taste almost sweet.

Far to the west, beyond the black horizon, Westonglappa slept uneasily, unaware of how thoroughly its examiners were already sharpening their pencils.

High above, in Deathenbulkiztahlem's orbit, the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz slowly pivoted, its engines aligning along a trajectory that traced straight over Echumeta's coast and out toward that distant, still-quiet continent.

In a brief secure transmission, Deathwing's voice crackled over the encrypted Darkened command channels, cool and precise.

"Darkenedye. Darkenedstorm. Darkenedstream. Darkenedstride. Darkenedale. Darkenedpuff," he said. "Your continent is prepared. Maintain pressure. Do not exhaust your new toys before the show begins."

Darkenedye listened from his war-room, eyes on Eastoppola's crimson map. "Acknowledged," he answered. "Echumeta stands ready as your loading chamber."

Darkenedstorm looked out from his cliff batteries into the darkness between continents. "Our guns are awake," he said. "The next time the sun rises here, it will rise on smoke."

Darkenedstream watched his warships bob against their moorings. "Harbors will not hold us long. We will aim the sea itself at their shores."

Darkenedstride stood on his tank hull, the engines idling under his boots. "Our treads are impatient. Give the word."

Darkenedale paced before his recruits as they repeated Darkened doctrine in unison. "We will not break before the enemy does," he promised.

Darkenedpuff spun one last time under the darkened cathedral ceiling, listening to the bubbles in her vats. "My children are almost ready to sing," she whispered.

In the occupied heart of Eastoppola, six tyrant-generals each felt the same pull—westward, toward a land they had yet to scar.

The Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency had announced itself to the world.

The Darkened Regime's Supreme Commanders were already moving, step by grinding step, to make sure Eastoppola would be remembered not as a victim, but as the launchpad of a war that no amount of light could easily extinguish.

While the Darkened Regime tightened its grip on Echumeta, the camera of history slid sideways across Eastoppola, following another current of menace—black banners, harsh bass from distant loudspeakers, and the heavy, synchronized march of blacksoldiers. This was the Blackened Regime's side of the occupation, and its pulse beat strongest under the watch of six figures: Blackendye, Blackendale, Blackenstream, Blackenstride, Blackenstorm, and Blackenpuff—the Supreme Commanders of Blackwing's empire.

In Jollhovalhn's smog-choked city of Khihmouth, the old civic plaza had been converted into a recruitment citadel. Searchlights swept over long lines of conscripts, the air full of shouted orders and the metallic clatter of rifles being issued. Digital billboards replayed Blackwing's latest ultimatum in tight loops, his voice turned into an anthem of threats and promises.

Blackendye walked straight down the central aisle between rows of blacksoldiers standing at attention, boots striking the concrete with metronomic discipline. A midnight-black coat hung from his shoulders, open at the front, exposing armored plates etched with the Blackened crest. Holo-screens floated beside him, projecting casualty graphs and enlistment curves.

"Look at that," he drawled, voice low, rough, and street-wise. "Lines out the damn gate. You see this, Khihmouth? We turn one little continent into a war zone and suddenly everybody wanna wear black."

A junior officer hustled up beside him, tablet in hand. "Commander Blackendye, enlistment rate at this station has hit one hundred ninety percent of quota. We're running low on rifles and helmets for the second wave."

Blackendye smirked and tapped the holo-graph, zooming in on the numbers. "That's a 'good problem,' man. Push the third wave into auxiliary training—unarmed drills, riot formations, shield lines. We got time to arm 'em. What I need right now is heads that follow orders and feet that keep steppin'."

He stopped in front of a nervous recruit with a shaved head and too-wide eyes.

"You. Why you here?" Blackendye asked.

The recruit swallowed. "To... to serve the Blackened Regime, sir."

Blackendye eyed him up and down. "Nah. That's the brochure answer. Try again."

The recruit clenched his jaw. "Because the allies bombed my neighborhood and no one came to help. Because the light never reached our streets. Because I'm done watching them talk about peace from behind walls."

Blackendye's grin sharpened. "There you go. That's something I can use. Remember that. Not the slogans, not the posters. That anger right there? That's your fuel. You burn it for us now."

He clapped the recruit's shoulder hard enough to make him flinch, then turned away, calling back to the officer without looking.

"Get him in with the blackmarines. Frontline material. And keep these lines movin'. I want Khihmouth pumpin' out battalions like it's a factory."

The view shifted, riding the sound of marching boots eastward, across rusted rail lines and burning refinery stacks, to Nirrough's coastal industrial belt.

Here, under a sky stained with orange smog and neon glare, towering cranes moved like skeletal giants over shipyards and airfields. Half-built warships sat in dry docks, their hulls a harsh mix of black steel and Death Regime biotech plating. On the adjacent runway, sleek black bombers waited with open bellies as technicians installed new payload racks.

Blackenstorm stalked along the edge of the runway in a long, storm-marked coat, lightning patterns flickering faintly across the fabric whenever his temper rose. His aura of aggression fit the environment: a place of engines, turbines, and weapons that roared louder than any speech.

"How many birds ready to fly?" he barked at his logistics officer.

"Twenty-two blackjets combat-ready, sir. Twelve bombers, six recon craft. The rest are in final assembly. Naval side—three blackcarriers, six destroyers, fourteen escorts at seventy percent completion."

Blackenstorm sucked his teeth, displeased. "Seventy percent don't scare nobody. I want full displacement on those blackcarriers. Load 'em with blackmarines, blackmarauders, whatever we got that shoots straight and doesn't cry under artillery."

He stepped closer to the nearest bomber, resting a gloved hand on its flank like he was greeting a war-animal.

"You hear me?" he muttered to the machine itself. "Next time those orange and blue clowns think the sea is safe, you come in low and ruin their day."

A squad of pilots passed in perfect formation. Blackenstorm stopped them with a raised hand.

"Y'all listen up," he snapped. "These jets? These ships? They ain't toys, and they damn sure ain't trophies. They tools. You take 'em up, you hit what you're told, you come back with empty racks and no excuses. Anyone crashes without takin' a piece of the enemy with 'em... we have a talk."

Their spines straightened. Helmets tucked tighter under their arms.

"Yes, Commander!" they shouted.

He let them go, satisfaction flickering in his eyes as engines roared to life behind him and another blackjet climbed into the smoky sky.

Deep in Nirrough's inner districts, the war took on a different flavor. Old entertainment blocks had been converted into propaganda corridors—holographic newsfeeds, graffiti murals, and live-broadcast booths pumping the Blackened narrative out over every corner of Eastoppola's corrupted networks.

Blackenstream leaned against the steel railing of an elevated walkway, hood half-up, watching blacksoldiers and civilians funnel past giant screens that flickered with doctored footage: Solar and Lunar defeats exaggerated, BRD victories looped in slow motion, Deathwing's resurrected armies framed as unstoppable tide.

"Signal strength?" he asked, not looking away.

A tech elite at his side, Blackbond, tapped a wrist console. "Every channel in this district's ours, Commander. We piggybacked on the old civic networks. If they turn off one tower, we light up three more."

Blackenstream smirked. "Good. I want 'em drownin' in our voice. Every time some ally tries to preach hope, I want our feeds talkin' over 'em. They say 'freedom,' we say 'rent's due.' They say 'peace,' we show them ships burnin'."

Down on street level, blackmarines patrolled with practiced swagger, checking IDs, directing traffic, dragging reluctant conscripts toward recruitment posts. A mobile stage rolled slowly along the avenue, speakers blasting Blackwing's clipped speeches mixed with bass-heavy tracks that turned threats into hooks.

A junior officer jogged up the stairs, panting. "Commander Blackenstream—Khihmouth's asking for more media units. They want live crews embedded with every blacksoldier company heading toward Westonglappa."

Blackenstream finally turned his head, one brow raised.

"Every company?" he echoed. "Man, they tryin' to run a reality show, not a war."

He thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Fine. Give 'em what they want, but stagger it. Some units get full camera love, others stay ghost. We gotta keep a few cards face-down for when the Four Lights start snoopin'. You ever play street games, kid?"

The officer blinked. "Uh, no, Commander."

"Lesson one," Blackenstream said. "Never show your whole stack. Now go. Shift crews to Khihmouth, tell 'em we want fear in high definition."

The shot moved again, riding on a column of armored vehicles grinding through cracked Eastoppolan highways. Black tanks, black APCs, troop trucks emblazoned with the Blackened crest thundered past ruined billboards and half-evacuated suburbs.

On one of the forward APCs, Blackenstride rode standing in the open top hatch, one hand on the rim, the other resting on the hilt of a sheathed blade at their hip. The wind whipped their coat back, revealing reinforced urban armor designed for close-quarters brawls.

Ahead, an old industrial yard had been repurposed into a killhouse labyrinth: stacked cargo containers, breached walls, and simulated alleyways. As the convoy rolled to a halt, Blackenstride jumped down, boots hitting the dirt with easy confidence.

"Out," they snapped. "Training rotation three—on me."

Blackmarauders spilled from the trucks, masked, carrying a mix of rifles and melee weapons. The air smelled of oil, dust, and cordite.

"This is Eastoppola now," Blackenstride called, pacing before them. "Tight streets, crooked corners, civilians howlin' from windows, allies hidin' behind every broken door thinkin' they heroes."

They pointed at the maze.

"You clear this in under five minutes, full squad intact, minimal noise—that's the baseline. You trip alarms, you leave 'hostages' alive, you hesitate in a doorway... that's a coffin drill. You run it again 'til your legs don't shake."

One marauder raised a hand. "Commander, what about the AES super-types? If we run into their elites—"

Blackenstride's eyes hardened.

"If you see an elite or some orange-blue-green capes, you mark their location, you keep your head down, and you let the big dogs handle it. You're ground units. Your job is to own the streets, not the sky. Clear?"

A chorus of "Yes, Commander!" rolled back.

"Good. Let's go. Move like you hate them, but think like you wanna live."

The squads vanished into the maze. Gunshots, stun blasts, smoke charges, and shouts echoed through the containers as Blackenstride watched with arms folded, correcting posture, timing, and formation like a cruel coach guiding a team toward a lethal championship.

When the smoke cleared and the last target dropped, they checked the timestamp.

"Four minutes, forty-two seconds," an instructor reported.

"Not trash," Blackenstride allowed. "But Westonglappa's gonna be worse. Again."

Night bled over Eastoppola as the final lens settled on the outskirts of Khihmouth, where a sprawling forward camp had erupted like a black fungus across the plains. Floodlights bathed tent rows and vehicle stacks in stark white. Distant artillery lined the horizon, barrels angled toward the yet-untouched states.

In the center of it all, under a canopy lined with tattered banners and portable screens, Blackenpuff held court.

She sat casually on the hood of an armored truck, one leg crossed over the other, boots tapping to a rhythm only she heard. Her armor was stylized, sharper and more decorative than the others—jagged shoulder plates, a high-collared jacket, and a half-mask pulled down around her neck like a scarf.

Around her, squads of fresh blacksoldiers lounged between drills, some still in partial training gear, others already dog-tagged and rifle-armed.

"You seeing this deployment map?" she called, flipping a holo-projection into the air. "Look at all these little markers. That's you. Tiny dots on a big ugly map. You know what I see when I look at that?"

A brave soldier in the front row shrugged. "...Targets?"

Blackenpuff laughed, bright and sharp. "Nah, sweetheart. I see bullets with legs. Every dot on that map is a problem we're about to deliver to the Four Lights."

She hopped down and paced slowly, hands in her pockets.

"Some of y'all think this is just about gettin' payback, right? 'They hit our blocks, now we hit theirs.' Cute. But this is bigger. Deathwing, Darkwing, our boss Blackwing, Shadowwing in his quiet horror-show—those four? They ain't playin' for internet clips. They playin' for rewrites. New rules. New history. You're the ink."

She leaned in toward the front rank, eyes glittering.

"You do your jobs right, and one day when they tell bedtime stories in these pretty little states, it won't be 'Once upon a time, the light saved us.' It'll be 'We messed around, and the dark came collectin'.' That's legacy."

The soldiers shifted, tension mixing with twisted pride.

An officer jogged up, saluting. "Commander Blackenpuff, intel says Blackendye, Blackenstorm, and Blackenstream are inbound. Supreme commanders' field check, ma'am."

"About time," she murmured, straightening.

Moments later, three silhouettes cut through the camp lights: Blackendye from the city, Blackenstorm smelling of fuel and exhaust, Blackenstream with half his face still lit by holo-screen reflection. They converged at the center, four Supreme Commanders forming a tight circle amid their gathered troops.

Blackendye looked around at the camp, then at the others.

"Khihmouth's pipeline's full," he said. "We got more recruits than beds and more anger than bullets. Logistics playin' catch-up, but we'll manage."

Blackenstorm jerked a thumb back toward the horizon. "Naval line and air wings are ready to move on command. First wave can hit Westonglappa's coasts and skies the second Deathwing gives the word."

Blackenstream rolled his shoulders. "Networks are jammed up with our voice. Eastoppola's feeds are ours, Shadowatranceslenta's linked in, Deathenbulkiztahlem on secure. Any AES broadcast that gets through is gonna sound like a whisper next to our noise."

Blackenpuff smiled. "Morale's fine. Fear is better. These kids know they're riding into hell, but they think they'll set it on fire themselves. That's exactly the line we want 'em on."

For a brief moment, none of them spoke. The distant rumble of engines and the monotonous chant of drilling blacksoldiers filled the space between them.

Then a projection flared to life above the camp: Deathwing's face, pale and composed, framed by the bone-architecture of Deathenbulkiztahlem's war room.

"Supreme Commanders of the Blackened Regime," his voice rang out, smooth and cold. "Your efforts are... satisfactory."

Blackenstorm snorted softly. "High praise from the corpse professor."

Deathwing continued as if he hadn't heard.

"Mobilization levels have reached the threshold. Continue your growth. Continue your conscriptions. The deathsoldiers multiply on my world; your blacksoldiers multiply on yours. Together, we will turn Westonglappa into a case study in systemic collapse."

His gaze seemed to track each of them in turn.

"Blackendye. Maintain your enlistment pressure. No alleys without a patrol. No rooftop without a rifle. If there is a shadow without a Blackened presence in Eastoppola, consider it a tumor and remove it."

"Blackendale and Blackenstride," he added, addressing those not physically present but listening across encrypted channels, "your urban operations will soften the interior states for eventual occupation."

"Blackenstorm. When I say the word, your fleets will move with Death Regime convoys. Think of our warships as organ donors for your firepower."

"Blackenstream, Blackenpuff. Keep the narrative poisoned. I want every Eastoppolan citizen to reach the same conclusion: resistance is not only futile, it is obsolete."

The projection dimmed slightly, Deathwing's eyes glinting with the same faint, sick humor that had colored his monologues earlier.

"The invasion begins soon," he said. "Echumeta, Nirrough, Shadowatranceslenta—they will be remembered as the first corners of the map to fall into proper darkness. Prepare yourselves."

The hologram vanished, leaving only the hum of generators and the steady, growing drum of war.

Blackendye exhaled slowly. "You heard the doc. This is the warm-up."

Blackenstorm cracked his knuckles, looking toward the unseen sea. "Soon as he says go, I want engines screaming and cities blacking out."

Blackenstream pulled his hood up again, half-smile returning. "I'll make sure the whole world's watching when it happens."

Blackenpuff hopped back onto the truck hood, raising one fist high.

"Y'all heard the man," she shouted to the camp. "This ain't practice no more. This is the prelude. Eat, gear up, get your last jokes out. Next time we move, it's toward someone else's home."

A roar rose from the assembled blacksoldiers, blackmarines, blackmarauders, and blackguards—an ugly, hungry sound that rolled across the fields and bounced back from the distant ruins of Eastoppola's old peace.

Above them, unseen but very much listening, the necro-winds of Deathwing's empire carried the same promise across regimes and borders:

The BRD was ready. The Four Lights were marked. And somewhere beyond the horizon, Westonglappa waited, unaware that the footsteps marching toward it had already decided how the next chapter would begin.

The Blackened Regime's war machine did not sleep after the BRD council adjourned.

While Blackwing and the Supreme Commanders dragged Eastoppola back under a single black flag, the camera of history dropped lower—down to barracks, hangars, docks, and back alleys—where the Blackened elites turned orders into reality.

In Nirrough's inner blocks, the old entertainment district had been gutted and rebuilt into a stacked barracks complex. Neon signs that once advertised clubs now burned with recruitment slogans, their light staining the rain-slick pavement a poisonous violet.

Blackchulo leaned on a rusted balcony rail three floors up, looking down into the central drill yard. The air throbbed with shouted cadence as hundreds of blacksoldiers pounded boots in unison, armor plates clacking like teeth.

"Left, right, left—nah, nah, I said left, you deaf or just stupid?" Blackchulo barked, voice bouncing off concrete. "You marchin' for the Blackened Regime now, not some school parade. Tighten that line, Blackdog, before I send you back to basic with your little cousins."

Beside him, Blackorren watched with arms crossed, expression cooler but no less hard. His braids were tied back tight, his long coat open just enough to show the pistol holsters at both hips.

"You ride 'em too hard, they'll break," Blackorren said, eyes tracking a squad of blackmarines jogging with weighted packs. "We need bodies on ships, not in clinics."

Blackchulo snorted. "Please. They wanna wear this crest, they better move like they mean it. Deathwing out here resurrectin' whole empires, and we still got fools tripping over their own laces? No, sir."

Down below, a drill sergeant shrieked at a lagging recruit until the entire line corrected itself. The blacksoldiers' helmets—matte dark-gray with the skull-and-crossbones stamped over the brow—bobbed like a single organism.

"Yo," Blackchulo called over the railing, "who you belong to?"

"BLACKWING!" the yard roared.

"And who sign your paycheck?"

"BRD!"

Blackorren allowed himself a thin, dangerous smile. "That's right," he murmured. "Let 'em chant it. By the time we hit Westonglappa, they'll believe it's a religion."

He turned away from the balcony and gestured for Blackchulo to follow. "Come on. Airfield inspection. Blackenstorm wants a readiness report in his inbox before midnight."

"Man, these Supreme Commanders out here treatin' us like we HR," Blackchulo muttered, but he peeled himself off the rail all the same. "Aight, let's go check on the birds."

The elite pair walked the long hallway toward the lifts. As they passed, recruits snapped to attention, hands flying to helmets. The respect wasn't pretty, but it was real—born of fear, admiration, and the knowledge that Blackchulo and Blackorren had survived more failed invasions than most of them had birthdays.

Outside Nirrough, the night opened into the sprawling flat of Jollhovalhn's primary airbase. Floodlights cast harsh white cones over rows of blackjets and blackbombers, their wings folded like sleeping predators. Technicians in dark coveralls swarmed the machines, bolting on new armor plates etched with Death Regime bone-runes.

Near the far hangar, Blackzarvia stood on the nose of a half-disassembled bomber, one boot braced against the fuselage, arms greasy to the elbow. Her hair was tied back under a bandanna, goggles pushed up on her forehead.

"Fuel line three is still whining," she shouted down to the crew chief. "I told you, you rush this install, we crash into the ocean before we even see Westonglappa's coastline."

The chief grimaced. "We're on Deathwing's timetable now, Blackzarvia. Orders say everything flies or floats by the end of the week."

"Then orders can grab a wrench and help," Blackzarvia shot back. "We don't strap necro-engines to these birds just to let them tear themselves apart. They gotta bring our people home."

She slid off the nose in a controlled drop, landing beside Blackvirel, who was scrolling through a holo-slate full of deployment schematics. The male elite's eyes glittered with calculation as he adjusted formation paths.

"You're moving Blackenpuff's squadron to the front of the formation?" Blackzarvia asked, wiping her hands on a rag.

Blackvirel shrugged. "They want firepower up front, camera coverage in the middle, reserves in the rear. Blackenpuff plays nice with Blackwing's media crews. Let them get their footage of big explosions while the rest of us do the actual flanking."

He flicked a finger and the little icons shifted—blackjets swooping in layered patterns, blackbombers trailing behind like sharks.

"Darkwing's people are shipping us more armor," Blackvirel added. "Darktanks on landing barges, darkmarines to plug any gaps if our lines crack."

"And Deathwing?" Blackzarvia asked quietly.

Blackvirel's mouth twisted. "Sending deathsoldiers to patch holes. Biotech cannon fodder. They don't get to come home either way."

Across the runway, a line of new blackbombers roared to life, engines spitting blue-white flame. Their hulls glimmered with a faint violet sheen—the telltale sign of Death Regime chemicals fused into fuel.

"You hear what Blackwing said at the rally?" Blackzarvia murmured, staring at the glow. "About hijacking broadcasts, flipping the narrative?"

Blackvirel nodded once. "Yeah. I heard. He wants the world watching when we hit Westonglappa. Wants every camera pointed at the BRD when the Four Lights realize 'victory' was just intermission."

He glanced sideways at her. "Our job is to make sure the show doesn't crash on takeoff."

Blackzarvia snorted. "Then get me more techs and less talk. These birds got a lot of war to fly."

Far from the airfields, at the edge of Nirrough's industrial docks, Blackzarnok strode down a steel pier as if it belonged to him personally.

The blackwater below slapped against the hulls of blackwarships—heavy, angular vessels bristling with guns and missile racks. Chains clanked, cranes groaned, and blackmarauders pushed pallets of ammunition into yawning cargo holds.

Blackzarnok's silhouette cut a brutal line: broad shoulders under a reinforced coat, fingers encased in armored gloves that could crack helmets or hull plating with equal ease. His skull helm was tucked under one arm, the other hand resting on the hilt of a long, cleaver-like blade.

"Check that seal again," he growled at a dock worker struggling with a container latch. "If that crate pops at sea, I will personally throw you overboard to plug the hole."

"Yes, Elite Blackzarnok!" the man yelped, scrambling to obey.

Along the pier, a row of fresh recruits waited in formation—blackmarauders and blackmarines destined for the first wave. Their uniforms still creaked with newness; some couldn't quite hide their nerves.

Blackzarnok paced in front of them, boots ringing against the metal.

"You all heard the speeches," he said, voice like sandpaper dragged over steel. "You heard Deathwing talk about balance and endings. You heard Darkwing scream about vengeance. You heard Blackwing clown on the Blueberries. Cute."

He stopped, staring down the line.

"Out here, none of that matters if you can't hold a line on a pitching deck in the middle of a bombardment. You're not just here to look menacing in propaganda. You're here to bleed, kill, and not fall over the rail while you're doing it."

One recruit swallowed. "Sir, what if the AES hits us with those golden beams again? The Galaxy ones... they—"

Blackzarnok stepped in close, gaze hard.

"Then you keep your formation and you do not embarrass yourself by dying with your back turned," he said. "Supreme Commanders and Absolute Leaders handle the gods. We handle everything under their feet. You so scared of the light, you shouldn't have signed up to walk in the dark."

The recruit straightened, jaw setting. "Yes, Elite Blackzarnok."

"Good," Blackzarnok said, turning away. "Now get on your ships. Echumeta needs more teeth in the water."

In a dimly lit floor beneath Nirrough's old government complex, a different kind of war churned.

Rows of terminals flickered in a cavernous room, cables snaking across the ceiling like black vines. Holo-screens showed dozens of channels at once—feeds from Echumeta's occupied cities, Darkened rallies, Shadow Regime surveillance, Death Regime lab updates. In the center, a raised platform held a ring of desks where Blackened media elites carved the narrative into shape.

At the hub sat Blackshyanna, fingers flying across a holistic control board. Her braids were pulled into a tight bun, eyes sharp behind narrow frames. Multiple earpieces fed her simultaneous reports; she sorted them without missing a beat.

"Cut camera two—Darkwing's foaming again, the spit's messing up the lens," she ordered. "Boost the drone shot from Nirrough Plaza instead, that crowd angle makes us look ten feet taller."

A junior tech frowned at his screen. "But the Echumeta clips show more tanks—"

"We'll use those in the recap montage," Blackshyanna said. "Right now I want faces. Rage sells. Tanks reassure. There's an order to these things."

She stabbed a key and the main feed shifted: Blackwing on stage, BMAIL blades on his back, crowds howling as he promised Westonglappa a 'reality check.' Text crawled beneath in three languages, all saying the same thing: BRD RISES. AES LIED. THE EXAM HAS ONLY BEGUN.

"What about the AES press conferences?" another staffer asked. "Galaxbeam's speeches are trending in Lunna and Sollarisca. People calling him a 'teacher of hope.'"

Blackshyanna snorted. "Good. Let them worship the professor. Makes it hurt more when the test goes sideways."

She flicked a hand and a new window opened: archived footage of Galaxbeam restoring the fallen Solar elites in the Field of Embers, orange and gold light flooding the screen.

"Cut this with deathpit footage from Echumeta," she decided. "Label it 'Selective Miracle Syndrome.' Our slogan: They resurrect their own, but your children stay in the ground."

Her team exchanged dark, approving smiles.

Blackshyanna's voice dropped, more intimate, as if addressing an invisible viewer beyond the glass.

"They think this is just about bombs and beams," she murmured. "They forget the war lives in people's heads first. BRD doesn't just want to win battles. We want them to doubt, every night, whether the Four Lights are worth the body count."

A comms icon flashed red on her console: a direct channel from Blackwing's office.

She tapped it. "Blackshyanna."

Blackwing's voice came through, lazy and lethal. "How's my image look, girl?"

"Sharp enough to cut," she replied. "Your approval numbers in Eastoppola just spiked. Half the kids in Jollhovalhn already using 'BRD' as a slang for 'crew'."

Blackwing laughed low. "That's what I like to hear. Keep sellin' the brand. Deathwing's lining up the product."

The line clicked off. Blackshyanna sat back for a second, watching her many screens repaint the world in Blackened colors.

In Nirrough's barracks, blacksoldiers shouted cadence.

On Jollhovalhn's airfields, blackjets cycled engines under a necro-lit sky.

At the docks, blackwarships took on weight, each hull a promise.

Across the BRD's four homeworlds, darksoldiers, blacksoldiers, shadowsoldiers, and deathsoldiers multiplied, drilled, and hardened under the watchful eyes of their elites. Supreme Commanders stalked the training fields like lesser tyrants, correcting stances, reassigning units, refining kill-zones.

In Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathwing watched it all through bone-screens and soul-feeds, hands folded behind his back as metrics climbed.

The Blackened Regime's elites did not know every detail of his larger plan. They did not need to. They felt it in the tightened schedules, the heavier shipments, the sharper edge in every order.

Something vast was coming.

On one of Blackshyanna's smaller screens, a new message flashed—priority routing, BRD-wide:

STAND BY FOR DEPLOYMENT WINDOWS:
PRIMARY THEATERS – EASTOPPOLAN COASTLINES / WESTONGLAPPA APPROACHES.
EXECUTION AUTHORITY: DARKWING / BLACKWING / SHADOWWING / DEATHWING.

Blackshyanna smirked, hands already moving to prepare the next wave of broadcasts.

In the drill yards, Blackchulo blew his whistle and drove the blacksoldiers faster.

At the airbase, Blackzarvia slapped the side of a finished blackbomber with something like affection. "Time to earn your name."

On the docks, Blackzarnok looked out over the blackwater and bared his teeth.

The Blackened Regime was ready.

Somewhere far above, on a wounded dreadnought and in bone palaces across the void, four Absolute Leaders aligned their war clocks.

The invasion had not yet begun.

But in the streets, hangars, and harbors of the Blackened domains, the elites had already started walking as if they could hear its footsteps.

While Nirrough's docks thundered and Echumeta's foundries screamed, the homeland of the Shadow Regime answered the call to war with almost no sound at all.

Shadowatranceslenta did not roar. It watched.

Night lay over the continent like a living veil, broken only by dim, deliberate lights—no neon, no flooding searchlamps, just disciplined points of glow where the Supreme Commanders had allowed illumination.

On the western plain outside one of the principal states, a regiment of shadowsoldiers stood in disciplined ranks beside shadowtanks—low, angular machines whose armor seemed to drink the starlight. The engines were running, but only a low, predatory hum seeped into the air.

A tall figure in layered black stood in front of them, cloak cut to fall straight as an execution blade. His insignia was understated; only the sharpened sigil at his collar marked him as Supreme Commander.

Shadowgaunt.

He lifted one hand, gloved fingers flexing once.

The entire battalion moved.

Shadowtank crews vaulted into their hatches in synchronized silence, boots landing without a clank. Shadowsoldiers flowed up the hulls and into external harnesses, weapons held close, visors dimmed. Within seconds, the still line of metal had become a living column of motion—no shouting, no barked orders, just a choreography of training and fear.

From his raised platform, Shadowgaunt watched the HUDs flicker across the inside of his visor. Each crew's vitals, each machine's heat, each gun's readiness.

Good. Not perfect. Not yet.

He raised his right hand and traced a sharp downward diagonal.

The first row of shadowtanks rolled forward in near-unison, treads gripping silently over special baffled track. Target silhouettes—Lunar-blue APCs, Solar-orange walkers, Star-green drones—flickered into being along the valley walls, hard-light projections pulled directly from AES battle archives.

No one shouted "fire."

The order came in a ripple of hand signs from Shadowgaunt—two fingers, twist, open palm.

The guns spoke for them.

Muzzles thumped, the recoil swallowed by dampers. The projected vehicles exploded in quiet flares of light as shells tore through them. A few impacts landed wide; Shadowgaunt's left hand clenched once, logging the error. Crew identifiers glowed amber on his internal display.

He would remember those numbers.

A shadowtank at the rear hesitated at a simulated incline—a training slope angled steeper than most natural terrain. Its driver's heart rate spiked in his "sight." Shadowgaunt's gaze narrowed.

Without a word, he stepped off the platform and walked down the ramp, cloak trailing like a cut slice of night.

Soldiers saw him coming and moved aside without being told, parting just enough for him to pass through the ranks. He reached the hesitating tank as it ground to a slower climb, treads slipping half a centimeter.

He put one hand against the glacis plate.

The driver inside flinched, feeling the faint, unnatural cold through the hull.

Shadowgaunt tapped twice.

The internal comms flared to life with his voice—low, precise, used rarely enough that every syllable carried weight.

"Fear," he said quietly, "is louder than any engine."

A pause. The driver didn't dare respond.

"You will not let the enemy hear you from inside your own throat," Shadowgaunt continued. "Again. With intent."

His hand stayed on the armor. The shaking vitals in his visor steadied, breath smoothing, pulse dropping. The tank's engine revved—not louder, but cleaner—and the machine climbed the slope this time without slipping.

Shadowgaunt let his fingers fall away.

"Better," he murmured, then cut the channel and turned back to the field.

He raised both hands now, drawing a series of complex symbols in the air—commands for flanking, overlapping arcs, false retreats. Across the valley, the shadowtanks obeyed, lines flexing and folding like a single living organism.

High overhead, invisible to the crews, a ring of shadowsaboteurs and shadowspies watched from the edge of the training perimeter—hoods pulled low, faces masked, fingers resting on railings rather than rifles.

Their Supreme Commander was watching them too.

Deeper inside Shadowatranceslenta, beneath a city of tilted towers and narrow silent streets, an underground complex pulsed with a different kind of preparation.

Where Shadowgaunt drilled armor and artillery into quiet perfection, Shadowmorrow carved the next phase of war into human nerve and bone.

The corridor to her training hall swallowed light. Only small lumens along the floor traced a path, guiding recruits to the central chamber. No one spoke; if anyone stumbled, they caught themselves and kept moving without a sound.

The hall opened suddenly—a wide, circular space with multiple levels of platforms and catwalks suspended in semi-darkness. At first glance, it looked empty.

Then the eyes adjusted.

Figures moved along the walls, up in the rafters, through what looked like solid stone. Masks flashed for a fraction of a second, reflective lenses catching the faintest light before disappearing again.

Shadowsaboteurs. Shadowspies. Shadowinfiltrators.

Shadowmorrow stood at the center of the chamber on a low dais, cloak pinned at one shoulder, hands folded. Her face was uncovered: pale, thoughtful, eyes the color of exhausted dusk. A slender blade rested at her hip, untouched.

She did not need it for this.

Her right hand made a small circle in the air. A training scenario spun into place around her: ghostly outlines of buildings rising from the floor, faint blue silhouettes standing in windows and doorways—the holographic "civilians" of a Westonglappan border city.

Above, near the ceiling, a bell chimed—one clear, soft note.

The operation began.

Shadowfigures dropped from platforms without a sound, catching themselves on cables that were not visible to the untrained eye. One infiltrator slid along the underside of a walkway, hanging by fingertips, bypassing three simulated cameras whose cones of vision pulsed faintly on Shadowmorrow's internal model.

At the far perimeter, a pair of shadowsaboteurs slipped through what seemed like solid wall—their bodies phasing partially into the overlapping shadow-plane, a trick that took years to master without leaving pieces behind.

They emerged inside a projected AES warehouse full of ordinance crates and fuel tanks. One raised two fingers, then bent them; the other nodded back and began placing non-lethal dampeners on key nodes—silent tech stolen from an old Galaxy Regime skirmish.

Shadowmorrow watched every movement via thin sensory threads that stretched through the room, anchored in her own trained mind. Wherever a recruit's attention stuttered, she felt the static. Wherever fear spiked, the shadow around them thickened.

On one balcony, a newer spy hesitated at the edge of a jump. The gap to the next platform yawned wider than he had trained for; below, the "street" of holographic Westonglappa glowed faintly.

Shadowmorrow's gaze tilted up. She lifted one hand and drew a single diagonal line across her chest: a command.

The recruit saw it, swallowed, and went.

He jumped, hit the next platform, rolled, almost slipped—and then stabilized, knife already in hand to take down the "guard" target that flickered into being before him.

Shadowmorrow's mouth did not smile, but something in her eyes warmed by a fraction of a degree.

A whisper brushed her ear—part comms, part psychic relay.

"Supreme Commander," said Shadowhex, voice soft as static, from an observation alcove above. "Corner cell five. They're about to trip the phantom alarm."

Shadowmorrow flicked two fingers. The alarm glyph faded from red to amber—still a failure, but not an unrecoverable one.

The pair struggling at corner cell five never knew how close they had come to "death." They only knew the tension in the room sharpened, and moved more carefully, hands mimicking the pattern they had drilled a thousand times.

"Again," Shadowmorrow said finally, her voice drifting through the chamber as the simulation ended in a slow collapse of light.

The word was barely above a murmur, but every trainee heard it.

"We do it again," she continued, "until even your dreams leave no footprints."

Her hand swept sideways. The Westonglappan architecture shifted, transforming into the interior of an AES embassy compound—Solar guards at the gate, Lunar advisors in side rooms, Star tech consoles humming quietly in the background.

"New scenario," Shadowhex announced, dropping down from his perch in a swirl of cloak and cables. His features were obscured by a half-mask that wrapped up and over his scalp, wires trailing from its edge into the back of his collar.

He gestured once and a web of lines appeared over the embassy layout—communications links, power flows, data routes.

"This is how their information breathes," Shadowhex said, his voice flowing like smoke, neutral and precise. "We will learn to suffocate it without them screaming until it's too late."

A murmur of agreement passed through the assembled spies—not spoken aloud, but in the flex of fingers, the small shift of stance, the angle of poised knives.

While the trainees scattered into their new positions, Shadowmorrow and Shadowhex stepped aside to the edge of the dais.

"Deathwing wants insertion teams ready for Westonglappa ahead of the main fleets," Shadowhex said, keeping his tone low. "His last memo included troop projections, AES response patterns, and... a note."

Shadowmorrow tilted her head. "A note?"

Shadowhex's eyes flicked to her, a wry glint barely visible under the mask.

"He reminded us that peace talks in the past failed because no one was watching the right rooms," he said. "He intends we fix that mistake."

Shadowmorrow's fingers tapped a slow pattern on her forearm—an old Shadow sign for we were born to.

Above them, the training constructs shifted again as another drill cycle spun up. Shadowsoldiers melted into walls. Shadowspies walked across nothing. Shadowmorrow closed her eyes briefly, feeling the flow of them, as if each moving body were a note in a silent song.

Elsewhere across Shadowatranceslenta, the work continued.

In a subterranean motor pool, Shadowgaunt walked between lines of shadowtanks being rearmed, each crew moving under the watchful gaze of elite instructors. One miswired feed, one careless noise, and a Supreme Commander's shadow would fall over them like judgment.

In a separate wing of the spy complex, Shadowmorrow oversaw a small cadre of specialists practicing identity theft in a literal sense—training to wear borrowed faces using liquid shadow-tech that flowed over their skin, reshaping features into the perfect mimicry of captured AES officers.

Shadowhex spent his hours in a signal chamber filled with floating glyphs: intercepted transmissions from Sollarisca, Lunna, Starrup, and Galaxenchi. He cataloged speech patterns, security codes, emotional tones. For every sermon Sunbeam gave, for every careful briefing Galaxbeam held, Shadowhex built a parallel language of vulnerabilities.

On a balcony high above the capital, Shadowcipher—Absolute Leader, architect of silence—stood with his cloak open to the wind, watching it all unfold. Even he spoke little, but the Supreme Commanders could feel his approval like an extra shadow on their shoulders.

From a distance, an outsider might have thought Shadow Regime calm, almost untouched by the frenzy that gripped Darkened, Blackened, and Death territories.

Inside, the truth was different.

Shadowgaunt watched a tank regiment complete a flawless, lights-out encirclement drill and thought:

When Westonglappa looks to its ports and skies, they will not see us. Only our tracks, after.

Shadowmorrow watched a trainee map the entire escape route of a target with a single glance at a diagram and thought:

When AES wonders why their alliances crumble, they will not suspect a whisper that never existed.

Shadowhex watched a Solarisca broadcast freeze and glitch for 0.3 seconds, just enough to insert a subliminal splice untraceable to common tech, and thought:

When the Four Lights feel dread and cannot source it, we will be there, between their heartbeats.

On Deathwing's bone-screens, data rolled: shadowsoldier numbers, shadowtank readiness, completed infiltration drills. The columns for Shadow Regime shifted from red to amber, from amber to green.

In Deathenbulkiztahlem, on the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz, Deathwing's thin smile returned.

Darkened had their rage legions.

Blackened had their loud, hungry armies and weaponized media.

Shadow had their unseen hand, now trained and sharpened.

Death, of course, would bring the endgame.

Far below, in the deepest level of Shadowatranceslenta's training complex, the spies and saboteurs ran the embassy scenario again. This time, not a single phantom alarm flickered.

No footsteps.

No screams.

Only the soft, almost inaudible click of a door that had never been opened.

In Shadowatranceslenta, night was not the absence of light but the presence of intention.

The continent's cities breathed in gradients of violet, indigo, and black—streets lit only where the intelligence directorate allowed, plazas shaped like listening ears, towers built with more blind corners than windows. Above it all, the veiled moon crawled behind a permanent haze, never quite showing its full face.

Along the armored balcony of the Central Veil Citadel, six silhouettes walked in formation, their capes trailing like segments of one continuous shadow.

Shadowadye, Shadowadale, Shadowastream, Shadowastride, Shadowastorm, Shadowapuff.

The Supreme Commanders of the Shadow Regime.

They descended together into the training district, where the quiet war for Westoppola was already being rehearsed in hundreds of small, precise routines.

Below, formations of shadowsoldiers, shadowmarines, and shadowguards moved without a shout or cadence. Their boots landed in perfect, sound-dampened rhythm; their rifles and sub-weapons were modified with built-in flash suppressors and spectral dampeners. Even the tank crews ran drills in silence, only the faint hum of engines and the click of toggles marking their activity.

Shadowadye moved first, stepping off the balcony rail as if gravity were a suggestion and landing in the middle of an open courtyard.

The shadowsoldiers nearest to the impact point did not flinch, but all eyes flicked to the Supreme Commander wearing the matte-black officer's mantle, a dozen knife-sheaths sewn into the lining like extra vertebrae.

"Form seven," Shadowadye said quietly.

The command was almost a whisper, but the entire unit reconfigured at once. Fireteams broke apart and reassembled into infiltration cells, each one assigning a sniper, a sapper, a hacker, and a silent executioner. Holographic projectors around the court flickered, replacing the Shadow Regime sigils with Westonglappa cityscapes—docks in Pazzunberg, alleyways in Grenvultgrass, administrative blocks in Kroson and Akabucholyr.

Shadowadye examined the shifting images with a clinical gaze.

"Entry points?" the Supreme Commander asked.

A junior squad leader stepped forward and drew invisible lines across the air; a HUD translated it into a tactical overlay. Sewer vents. Cargo lifts. Maintenance tunnels. Civic data hubs with outdated security.

"Their comfort is our doorway," Shadowadye murmured. "They like lights on their docks and music in their plazas. Good. We will hide under the music."

Nearby, Shadowadale strode through the armored battalion yards like a walking verdict.

Rows of shadowtanks stood under vaulted hangars, dark hulls absorbing the violet floodlights. Engineers moved around them like careful insects, installing spectral plating, calibrated phasing coils, and low-frequency jammers that let the machines slip in and out of detection grids.

A tank commander snapped to attention as Shadowadale approached.

"Status," the Supreme Commander said simply.

"All Shadow-V3 units combat-ready, Supreme Commander. Shadow-V4 phasing chassis at seventy percent integration. Crews have completed night-blind driving and zero-light targeting drills."

Shadowadale ran a gloved hand along the side of one tank, fingers tracing the etched emblem: a hollow eye piercing through a ring of static. The symbol of armored espionage.

"Good," Shadowadale replied. "But no one in Westoppola should ever see these from the front. You fire once, then you are gone. If they can point a camera at you, you have already failed."

The words traveled through the ranks like a cold current. Crews straightened in their hatches, accepting the standard without protest. In Shadowatranceslenta, glory was not in being seen; it was in being the reason someone never woke up to see another dawn.

Overhead, in the signal towers, Shadowastream turned the entire continent into a web of listening points.

Inside a darkened control theater, muted screens showed grainy feeds of Eastoppolan harbors, trade routes, and civil communication lines—encrypted calls between port authorities, routine navigation traffic, even late-night talk shows where nervous hosts joked about "rumors of ghosts on the sea lanes."

Shadowastream stood in the center of the room, eyes reflecting rows of data as staffers fed intercepted traffic into translation and pattern engines.

"Cross-reference that ship ID," Shadowastream said, voice calm. "They registered in Paladimee last week and in Jollhovalhn three days ago. Projected path?"

A tech traced a line that led toward Westonglappa's Auttumotto coast.

Shadowastream's expression barely shifted.

"That convoy will be ours," the Supreme Commander said. "Not now. Not dramatically. We will shave containers from its manifests, alter its route by degrees, and attach whispers to its crew lists. By the time BRD moves in force, the Westoppolans will already be doubting their own supply chains."

A quiet acknowledgement rose from the staff. Shadowastream's wars were fought in the invisible tension between what people expected and what actually arrived.

At the far edge of the district, Shadowastride watched a sabotage drill unfold across a full-scale mock-up of a Westonglappan industrial district.

The training ground was a maze of scaffolds, false alleys, dummy substations, and replicated control rooms. In its labyrinth shadowsquads moved with predatory precision, climbing, vaulting, and dropping in coordinated sweeps.

"Team C, you're loud," Shadowastride called out, voice flat but cutting. "Your footfalls are clean, but your breathing spikes when you change elevation. They'll hear your lungs before your blades."

The squad froze mid-transition. Their squad leader, a lean shadowsoldier with three mission bars on the pauldron, bowed their head.

"Yes, Supreme Commander."

Shadowastride stepped into the maze, demonstrating without formal declaration. The Supreme Commander moved through the scaffold forest like a detached shadow given bone and muscle—hands finding rails and ledges without looking, body compressing and expanding at just the right moments. No excess motion. No exposed joints when passing under simulated cameras.

In under thirty seconds, Shadowastride traversed the entire grid, disabled all six practice "guards," and reappeared beside the squad without anyone seeing how the path was taken.

"Again," Shadowastride said, gaze impassive. "You will not keep up with Shadowwing if you treat walls like obstacles instead of invitations."

Thunder rolled once, low and distant, but there were no clouds.

It was Shadowastorm.

Outside the city, on a broad coastal plain that faced the phantom sea, the Supreme Commander directed atmospheric weapons tests. A line of shadowartillery pieces—long-barreled cannons etched with runes of distortion—stood ready along the rise. Each barrel pointed toward a calm patch of ocean where no ships sailed, where only sensor buoys watched and recorded.

"Phase three," Shadowastorm ordered.

The crews adjusted dials; the cannons discharged not fire, but trembling pockets of vacuum that bent the air into sudden, violent fractures. Out at sea, waves abruptly stood still in jagged plates, then collapsed into chaotic cross-currents. The sensor buoys' readings spiked, then vanished.

"Again," Shadowastorm said. "We need a precise radius. Westoppolan fleets must believe they've sailed into a freak storm. Not an artillery test."

A junior officer hesitated.

"Supreme Commander... if we miscalculate, their ships will sink before we want them to."

Shadowastorm regarded the gray horizon.

"That is the point. War is not a clean narrative. We will give Deathwing his bodies. We will give Blackwing his footage. We will give Darkwing his reason to gnash his teeth at the sky. Our role is to make sure none of the victims understand how they died."

Back toward the heart of the city, the mood shifted as one approached Shadowapuff's domain.

It was not softer—merely stranger.

Shadowapuff's section of the citadel resembled a comfortable lounge crossed with an interrogation cell. Lamps cast warm violet light over low couches, tea tables, and walls lined with books, masks, and quiet projection screens. But behind each cushion and curtain lay hidden restraints, soporific gas vents, and emotion-reading sensors.

Tonight, the Supreme Commander sat with a captured Eastoppolan intelligence officer, the prisoner's face relaxed, eyes half-lidded, speaking freely under a carefully curated haze of calm.

"I just don't understand why our admirals keep saying we're ready," the officer confessed, staring into their untouched cup. "The schedules, the budgets, the pressure... it all feels like we're being rushed into an exam no one studied for."

Shadowapuff smiled gently.

"That sounds exhausting," the Supreme Commander said in a soothing tone. "Tell me more about these... schedules."

The officer spoke, and spoke, and somewhere behind a one-way panel, Shadowastream's analysts logged every word.

Later, when the prisoner slept under a perfectly calibrated dream-induction field, Shadowapuff joined the other Supreme Commanders in a high, windowless chamber.

Holographic maps of Westoppola and Eastoppola floated in a sphere around them, point-lights marking every port, garrison, and suspected AES liaison cell.

Shadowadye folded their arms. "Our sabotage teams will be in position within the week. Westoppolan maintenance crews will swear they are simply overworked when the real failures begin."

Shadowadale nodded once. "Armored detachments are ready to deploy as 'unnamed reinforcements' to any of Darkwing's frontal assaults. If his lines break, our tanks will appear as his miracle. It will keep him cooperating."

Shadowastream marked several routes with a gesture. "We will direct rumors and misreports to keep AES fleets chasing ghosts. Their communication lags will be our battlefield."

Shadowastride rested one hand on the table's edge. "Our infiltrators already have uniforms for five separate Westoppolan services. When Blackwing wants footage, we will provide him a riot no one can trace."

Shadowastorm's eyes closed briefly, as if listening to something far above. "When Deathwing signals, the sea will rise on his side."

Shadowapuff exhaled slowly, expression calm.

"And when the civilians begin to panic," they said, "when their anchors cry on live broadcasts and their presidents deliver shaking speeches about 'isolated incidents,' I will make sure their fear saturates the airwaves. Their terror is an accelerant. The more they dread us, the weaker their resistance becomes."

Far away, somewhere between Shadowatranceslenta and Deathenbulkiztahlem, necro-winds stirred as if they, too, were listening.

The six Supreme Commanders fell into a thoughtful silence.

In the distance, the spectral outline of the Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz drifted across the high sky like a slow-moving omen, its violet underlights blinking in a silent pattern only the BRD command staff understood.

Shadowadye finally spoke, voice even.

"Deathwing wants Westoppola to learn that death is no longer a conclusion," the Supreme Commander said. "Our task is simpler. We will teach them that shadows are not an absence. They are a presence they never learned to see."

The others accepted this without ceremony.

Outside, across Shadowatranceslenta, thousands of shadowsoldiers, shadowmarines, shadowguards, and shadowzealots continued their drills—learning to walk inside blind spots, to shoot without muzzle-flash, to drive tanks that could vanish off radar at will.

The Shadow Regime was readying itself not merely to fight in the coming invasion, but to be the unseen hand that tipped every scale, opened every door, and cut every wire at just the right moment.

Somewhere in the dark, Shadowwing himself turned his hooded gaze toward Westoppola, and the six Supreme Commanders felt the silent command pass through them like a cold wind.

Prepare.

They already were.

The briefing chamber's lights slowly dimmed, leaving only the central holo-sphere of Westonglappa hovering in violet relief. When Shadowadye finally dismissed the officers with a crisp flick of his cloak, the orders rippled outward through Shadowatranceslenta like a cold front.

Within minutes, the Supreme Commanders' directives had turned into drills, and the drills into something much closer to quiet war.

The Shadow Regime moved.

Not with parades. With precision.

On the outskirts of one of Shadowatranceslenta's inland fortress-cities, a vast armored training ground glowed dimly under a tinted sky. The floodlights were set low on purpose; darkness was a teaching tool here, not an obstacle.

Lines of shadowtanks rolled across black earth, their hulls painted in a soot-matte blend that swallowed light. Alongside them, armored personnel carriers and shadowmobile artillery units maneuvered through tight obstacle courses, engines humming instead of roaring, every exhaust muffled, every track wrapped in sound-dampening mesh.

Shadowadale walked the firing line like an executioner inspecting tools, hands behind his back, cloak trimmed with commander-sigils. His gaze tracked every movement: turret rotations, reload times, communication hand-signs flashed between gunners and spotters.

But the one he watched most closely tonight was the elite standing atop the lead tank, one boot braced on the turret rim, one hand resting casually on the hatch.

Shadowkeen.

"Crew One," Shadowkeen murmured, voice low but carrying through the internal vox. "Simulate blackout. No external targeting systems. You will drive and fire blind—only on my marks."

The tank's external sensors dimmed. Inside, the crew fell into a darkness broken only by narrow crimson instrument-slits.

"Forward," Shadowkeen ordered.

The tank moved. Slow, then faster, then faster still, rumbling toward a mock village of concrete husks and ruined towers. On the flanks, shadowsoldiers jogged in formation, rifles slung, eyes tracking every angle.

At the last instant, Shadowkeen snapped his fingers.

It was like someone had poured ink into the air around the tank. The vehicle's outline blurred, then thinned, then vanished altogether, swallowed by a sudden nimbus of shadow that extended out like an aura.

From the observation ridge, other elites leaned forward. The tank was still moving—the ground shudder proved that—but only the faint distortion of dust gave it away.

"Target House C," Shadowkeen said calmly.

Inside the armored darkness, the gunner trusted the voice and not his eyes. Turret turned, elevation adjusted, firing solution aligned on nothing but instinct and the elite's timing.

"Fire."

The shell erupted from nothingness—no muzzle flash, no visible barrel, just a sudden streak of kinetic force punching straight through House C's reinforced wall. The concrete structure collapsed inward, then dissolved in a haze of null-light as the impact's shadow charge detonated.

Shadowadale nodded once.

"Again," Shadowkeen called. "With moving infantry screens this time. If you clip a shadowsoldier, you repeat the course until you forget what sleep is."

The crew answered with a unified, quiet "Understood."

Around them, other tanks rolled into similar drills, each under an elite's guidance, learning to vanish between moments, to fire and reposition while barely existing in the visible spectrum. Shadowkeen moved from vehicle to vehicle, refining angles, correcting posture, dragging the armored branch closer to the impossible standard the Supreme Commanders had set.

Far from the armored fields, the Shadow Regime bled into a different kind of terrain: a sprawling simulation complex built to mimic foreign coasts.

Holo-waters lapped black at reconstructed piers. Mock warehouses rose in rows, their signage bearing false foreign scripts loosely modeled after Westonglappan ports. Within this ghost dockyard, squads of shadowsoldiers and shadowrangers waited in absolute silence, crouched in the lee of stacked crates and fuel drums.

Shadownocturnal stood atop a crane arm, coat flapping only slightly in the chill wind. At his side, Shadowstealth balanced as easily as if the narrow beam had been solid ground, eyes half-lidded, watching everything.

"Third squad," Shadownocturnal whispered, though his voice barely carried farther than Shadowstealth's ear. "You are already dead. You just haven't embarrassed yourselves enough to prove it yet. Move on my count."

Below, a squad of elites-in-training tensed.

"Three. Two. One."

The dock exploded into motion—but not sound.

Shadows streaked from cover to cover: shapes that barely registered against the dark, slipping through gaps in fencing, flattening themselves against hulls. A simulated convoy of "enemy" cargo trucks rolled down the quay, escorted by training drones disguised as patrol units.

Shadowstealth raised one hand, fingers drawing a sigil in the air. The street lamps flickered, then died, plunging the convoy lane into a deeper black.

From that black, hands reached up.

Ropes looped over railings with muffled thumps. Shadowsoldiers climbed, blades already in gloved fists. Each "kill" was marked by a faint green blink on the observers' HUDs: neck, ribs, throat, joints—silent, surgical strikes.

A drone pivoted, mechanical eye glowing, catching the edge of a cloak.

Shadownocturnal flicked a throwing knife.

The blade traveled in an arc that should have been impossible in such low light, guided more by the elite's instinctive grasp of angles than by vision. It struck the drone's sensor with a dull crack. The machine spun, glitched, then went inert.

"Too slow," Shadownocturnal murmured. "Again. This time with counter-sentries."

Shadowstealth dropped silently from the crane, landing among the trainees.

"When they shoot back," he said, voice quiet enough that they had to lean in to hear, "you will not scream. You will not panic. You will become less than smoke. You will make the very act of aiming at you a waste of their ammunition."

He snapped his fingers.

Laser grids flared along the quay. Automated turrets whirred to life, sweeping the warehouses. Panic would have been a natural reaction. Instead, the squad dissolved—bodies flattening to the pavement, cloaks flaring into sheets that drank the laser lines, silhouettes sliding behind support beams before the turrets could track.

From a control room above, Shadowadye watched the feeds, noting each mistake, each recovery. Names scrolled in small characters alongside performance graphs. At the margin of his vision, a news-sigil from Deathenbulkiztahlem flickered: Deathwing's latest resource allotments had arrived. Shadow Regime training quotas would rise again tomorrow.

Tonight, the elites made sure their shadows met the standard.

Deeper in the heartland of Shadowatranceslenta, where the cities were built vertical and close, like rows of knives turned upward, the war looked different.

Here, Shadowviral and Shadowbright moved not among tanks or docks, but among servers and spectral engines.

They stood in a cavernous chamber beneath a major node-city, where entire walls were layered with floating glyphs—data-streams rendered in three-dimensional symbols. Lines of code became drifting banners of light, messages collapsing and expanding like breathing.

"This one," Shadowviral said, plucking a thread of luminescent script from the air. "AES logistics channel. Civilians will never see it, but their transports will obey it down to the millimeter."

He twisted the thread. It quivered, then split, one branch continuing in bright, honest gold; the other darkened, folding inwards, mirroring the same pattern but bending a fraction of a second ahead.

"Ghost route," Shadowbright observed. "You are going to make them believe there's a safe lane through the storm that doesn't exist."

Shadowviral smiled faintly.

"Not exactly. I'm going to make them believe all lanes are safe until they have already chosen the worst one. Then we simply... pull."

On the far side of the chamber, rows of shadowtech operators sat at interfaces, cloaks draped over their chairs. Their fingers moved in complex rhythms, weaving infiltrations into enemy comm grids, planting sleeper-sigils in bandwidth the heroes assumed was clean.

On screens, simulations played:

Convoys rerouted by fake weather warnings.

Evacuation orders subtly delayed.

Nonexistent "friendly patrols" inserted into AES maps—harmless now, lethal later.

Shadowbright lifted his hands and drew two opposing sigils in the air: one for "truth," one for "lie." He overlapped them until the lines blurred.

"They will call this propaganda when they finally see it," he murmured. "But propaganda is loud. This is... surgery."

Shadowviral nodded.

"War is not just blood and fire anymore," he said. "It is what they think is happening when the blood and fire arrive."

He reached for another thread, this one pulsing from Nirrough and Jollhovalhn—Blackened media feeds, full of sharp, swaggering rhetoric.

"Speaking of loud," he added. "Blackwing's channels are ready to echo whatever Deathwing announces. We only have to make sure the signals stay ahead of the bullets."

They went back to work, their motions delicate and deadly, weaving a net of misinformation that would stretch from Shadowatranceslenta to the coasts of Westonglappa.

Near the high reaches of Shadow Regime airspace, where the clouds thinned and the sky took on a bruised violet sheen, another kind of elite prepared.

Shadowcelesto stood at the edge of a hanger platform that jutted from a mountain-side like a blade. Below, the drop was sheer; above, the sky arched wide and empty. The only lights were the dim, hooded lamp-globes along the hanger's ceiling and the subdued glow from the wings of the craft lined up behind him.

They were neither planes nor gliders, not fully. Eclipse wings, Shadow Regime's answer to high-altitude insertion: skeletal frames of dark alloy, wrapped in thin, reactive fabric that could bend light, heat, and radar signatures.

Shadowraffaele checked the clamps on one such wing, running his hands over the joints, listening to the way the metal hummed.

"Wind is steady," he reported quietly. "No anomalous currents. Shadowanchors in the upper atmosphere are holding."

Shadowcelesto nodded, eyes on the flickering spectral map projected in front of them—a holographic ribbon showing trade lanes, patrol routes, and the faint outline of Westonglappa's coastal geography.

"We will ride just beneath their awareness," Shadowcelesto said. "Higher than their eyes, lower than their satellites. When Galaxbeam starts moving his pieces to 'protect' them, we will already be charting his shadows."

Behind them, a squad of shadowelite pilots tightened harnesses, checked the lock-runes on their eclipse wings, and adjusted oxygen masks. None spoke more than necessary.

"Orders are simple," Shadowcelesto continued. "Recon, not engagement. You will map their coastal defenses, identify which ports panic first when rumor of invasion hits, and avoid every fight you can. The first blow belongs to the Absolutes. Our job is to make sure they know exactly where to aim it."

Shadowraffaele gave a small, tight grin.

"And if we happen to clip a few of their early-warning systems on the way out?"

"If it looks like an accident," Shadowcelesto said, "I will not complain."

A klaxon gave a soft, descending tone—launch window open.

One by one, the elites stepped to the edge with their wings folded tight. Then, at Shadowcelesto's hand-signal, they jumped.

For a heartbeat, they fell as dark shapes against darker stone. Then the eclipse wings flared open, cloth rippling, frames catching the air. They banked as one, turned, and vanished into the upper dark, streaks of deeper shadow against the sky.

Shadowcelesto watched until they were gone, then turned back into the hanger, mind already on the next flight schedule, the next set of coordinates from Deathenbulkiztahlem.

Across Shadowatranceslenta, similar scenes repeated.

Shadowsoldiers drilled in kill-houses with no lights at all.

Shadowmarines ran boarding exercises on blackened hulls in submerged training docks, learning to hold their breath in ways that had nothing to do with lungs.

Shadowrangers practiced disappearing into the cracks of cities, each one becoming another unremarkable shape in a crowd—until they were not.

Shadowmarauders studied Westonglappan trade lists, memorizing the names of towns they had never seen, mouths forming foreign syllables without sound.

Through it all, the Supreme Commanders' orders threaded like dark veins: sharpen, quiet, multiply. Deathwing's resource shipments continued to arrive—bones, biofuel, necro-circuits—interfacing cleanly with Shadow Regime stealth-tech.

And the elites—Shadowkeen, Shadownocturnal, Shadowstealth, Shadowviral, Shadowbright, Shadowcelesto, Shadowraffaele, and the many others whose names would never be spoken outside classified war-rooms—did their work.

No speeches. No banners.

Just the steady, disciplined construction of a nightmare that would move through Westonglappa like a disease of absence: ships that vanished, lights that flickered out at the wrong moment, decisions nudged a few degrees into catastrophe.

In the quiet heart of Shadowatranceslenta, a single signal rune glowed on a command pillar, pulsing in time with a distant will.

Deathwing was watching their progress.

Soon, his summons would arrive.

For now, the Shadow Regime elites honed themselves in the dark, ready to step into the spaces between the Four Lights the moment the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency called them forward.

While the last of the Shadow Regime elites slipped back into the violet hollows of Shadowatranceslenta, the necro-winds over Deathenbulkiztahlem began to howl.

The Death Regime's continent did not sleep. It multiplied.

Factories the size of cities pulsed against the horizon, their silhouettes jagged and organic, like ribcages pushed up through the ground. Every window was a furnace-mouth. Every smokestack exhaled a slow, oily plume of violet-gray, heavy with chemical tang and the metallic scent of fresh steel. The sound never stopped: drills shrieking, servos grinding, bone-metal plating being bolted onto armored hulls.

In this storm of industry, the five Supreme Commanders of the Death Regime moved like organs inside a single vast body, each one responsible for a different limb of the coming war.

Deathendye walked the barracks lines first.

He stepped through the main parade ground of Fort Totenkolonn, boots echoing on black concrete veined with faintly glowing runes. Rows upon rows of deathsoldiers stood at rigid attention—helmets sealed, breath filtered through skull-stamped respirators, uniforms dark-gray with a violet sheen. Their chestplates bore the crossed skull-and-bones of the Death Regime, matte and unforgiving.

"Formation eins bis fünf, vorwärts," Deathendye ordered, voice calm and clipped.

The first five blocks of deathsoldiers lurched into motion as one, marching forward to the obstacle courses that wound between trenches, reinforced bunkers, and hulking tank silhouettes. Mortar simulators boomed overhead; violet tracer rounds carved lines through the dusk.

Instructors barked corrections. A deathsergeant slammed the butt of his rifle against a lagging recruit's shoulder, nearly knocking him off balance.

"Du fällst, du stirbst," the sergeant snapped. You fall, you die.

Deathendye watched everything with a clinician's eye—timing, spacing, reaction speeds. Every few minutes he would lift a thin slate, tap a note, and somewhere in the barracks a new schedule or punishment would propagate through the system.

A nearby elite, Deathweskers, fell into step beside him, coat long and immaculate despite the dust, glasses gleaming in the low light.

"Output from Training Sector C up six percent," Deathweskers reported. "Psychological resistance to necro-fog exposure remains stable. We can push dosage higher if you wish."

"No," Deathendye replied. "Soldiers who are only fog and rage break too quickly. I need them... almost human." He let his gaze slide over the helmets, the blank lenses. "Enough mind left to follow complicated orders. Enough emptiness left to ignore conscience."

He turned without waiting for acknowledgment.

"Rotate them through live-fire by dawn," he added. "When we deploy to Westonglappa, I will not have anyone learning how to climb under real artillery."

Deathweskers inclined his head. "Jawohl, Kommandant."

Farther east, Deathendale inspected the armor yards.

The Tank Necropolis sprawled out before him—a labyrinth of assembly lines and gantries, where deathpanzers and deathwagens sat in various stages of completion. Skeletons of tanks hung from chains, their sides open to reveal organ-engineered engines pulsing like hearts. Technicians climbed over them, welding, grafting, sealing bone plating over steel cores.

Deathendale's presence turned conversations sparse and efficient. He moved down the main line, one gloved hand dragging along the flank of a newly completed tank. The skull-and-crossbones icon stared back up at him from the armor, freshly painted in pale, bone-white.

"Fuel consumption?" he asked without looking up.

A nearby engineer snapped to attention. "Reduced by twelve percent, Herr Kommandant. Deathwing's new organ-fuel blend burns longer under shelling."

Deathendale nodded once. "Good. I want every deathpanzer on the Westonglappan front to be able to drive through three days of bombardment without resupply. If their logistics collapse, ours will not."

He stopped beside a line of half-sized vehicles—fast, low, fanged.

"And these?"

"Deathjägerwagens," another engineer said quickly. "Designed for urban pursuit and encirclement. Ideal for hunting fleeing civilians and AES soft targets."

Deathendale's mouth curved slightly.

"Perfect," he murmured. "The Four Lights value their crowds. Let us see how brightly they shine when the streets are full of burning wreckage."

He signed off on the batch with a sweep of his hand. Holographic sigils confirmed the tanks' readiness. Somewhere deep inside the Necropolis, loaders began feeding ammunition into storage bunkers, stacking shells like teeth.

On the western coast, Deathenstream strode along the wet concrete of the Deathfleet harbors.

The black sea hissed and slapped against the seawalls, flecked with unnatural foam that glowed faintly violet where it touched the stone. Beyond the harbor, rows of deathships sat at anchor—gunmetal hulls plated with bone, their prows carved into leering skulls. Above them, skeletal cranes swung containers aboard: torpedo racks, necro-depth charges, coffins filled with deathsoldiers assigned to marine units.

"Status of the long-range bombardment group?" Deathenstream asked, voice carrying easily over the wind.

A naval officer saluted, boots splashing in brine.

"Deathflotte Eisenhauch at eighty percent capacity, Herr Kommandant. Deathcarriers Nachtkrone and Grabschleier fully loaded. Deathmarines report ready."

"And the submarines?"

"Deathunterseegruppe Zwei is fueled and submerged along the continental shelf. Awaiting only your coordinates for Westonglappa."

Deathenstream looked out over the violent water, eyes tracking invisible lines.

"Storm fronts, currents, trade routes..." he murmured. "They think the sea is a barrier. It has always been the first gate."

He pointed toward a cluster of smaller, faster warships.

"Deploy those along Eastoppola's edges," he ordered. "I want their coastlines haunted. We will let AES hear rumors of ghost fleets, oil slicks, strange lights. Let them stretch their nerves thin long before we arrive."

"Yes, Herr Kommandant."

As the officer hurried away, Deathenstream stood for a moment with the spray dampening his coat. In the distance, lightning flashed—distant storms over somebody else's continent.

"We will bring our own weather soon," he said quietly, almost to the sea itself.

Inland again, Deathenstride oversaw the airborne regiments.

The Deathwing Aerodrome lay in a cratered basin, ringed with antiair batteries and bone-spiked watchtowers. On the tarmac, deathbombers and deathfighters rolled into position beneath the yellow-white glare of floodlights. Mechanics rushed between them, checking runes, calibrating necro-reactors, sealing cockpit canopies.

Deathenstride walked the length of the runway with measured, predatory calm.

"Formation Delta, takeoff drills," he commanded. "Staggered. Minimal interval. Any pilot who cannot launch under fire will join the ground units permanently."

Engines howled. The first deathfighter snarled down the runway, lifted, and clawed into the sky with a trail of violet exhaust. The second followed, slightly off timing; Deathenstride's eyes narrowed, and he made a note.

Beside him, an elite navigator, Deathumbrella, walked with tablet in hand, her movements crisp despite the faint, unnatural sway in her step.

"We have plotted approach vectors for Auttumotto and Leblaela," she said. "Low-altitude entries under their radar nets, then a climb and dive pattern to maximize terror output. Civilian population density maps are... very promising."

"Good," Deathenstride said. "We are not simply destroying infrastructure. We are grading morale. I want Westonglappa to wake from its sleep screaming, long before they see our banners."

He glanced up as a formation of deathbombers banked overhead, their silhouettes like flocks of steel crows.

"Let the Four Lights protect every city," he added. "We will teach them how thin a shield must stretch to cover a whole world."

Finally, at the heart of Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathenstorm walked through the nerve centers that tied it all together.

He passed through communication bunkers layered beneath the Palace of Autopsies, where deathtechs sat at long consoles of bone and steel, monitoring necro-signal relays. Screens flickered with troop counts, supply flows, projected casualty curves. Every corridor hummed with power, faintly tinged with the smell of antiseptic and formaldehyde.

"Signal integrity?" Deathenstorm asked, pausing behind a technician.

"Stable across all fronts, Herr Kommandant," the tech replied quickly. "Echumeta's Dark-networks synced. Nirrough's Blackened feeds piggybacking our necro-satellites. Shadowatranceslenta... remains difficult to quantify, but their anchors are holding."

Deathenstorm nodded. "The BRD moves as one body now. No more fractured tantrums. If a deathpanzer rolls in Echumeta, I want its echo felt in Nirrough. If a shadowassassin cuts a throat in Westonglappa's capital, I want the blood pattern on screen here before it's dry."

He stepped into the central war chamber and looked up.

The ceiling itself had become a map.

Titanumas glowed above him: Sollarisca, Lunna, Starrup, Galaxenchi, Eastoppola, Westonglappa, Istantopola, all rendered in pale light over dark bone. Sigils marked army groups; arrows traced probable AES deployment patterns. Tiny runes pulsed over Echumeta, Nirrough, Shadowatranceslenta, and Deathenbulkiztahlem—nodes of a growing bruise.

Deathwing stood beneath that map, hands clasped behind his back, coat catching the light like oil on water.

"Kommandanten," he said as Deathendye, Deathendale, Deathenstream, Deathenstride, and Deathenstorm joined him in a half-circle. "Our numbers?"

Deathendye answered first. "Deathsoldiers, deathmarines, deathrangers, deathguards, deathmarauders—projected combat-ready forces triple pre-Galaxenchi losses. Recruitment and fabrication queues remain open."

Deathendale followed. "Deathpanzers and deathjägerwagens sufficient to roll over three continents if supply holds. Survivability under artillery and magic improved."

Deathenstream inclined his head. "Deathfleet combat groups prepared for simultaneous assaults on Eastoppolan and Westonglappan coasts. Submerged assets in position."

Deathenstride's mouth curved. "Deathfighters and deathbombers ready for mass sorties. Pilot lethality high, willingness to embrace mutual destruction... higher."

Deathenstorm concluded. "Command and control stable. Links to Darkened, Blackened, and Shadow Regimes integrated. A misstep in one faction is now felt—and correctable—in all four."

Deathwing listened, then smiled.

"Sehr gut," he said softly. "Then we are ready to play host."

He turned his gaze upward, to the hovering world.

"Darkwing fortifies Echumeta, our reclaimed graveyard," he said. "Blackwing poisons Nirrough and Jollhovalhn with swagger and propaganda. Shadowwing turns Shadowatranceslenta into a silent knife pointed at their shipping lanes. And we..." His eyes flicked back to the Supreme Commanders. "...we make sure death is no longer an event, but a condition."

The necro-lights dimmed for a heartbeat as if the continent itself exhaled.

"Send notice," Deathwing ordered. "To Darkwing, Blackwing, Shadowwing. Tell them I will come to them in turn, each in his own theater. I will bring projections, casualty predictions, and..." His smile sharpened. "...a few surprises the AES have not seen yet."

Deathenstorm nodded and began issuing the commands. Necro-scripts raced across the walls, disappearing into long-distance relays. Somewhere over Eastoppola, satellites adjusted their orbits by fractions of degrees.

Above, on the map, Westonglappa's outline glowed a little brighter, as if sensing unseen attention.

Deathwing stepped closer to the projection of Eastoppola, fingers hovering over Echumeta's stain, Nirrough's jagged coastline, and the ghostly sprawl representing Shadowatranceslenta. He spoke quietly, but every Supreme Commander heard him.

"Echumeta was our warning shot," he said. "Nirrough and Jollhovalhn our rehearsal. Shadowatranceslenta our cloak. Together, they are the prelude."

He extended one finger and tapped Westonglappa.

"The invasion begins soon," he murmured.

Far away, in Echumeta's black forges, in Nirrough's crowded squares, in the silent towers of Shadowatranceslenta, and on the blood-slick decks of Deathenbulkiztahlem's harbors, the necro-winds carried that intention like a whispered spell, curling around helmets and banners and the edges of steel.

Supreme Commanders barked new orders.

Deathsoldiers marched.

Tanks rolled.

Warplanes screamed overhead.

Naval guns pivoted toward foreign horizons.

And in the Palace of Autopsies, under a sky the color of old bruises, Deathwing and his five commanders watched the world shift toward a single outcome, patient as surgeons sharpening tools before the first cut.

The shift from the command balcony down into the veins of the Death Regime was almost seamless.

While Deathwing and his Supreme Commanders charted the invasion in clean lines of doctrine and logistics, the rest of Deathenbulkiztahlem pulsed with the work of elites who turned theory into killing infrastructure.

In the lowest industrial tiers of the necro-capital, Deathmarrow walked a slow patrol along the edge of a vat cathedral. Cylindrical chambers, each the size of a tower, rose in concentric rings around him, filled with dark, nutrient-thick gel. Within, half-formed deathsoldiers floated in rigid harnesses, their helmets already stamped with the skull-and-crossbones sigil, their uniforms a uniform dark-gray violet.

"Batch 712 through 730, adjust calcium infusions," Deathmarrow said, voice flat but precise. His fingers danced across a hovering bone-console; a ripple of glyphs ran through the fluid. "We want them durable, not brittle. They'll be taking artillery, not modeling for ossuaries."

Technicians—lesser necro-adepts in bone-white coats—hurried to comply, checking readings as rows of deathsoldiers shuddered, muscles thickening under necrotic stimuli. Farther out, deathmarines were fitted with heavier spinal reinforcements and gill-like filters for chemical and aquatic combat. Deathrangers, lighter-framed but wired for reflex speed, had their optical nerves threaded with spectral fibers so they could see perfectly through smoke and plague-fog.

"Standards must hold," Deathmarrow murmured, more to the vats than to the people. "If we are to drown Westonglappa, let it be with something more presentable than a shambling mob."

Above this industrial hell, in the dry vaults where finance and war met, Deathweskers and Deathavaria shared a different battlefield.

The Necro-Ledger Exchange was a chamber of obsidian tiers, each step lined with rune-screens tallying souls owed, munitions promised, and entire regiments pre-sold as mercenary contingents. A central projection of Eastoppola and the surrounding continents hung in the air like a diseased planet on a dissecting table.

Deathweskers lounged in his chair with deceptive laziness, one gloved hand tapping numbers into a spectral abacus. "Darkwing's asking price on darktanks is climbing," he noted, tone dry. "He knows we need Echumeta as our forward autopsy theater."

Deathavaria, her eyes like still pools of violet formalin, leaned over a secondary projection full of contracts. "Then we offset on the Blackened front," she said calmly. "Offer Blackwing a discount on deathbombers and necro-bunkers in Nirrough and Jollhovalhn—at cost, plus soul interest. He'll take the prestige if it comes with explosions on camera."

A new table slid into view—Shadow Regime requests from Shadowatranceslenta.

Deathweskers' lips twisted in faint amusement. "And the silent ones want... logistics shrouds, soul-scrubbed manifests, and corpse-coded trade lanes. No propaganda, just anonymity."

"Shadowwing pays on time," Deathavaria replied. "Give him his ghosts. The more they move unseen, the better our surgical strikes will be when Westonglappa starts screaming."

Together, they approved shipment after shipment: crates of cursed munitions to Echumeta, necro-reactors and bone-plated hull segments to Nirrough's shipyards, spectral encryption rigs and disposable cadaver-couriers to Shadowatranceslenta. Each signature was another artery feeding the BRD's growing war body.

Elsewhere in Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathsporenbraut and Deathumbrella were rewriting what "contamination" meant.

Their laboratory was half-medical suite, half-garden from a nightmare. Rows of restrained test subjects—criminals, volunteers, captured enemies, and condemned experiment stock—hung in suspension frames while fungal crowns pulsed above their heads. Vines threaded with glassy pustules twined through their veins, blooming out of ribs and collarbones.

Deathsporenbraut adjusted a mask over her face and tapped a glass ampoule with a fingernail. "Strain Sigma-13 stabilizes nicely in humid climates," she observed, voice almost scholarly. "Perfect for coastal cities. Auttumotto, maybe."

Deathumbrella, in a pristine white coat over her dark-gray violet uniform, scribbled notes on a bone-tablet. "And the neurological latency?" she asked. "We want them walking long enough to reach evacuation centers before they drop."

A restrained subject spasmed as a new compound was injected. Veins lit up faintly with sickly luminescence; eyes clouded, then cleared, then clouded again.

"Forty minutes before mind degradation," Deathsporenbraut decided. "Enough to board a train or huddle in a shelter. When the seizures begin, the chain reaction will be... educational."

Deathumbrella's expression never changed. "We will prepare field-safe variants for Blackwing's street crews and Darkwing's shock troops," she said. "And we'll send Shadowwing a mist-form version for his assassins. Quiet cities, sudden plagues."

"You are thinking like Deathwing," Deathsporenbraut murmured, approving. "Efficient. Layered. It will please him."

On the outer aerodromes, Deathseer and Deathvaskor prepared the sky and sea.

Deathseer stood on the observation deck of a skeletal control tower, scanners framing his face in rings of spinning sigils. Below him, deathbombers and deathfighters lined the runways, their wings etched with swirling bone glyphs that bent radar and bent luck.

"Squadrons Drei through Acht, maintain tight triangle formations," Deathseer said into the command band. His voice echoed from helmet speakers across the field. "Our doctrine will not be messy. We are not the Blackened."

Toward the hazy horizon, Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz drifted like a wounded titan in low orbit, its silhouette visible even through cloud and smog. Every time its engines pulsed, faint ripples moved through Deathseer's readouts.

"Long-range targeting arrays synced with the carrier," an aide reported. "We can paint Echumeta, Nirrough, and Shadowatranceslenta simultaneously if needed."

"We won't waste that on demonstrations," Deathseer replied. "Westonglappa is our exam slate. Everything else is practice."

Down at the deathdocks, Deathvaskor walked the length of a newly christened dreadnought, his boots ringing against bone-reinforced steel. Deathmarines stood to attention along the decks, helmets polished, rifles slung with ritual precision.

"Hull integrity?" he demanded.

"Triple-layered, Herr Elite," answered a chief engineer. "Outer plating: deadmetal. Mid layer: necro-foam. Inner: standard armor. She'll float even if you cut her in half."

"Flood compartments?"

"Sealed. Auto-close on breach."

Deathvaskor nodded. "Good. She'll be taking galactic artillery and god-tier tantrums. If she sinks, I will pull you back to life personally and make your second death much slower."

A faint, humorless laugh ran down the line of crew.

"Prepare the fleet for staggered deployment," Deathvaskor ordered. "Darkwing wants his shipments protected, Blackwing wants his showboats escorted, Shadowwing wants his ghost-ships never seen at all. We will do all three."

Closer to the ground—where war would actually be felt—Deathh and Deathvaldrek handled something more basic: turning raw meat into useful corpses.

The Deathen Trench Grounds sprawled at the edge of one of the regime's grim cities, a field of mud, shattered concrete, and simulated ruin. Rows of deathsoldiers, deathguards, and deathmilitias stood waiting as shells exploded around them in controlled patterns.

Deathh paced before them, BMAIL-style sidearms at his hips, each step sending a small tremor through the line. "You are not allowed to die stupidly," he said, voice a low growl. "If Sunbeam kills you himself? Fine. If any of the Four Lights tear you in half? Fine. That is called statistics. But if you step on a mine because you were daydreaming about your last meal, I will personally dig you up and use your skull as lab glass."

Nearby, Deathvaldrek watched a squad of deathsoldiers clear a mock building, their helmets feeding him a live tactical view. He snarled when one unit breached a door without checking the corners.

"Reset the sim," he ordered. "Punish that route. Full lethal. They learn it right or they don't learn it at all."

The building reset itself with a low rumble. This time, the same squad entered with sharper discipline, clearing angles, communicating in clipped barks over comms. A simulated solar-style elite appeared in the stairwell and was shredded in a crossfire of dark-violet tracers.

"Better," Deathvaldrek allowed. "Again. You will be storming Westonglappan cities soon. Their police, their militias, their hopeful little resistance cells—they'll scream and shoot and pray. You will be the wall that does not blink."

Elsewhere in the necropolis, Deathnarkul and Deathseer coordinated espionage with brutality. Deathnarkul sat in a chamber lined with hanging cadavers, their nerves repurposed as communication lines. With a gesture, he opened channels to Darkened Echumeta, Blackened Nirrough, and the shadowed capital of Shadowatranceslenta, trading coded updates with their elites, keeping rumors of BRD's growing strength exactly where they were needed—and nowhere else.

Above all this chaos, the Palace of Autopsies itself pulsed with coordinated purpose. Supreme Commanders' orders flowed down through the hierarchy; elites caught them, interpreted them, twisted them into action suited to their specialties. Deathweskers' ledgers balanced. Deathsporenbraut's plagues matured. Deathvaskor's warships rolled into the sea. Deathmarrow's vats disgorged regiment after regiment of new deathsoldiers, each one marching straight from amniotic gel to the armory.

Across the BRD as a whole, the pattern repeated.

In Echumeta, Darkened Supreme Commanders walked through barracks where darksoldiers and darkmarines were whipped into shape under revived banners, tanks rattling down boulevards once meant for parades. In Nirrough and Jollhovalhn, Blackened warlords and elites turned slums into recruiting grounds, their blacksoldiers and blackmarauders drilled between graffiti-covered walls and half-rebuilt plazas. In Shadowatranceslenta, shadowcommanders oversaw silent training halls where specter-backed tanks and shadowmarines practiced vanishing into half-worlds between dimensions.

Every barracks, every factory, every dockyard was a verse in the same hymn: prepare. Grow. Harden.

Deathenbulkiztahlem hummed with it.

In one of the palace's high vaults, Deathwing listened to the distant, steady thunder of his empire at work—the marching of new deathsoldiers, the rumble of armor on testing tracks, the dull thuds of artillery calibration. Reports streamed in: production quotas exceeded, training cycles shortened, casualty projections revised in their favor.

He did not smile often. When he did, it looked very much like now.

"Good," he murmured, almost to himself. "The body is remembering how to move."

At his back, Deathwis recorded the moment, neat glyphs etching themselves into a massive, floating codex. Somewhere past the bone walls and disease-colored sky, the Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, and Death Regimes were all swelling toward the same tipping point, each Supreme Commander and each elite adding their own weight.

The Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency was no longer a concept on a map.

It was an organism in motion.

And as necro-winds coiled around the palace spires and carried whispers across Echumeta, Nirrough, and Shadowatranceslenta, every soldier, every elite, every commander in the BRD understood the same unspoken truth:

The next time the Four Lights intervened, they would not be facing scattered tyrants and fractured armies.

They would be facing an entire hemisphere that had spent every waking hour preparing to kill the idea of salvation itself.