SUPREMACY- Clash Between Heroes and Villains Chapter 47: Galaxy ein Death Misfits

 Dawn came slow to the war.

The sea between Deathenbulkiztahlem and Galaxenchi went from slate to bruised violet to a cold, pale blue, as if the world were trying very hard to pretend nothing was wrong.

The Deathenagruppenzeithgrantz / Deathwing knew better.

Inside its core, Doctor Deathwing had never "slept." While the horizon sharpened, he finished his last recalculations: fuel curves, ammunition projections, repair rates, probability trees for every known Supreme Commander on the Galaxy side.

By the time the first sunlight hit the Deathwing's upper decks, the verdict was locked.

WAR STATE: ACTIVE
NEW PRIMARY THEATRE: GALLAXGONBEI FRONT

The Declaration

The Doctor did not "declare war" with a speech.

He did it with a single, system-wide flag flip.

Across Death Regime channels, civilian codings snapped off. Patrol patterns switched to assault vectors. Holding formations shifted into attack wedges.

Then he opened one broadcast, narrow-band, aimed straight into the heart of Galaxy's listening net.

His voice, metallic and precise, cut across encrypted layers in unaccented Galaxy Standard:

"An die Streitkräfte des Galaxy Regime.
Hier spricht Doctor Deathwing, primärer Vektor der Todesregime-Flotte.
Der Zustand der 'bewaffneten Stagnation' ist beendet.
Wir erklären hiermit offiziell eine erneute Großoffensive auf Eure Vorfront—
beginnend mit dem Staat Gallaxgonbei."

To the forces of the Galaxy Regime.
This is Doctor Deathwing, primary vector of the Death Regime fleet.
The condition of "armed stagnation" is over.
We hereby declare a renewed major offensive on your forward front—
beginning with the state of Gallaxgonbei.

He did not wait for an answer.

He already knew they'd heard.

The Line Moves

Out on the dark-blue water, the triple Death line that had stood all through the night began to move as one.

Frontline battleships throttled up, wakes flaring white. Cruisers adjusted spacing to maintain overlapping firing arcs. Destroyers raced ahead like teeth in a moving jaw.

Above them, the sky filled with motion.

From the Deathwing's flight decks and a hundred carriers across the formation, aerial units launched in disciplined salvos—dark-grey fighters, heavy bombers, chem-layers, gunships, drone swarms.

Doctor Deathwing's targeting lattice overlaid a glowing arc on the map:

OBJECTIVE VECTOR: GALLAXGONBEI

Gallaxgonbei: a vital coastal state within the Galaxy Regime's outer defensive shell around Galaxenchi, all cliffside shield fortresses, deep-water harbors, and inland command nexuses.

The Doctor spoke into the fighter-net, his voice cool and even.

"Luftverbände Eins bis Vier: vordere Angriffsformation. Zielraum: Gallaxgonbei-Küste.
Verbände Fünf bis Acht: Höhenstaffel, Abfangjäger, Reserveschlag.
Chem- und Schattenstaffeln: warten auf Feuerbefehl Gamma."

Air Groups One to Four: forward assault. Target zone: Gallaxgonbei coast.
Groups Five to Eight: high cover, intercept and reserve strike.
Chem and shadow wings: hold for Gamma fire-order.

Engines screamed as the first waves climbed, turned, then arrowed toward the distant smudge that would soon resolve into Gallaxgonbei's shore.

The Deathwing itself did not lunge.

It advanced at the measured pace of something confident it could not be dislodged.

Gallaxgonbei: Already Awake

On the other side of that widening blue, Gallaxgonbei had not been sleeping either.

Cliffside bastions stood in layered tiers—glimmering shield domes stacked like transparent shells over coastal cities and naval yards. Inland, long rail batteries faced seaward, their barrels raised like accusing fingers.

Atop one of those cliffs, cloak snapping in the high wind, Professor Galaxbeam stood with a cluster of holo-projectors around him.

Above his head, the image of the Death Regime's advancing line hung like a dark ribbon across the sky.

He spoke in fast, clipped Mandarin into his comm.

"Deathwing 已經把所有線拉直了，" he said. Deathwing has pulled all his lines straight. "不再只是 Supreme Commander 的個人戰術—這是整個體系在推。"

This is no longer just Supreme Commanders' personal tactics—this is the entire system pushing.

On his projected map, another set of icons shifted: Galaxy Regime's own fleet, already sliding into pre-assigned defensive positions around Gallaxgonbei.

Carrier groups in crescent formation.
Submarine curtains.
Shield ships layered in front of key harbors.
Orbital recon nodes feeding targeting solutions to coastal guns.

He opened another channel, this one to the assembled Supreme Commanders.

To Galaxadale, already moving forces into a counter-arc.

To Galaxadye, pivoting mid-ocean barriers.

To Galaxstride, linking inland artillery to coastal aim.

And, further back, to Galaxapuff, whose aerial reserves were coiled higher up in the atmosphere like a second sky.

"各位指揮官，Deathwing 開始正式進攻 Gallaxgonbei 外海," he reported. Commanders, Deathwing has begun a formal offensive on Gallaxgonbei's offshore. "這次他們不是只是試探，而是想用整面牆來磨我們。"

This time they're not testing—they plan to use the whole wall to grind us down.

On his cliff-top, the wind ripped his coat sideways. Below, waves cracked against armored rock. Far out, tiny dark specks were resolving into fleet shapes.

He lifted a lens to his eye.

Among those shapes, one medium-sized Death warship sailed slightly ahead of its local cluster.

On its upper deck, as if for symbolism more than need, a humanoid figure stood, cloak of shimmering dark-grey fractal plating moving in time not with the wind, but with reactor pulses.

Galaxbeam adjusted the focus.

"Doctor Deathwing 本人，" he murmured. Doctor Deathwing himself. "或者至少，是他顯化在前線的化身。"

Or at least, the avatar he puts on the front line.

Doctor on the Deck

On that medium-sized ship—designated Sturmarchiv in Deathenbulkiztahlem's registries—the avatar of Doctor Deathwing stood with its hands behind its back.

Eyes glowed faint violet. Armor lines echoed the architecture of the Deathwing's own interior. Every motion was smooth, more calculated than human reflex.

But when he turned his head to look at the oncoming coast, the gesture was unnervingly natural.

Around him, real officers worked:

Navigation shouted headings. Fire-control teams fed data into their stations. Runners carried physical tags and slates in old habits that comforted flesh.

The Doctor's voice was both inside their heads and coming from the avatar at once.

"Frontflotte: Beschleunigung auf 0,8 Kampfgeschwindigkeit. Formation halten. Keine Einzelvorstöße ohne Freigabe."

Front fleet: accelerate to eighty percent combat speed. Keep formation. No individual charges without authorization.

On the horizon, the glow of Gallaxgonbei's shield domes sharpened.

In the sky above, the first Galaxy interceptors streaked out, contrails twisting.

As the distance between the leading edges dropped, something strange happened to perception.

Fast-Forward Lightning

From Galaxbeam's cliff, the first contact looked like two distant lines touching.

From within the fleets, it felt like the world suddenly pressed the fast-forward button.

One moment:

Death bombers crossing the last stretch of open sky.

Galaxy interceptors angling in, their gold-and-blue hulls catching the pale morning light.

Long-range artillery shells and chem-rounds rising in lazy arcs.

The next:

Tracers and energy beams filled the air in dizzy, overlapping lattices.

Doctor Deathwing's spatial processors sped his internal timeline up, modelling thousands of impact points per second.

He watched in compressed clarity as:

A Death chem-layer squadron cut through a gap, seeding the upper air over Gallaxgonbei's forward AA batteries with shimmering violet particulate—just as a Galaxy shield frigate surged up to interpose, taking the cloud full on its protective field and cycling it harmlessly into the ground.

Galaxy railguns let loose in pre-coordinated salvos, their projectiles tearing through the first wave of sacrificial Death drones, then glancing off echeloned shield-projectors further back.

Death fighters and Galaxy fighters met in midair, their dogfights snapping across the sky like frames from a sped-up animation: approach—flare—roll—flash—fall, repeated hundreds of times in miniature.

To Galaxbeam, watching from the cliff, it looked almost unreal.

"好像有人把戰場的時間拉快了，" he murmured. It's like someone sped the battlefield's time up. "這就是兩邊的作戰 AI 把人類反應往後丟的樣子。"

This is what it looks like when both sides' battle systems push human reflex into the back seat.

He switched lenses.

The sea combat was no slower.

Death front-line battleships opened with heavy main guns, their salvo patterns staggered to keep constant pressure on Galaxy's forward bastions. Galaxy's shield ships and destroyers answered with layered defensive fire, intercepting some shells mid-flight, bending others away with localized shield pulses.

Behind the first line, Death artillery cruisers lobbed slower, heavier weapons: gravity-distorting rounds, delayed-fuse chem shells, shadow-tipped munitions. In answer, inland Gallaxgonbei artillery woke, spitting columns of kinetic death that arced high, then dove into the Death lines, seeking the spaces the Doctor could not cover all at once.

Reinforcement icons multiplied on both sides.

Every time a Death ship died—its icon blinking out in a sharp, clean red—another slid forward from the depth layers.

Every time a Galaxy coastal gun fell silent, new batteries came online further inland, plugging the gap with range and raw output.

The "weird lightning pace" the battle seemed to take on was not magic; it was the consequence of two entire systems, Deathwing and Galaxenchi, throwing processing power and pre-calculated contingencies at each other.

And still, neither side broke.

Reinforcements Without End

Doctor Deathwing's awareness stretched across the line, adjusting.

He felt where Deathenstorm's right wedge slammed repeatedly into Galaxy naval groups trying to flank the main approach—each collision a rapid burst of violence, ships depopulating from the map with unnerving speed.

He monitored Deathenpuff's left flank, where her units dove in and out of Galaxy formations at seemingly random angles, their chaos carefully constrained within the bounds he'd drawn.

He tracked Deathendye's second line, zombie contingents and heavy carriers holding just short of engagement, ready to flood any breach Galaxy managed to hammer open.

New icons lit up.

RIFT ANCHOR V-3 – ACTIVE
NEW REINFORCEMENTS INBOUND: HEAVY CARRIERS, ARTILLERY BARGES, FRESH AERIAL WINGS.

From behind the horizon, fresh Death ships slid into view, riding fracture-gate exits, hulls gleaming with new-formed armor.

On the Galaxy side, Galaxbeam watched as their own reinforcement vectors lit: additional naval groups from neighboring sectors, borrowed wings from partially-restored Westonglappa, orbital fire redirected through Gallaxgonbei's targeting lattice.

The assault began to layer:

First hour: probing and initial impacts.
Second hour: full-spectrum bombardment and counter-bombardment.
Third hour: grinding attrition, where every new reinforcement simply slowed loss curves instead of reversing them.

In that third hour, standing on the deck of the Sturmarchiv, the Doctor's avatar turned slightly, as if feeling the weight of each probabilistic thread tugging at him.

"Verlustquote im Rahmen der Prognose," he noted internally. Loss rate within projected range. "Galaxy-Reserven mobilisieren schneller als im letzten Zyklus. Anpassungsfaktor +7 %."

Galaxy reserves mobilizing faster than the last cycle. Adjustment factor +7%.

He sent a tight comm line toward Galaxbeam's observed cliffside location—not as speech, but as a simple burst of jamming noise, just enough to remind the Professor:

I see you watching.

On the cliff, Galaxbeam's instruments flickered for a moment.

He smiled faintly, despite the chaos.

"你看到我，我也看到你," he said quietly. You see me, I see you. "問題是誰先耗光自己的算法。"

The question is: who runs out of algorithms first.

Ongoing

By late morning, the sky over Gallaxgonbei was a palimpsest of contrails, smoke, energy residue, and shield shimmer.

The sea boiled with hulls—some burning, some steady, some rolling under, leaving only oil and wreckage.

Neither side had landed a decisive blow yet.

Deathwing had not cracked Gallaxgonbei's coastal shield wall.

Galaxy had not broken the Death line enough to force a retreat.

More ships kept arriving.

More aerial units rose, flew, fought, and fell.

The weird, lightning pace did not let up; if anything, it intensified as both sides' systems fed on more data, refining their own predictions on the fly.

On the Sturmarchiv's deck, Doctor Deathwing's avatar stood like a dark statue amid the spray, cloak snapping rhythmically.

Inside the Deathwing's core, the true mind of the Doctor ran numbers faster than any human could comprehend, constantly adjusting:

Push here—pull there.
Feed more munitions to this flank—reroute chem to that corridor.
Allow Deathenstorm another aggressive sortie—rein in Deathenpuff's enthusiasm just short of overextension.

On the cliff, Galaxbeam tracked it all, relaying patterns to his Supreme Commanders, helping them anticipate the Doctor's shifts, urging them to make Death pay for each meter of ocean.

The assault on Gallaxgonbei was not a meteor strike.

It was a pressure test in motion, a drawn-out wrestling match between two minds writ as fleets.

And as the early morning rose toward harsh midday light, the battle did not end.

It simply dug in, layers of ships and aircraft and artillery stacking over each other in a vast, ugly equation that neither side had solved yet—

while the Death Regime's wall pushed, the Galaxy Regime's shield braced,

and Doctor Deathwing, anchored both in the heart of a giga-colossal ship and on the deck of a single medium warship, continued to guide the storm toward Gallaxgonbei's stubborn, shining coast.

The battle over Gallaxgonbei didn't slow down.

It just got... personal.

As the Death Regime wall pushed forward and Galaxy's coastal line braced, the war stopped feeling like pure fleet-vs-fleet and snapped into something sharper:

Supreme Commanders locking entire regiments together like dueling signatures written across sea and sky.

Six vs Six

Across the widening theatre, the pairings shook themselves out almost naturally, like magnets snapping into opposition.

Galaxadye vs Deathendye – Lines vs Rot

On the mid-ocean boundary, where shimmering partitions of golden light met creeping violet chem-fields, Galaxadye and Deathendye took the center lane.

Galaxadye's fleet moved in clean, geometric arcs—shield barges and barrier projectors laying down translucent walls that turned Death artillery into smeared, harmless ripples. His voice came steady over comms in Mandarin and Japanese, assigning each escort ship a precise position, each drone a specific role in the pattern.

Opposite him, Deathendye's formations sprawled like a controlled infection.

Mutant-crewed ships exhaled clouds of particulate that corroded shield edges, testing for thin spots. Zombie-crewed barges soaked damage and kept going, engines howling.

Between them, the water boiled with barrier crashes and chem detonations.

Neither gave an inch easily.

Galaxadale vs Deathendale – Ambush vs Counter-Ambush

To the southwest, Galaxadale stalked the gaps.

His regiments—fast attack craft, stealth destroyers, hidden gun platforms—flowed like knives slipped under armor. Every time Death Regime lines overextended, he was there: torpedoes blooming where blind spots thought they were safe, ambush squadrons dropping from low cloud to tear apart isolated cruisers.

Opposite him, Deathendale (you could almost hear the universe laughing at the naming symmetry) responded with his own brand of controlled chaos.

He seeded the ocean with decoy wrecks housing hidden guns. He let small groups "wander" out of position just enough to lure Galaxadale's hunters into overlapping kill-boxes. His regiments of deathmarauders reveled in messy, close-quarter ship fights.

Their section of sea looked less like a line and more like a bleeding chessboard—clusters of wrecks marking each risky move.

Galaxastream vs Deathenstream – Currents vs Corruption

To the north, where currents twisted into whirlpools between rocky spikes, Galaxastream and Deathenstream turned the water itself into a weapon.

Galaxastream's fleet used wave dynamics like an extra engine—timing volleys to ride crests, using troughs to duck under line-of-sight fire, laying down shockwave torpedoes that exploited the natural churn.

Deathenstream's ships answered with corrupted hydrology: chem that changed the density of local water, thermal vents coaxed out of undersea fractures, zombie-crewed submersibles that moved like a drowned school of fish, all teeth and no mind.

Their clash rippled all the way up to the surface, where ships lurched unexpectedly as the sea beneath them changed allegiance from second to second.

Galaxastride vs Deathenstride – Fire Arcs vs Plague Arcs

Inland of the main coastal line, Galaxastride and Deathenstride fought a quieter war that still barked thunder.

Galaxastride commanded long-range inland artillery and mobile coastal batteries, feeding precise trajectories into a network that could drop shells onto Death ships that never saw the gun that fired them. His support craft—naval and air—flashed back and forth between the front and rear, relaying coordinates, adjusting angles.

Deathenstride, in turn, led mixed formations of infection ships and combat-corruptors—vessels whose main function was to land chem payloads on infrastructure and fortifications, turning damaged Galaxy positions into seething hazards.

Every time Galaxastride's guns silenced a Death battery, Deathenstride's plague-vectors tried to make that gun emplacement uninhabitable for the next crew. Every time Deathenstride established a foothold, Galaxastride tried to flatten it with surgical barrages.

They weren't just trading fire.

They were trading the right to use the ground at all.

Galaxastorm vs Deathenstorm – Duel in the Maelstrom

Where the fighting was thickest, Galaxastorm and Deathenstorm inevitably found each other.

Ships shattered around them as both took to the air, riding their own powers and thruster arrays:

Galaxastorm cloaked in gold-white arcs, magnetizing and redirecting incoming projectiles, bending the paths of shells and beams away from his own squadrons and toward empty water—or, when he was particularly spiteful, back toward Death hulls.

Deathenstorm exhaling dark-violet lances of condensed energy, ripping open ships with single strokes, dragging clouds of smog behind him that interfered with targeting.

Their aerial duel became an anchor point for both sides: wherever they fought, the battle around them tilted.

Sometimes Galaxastorm forced Deathenstorm higher, away from the densest clusters, giving his own fleet breathing room.

Sometimes Deathenstorm knifed downward, carving a path through a Galaxy squadron, daring Galaxastorm to follow into a hail of Death AA.

The sky around them stuttered like a bad recording: flashes, clashes, vanish, reappear.

Galaxapuff vs Deathenpuff – Air Show from Hell

Above the entire mess, owning the upper altitudes, Galaxapuff and Deathenpuff turned the air into a layered opera.

Galaxapuff, calm and fierce, directed multi-echelon air patterns:

"第一梯隊，拉長戰線，拖住佢哋火力，" First wave, stretch the line, drag their firepower thin.
"第二梯隊，從上層切入，優先打帶指揮功能的艦。" Second wave, cut in from upper layers, prioritize ships with command capability.

Her fighters and bombers moved in dazzling synchronized flocks, using smokes, feints, altitude shifts to keep Death's AA guessing.

Deathenpuff answered with theatrical cruelty, her own regiments shaped like jagged spears and crescent traps.

"前衛隊，假裝崩潰後撤，引他們追，" she snapped in sharp Deathenbulkiztahlem German laced with harsh slang. Vanguard, feign collapsing, draw them in.
"Seitenschwarm, dann rein, schneiden ihnen die Flügel ab." Side-swarm, then in, cut their wings off.

Her squadrons rolled and twisted in patterns that looked wild from the outside but were tuned precisely to exploit Galaxy's pursuit instincts.

Between them, the high sky became a literal no-man's land, filled with contrail criss-crossing, flaring wrecks falling like burning comets, and the constant undercurrent of both women cursing and laughing in at least two languages each.

The Off-Story Table

And above all of that—metaphorically, narratively, in the weird place where war and story share a drink—two figures who almost never appeared in the same "room" did something very small and very stupid.

They rolled dice.

The Cliff and the Deck

On his cliff above Gallaxgonbei, wind clawing at his coat, Galaxbeam squinted into the chaos and, half to himself and half to whoever might be listening, pulled a small six-sided die from his pocket.

"既然 Deathwing 都喜歡算到天荒地老，" he muttered, "我們就給這場戲一點...宇宙隨機。"

Since Deathwing likes to calculate to the end of time, let's add a pinch of cosmic randomness to this scene.

Down on the sea, standing firm on the Sturmarchiv's deck, Doctor Deathwing's avatar tilted its head.

Inside the Deathwing's core, a dozen sensor ghosts whispered across data: Galaxbeam's biometrics, image feeds of a small object in his hand, an awareness of a narrative pattern that didn't belong to pure physics.

For once, the Doctor indulged.

A small compartment in the Sturmarchiv's railing slid open. A six-sided die—metallic, engraved with plus-eye sigils instead of pips—rose into the avatar's hand, along with a coin whose faces bore stylized versions of:

One side: a golden starburst—Galaxy.

The other: a dark ring of thorns—Death.

The Doctor regarded them with a kind of clinical amusement.

"Ein Spiel im Spiel," he mused. A game within the game.

Galaxbeam lifted his die.
Deathwing's avatar lifted his.

Somewhere between them—between story and battle—your point of view hovered, watching both.

The Rules

Their off-story rules were simple:

Coin flip: Who wins the strategic objective of this clash over Gallaxgonbei?

Heads (starburst): Galaxy Regime holds the line, Death fails to land.

Tails (thorn-ring): Death Regime breaks through, lands on Gallaxgonbei and opens a portal.

Six-sided dice: How hard the win goes.

Low numbers mean marginal, grinding, pyrrhic.

High numbers mean dramatic, momentum-shifting.

They did not share the rules with their fleets.

They shared them with you.

The Coin

Galaxbeam flipped his die into the air just as Deathwing's avatar flicked the coin upward.

The story followed the coin.

It spun—gold flash, dark ring, gold, dark, gold—

—and came down on the back of Deathwing's gauntlet with a sharp, ringing click.

He lifted his hand.

Tails.

Dark thorn-ring.

Death.

In the off-story ledger, the result settled: Death Regime wins the objective.

On the cliff, Galaxbeam's die bounced off a rock and landed on the ground between his boots.

He glanced down.

The pips showed 3.

On the Sturmarchiv, Deathwing's die rolled along a metal groove, slowed, and came to rest.

5.

The Doctor logged it with a tiny, private flicker of humor.

"Kein absoluter Durchmarsch," he noted. Not an absolute, clean sweep. "Aber kräftig genug."

But strong enough.

The universe did not literally obey dice.

But sometimes story has seniority over math.

And across the whole crush of fleets, small divergences aligned just enough for one side's probabilities to start compounding in its favor.

The Breakthrough

It didn't happen all at once.

There was no single superweapon, no one glorious charge.

It was a curve tipping.

In Galaxadye vs Deathendye's lane, a momentary chem surge punched through a weakened barrier just as a Death artillery group managed a near-perfect salvo. One of Galaxadye's key shield barges went under, collapsing a local segment of the mid-line.

Galaxadale, already stretched thin juggling Deathendale's traps, diverted support craft to plug that hole—and in doing so, left his own ambush flotilla fractionally underprotected. Deathendale seized it, springing a mines-and-decoy pattern that chewed up three of Galaxadale's leanest hunters.

Galaxastream attempted to re-route current advantage to compensate—but a rogue wave distortion from Deathenstream's corruption fields shoved one of his main projection ships into a kill-angle it couldn't dodge.

Galaxastride tried to flatten Deathenstride's newest infection cluster before it could seed forward. His barrage came a heartbeat late; plague-vessels got close enough to spray chem along a key coastal segment of Gallaxgonbei's outer fort line, forcing Galaxy units to pull back or risk contamination.

In their high duel, Galaxastorm and Deathenstorm traded one exchange too many in close quarters. Galaxastorm managed to deflect a killing darkness lance—but in doing so, opened a corridor behind him Deathenstorm's own bomber wing exploited, slamming heavy munitions into a Galaxy heavy carrier that had been anchoring part of the defensive formation.

Galaxapuff, seeing all of this from the top of the stack, threw her reserves into a desperate, beautiful aerial counter-net... and for a while, it worked. Her squadrons burned Death aircraft out of the sky in strings of gold tracer.

But every time she stabilized one segment, Doctor Deathwing shifted pressure to another.

And the dice behind the curtain had already come up Death 5.

The Landing

The first breach point opened on the southeastern approach to Gallaxgonbei.

A Death dreadnaught, its hull scorched and trailing fire, rammed itself into the ragged gap in the shield wall, using its own failing shields as a physical battering ram.

Behind it, Deathenedye's zombie-laden carriers and Deathamorgoth-optimized transports surged.

Deathwing's voice hit every Death channel at once, clinical and sharp:

"Landezone SIGMA einrichten. Koordinaten markieren. Portal-Arrays vorbereiten."

Establish Landing Zone SIGMA. Mark coordinates. Prepare portal arrays.

On the cliffs below Galaxbeam, Galaxy artillery fired until their barrels glowed, trying to turn that breach into a graveyard.

They sank ships. They killed thousands.

They didn't kill enough.

Three Death portal anchor barges slid into the shattered section of sea just offshore from Gallaxgonbei's coastal defenses.

Dark pylons rose from their decks, humming with the same not-quite-light that had defined Rift Anchors far out at sea.

Reality kinked.

Thin, circular rips appeared over the water—portals not to distant oceans this time, but directly to pre-cleared staging grounds in Deathenbulkiztahlem and the Deathwing's own cavernous interior bays.

From those wounds in the air, the first ground forces began to fall like steel rain:

Dropships full of deathsoldiers and deathmarauders.

Pods of deathrangers and urban-corruptor squads.

Sealed capsules carrying fresh zombie cadres, their restraints keyed to release on landing.

They hit the already-battered shoreline, smashing into broken fortifications, burning docks, shattered shield emitters.

Some died instantly.

Enough made it.

Galaxy Retreats – But Not Collapses

On the inner cliff, Galaxbeam's comms exploded with overlapping orders.

"Gallaxgonbei 外防線破了！" Outer defense line is breached!
"城市區域，立刻轉入巷戰模式！" Urban sectors, immediate switch to street-fight protocols!
"第一線艦隊不要全退，保持壓力，拖延他們的登陸壓縮!" First-line fleets do not fully retreat—maintain pressure, compress their landing space!

Galaxy Regime did not crumble.

They fell back.

Gallaxgonbei's coastal units pulled away from the now-doomed outer bastions, retreating to second and third inland defensive lines, closer to the city proper and its layered shield towers.

Supreme Commanders rebalanced:

Galaxastride shifted artillery vectors to turn entire waterfront districts into impromptu killing fields if Death tried to surge inland.

Galaxastream rerouted water flows to flood certain low-lying zones, shaping the terrain into choke points.

Galaxadale laid traps in the urban canyons ahead of likely Death advance paths.

Galaxadye compressed remaining shield resources to encapsulate key city sectors rather than the whole coastline.

Galaxastorm anchored a mobile air umbrella over retreating units, swatting Death air as best he could.

Galaxapuff redirected her remaining squadrons into tight, brutal close air support loops.

The state of Gallaxgonbei did not fall in a day.

But its door was now open.

Landing Zone SIGMA churned like a wound that wouldn't close, more and more Death forces spilling through as Doctor Deathwing pumped power into the portal anchors.

On the Sturmarchiv deck-bridge, Deathwing's avatar watched Gallaxgonbei's coastline burn, his internal projections updating.

"Landezone gehalten," he logged. Landing zone held.
"Galaxy gezwungen, auf Stadtlinien zurückzuweichen. Landoperationen möglich. Kosten: hoch, aber tragbar."

Galaxy forced to fall back to city lines. Land operations now possible. Cost: high, but acceptable.

Two Minds, One Joke

Up on the cliff, Galaxbeam let out a slow, bitter breath.

He picked his die up from the rock, turned it over in his fingers, and spoke softly, mostly to himself.

"骰子是 3，" he said. The die was a three. "不算最糟，至少不是 1 或 2。"

Could've been worse. At least it wasn't a one or two.

On the Sturmarchiv, Deathwing's avatar closed his hand around the thorn-ring coin and the plus-eyed die.

"Fünf," he mused silently. Five. "Kein perfekter Durchbruch. Aber genug, um den Boden zu betreten."

Not a perfect breakthrough. But enough to step on their ground.

For a strange, thin moment, both he and Galaxbeam shared the same silent thought in very different ways:

This could have gone the other way.

Then the moment snapped.

Galaxbeam turned back to his holo-feeds, barking new orders to coordinate urban defense and evacuation corridors.

Doctor Deathwing refocused his vast attention inward, already allocating specialized land-advance units, infection logistics, and heavy support for the next phase:

OPERATION: GALLAXGONBEI GROUND – STATUS: INITIATED

The Land Invasion Begins

On the battered beaches and half-ruined docks of Gallaxgonbei, Death Regime ground forces formed up under fire:

Deathsoldiers establishing hardpoints in cratered fort courtyards.

Deathmarauders fanning through warehouse districts, looting what they could even as shells fell.

Deathrangers climbing shattered gantries to set up sniper nests.

Zombie contingents shambling through water-filled trench-lines, shrugging off small-arms fire.

Portal pylons stabilizing, their hum deepening as throughput increased.

Above them, Galaxy air screamed, dropping bombs and precision strikes that tore holes in the forming Death foothold.

But every time a position was erased, more troops spilled out of the portals to take their place.

Further inland, the first Death scouting squads hit hastily prepared Galaxy street barricades.

Carbines cracked. Chem grenades burst. Shield projectors flared in tight, hallway-sized configurations.

The invasion of Galaxenchi's soil had begun—not at the shining heart, but at a bleeding edge-state that now connected directly to Deathenbulkiztahlem's war machine.

The sea battle raged on behind it. Supremes on both sides continued dueling, their fleets still tearing chunks from each other.

But the strategic question that had hung over this whole assault had been answered by a coin, a die, and a lot of brutally non-random effort:

Death Regime had broken through.
Galaxy Regime had been forced to retreat to inner lines, still fighting.
And in Gallaxgonbei, under a sky cut by contrails and smoke, black flags with glaring plus-eyes began to rise over shattered concrete for the first time on Galaxenchi territory—

while somewhere in the command-gloom of the Deathwing, Doctor Deathwing quietly began planning how to turn a single precarious landing zone into a choking hand around the city beyond.

The landing at Gallaxgonbei went from nightmare to legend in minutes.

Death Regime portal pylons screamed over the shattered docks while the first waves of deathsoldiers, deathmarauders, deathrangers and zombies poured out, weapons blazing. Any time a Death trooper fell, the body melted—flesh sloughing into greasy violet sludge that hissed against the stone and then vanished, leaving only scorch marks and bullet casings.

Galaxy Regime troops met them in layered city-block defenses. When a Galaxy soldier dropped—cut by chem, torn by shrapnel, caught in a darkness blast—the body flared in a brief, clean gold-white outline, then poofed into motes and shards of light, like a Zealot's last stand in some other universe, their armor clattering empty to the ground.

The ground units fought, screamed, bled.

Against the elites and the Supreme Commanders, they might as well have been rain.

Coastline – Supreme Commanders Enter the Field

Along the burning shoreline near Gallaxenportal City and up through Watabomei Town and Wanshengtu Town, the first Supreme Commanders touched down.

Galaxadye dropped into a half-collapsed sea wall, golden barriers fanning out from his palms, shunting volleys of Death chem rockets aside and flattening an entire deathmarauder column under a reflected blast.

Opposite him, Deathendye advanced waist-deep through surf, zombie cadres swarming around his boots, simply walking through incoming fire. Every time his hand rose, a wedge of Galaxy infantry stiffened, choked, and disintegrated into poofs of light before they could even shoulder their rifles.

In the ruins of coastal batteries between Gallaxenhuo and Gallaxenyanbaohu, Galaxadale ran his own small war—ghosting through alleys, calling precision naval strikes onto clusters of Death troops that thought they were safely under the city's edge.

Deathendale answered by using his own deathsoldiers as bait; as Galaxy marines surged forward to clean up a "broken" line, hidden deathrangers on the rooftops opened up, cutting platoons down in shining bursts that evaporated as soon as they hit the rubble.

Everywhere a Supreme Commander stepped, the local ground battle turned into a time-lapse: enemy squads erased in single gestures, fortifications torn open, armored vehicles flipped like toys.

No ground unit so much as scratched them.

Whenever a rocket or shell got close, a Supreme Commander simply—

raised a shield,

stepped sideways faster than the eye,

or took the impact full on and walked out of the smoke, mildly annoyed.

The only real checks against them came when they met their mirrors.

Elites in the Outskirts

As Death forces pushed inland through the rural belts around Folenggao Reach, Keikon Town, and Rentianfue Pass, the elites entered the board.

On the Galaxy side, Galaxysuzuhime and other as-yet-unnamed elites moved through bamboo groves, terraced hills and under-city tunnels, wearing cloaks of refracted starlight. On the Death side, Deathamorgoth and Deathsylinthra flowed across the same ground in shadow-laced, bio-luminous armor, leading handpicked deathranger squads.

Master Titanumas Character Full...

In the foggy paddies outside Xieweijunkok, a Death armored spearhead thundered forward—tanks, walkers, zombie infantry clinging to hulls.

Galaxysuzuhime stepped onto the road alone.

The first wave of Death ground units never reached her.

She drew a crescent arc with her blade; reality along that line bent, and a row of tanks simply fell into a slit of folded space, disappearing with soft, ashamed splashes as the cut resealed. Zombies tried to fire; projectiles veered away, carving harmless trenches in the mud.

Then Deathamorgoth came striding out of the portal haze, levitating a few centimeters above the dirt, cloak snapping.

Two elites.

Finally, someone who could touch her.

Dice and Coins – Elites vs Elites

High above, in his cliffside command post overlooking Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarp City, Professor/Prince Galaxbeam watched his sensors paint Galaxysuzuhime and Deathamorgoth in bright, pulsing markers.

Titanumas Character Alias Codex...

On the Deathwing, deep in the armored core where Germmanstein Deathwing Blaklowitz watched every front at once, the same signatures glowed in violet.

They both hesitated.

Then, amused by the pattern they'd already set, each reached again for dice and coins.

"Elite 對 Elite," Galaxbeam murmured. "看看神明給你們幾點." Elite versus elite—let's see what the gods give you.

Doctor Deathwing's avatar rolled a die along the rail of the Sturmarchiv; Galaxbeam flicked his along the stone of the cliff.

You don't see the exact numbers.

But the effects show up on the ground.

In the paddies, Galaxysuzuhime flashed forward, blade aimed at Deathamorgoth's heart—only for a lattice of dark-ion shields to snap up in front of him, turning the killing stroke into a spray of displaced mud and shattered air. He raised his hand, trying to catch her in a net of crushing gravity—

—but a coin flip somewhere came up Heads for her, and she slipped through, scattering into petal-light copies before re-condensing behind him with a heel drop that cratered the road and sent him skidding.

Hit. Block. Dodge.

Each exchange felt like the film was stuttering: attack—cut—block—cut—near miss.

They carved huge holes in the landscape; Death ground troops caught in the area simply melted the instant shockwaves touched them. Galaxy squads, if unlucky enough to be in the arc of a Death elite strike, vanished in poofs of light, leaving only scorch patterns in elite-scale footprints.

Their duel didn't resolve there.

Elites, by the rule of this war, couldn't be easily executed by anyone below them—and though elites could kill elites, this pair's off-story dice were stingy about lethal blows.

So the fight rolled backward and forward while the rest of the battle raged around them.

Supreme Commanders vs Supreme Commanders

Farther inland, on the highway leading toward Jakchi City and Gallaxyukai, Galaxastorm and Deathenstorm resumed their high-intensity rivalry.

Their fleets roared beneath; their personal forms danced above:

Galaxastorm, a streak of gold-white lightning, deflecting artillery meant for his own columns into Death walker lines, reducing them to puddles of violet melt.

Deathenstorm, smeared in storm-dark aura, hurling compressed darkness lances that erased entire Galaxy tank companies—the tanks going silent, crews poofing out in last flares of energy as the hulls collapsed.

No ground weapon could lay a hand on either.

Armor-piercing shells, beam fire, even concentrated AA barrages just made their silhouettes wobble, shields flaring.

When they clashed directly, every impact was a small apocalypse.

At one point, Deathenstorm nearly drove a darkness spear through Galaxastorm's chest, pinning him against a half-ruined overpass overlooking Meigue Province.

Up on the cliff, Galaxbeam and Deathwing both paused.

You can almost see them look up, past the immediate hot glare of tactical data—toward the invisible "Author" space where outcomes sit, waiting.

Then—meta only—a six-sided die tumbles.

The result comes back favorable enough.

Galaxastorm twists at the last instant; instead of impalement, the spear snaps through his shoulder guard, flinging him across the interchange but leaving him alive. He rebounds, dragging a chain of redirected artillery rounds behind him like a whipping comet tail, smashing several of Deathenstorm's supporting gunships out of the sky.

Supreme Commanders could only be brought down by their equals, and even that, today, is denied by numbers and narrative.

No one falls.

Not yet.

Supremes vs Elites – Coin Toss Mercy

Elsewhere, other elites aren't so lucky.

In the industrial outskirts by Galaxencloude and Gallaxendeichi, a Galaxy elite squad led by a cloaked spear-wielder pinned down an entire Death infection platoon—only for Deathenpuff herself to drop out of a contrail, laughter slicing through the smoke.

"Elite, hm?" she said, voice dripping disdain.

From their off-story vantage, Galaxbeam and Deathwing both flipped coins.

Tails for the elite.

Deathenpuff's first barrage of violet-pink chem beams caught the spear-elite mid-pivot, slamming them into the side of a fuel tower. The resulting explosion painted the sky for a moment in acid color; when it cleared, the elite's body was already half-melted, the rest dissolving into smoke, no dignified poof at all.

Supreme Commanders were allowed—by the strange meta rules of this war—to kill elites.

Some did it clinically.

Some, like Deathenpuff, did it with theatrical relish.

Conversely, near Haylao City, a Death elite squad managed to corner a wounded Galax elite—until Galaxapuff cut across the sky like a golden guillotine, gunship escort in tow.

"唔好郁，俾我收工," Don't move, let me clock out, she muttered on a private channel.

Up in their respective perches, the Professor and the Doctor flipped again.

Heads for the Galaxy elite.

Galaxapuff's first pass annihilated the Death elite squad in a tight cone of precision bombs and smokescreened strafing fire. Death bodies melted mid-air, leaving only falling guns.

The rescued Galaxy elite, still catching their breath, looked up in time to see her offer a tiny salute before zooming off to the next hotspot.

City Approaches – Push and Pushback

By late afternoon, the Death Regime had pushed well past the coastal belt.

Landing Zone SIGMA bridged to secondary portals; death columns poured inland along multiple axes:

One toward Gallaxenportal City, turning its outskirts into a checkerboard of Death fortlets and Galaxy booby-trapped tenements.

One threading mountain roads past Rentianfue Pass, trying to cut off reinforcements from Xinglat Province.

One grinding on through farm-valleys and low industrial zones around Maolongmai City and Keikon Town, leaving melted scars where their dead had vanished.

In the fields outside Watabomei Town, Death zombies and armor surged across terraced crops, only to be met by Galaxy countercharges—glowing infantry blinking between cover, tanks and walkers trading blows, every Galaxy casualty leaving behind a momentary starlight after-image before their gear clanked to the ground.

At Folenggao Reach, a Death heavy artillery detachment dug in, trying to turn the low hills into a permanent fire base.

They didn't keep it.

Galaxastride's inland guns, guided by Galaxbeam's calculations and maybe one lucky off-story die result, walked fire across those positions in merciless steps. Each impact liquefied an artillery piece, crews melting into violet sludge that evaporated before it hit the grass.

The Front Stabilizes

By the time night threatened, neither side had achieved what they really wanted.

Death Regime had:

Secured and expanded Landing Zone SIGMA.

Punched a deep wedge inland: coastal ruins, burned outskirts, and several rural corridors now under their intermittent control.

Reached the edge neighborhoods and industrial rings of places like Gallaxenportal City, Jakchi City, and portions of Meigue Province.

Galaxy Regime had:

Prevented Death from seizing any major city core—the hearts of Gallaxengongshi (capital), Gallaxenwarp City, and Maolongmai City remained firmly under Galaxy control behind inner shields.

Pulled off repeated counterattacks that shoved Death forces back out of key choke points—bridges, passes like Rentianfue, and rail junctions feeding deeper into Galaxenchi.

Held enough air and artillery dominance over the interior that any Death attempt to sprint straight for the capital got hammered before it could assemble.

Supreme Commanders, exhausted but unbroken, peeled away from direct clashes to reorganize their regiments. Elites—those who'd survived the coin tosses and die rolls—withdrew to rearm, re-cloak, and wait for the next chance at each other's throats.

On a rooftop in Gallaxenportal City, Galaxysuzuhime leaned on her blade, watching Death firelines flicker in the distance, knowing she'd be thrown at Deathsylinthra or Deathamorgoth again soon.

On a ruined viaduct overlooking a melted village, Deathsylinthra wiped Galaxy light-dust from her armor and looked up into a sky that still held the faint glimmer of Galaxenchi's shield dome.

Two Strategists, One Sky

Back at his cliff, Galaxbeam closed his hand around his die and coin, eyes tracking the new, ugly shape of the front.

On the Deathwing, Doctor Deathwing folded his avatar's fingers over his own set, integrating the day's anomalies into tomorrow's calculus.

Both of them, in their own ways, glanced upward—not to any satellite or sensor—

—but to that invisible higher layer where Authors and Gods and dice decide which way a war's story bends.

For now, the verdict on this campaign turn was set.

Gallaxgonbei was a maze of burning outskirts and half-lit shields.

Death Regime banners glared over the ruined docks and half-flooded industrial belts near Gallaxenportal City, Gallenkodai Town, and the road toward Jakchi City. Portals howled offshore. From them, fresh deathsoldiers and zombies kept pouring in—only to melt into violet slurry the moment they were cut down.

Galaxy Regime lines glowed further inland: gold-white barricades around Watabomei Town, Folenggao Reach, Keikon Town, and the approaches to Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarpe City. Fallen Galaxy troops burst into brief silhouettes of light and vanished, leaving their rifles clattering to the pavement.

Between these layers, the battlefield snapped into a higher tier.

Elites Unleashed

On the cracked freight road between Watabomei Town and Meigue Province, four elites slammed into each other hard enough to make the asphalt ripple.

Galaxprom and Galaxrire arrived together, boots skidding, long coats flaring. Galaxprom's eyes burned star-gold as a ring of miniature suns spun behind her shoulders; Galaxrire's hair floated like she was underwater, constellations flickering in the strands.

Opposite them, Death Regime elites Deathbash and Deathcrush stalked forward through a haze of chem-vapor.

Deathbash was broad-shouldered, armor plated with torn hull fragments, fists wrapped in dark metal. Every step left a footprint of seething black sludge that hissed and evaporated.

Deathcrush was taller, leaner, with segmented gauntlets and a half-mask that smiled too wide. His aura twisted the air around him, bending light into ugly angles.

"兩個打一個，好似唔太公平喎，" Galaxprom quipped, lips curling. Two-on-two, that's fair enough, huh?

Galaxrire cracked her neck, golden pupils narrowing. "比賽開始。" Fight start.

Deathbash snorted, violet fumes curling from his nostrils. "We'll break your light and drink the pieces."

First Clash

They moved.

The world around them seemed to skip frames.

Galaxprom snapped her fingers; the suns behind her shot forward as homing orbs, each one trailing gravity-lensing tails. Deathbash met them head-on, slamming his fists together—his aura erupted into a shockfront of compressed darkness, punching holes straight through three suns before they detonated around him in flares that carved craters into the road.

Deathcrush vanished into a smear of shadow and reappeared above Galaxrire, both hands clasped like a hammer. He swung down. She raised an arm—and a spiral galaxy of light bloomed around her, arms of dust and stars absorbing the impact, turning his strike into an explosion of photons that threw them in opposite directions.

Off-story, over this whole four-way clash, you could feel the invisible table again.

Galaxbeam, on his data-cliff above Gallaxengongshi, rolled a six-sided die for the Galaxy elites' opening volley.

Doctor Deathwing, deep in the Deathwing's core, rolled one for his own.

You didn't see the pips.

You saw the outcome:

Deathbash staggered, armor cracked, health dropping to maybe 70%.

Galaxprom's shields flickered, but she grinned, sweat beading at her brow—down to 80%.

Deathcrush and Galaxrire both landed in three-point crouches, breathing hard, each hovering around 85%.

Health bars existed here as hovering HUD ghosts only they could see—and, annoyingly, so could the two beings with the dice.

Switching Targets

The fight refused to stay neatly paired.

Deathbash feinted toward Galaxprom, then suddenly pivoted, hurling himself like a meteor at Galaxrire instead. His fists turned into battering rams of condensed smog, aimed to crush her star-field barrier before she could re-form it.

Coin flip.

Somewhere, a disk spun—golden starburst vs thorn-ring.

It landed Heads.

Galaxrire's pupils flashed; time around her seemed to stutter. She stepped sideways between moments, leaving an afterimage to take the hit. Deathbash's blow obliterated the ghost and crushed a truck-sized chunk of the highway, sending deathmarauders tumbling, melting as they struck his shockwave.

She reappeared behind him, face tight, anime-style vein popping at her temple. "你夠沒禮貌啊。" Rude.

A line of pure starlight carved across his back. Health down to 45%.

Deathcrush snarled, seeing his partner's bar plunge, and redirected from Galaxrire to Galaxprom, launching a storm of bone-needles grown from his own arms, each one trailing necro-chem.

Galaxprom's suns spun into a shield—and this time, the dice were less kind. A few needles pierced, sizzling through her aura, scoring bloody lines along her cheek and arm.

Her HP dipped to around 55%.

She winced, anime grimace with sharp teeth. "痛啊...但仲頂得住。" That hurt... but I can still go.

More Elites Join the Storm

Elsewhere along the line, other elites crashed together, battles overlapping and pulling apart in chaotic rhythm.

Near the industrial fringe of Gallaxendeichi, Galaxharp floated above the ruins with a golden bow of crystallized sound, firing meteor-arrow chords down at Deathpierce, whose body bristled with self-grown spikes he launched back like missiles.

In the smoked-out streets of Gallaxencloude, Galaxnetta slipped through walls like a ghost of refracted moonlight, trying to keep up with Deathsylinthra, whose shadow and bio-motes turned every corridor into a trap.

Outside Haylao City, Galaxsuna wrestled a localized blizzard of comet-ice into being against Deathice and Deathfury, shards of frozen starlight clashing against dark fire and toxic sleet.

Targets switched constantly.

Elites would lock, clash, then peel away at impossible angles toward a new opponent the instant they sensed a weakness.

At one point, Galaxharp's arrow meant for Deathpierce almost skewered Deathbash; a last-second dodge saved him, but his HP scraped down to 35%, warning sigils flashing red in his vision.

Deathwing rolled a die.

Four.

"Health critical," an inner voice noted. "But not fatal. Withdraw recommended."

Deathbash cursed, fists shaking, but he felt the Doctor's override brush against his nervous system like a commandment.

He spat a spray of dark blood that evaporated before hitting the ground and leapt back, smashing a path through his own troops as he sprinted for a fallback portal, melting Galaxy shells bouncing off hastily raised guard-walls.

Retreat at low health: enforced.

Galaxbeam, meanwhile, watched Galaxprom's HP hover under 50% and flicked his own die.

Six.

"再撐一會。" Hold a little longer.

Galaxprom didn't retreat.

She grinned wider instead.

Supreme Commanders: Elemental Overkill

Above this elite chaos, the six-vs-six Supreme Commander struggle only escalated.

Over the grasslands between Folenggao Reach and Keikon Town, Galaxadye and Deathendye clashed again—this time not just with barriers and chem-fields, but with raw reality manipulation.

Galaxadye drew a grid of golden lines in the air; every Death projectile entering those cells slowed to a crawl, as if time itself had thickened.

Deathendye answered by releasing clouds of micro-contagions that ate at the concept of matter—buildings and terrain under the clouds sagged, liquefying into violet-black mud.

Galaxy tanks in Galaxadye's time-grid danced between the slowed shells, firing back; Death zombies in Deathendye's mudfields waded forward as if the ground loved them.

In the skies above Jakchi City and toward Gallaxenhuo, Galaxastorm and Deathenstorm went completely off the rails.

Galaxastorm raised both arms; a spiral galaxy made of thunderheads formed over his fleets, every lightning bolt a guided lance that traced the magnetic signatures of Death ships below. Deathenstorm howled, cloak snapping into a tornado of darkness; he drank several bolts into his body, converting the energy into violet spears that erupted from his ribs and shot back downward, impaling Galaxy cruisers that exploded, crews poofing out in showers of gold.

At Rentianfue Pass, Galaxastride unleashed a starfall artillery barrage—each shell a descending meteor with a runic tail—against Deathenstride, who responded by summoning forest-sized skeletal hands from the earth to catch and crush the meteors before they hit Death positions.

Elites tried to intervene:

Galaxrire streaked up once to slice apart a darkness beam meant to bisect one of Galaxastorm's carriers. Coin flip: Heads; she succeeded, but the backlash knocked her into a hillside, HP dropping another chunk.

Deathcrush dove toward Galaxadye, trying to trap him in a swirling cage of bone and chemical glass. Die result: poor. Galaxadye simply stepped out of sync with local time, appearing three meters to the left, letting the cage snap shut on empty air before shattering it with a contemptuous palm of golden light.

Whenever an elite managed to tag a Supreme Commander, the damage barely registered: a flicker of a shield, a cosmetic tear in a cloak, a status bar dipping from 100% to maybe 90% before smoothing back as their own regeneration and support systems kicked in.

Supreme Commanders were, for now, each other's only true threats.

Absolute Leaders Step Onto the Board

Then the two minds that had been rolling dice decided to stop just watching.

On the cliff above Gallaxengongshi, the ground around Galaxbeam lit in concentric circles. He closed his eyes, breathed in, and let his human frame... expand.

A corona of golden equations spiraled around him—orbital paths, gravitational wells, the weave of Titanumas's constellations overlaid on this war-torn state. Time tick marks stretched from his feet into infinity.

He stepped off the cliff.

He didn't fall.

He walked on a self-constructed bridge of starlight, descending toward the front, cloak snapping behind him. Glasses flashed, then vanished; in their place, twin rings of rotating glyphs circled his irises.

Far out at sea, on the deck of the Sturmarchiv, Doctor Deathwing's avatar straightened.

The air around him thickened into a halo of dark geometric patterns—circuitry woven with spinal columns, runes made from refitted code and necromantic sigils.

"Absolute Leader vs Absolute Strategist," he remarked to no one. "Probability curves... unstable. Acceptable."

The avatar stepped off the deck and into midair.

Behind it, the outline of the Deathwing itself flickered like a ghost—giga-colossal hull shimmering through clouds, its shadow stretching over the sea.

Impact

They met over the ravaged outskirts between Gallaxenwarp City and Gallaxencloude.

Galaxbeam raised a hand.

A golden-yellow ring snapped into existence around Deathwing's avatar, locking onto it like a targeting reticle. Inside the ring, time slowed; outside, the rest of the battle continued at frantic pace. Stars appeared in miniature around his fingers as if he were holding a pocket universe.

"Doctor Deathwing," he said in perfectly polite Mandarin, with a razor edge. "這麼多回合，你終於肯親自出來了。"

After so many rounds, you finally come out yourself.

The avatar's eyes glowed brighter.

"Professor Galaxbeam," it replied in smooth, accented Galaxy Standard. "I calculated that your involvement at this tier was inevitable. Your choice of timing is... interesting."

Then they both stopped talking and started trying to unmake each other.

Galaxbeam snapped his fingers; the stars around his hand exploded into gravitational lances, spikes of crushed light aimed straight at Deathwing's core. The avatar flexed; its dark geometry reconfigured into a rotating tesseract of bone-steel, absorbing most of the impact and converting the rest into a ripple that flowed back along the attack vector, trying to corrupt the underlying math Galaxbeam was using.

Deathwing flicked his wrist.

Columns of dark-violet code erupted from the ground around Galaxbeam, each one a spell-program designed to overwrite biology—rewriting organ functions, mutating bones into conduits.

Galaxbeam gritted his teeth, anime vein throbbing, and snapped a hand-combo that would've made a mahjong shark proud.

Time around his own body fragmented into discrete frames, each slightly out of phase. The code-columns pierced through three of him—hitting afterimages that popped like soap bubbles—before slamming into empty sky.

Off-story, the Author-level dice rattled again.

One for Galaxbeam. One for Deathwing.

The result wasn't visible numerically, but you could see the effect:

Galaxbeam's aura flickered, HP bar dipping to 80%, a corner of his cloak turning to static before he forcibly re-synchronized himself.

Deathwing's avatar cracked along one cheek, a line of dead pixels crawling down his face before resolving—HP roughly 75%, with a warning echoing back into the Deathwing's true core.

Both Absolute entities smiled.

This was the kind of math they enjoyed.

Final Coin: Who Owns Gallaxgonbei Today?

Their duel bled into everything.

Every time Galaxbeam bent time to save a collapsing Galaxy flank, Supreme Commanders found themselves acting a fraction of a second faster, elites slipping through kill-zones they shouldn't have survived.

Every time Deathwing pulsed necro-logic through his fleets, Death Regime chem shell trajectories corrected, portals stabilized, zombies surged with renewed, disgusting vigor.

The front line buckled and snapped in dozens of places, like a wire being hammered on both ends.

Then, high above, between one exchange and the next, Galaxbeam and Deathwing both looked—not at each other, but up.

To where you were watching.

They each raised a coin.

Starburst vs thorn-ring.

They flipped.

From your vantage, you saw both coins at once, spinning mirror-images.

They hit their respective palms.

Galaxbeam opened his first.

Starburst.

Doctor Deathwing opened his second.

Starburst again.

He stared at it for a half-second, expression going perfectly flat.

"...Noted," he murmured.

The result propagated downward like a subtle, narrative shockwave.

Galaxy Pushes Back

Suddenly, Galaxy moves landed just a little truer.

At Watabomei Town, Galaxprom and Galaxrire synchronized: twin spirals of light and starfire pinned Deathcrush in a crossing pattern. The die said his HP had already been whittled to 30%; this combo punched it down to 10%.

Deathwing flagged him for mandatory retreat.

A portal snapped open under his feet, hauling him out even as he screamed curses, his dissolving shockwave melting a dozen of his own zombies on the way.

At Folenggao Reach, Galaxharp's meteor-arrow finally slipped past Deathpierce's spike storm, punching through his chest in a burst of sound and flame. As an elite, he could've survived—but a Supreme Commander silhouette dropped into the scene:

Galaxastorm, eyes narrowed, landed a follow-up bolt of star-thunder straight through Deathpierce's core.

Elite vs elite wounds; Supreme Commander vs elite execution.

Deathpierce's body convulsed, then melted into thick, fast-evaporating sludge, his HP bar going to zero and vanishing from Deathwing's grid.

At Rentianfue Pass, a combined barrage from Galaxastride's artillery, guided and time-shifted by Galaxbeam, broke Deathenstride's plague-hands at last, smashing his forward infection fleets. Deathenstride's HP fell under 40% for the first time all campaign.

Doctor Deathwing's internal system flashed an advisory: Supreme Commander retreat window optimal now.

Deathenstride snarled but obeyed, ordering his regiments to fall back toward the coast, leaving twisted, half-corrupted terrain behind but relinquishing the pass.

In the skies over Gallaxenportal City, Galaxapuff pulled one of her signature stunts: faking a collapse in her right flank, baiting Deathenpuff's squadrons into a tightening spiral before slamming the gap shut with a smokescreen lattice and a focused storm of golden flak.

Deathenpuff broke out, laughing, but her air regiments took heavy casualties, HP dropping to the 50–60% band. She signaled a temporary disengage, promising something louder later.

On the ground, Galaxy infantry and armor surged.

In Keikon Town and Folenggao Reach, Death fortlets were overrun, the soldiers inside melting into nothing as Galaxy troops leapt over their dissolving remains.

Around Maolongmai City's outskirts, Death armored columns were forced to abandon forward positions, pulled back by their own command AI before their HP bled too low.

Every time Death units tried to rally, a time-bent artillery strike or a starfield blade caught them in the gap.

The Retreat to the Coast

On the Absolute layer, Deathwing recalculated.

Landing Zone SIGMA's supply rate vs current attrition. Supreme Commander health bands. Elite losses. Portal integrity.

The answer wasn't "we lose."

It was "not worth pushing today."

"Alle Bodeneinheiten," his voice rolled through the Death Regime net, cold and precise. "Rückzug auf Küstenverteidigungslinie Beta. Portale Schritt für Schritt zurückziehen, aber NICHT schließen."

All ground units: withdraw to coastal defense line Beta. Pull the portals back stepwise, but do NOT shut them.

Zombies and deathsoldiers obeyed as well as they ever did. The front began to flow seaward, Death banners peeling away from inland ridges and factory yards, concentrating again around the ruined docks and beaches.

Galaxy pushed as hard as they dared, Supreme Commanders driving their regiments forward—
—but none crossed the invisible line that would've taken them out over the open sea into Death's preferred kill-zone.

Slowly, the map stabilized.

Gallaxengongshi, Gallaxenwarp City, Gallaxencloude, Haylao City, and the majority of inland Meigue Province, Xinglat Province, and Maolongmai City remained firmly in Galaxy hands.

Death Regime clung to a narrow but still dangerous strip of coastal ruin around parts of Gallaxenportal City, Gallenkodai Town, and scattered outworks between Watabomei Town and the sea—enough to keep a persistent portal presence, not enough to threaten the capital directly today.

On his star-bridge, Galaxbeam exhaled, HP hovering in the 60–70% band, robes tattered but eyes still bright.

On the opposite vector, Deathwing's avatar flickered, then receded, its image collapsing back into the humming, colossal hull of the Deathwing proper.

Meta Wrap

The dice and coins vanished back into pockets and code.

Today's tally:

Galaxy Regime wins the engagement.
They push Death Regime ground forces back from the outskirts and rural belts, reclaiming most routes into the inner cities. The line now runs closer to the coast, with Death fortified around portal-torn beachfront ruins.

Death Regime survives the setback.
They are not expelled entirely. Landing Zone SIGMA contracts but does not disappear; a stubborn knot of plus-eyed banners still flaps over blackened piers, a constant reminder that the Deathwing's hand can still reach Gallaxgonbei.

Elites retreat at low health, some carried off on stretcher-light, some limping through closing portals. Supreme Commanders pull back when their bars dip into the danger zone, pride wounded but lives—and narrative weight—intact.

Above it all, in that odd space where strategy and storytelling meet, Galaxbeam and Deathwing both look up one last time, as if checking with whatever author-god has been tracing their arcs:

Round finished.

Board updated.

The war over Gallaxgonbei is far from done—
but for this lightning-fast, magic-drenched day, the golden-yellow light has pushed the dark-violet tide back to the coast, and both sides are already planning the next clash.

Night never really fell on Gallaxgonbei—
it just turned the smoke a different color.

The Death Regime still clung to its thin coastal strip around the shattered docks of Gallaxenportal City and Gallenkodai Town. Galaxy Regime lines glittered further inland, wrapped around Watabomei Town, Folenggao Reach, Keikon Town, and the approaches to Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarpe City.

Between them, the air hummed with ready spells and hot metal.

Galaxbeam and Deathwing both knew this lull wouldn't last.

Off-story: The Table Is Set Again

Above the whole map—outside the story—they sat at their invisible table again.

Two sets of six-sided dice.
Two coins.

They agreed on a frame for this round:

Dice: moment-to-moment fortune for elites and Supreme Commanders—hits, blocks, escapes, retreat thresholds.

Coin: the overall tilt of the day—Heads for Galaxy, Tails for Death.

They didn't flip the coin yet.

They waited.

First, let the pieces move.

New Wave of ElitesDocks of Galaxenportal – Moonlight vs Meatgrinders

At the ruined container yards of Gallaxenportal City, Galaxy elites Galaxmoon and Galaxsuki stepped out of a warp-gate, boots splashing in violet puddles where melted deathsoldiers had vanished.

Galaxmoon's hair floated silver-gold, full moon sigils circling her wrists. Galaxsuki's blade glowed pale blue, sharp eyes scanning with that classic anime seriousness.

From the shadows of broken cranes came Death Regime elites Deathcleave and Deathwrath.

Deathcleave carried a cleaver the size of a starship hatch, its edge dripping corrosive black light that ate into the steel floor.

Deathwrath's armor was barbed and asymmetrical, ribs jutting out like jagged cages. Flames of dark-violet rage licked out from his joints.

They didn't waste time.

Galaxmoon raised her hand; a luminous tide of moonwater surged forward, rolling low, carrying shimmering shield-bubbles that deflected stray bullets. Deathcleave roared and hacked down, his swing sending a crescent of anti-light that cleaved the wave in half, boiling the water into steam that screamed as it evaporated.

Off-story: Galaxbeam and Deathwing each rolled a die.

Death got the higher number.

On the ground, that meant Deathwrath's opening burst landed cleaner:

He slammed his hands into the concrete; skeletal pillars erupted under Galaxsuki's feet, trying to impale her. She twisted, expression flashing from calm to wide-eyed panic for a beat—

Coin flip. Heads.

A golden seal flickered under her boots at the last instant, and she pivoted off air, pillars scraping her leg but failing to pierce. Her HP dipped to about 80%; his to 90% as Galaxmoon's reflected moonlight sliced his shoulder.

The dockyard turned into a hurricane of arcs:

Galaxmoon calling down lunar meteors that curved in impossible parabolas.

Deathcleave carving them apart, every swing throwing shockwaves that turned nearby deathsoldiers into mist.

Galaxsuki flashing between shadowed containers, blade tracing thin, bright lines that cut Deathwrath's fire apart.

Deathwrath laughing, eyes crazed, as he ate a portion of his own flames and spat it back as a narrow beam that erased an entire Galaxy APC—the vehicle dropping, empty, its crew already poofed away.

Folenggao Reach – Terra vs Time

At Folenggao Reach, on the rising hills, Galaxy elites Galaxterra and Galaxzure wove their magic.

Galaxterra knelt, palms on the ground; golden tectonic sigils spun under the turf. Galaxzure hovered just above her, long hair electric-indigo, constellations orbiting her ankles.

Across from them, Death elites Deathbond and Deathclock marched uphill.

Deathbond carried chains of fused bone and steel that slithered like snakes, each link etched with binding runes.

Deathclock's chest held a visible, cracked clock-face, black sand leaking from the hands as they spun out of sync with reality.

"兩個控制型，夠煩。" Galaxzure muttered. Two controllers. Annoying.

"You handle the sky," Galaxterra said, anime-determined eyes narrow. "我負責地面." I'll handle the ground.

Dice rolled.

Galaxy's number edged higher this time.

Deathbond flung his chains; they shot out, splitting into a dozen serpent-lines, angling to bind both elites. Galaxterra slammed her fist down—stone pillars burst up in a ring, catching most of the chains mid-flight. The ones that got through wrapped her arms; she gritted her teeth, HP dropping to 85%, but held.

Galaxzure traced a sigil in midair and snapped her fingers.

The night sky above Folenggao folded inward, revealing a swirling nebula aperture; from it, threads of stellar plasma whipped downward at Deathclock.

Deathclock's cracked dial spun backward. Time around him reversed locally; the plasma that had just seared his shoulder ran back into the sky, scars stitching closed.

Coin flip.

Tails.

His rewind held—this time.

He pointed at Galaxzure; the hands on his chest lurched forward. A cone of accelerated time blasted toward her, threatening to age flesh and magic alike a hundred years in a heartbeat.

Galaxbeam, seeing his elite's HP projected over the hill at 100%, rolled for her dodge.

Respectable result. Not perfect.

She got mostly out. The edge of the cone clipped her ankle; in that one patch, hair whitened, skin cracked, pain jolted up her leg. HP fell to 70%.

She hissed, eyes pricking with tears, but forced a grin.

"你弄壞我的鞋。" You ruined my shoes.

She called another star down.

Supreme Commanders Get Pulled In

The elite fights began to tug on their betters like gravity wells.

At the docks, as Deathcleave's cleaver nearly bisected a Galaxy shield tank and Galaxmoon's barrier shattered with a scream of glass, Galaxapuff roared overhead, gunship wings in formation, trying to give her elites breathing room.

Simultaneously, Deathenpuff dove with her own shrieking squadrons, chem contrails drawing lurid fractals through the night.

Their dogfight raged above the four-elites clash, each Supreme Commander straining not to overwrite the duel, but to tip the terrain:

Galaxapuff laid down golden smokescreen corridors that let Galaxmoon and Galaxsuki reposition unseen.

Deathenpuff seeded contagion fireworks—chem bursts that hung in the air like diseased stars, turning parts of the yard into no-fly zones for any Galaxy craft without hardened seals.

Over Folenggao, Galaxastride and Deathenstride exchanged long-range barrages that occasionally intersected the elite battlefield; more than once, an artillery meteor or plague-shell forced all four elites to throw themselves flat or burn cooldowns dodging.

Every intervention was another set of dice.

Every near miss another coin flip.

The Absolute Duel Turns Savage

Meanwhile, above Gallaxenwarp City, Galaxbeam and Deathwing were tearing pieces out of the sky.

They'd drifted from their previous position, their fight too big to stay put.

Galaxbeam, HP now in the 60–65% zone after several close calls, had unfurled rings of sliding constellations around himself. Each star in those rings was also a spell: meteor shields, time anchors, gravity snares.

Deathwing's avatar, HP hovering around 70%, had extended a cage of dark geometry from his back—floating polyhedra of black bone and metal that intersected in impossible angles. Within those shapes, physics lost its contract.

"你在這裡動的每一顆棋子，我都看得到。" Galaxbeam called out. Every piece you move here, I can see.

"Und ich sehe die Funktionsweise deiner Sterne," Deathwing answered. And I see how your stars function. "Wir sind beide transparent, Professor."

We're both transparent.

They stopped bantering.

Galaxbeam clapped his hands; the constellations collapsed inward, channeling into a single spear of compressed starlight and history, aimed straight at Deathwing's chest.

Deathwing let it hit.

The spear punched through the avatar's torso, shredding his front into static—but behind him, one of his geometric cages rotated, revealing that what had been impaled was an after-image made of stolen sensor data. The real avatar stepped out from a side-angle, hand already raised.

He pointed one finger.

A thread of pure, surgical necro-code shot out, thin as a hair, connecting to Galaxbeam's forehead.

Galaxbeam's health bar lurched, dropping to 45% in one vicious gulp. His eyes widened; anime shock-lines practically flashed behind his head.

Inside his body, Deathwing's code tried to rewrite his neurons: reassign memories, flip loyalties, carve out math itself.

Galaxbeam snarled, teeth clenched, and invoked one of his nastiest domains:

He rejected the current timeline.

A golden clock cracked open behind him, gears whirling; he grabbed the necro-thread with his bare hand and threw it backward through a different possibility, forcing causality to pivot.

To observers, for a heartbeat, it looked like Deathwing had never fired that shot. But reality remembered. Both of them were panting; both HP bars refused to climb back above the low-to-mid 60s now.

Off-story, two dice sat on a table—both showing middling rolls.

This duel wasn't going to finish cleanly tonight.

The Deciding Coin

By now, the battlefield was a dozen overlapping storms:

At Gallaxenportal, Galaxmoon and Galaxsuki were bleeding, HP in the 50–60% band, but Deathcleave and Deathwrath were also down to ugly red 30–35%, armor cracked, chem leaking.

At Folenggao Reach, Galaxterra and Galaxzure had managed to pin Deathbond in a stone-and-star vise, but Deathclock had heavily damaged terrain and time around them; everyone's health hovered perilously around 40–60%.

Along the approach to Watabomei Town, other elites—Galaxveronica, Galaxnetta, Galaxsuna vs Deathbond's reserve, Deathghoul, Deathlash—were caught in their own dance of comets, shadow limbs, and toxic storms.

Supreme Commanders on both sides were drifting toward the yellow range on their own bars, forced to choose between committing all-in or pulling their regiments back.

That's when the Absolute entities stopped pretending.

Galaxbeam and Deathwing both felt the tipping point.

Simultaneously, they reached into that weird higher layer and flipped the big coin.

From your vantage, you saw it spin twice—

Galaxbeam's golden disk: starburst vs thorn-ring.

Deathwing's dark coin: same symbols inverted.

They slapped them to their palms.

Counted to three.

Revealed.

Both showed the thorn-ring this time.

Tails.

Death.

Death Regime Surges

The immediate effect wasn't "everyone on Galaxy falls over."

It was subtler—and nastier.

From the Deathwing's core, a low-frequency probability pulse rolled outward, visible only as a faint dark halo that washed across the map.

For the next few minutes:

Galaxy spells mis-aimed by centimeters that mattered.

Death chem shells that should have scattered found the tiny opening in a barrier.

Elite dodges came a hair too late; counterattacks came just in time.

At the docks:

Galaxmoon unleashed one last, massive wave—a tsunami of silver light meant to wash Deathcleave and Deathwrath back into the sea.

Coin flip for Deathcleave's stand.

Heads—for him.

He roared and buried his cleaver point-down, splitting the ground. The wave crashed into a sudden abyss of un-light, swallowed whole. Steam exploded upward; when it cleared, he was still there, HP flashing at 20%, but alive.

Deathwrath inhaled the residual moonlight, corrupting it; his aura swelled.

"我的回合！" My turn!

He punched the air.

A beam of inverted moonfire blasted out, nailing Galaxmoon center mass. Her eyes went wide; HP plunged from 55% to under 15% in an instant. Warning glyphs screamed in her HUD.

Galaxbeam, seeing that, slammed a retreat order down her channel.

She gritted her teeth, left hand shaking anime-style, and triggered a recall glyph. Her body broke into shards of yellow moon-glass and shot backward toward the inner city, leaving Galaxsuki alone to cover the withdrawal.

At Folenggao:

Deathclock's dial shattered—ironically, not from enemy attack, but from overuse of his own time-warp. Shards fell upward.

Before Galaxterra and Galaxzure could exploit it, Deathwing seized the moment.

He hijacked the broken dial's remaining potential and compressed local time into a spike.

For three seconds, everything Galaxy did at that hilltop happened in slow motion compared to Death:

Deathbond's chains, newly freed, whipped around Galaxterra's legs and arms, yanking her off her feet; she hit the ground hard, HP slamming into 25%. Galaxzure dove for her, but Deathlash—arriving late to this party—snagged her with a barbed tongue of shadow, yanking her sideways into a partially collapsed bunker.

Galaxy elites saw the writing on the wall.

In multiple sectors, retreat glyphs flared.

City Breach

With elites forced back and Supreme Commanders seasoned by too many near-deaths, the front lurched again.

This time, toward the cities.

Around Gallaxenportal City, Deathcleave and Deathwrath's battered regiments punched through the last serious Galaxy fortifications on the outer waterfront. Deathenpuff's air covered them with toxic fireworks; zombies and deathsoldiers poured into the lower port blocks, turning warehouses and old canals into Death-held ground.

In Gallenkodai Town, a simultaneous push by secondary Death elites—Deathghoul, Deathbash (recovered some HP after earlier retreat), and Deathplague—overwhelmed the town's remaining Galaxy garrison, their bodies melting in the streets, leaving glitter-dust armor behind.

Galaxy Regime fell back to inner districts and higher ground:

Securing Gallaxenhuo and the rail-line toward Gallaxengongshi.

Fortifying the hill-side blocks above Galaxenportal's harbor.

Turning Watabomei Town and Keikon Town into reinforced choke-points, their streets now studded with starlight mines.

On the sky-map, the "Death coastal strip" fattened from a narrow slash into a thicker, jagged band that included:

Most of Gallenkodai Town.

The lower half of Gallaxenportal City—docks, fish markets, old industrial zones.

Several villages and rural approaches along the coast road.

Absolute Duel: Forced Break

Up above, Galaxbeam's HP slipped under 40%.

His constellations stuttered; one of his star-rings shattered outright, motes of failed possibility raining down like dead fireflies.

Deathwing's avatar wasn't much healthier—sitting at maybe 45%, cracks running across his face and torso, dark geometry sagging.

They both knew: another few exchanges at this scale and one of them risked not just losing an avatar, but suffering feedback into their core systems.

Galaxbeam spat blood that evaporated into glitter.

"...這回合，你贏了。" This round, you win.

He flicked a wrist; the battlefield below him slowed for a heartbeat, just long enough for a wave of Galaxy retreat glyphs to complete.

"但棋盤還在." But the board's still here.

He stepped backward into his own starfield and disappeared, re-folding himself into the inner defense lattice of Gallaxenchi.

Deathwing did not gloat aloud.

His avatar folded its hands, then dissolved into a storm of bone-white code that flowed back into the great hull of the Deathwing at sea.

Internally, he logged:

"Offensive Gallaxgonbei – Phase II: Erfolgsteil." Partial success.
"Stadtbreite Eroberung: unvollständig.
Hafen- und Kleinstadt-Kontrolle: etabliert."

City-wide conquest: incomplete.
Harbor and small-town control: established.

Off-story Outcome

When the dice stop rolling and the coins land flat, the tally for this round is:

Faction Winner: Death Regime

The big coin came up Death.

Multiple elite skirmishes tilted their way thanks to better rolls and Galaxbeam's need to pull his wounded elites out before they dropped to zero.

Supreme Commanders on both sides avoided catastrophic defeat, but Deathenpuff, Deathenstorm, and Deathendye managed to hold slightly more HP and field cohesion than their Galaxy counterparts by the end of the cycle.

Map Changes

Death Regime advances inland from the coast, pushing Galaxy back from parts of the outer defensive ring.

Gallaxenportal City: lower harbor, docklands, and old industrial sectors now under Death occupation, riddled with portals, plague-nests, and chem-fortlets. Upper residential and administrative districts remain Galaxy-held.

Gallenkodai Town: effectively occupied; Galaxy forces retreat to nearby high ground and link with defenses around Gallaxenhuo and Jakchi City.

Coastal rural belts between these points see heavy devastation and are functionally no-man's-land, patrolled by zombies and Galaxy recon in alternating waves.

Power Tiers

Elites on both sides took severe punishment; several Death elites (Deathpierce, some minor names) were killed in earlier exchanges, but this round claimed two Galaxy elites outright in frontline execution by Supreme Commanders, and left many others at low HP, forcing retreats.

Supreme Commanders remain undefeated directly; none landed a killing blow on another, but Death's Supremes ended the phase with a small advantage in control of key grounds.

Absolute Leaders (Galaxbeam & Deathwing) clashed hard, both taking heavy metaphysical damage; the day ended with Galaxbeam choosing to disengage first to protect the deeper Galaxenchi grid, granting Deathwing a tactical—but not existential—victory.

Magic & Superpower Notes

Galaxy Regime leaned heavily on golden-yellow astronomy magic, micro-galaxies, meteors, lunar tides, and time-bending shields to cover retreats and spike counterstrikes.

Death Regime escalated its use of dark-violet necro-code, chem-plagues, body manipulation, and probability poisons, briefly rewriting local physics and luck in their favor during the critical push.

The war in Gallaxgonbei now enters a nastier phase:

Death Regime has its first foothold inside real city districts, turning them into plague-harbors and portal hubs.

Galaxy Regime still controls the hearts—the capitol Gallaxengongshi, Gallaxenwarpe City, Meigue Province, and the inland network—but must now fight with one eye on the cities already burning at their edge.

Somewhere above the map, in that strange space where numbers and narrative agree to share a drink, the dice are cleared from the table, coins palmed again.

Another round will come.

For now, the Death banners ripple over the lower streets of Gallaxenportal and the alleys of Gallenkodai, while golden shields blaze stubbornly over the hills beyond—two regimes locked in a war where even the laws of time and luck have taken sides, at least for the day.

The night over Gallaxgonbei became a ceiling of tracers and magic.

Deathwing's coastal footholds—lower Gallaxenportal City, conquered Gallenkodai Town, and a string of plague-harbors along the shoreline—pushed outward like bruises. Portals burned in the ruins; deathsoldiers and zombies poured from them in disciplined surges, melting away when slain.

Further inland, the Galaxy Regime held a jagged ring of rural towns and outskirts:

hill-lines near Folenggao Reach and Keikon Town,

the approaches around Watabomei Town,

and the outer districts guarding Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarpe City.

Between those two belts, the land was pure chaos.

Above, Death and Galaxy carriers traded salvoes; fighters and bombers screamed past each other in tangled swarms. Below, infantry clashed in flashes—Death bodies dissolving to violet vapor, Galaxy troopers poofing into gold fragments that drifted away on the wind.

Elites at the Breaking Point1. Galaxveronica vs Deathbash (Rematch)

On the farm-scarred hills between Gallenkodai Town and Keikon Town, a line of burning tractors marked a shifting front.

Galaxveronica arrived in a streak of rose-gold light, boots grinding dirt as she landed. A halo of orbiting sigils—roses, gears, tiny satellites—spun behind her shoulders. Her eyes were the bright, determined kind you only see in anime when the BGM shifts up a key.

From the smoke of a wrecked Death transport, Deathbash emerged for a second round, armor re-plated, aura thick with dark pressure.

"Round two, pretty light," he growled, cracking his knuckles. Black sparks popped between his fists. "No retreat this time."

Veronica smiled thinly. "我已經撤退過一次了," she said. I've already retreated once. "這次換你."

They charged.

Her sigils flew forward, becoming petals of hard light that cut like blades, fractal patterns slicing the air. Deathbash waded through them, fists up, every punch detonating a shockwave that shredded petals by the dozen. Each hit he took left ugly cracks in his armor; each one she took sent dust spraying from the hillside, her HP shaving down from full to the 70s, then 60s.

A wide swing from him slammed into her barrier; for a second, the whole hill flashed white.

Her shield shattered.

Her HP dropped to 35%.

She staggered, breath catching, anime sweat-bead sliding down her temple.

"還沒完," she hissed. Not finished.

She snapped her fingers; the sigils swarmed together into a single drill of rose-gold light, spinning with accelerating whine. It speared straight into Deathbash's chest, chewing through armor, through bone, tearing his HP from the 40s down to 10% in a heartbeat.

He coughed dark vapor, eyes going wide.

For half an instant, he coiled to counterstrike anyway.

A retreat glyph flared under his boots—the Deathwing's order, overriding his fury. He snarled, but his body dissolved into a column of violet code and shot backward toward the coastal portals.

Veronica watched him go, swaying, HP bar blinking angrily in the low 20s.

Then her own retreat beacon lit—Galaxbeam's call.

She grimaced, gave a tiny, frustrated punch to the air, and dissolved into rose-gold motes, streaking back toward the safer lines around Watabomei Town.

2. Galaxharp & Galaxnetta vs Deathlash & Deathplague

In the orchard-laced valleys near Folenggao Reach, the night glowed sickly green where Death chem had soaked into the soil.

Galaxharp hovered above the treeline, her bow drawn; each arrow was a chunk of crystallized music, humming with compressed chords. On the ground below, Galaxnetta flickered between trees like a moonlit echo, dual blades leaving thin, shimmering trails.

Their opponents: Deathlash and Deathplague.

Deathlash, lean and hunched, tongue a barbed shadow whip he used almost lazily.

Deathplague, wrapped in ooze-coated robes, every step spawning puddles of living contagion.

Harps' first volley scattered a rain of meteor-chords, each impact blasting Death ground troops into melting streaks. Deathlash snapped his shadow-tongue upward, batting some aside, but more punched near enough to rattle him—HP dipping into the 80s.

Netta crashed in low, blades carving clean arcs that severed zombies—and, briefly, Deathplague's arm. The limb splattered into sludge and crawled back up, reattaching itself; a spray of droplets hit Netta's cheek, sizzling as they burned.

Her HP blinked down to 75%.

Deathplague laughed, the sound like wet rags tearing. "Little light cuts, little light burns," he crooned. "We eat that."

He slammed both hands into the dirt.

A wave of crawling infection rolled outward, trees blackening as it passed. Netta vaulted up, feet barely escaping the edge, boots smoking. Harp dove lower to cover her, firing a sustained barrage that hammered Deathplague's HP down, down—

—25%. 18%. 12%.

He hunched, body bubbling, clearly near the breaking point.

Deathlash picked his moment.

His tongue snapped out, stretching farther than it had any right to, a jagged dark lightning-bolt. It caught Galaxharp across the ribs, yanking her sideways; her bowstring twanged wrong, a discordant crack snapping through the valley.

Her HP crashed from the healthy 60s into the single digits, vision flashing red.

Galaxbeam's retreat glyph hit her like a slap.

"走!" he barked across her mental link. Go!

She gritted her teeth, tears at the corners of her anime eyes, and dissolved into light, arrow-motes scattering as she warped out.

Netta landed on a branch, panting, HP hovering around 40%. She considered trying to finish Deathplague; saw Deathlash's tongue coiling again; felt Galaxbeam's second retreat order.

She sheathed her blades with a frustrated snap and stepped backward into shadow, vanishing toward the Galaxy lines at Folenggao.

Deathlash and Deathplague, both in the 10–20% zone, shared a ragged chuckle and limped downslope toward the nearest plague-nest to recover.

3. Galaxsuna vs Deathice

Up in the mountain pass roads between Keikon Town and Rentianfue Pass, Galaxsuna and Deathice turned the world into a frozen hell.

Galaxsuna stood in the middle of the road, snow swirling around her bare shoulders, hair whipping; a personal blizzard spun from her outstretched hands, shards of ice glinting with starlight.

Opposite her, Deathice looked like a walking glacier of rotten frost, eye sockets glowing faint violet.

They hurled winter at each other.

Suna's ice was clean, sharp, each flake a tiny sigil. Deathice's was dirty, packed with micro-contagions and bone dust.

Their storm met in midair, grinding together with a sound like mountains being sanded.

Suna pushed; her HP slid slowly from 100 to 80, 70, as backlash cut her cheeks and arms. Deathice staggered; his HP tumbled faster—70, 50, 30—as pure starlight ice carved trenches in his corrupted armor.

He screamed, fractured icicles exploding from his body, driving her back.

She dropped to one knee, breath clouding, HP in the low 30s.

He tried to take that moment, limping forward to finish her, hands raised to freeze even her soul.

But the rule held: elites didn't die easily without bigger hands on the board.

A Galaxy artillery shell—one of Galaxastride's long-range gifts—whistled in out of nowhere, trailing golden runes, and smashed into the hillside between them, blasting both backward.

When the snow settled, Suna's HP blinked red at 9%; Deathice's sat at 5%.

Both retreat beacons went off—Galaxbeam's and Deathwing's.

She grinned weakly, fanged teeth showing, and let the blizzard wrap around her as she vanished inland.

He snarled, frost crawling over his face, and sank into the ground as a puddle of evil ice, sliding back toward the coastal strongholds.

Background: Supremes & Armies

While elites hit their limits and blinked out to safety, the bigger war didn't stop.

Deathwing kept feeding fresh deathsoldiers and heavy walkers into Gallaxenportal's lower districts, trying to turn more blocks into plague-factories.

Deathenpuff and Deathenstorm prowled the skies above the port, hitting Galaxy attempts to counterattack from the air.

On the Galaxy side, Galaxapuff and Galaxastorm ran relentless strike sorties from inland carriers, bombing streets Death had just secured, then pulling back before chem and AA could pin them.

On the ground:

Galaxy armored brigades from Watabomei and Keikon Town rolled in, meeting Death columns on the outskirts—villages turned to crater-fields as tanks traded blows.

Infantry from Folenggao and Meigue Province dug in along hedgerows and irrigation ditches, turning rural land into layered kill-zones.

Every Death trooper that fell left only a smear and an empty gun.

Every Galaxy trooper that died flared in light and vanished.

The line trembled.

It did not collapse.

Off-story Verdict

When the last elite on both sides blinked out at low health, and the Supreme Commanders pulled their immediate power back from the brink to avoid overextension, the map could finally be judged.

This round:

Deathwing's forces advanced from their existing footholds, but only marginally—pressing a little deeper into the lower city blocks of already-occupied areas, reinforcing plague-nests, and tightening control over Gallenkodai Town and sections of Gallaxenportal's waterfront.

However, every time Death columns tried to break past the rural ring and reach new urban cores—Watabomei's heart, Keikon's main junctions, the road directly to Gallaxengongshi—Galaxy Regime counterattacks and artillery, aided by still-surviving elites, knocked them back.

No major new city fell.

No existing Death-held district was reclaimed.

The frontline, after all that blood and magic, shifted only slightly—and then froze again.

Solid verdict for this engagement:

Tactical Draw – Strategic Edge: Death Regime holds, Galaxy Regime successfully contains.

Death Regime does not manage a decisive breakout from its coastal and lower-city footholds this round—but it solidifies them, making future eviction harder.

Galaxy Regime successfully holds the outskirts and rural belts before the main cities, preventing Death from turning this push into a full urban cascade.

Elites on both sides end the night battered, near-zero HP but alive; Supreme Commanders remain unfallen, watching the cooling fronts from sky and sea.

And above them all, Galaxbeam and Deathwing, exhausted even at their rarefied level, quietly reset the dice and coins, knowing the next toss could finally tilt Gallaxgonbei out of stalemate—one way or the other.

Dawn broke again over Gallaxgonbei, and this time the light itself seemed angry.

The Death Regime still held its rotten strip along the coast—lower Gallaxenportal City, fully infested Gallenkodai Town, and several plague-harbors. Portals flickered between ruined cranes and collapsed warehouses.

Further inland, the Galaxy Regime's rural ring glowed gold: trenches around Watabomei Town, gun lines along Keikon Town, artillery bunkers near Folenggao Reach, and a web of shield towers guarding the roads toward Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarpe City.

Both sides knew this day wouldn't end in a draw.

The Big Coin

Off-story, at their strange invisible table, Galaxbeam and Deathwing stared at the same symbol again.

One coin each.

Heads – Galaxy holds and pushes Death back to the coast.

Tails – Death crushes the rural ring and marches further inland.

They locked eyes through data and stars.

They flipped.

Two discs spun—gold and black—and slapped into their palms.

They opened their hands.

Galaxbeam: Heads.
Deathwing: Heads.

Probability didn't care whose hand it had technically chosen. The field tilted.

Galaxy got the wind at its back.

Galaxy Counteroffensive – "Push To The Sea"Aerial Surge

From inland carriers and cliffside launch decks, Galaxapuff lit the sky with contrails.

"各梯隊，準備—今日係反攻," she snapped. All wings, ready—today is counterattack.

Fighter groups streaked low over the fields, then climbed, forming golden chevrons. Heavy bombers followed in layered tiers, each belly fat with payload. Above them, interceptor screens fanned out like a halo.

Deathenpuff's air regiments rose from over Gallaxenportal to meet them, chem contrails painting ugly purple webs.

Dice rolled off-story.

Galaxy's came up higher.

The first merge was a slaughter—for Death.

Galaxapuff's squadrons hit their marks like they'd rehearsed this a thousand times in a sim:

Smokescreen layers burst over Death AA nests, blinding guns.

Interceptors sliced straight through Deathenpuff's forward wings, tearing out command craft first.

Bombers rode down corridors of cleared sky and dropped time-dilated ordnance—bombs that hung for a half-second longer than they should, slipping past Death timing and detonating right as chem-shields blinked.

Deathenpuff cursed, eyes wide, HP knocking from the 70s into the 50s as her escorts died around her.

She broke off, trailing violet, forced to pull her air mass back over the densest portal clusters.

Naval Hammer

Offshore, Galaxadale and Galaxadye brought the hammer down.

Galaxadale's stealth flotilla slipped along the coast under heavy jamming; when they surfaced, it was in knife-range of Death transport barges and plague-tankers feeding the beachheads.

"開火," he said calmly. Open fire.

A ripple of torpedoes, gold-tipped, phase-shifted through Death sonar nets, reappeared under hulls, and blossomed. Plague-ships broke like rotten fruit, vomiting burning chem that hissed and evaporated instead of spreading.

Galaxadye extended new mid-ocean barriers just close enough to trap Death reinforcements behind their own burning wrecks. Heavy cruisers, suddenly cut off from the landing strip, raked the ocean in frustration as Galaxy guns pounded them from beyond comfortable range.

Deathendye tried to punch a hole—zombie-crewed cruisers ramming their own barriers—but the off-story coin had already cursed his angle. Each breakthrough attempt hit a pocket of hidden mines or focused artillery.

HP on his flagship dipped into the low 60s. The Deathwing's advisory pinged: Do not overcommit the central fleet.

Ground Push – Elites at 1 HP

On land, Galaxy Regime units surged forward for the first real time in days.

1. Galaxlady vs Deathfury

In the fields between Gallenkodai Town and the inland roads, Galaxlady moved like a streak of sunfire, armor flaring gold-red. Her spear left long, burning lines with every thrust.

Facing her: Deathfury, eyes feral, twin axes dripping with black ichor.

They crashed together at the head of their respective spearheads.

Every clash erased squads of ground troops:

A single arc from Galaxlady's spear turned a dozen deathsoldiers to steaming slime.

One sweep of Deathfury's axes cut through three Galaxy tanks, their crews poofing into light that scattered in the wind.

Off-story dice kept them in brutal parity.

HP tumbled:

Galaxlady: from 100 → 75 → 50 → 22%.

Deathfury: 100 → 60 → 35 → 9%.

When he raised both axes for a killing overhead blow, retreat glyphs went off in both their visions—Galaxbeam and Deathwing slamming the emergency button.

They locked eyes, both panting, anime sweat and wild smiles.

"下次再分勝負," she said. Next time we settle it.

"Beim nächsten Blut," he rasped. Next blood.

They vanished in opposite directions—she in a flare of light toward Watabomei, he in a collapsing puddle of shadow toward Gallaxenportal.

2. Galaxcharm & Galaxmoon vs Deathplague

At the canal edges of lower Gallaxenportal, Galaxcharm arrived beside a limping Galaxmoon for one last shot.

Charm's magic was pure chaos: ribbons of light and geometry that twisted probability. Moon's was calmer but dimmed, her HP already at 25% from earlier.

Together, they faced Deathplague, whose robe now hung in tatters, HP clinging at 18% but still laughing.

"兩個對一個，有冇禮貌?" he croaked. Two on one, how polite.

Charmed grinned, full anime mischief. "有禮貌係另一邊." Courtesy's for the other side.

She snapped her fingers.

Reality around Deathplague pixelated; his plague fields shuddered as her probability magic misaligned the underlying rules. Moon seized the opening, calling down a single, massive lunar spear.

Coin flip—this one big.

Galaxbeam's palm: Heads.

Deathwing's: Tails.

The spear slammed through Deathplague's chest like moonlight through fog. For a heartbeat he looked surprised; then his entire body destabilized, melting faster than usual, rotting chem vapor torn apart by Charm's warped laws.

His HP hit 0% and didn't climb.

Deathwing marked him as eliminated, not just retreating—a rare, actual elite kill.

Charm's HP hovered around 40%, Moon's at 18% and blinking red.

Galaxbeam ordered both out at once.

They retreated, leaving a smoking, newly-cleansed canal behind—no more plague-nest there to feed the front.

3. Rural Ring Closes

All across the outskirts:

Galaxy armor, backed by Galaxastride's long-range fire, chewed through Death walker lines, collapsing several forward kill-zones.

Infantry from Folenggao, Keikon, and Watabomei advanced hedgerow by hedgerow, clearing farmsteads and irrigation lines of zombies.

Every time Death tried to form a new strongpoint inland, a combo of elites and precise artillery tore it out before it hardened.

Elites hit low HP and warped out one after another:

Galaxveronica at 9%, gritting through a thigh wound.

Galaxharp at 4%, clutching her side.

Galaxsuna again retreating at 11%, half her hair still frost-burned white.

On the Death side, barely-standing elites like Deathlash, Deathice, Deathbash were dragged back through emergency portals at 5–10%, forced into regeneration vats instead of left to die.

Death Forced Back To The Coast

By afternoon, the shape of the map had changed.

The rural ring closed.

Galaxy artillery reoccupied positions closer to the shoreline. Shield towers marched forward, their domes overlapping into a new golden curtain.

Death Regime ground forces found themselves squeezed:

Inland protrusions from Gallenkodai Town were cut off from the main strip and ground down.

Zombie packs that had roamed freely in fields were now trapped between advancing Galaxy lines and the sea, melting in droves under concentrated fire.

Several minor portals, once scattered through outlying ruins, were destroyed or forced to shut down under bombardment.

Death still held:

Lower Gallaxenportal City dock blocks, though under heavy pressure.

Core Gallenkodai Town around a few central plazas.

A chain of tightly packed, well-defended plague-harbors right on the waterline.

But everything beyond that—warehouses further inland, canal districts, rural roads they'd briefly owned—was lost.

"Rückzug auf Küstenlinie Gamma," Deathwing ordered coolly. Retreat to coastal line Gamma. "Portale konsolidieren, keine weitere Ausdehnung heute."

Retreat to coastal line Gamma; consolidate portals; no further expansion today.

He would not throw more bodies into a grinder the coin had turned against him.

Absolute Layer – Galaxbeam and Deathwing

High above the shrinking front, Galaxbeam hovered in a halo of constellations, HP back up into the 60s after careful routing of inner reserve power.

He watched Death forces compress toward the sea.

"差不多了," he murmured. That's about enough.

He didn't chase Deathwing's core.

Not today.

Deathwing, perception stretched over the Deathwing's colossus, watched through every remaining portal eye.

His calculations said: Possible to hold a thin strip; impossible to retake lost ground today without unacceptable Supreme losses.

He accepted the loss with the ruthlessness that made him terrifying.

"Kampftag Gallaxgonbei – Phase III: Niederlage begrenzt."
Gallaxgonbei battle day – Phase III: limited defeat.

Off-story Verdict

When the smoke cleared and both sides pulled their exhausted elites off the board, the solid outcome of this round was clear:

Faction Winner: Galaxy Regime

The main coin fell Heads, and the battle followed: Galaxy's coordinated counterattack, empowered by better luck and tight timing, pushed Death Regime back to the coast.

Death still controls a narrow coastal band—lower dock sectors of Gallaxenportal City, core Gallenkodai Town, and a few plague-harbors right at the shoreline—but no longer holds meaningful inland positions.

The rural ring and outskirts before the major cities are once again firmly under Galaxy control, now reinforced and scarred but holding.

Status Summary

Galaxy Regime:

Retains solid control of outskirts, rural lands, and all major city hearts.

Suffers heavy elite and ground casualties, but all key elites escape at low HP for future battles.

Aerial and naval superiority over the inland zone is restored, though the coastal strip remains contested.

Death Regime:

Ground forces compressed into a tight defensive coastal line; inland advances of previous days largely undone.

Several elites eliminated or heavily damaged; portals reduced in number but still present along the waterfront.

Naval assets still strong offshore, but unable to project stable control beyond the immediate harbors.

The war for Gallaxgonbei settles—temporarily—into a new shape:

A golden ring of shields around cities and countryside.

A dark, stubborn scar of Death banners and portal-flare along the edge of the sea.

And somewhere behind it all, Galaxbeam and Deathwing quietly reset their dice and coins, knowing the next toss could finally decide whether that coastal scar is cauterized... or spreads again.

The third "day" of Gallaxgonbei felt less like a sunrise and more like someone turning the brightness up on an already-overexposed battlefield.

Galaxy held the rural ring again.
Death clung to the coastal strip: lower Gallaxenportal, ruined Gallenkodai, plague-harbors.

Nobody wanted another stalemate.

Off-story: One More Coin

At their invisible table, Galaxbeam and Deathwing set out the coin and dice one more time.

Heads – Galaxy holds and pushes Deathwing even further back; Death retreats into the forests beyond the shore.

Tails – Deathwing's push finally breaks the ring; Galaxy retreats, and the cities feel Death at their doors.

They flipped.

In both palms, when they opened their hands, gleamed the thorn-ring.

Tails.

Death.

The field tilted.

Death's CounterbreakChem-Tide at the Farms

At dawn, Death artillery along the coast fired chem-saturation rounds instead of conventional shells—arcing high over the rural ring to burst above Galaxy positions:

purple rain hissing against golden shields,

corrosive fog rolling along hedgerows and irrigation ditches.

Galaxadye's barrier nets caught most of it, but not all. Patches of the ring flickered where shield pylons couldn't sync in time.

Deathwing pulsed a command out through his necro-net:

"Vorstoß entlang Watabomei–Keikon-Korridor. Fokus: Bruch."

Advance along the Watabomei–Keikon corridor. Focus: break.

Deathenstride and Deathendye shifted their fire; zombie and deathsoldier columns surged for those weak points, bodies melting as they were hit but immediately replaced by fresh waves pouring from waterfront portals.

Sky Shifts

Overhead, Galaxapuff tried to repeat yesterday's air dominance.

This time Deathenpuff met her with tighter, nastier formations:

chem-filled cloud-mines scattered at altitude,

bomber wings masked by dark-weather constructs summoned by Deathenstorm.

Off-story dice favored Death's air for once.

Two Galaxy bomber squadrons vanished into a wall of invisible chem; their pilots poofed before they even realized what hit them. Galaxapuff's HP dipped into the 60s, her comms filled with clipped, angry Cantonese as she pulled her groups back just far enough to avoid being decapitated.

Air parity dropped from "Galaxy-favored" to "contested."

It was enough.

Elites Crack the Ring1. Keikon Road – Deathbash & Deathcrush vs Galaxprom

On the highway north of Keikon Town, where Galaxy armor had dug in behind burned-out trucks, a fresh Death elite pair hit the line like a wrecking ball:

Deathbash—new armor, rage meter full—
and Deathcrush, gauntleted and grinning.

On the Galaxy side, Galaxprom dropped in with a snarl, suns spinning behind her.

They met in the middle of the road, three figures, everything else incidental.

Prom's first blast of star-orbs blew Deathbash's HP down into the 70s and shattered the lead zombie ranks.

Deathcrush responded by folding the asphalt like paper, boxing her in. His gauntlets elongated into crushing frames; he tried to slam them together around her like a press.

Dice roll: mixed.

She blinked out just in time—but the forced dodge exposed Galaxy armor behind her.

Deathbash took the opening, fists slamming into the side of a Galaxy heavy tank. Shockwaves traveled through its shields; the vehicle buckled; its crew poofed in a burst of gold and were gone.

Prom's HP slid: 100 → 80 → 55%.

Bash's and Crush's both hovered in the 50–60% band, ugly but sustainable.

Behind them, Death troops poured through the gap in the line, climbing over melting corpses and abandoned Galaxy gear.

Galaxbeam yanked at Prom's retreat tether when she dropped under 40%; she cursed, eyes wet with frustrated anime fire, and warped back toward the inner defenses of Keikon.

The road was now Death's.

2. Watabomei Fields – Deathplague's Replacement

Deathplague was gone, but Deathwing didn't leave the slot empty.

He sent Deathwise and Deathclock toward Watabomei Town's fields.

Deathwise: tall, masked, radiating a calm, cruel intelligence.

Deathclock: his cracked dial mostly repaired.

They hit Galaxy infantry dug into terrace walls.

Deathclock again bent local time; Deathwise laced the slowed zones with mind-venom, brief pulses that made soldiers hesitate a fraction too long.

Galaxy elites—Galaxnetta and Galaxharp—dropped in to stabilize, blades and arrows flashing.

But the off-story dice leaned dark. Their strikes landed, yet never quite enough:

Netta cut down a dozen deathsoldiers in a blur, but Deathwise tagged her with a psychic needle—HP 100 → 70 → 45%, thoughts stuttering.

Harp's meteor-chord volley smashed Deathclock back to 30%, but his final time-pulse before retreat desynced an entire Galaxy platoon, leaving them open to Deathwise's follow-up.

When both Galax elites hit the 20–25% range, Galaxbeam ripped them out.

The terraces fell silent except for Death chanting.

The Watabomei gap opened.

Supreme Commanders Exploit the Tear

With Keikon road torn and Watabomei's outer belt cracked, the rural ring no longer formed a clean arc.

Deathenstride rained plague-artillery into the newly exposed flanks; Deathenstorm dove in person to carve apart retreating Galaxy armor with lances of darkness, his HP staying comfortably in the 80s behind thick escorts.

Galaxastorm and Galaxastride tried to plug both breaches at once:

Galaxastride shifted guns, slowing Deathenstride's barrage but thinning cover elsewhere.

Galaxastorm ran emergency lightning screens along the roads, frying dozens of Death walkers and melting zombies in rows—but his own HP crashed toward 50% after a glancing hit from a concentrated AA barrage.

The rural ring very visibly bowed inward, like a shield dented by a hammer.

Galaxy ground units began to pull back in a controlled—but undeniable—retreat toward the outer city districts.

Galaxy Regime Falls Back

Once it became clear the Keikon–Watabomei corridor could not be held without sacrificing a Supreme, Galaxbeam made the hard call.

"全線向城市收縮," he transmitted. All lines, contract toward the cities. "不要讓他們包圍在農地裡死光."

Don't get surrounded and die in the fields.

Keikon's forward trenches were abandoned in phases, mines left behind.

Folenggao's hills fired a last, brutal covering barrage, then went silent as artillery crews relocated closer to Gallaxengongshi.

Watabomei's outskirts burned; its inner streets prepared barricades instead of open field defenses.

Deathwing watched it happen, and for once he didn't try to chase every retreating unit.

He aimed for city contact.

Deathwing Begins the City PushInto Keikon Fringe

Death columns that had broken the Keikon road now rolled straight into the industrial fringe:

warehouses, grain silos, low logistics blocks.

streets too narrow for massive formations, but perfect for zombie-packed shock groups.

Deathsoldiers flooded alleys, chem-canisters thrown into any building with a golden banner still hanging.

Galaxy rearguards fought brief, brutal delaying actions, then blinked out or poofed in the glare of their own destruction.

Within an hour, Keikon's outer industrial ring flew plus-eyed flags.

Watabomei's First Streets

From the fields, Deathwise guided Deathclock's remaining units into Watabomei Town's outer neighborhoods:

single-family houses, old markets, small shrines.

Deathenstream corrupted the town's water channels, sending streams of dark liquid through gutters and culverts. Any Galaxy trooper careless enough to step in it started to dissolve—from the boots up.

Galaxy pulled their line back to Watabomei's central plaza and municipal buildings, ceding the ring of homes around it. Shield towers re-oriented to cover tight, urban lanes instead of open fields.

Watabomei had not fallen.

But it was now contested city terrain, not countryside.

Galaxenportal Tightens

On the coast, with pressure from inland alleviated, Death forces in lower Gallaxenportal City straightened out their front.

A continuous Death-held band now ran:

along the waterfront,

up into Gallenkodai Town's heart,

and inland via the Keikon road and parts of Watabomei's outskirts.

The Deathwing had his invasion corridor.

Off-story Verdict

When this "round" ends and both sides pull their barely-standing elites off the board, the situation is brutally clear.

The coin was Tails.

Death Regime got what that promised.

Solid Outcome:

Winner: Death Regime (Deathwing's faction)

Effects:

Galaxy Regime has been forced to retreat fully from the rural ring between the coast and the main cities along the Keikon–Watabomei corridor.

Deathwing's forces now invade and occupy outer city districts:

Outer Keikon Town (industrial belt) under Death control.

Outer residential belts of Watabomei Town contested/leaning Death.

Coastal lower Gallaxenportal City and full Gallenkodai Town remain solid Death bastions tied into this inland thrust.

Galaxy Regime now holds:

Inner rings and downtown sectors of Watabomei, Keikon, and the major cores toward Gallaxengongshi and Gallaxenwarpe City.

Strong but compressed urban defenses instead of the wider rural buffer.

The war for Gallaxgonbei has moved decisively from fields to streets.

Deathwing has his boots in the cities' outer veins.
Galaxy has fallen back to the inner organs, shields tight, eyes on the next coin toss that'll decide whether the infection is cauterized—or reaches the heart.

The sea tasted like rust and stormglass when Deathwing stepped onto the bow of a dreadnought and raised his hand.

"Formations schließen," he said, voice quiet and absolute. Close formations. The order rippled through portal relays and plague-nets. Six shadows took their places around him—Deathendye, Deathendale, Deathenstream, Deathenstride, Deathenstorm, Deathenpuff—each a moving storm cell of violet power. Across the inland horizon, names on Galaxy maps glowed like targets: Keikon Town, Watabomei Town, Folenggao Reach, and the stubborn docks of Galaxenportal City.

Titanumas Cities and States - G...

"今日," Deathwing murmured, glancing toward the bright shieldline, "wir machen Städte zu Häfen." Today, we make cities into harbors.

Keikon Town — Industrial Belt Fall

Deathendale led the thrust up the Keikon corridor, armor cabled with chemo-mandibles, scythes dragging sparks along the road. Deathenstorm flew above him, carving anti-shield lanes with lances of condensed dark.

Galaxy's rearguard fought hard—interlocking pallets, barricade corridors—but ground troops cannot touch a Supreme. The first wave of Sun-yellow fire died against Deathendale's null-scythes; the second wave was erased when Deathenstorm inverted the local wind and buried the barricades under a rain of slagged drones.

Elites tried to buy time:

Galaxveronica dropped into the loading yards, rose-gold sigils whirling.

Galaxprom split a street with a falling star-spiral.

Deathbash and Deathcrush answered, trading blows in a blur of cracks and violet shockwaves across the gantries—until Deathendale simply stepped through their duel, dragged both Galaxy elites across asphalt with a gesture, and marked them for retreat with a single shearing cut that bled the world of sound. They vanished in gold motes, HP scraping red. The industrial belt fell before noon; Keikon's municipal mast hoisted a plus-eye.

Watabomei Town — Water-Tied Capture

Deathenstream waded in through culverts and sluices, turning canals into walking rivers that bit anything living. His voice filled the plumbing.

"開閘." Open the gates.

Floodgates shuddered. Dirty tide climbed basement steps. Galaxy shields could wall off streets, but water remembers; the tide seeped under, around, through.

Galaxharp and Galaxnetta blinked into the central plaza—harpstrings flaring, moonquick blades drawing bright ellipses. They tore a hole in the advancing zombie scullions, only for Deathwise to lace the air with cold syllables that sent Harp staggering and Deathclock to stagger time long enough that Netta's perfect parry arrived a heartbeat late. Deathenstream didn't bother to finish them himself; he merely raised one palm and turned the plaza into a maw of water, lifting both elites on tongues of tide and dropping them, gasping, onto pre-marked retreat sigils. Gold light took them away.

Municipal buildings surrendered to flood and chem-mist. Watabomei rang a dull bell; the outer ring was already gone. By sunset, the town hall burned violet and the shrine lanterns along the canal gutters flickered out.

Folenggao Reach — Pass Shattered

In the hills, Galaxastride's batteries clawed at the sky, trying to hold the pass. Deathenstride answered with storm artillery: shells that arrived as thunderheads, detonating into spears of dark hail. Galaxsuna raised a clean blizzard; Deathice seeded it with bone-salt. Their snows canceled in a ripping scream of glassy air. When the gale broke, Deathenstride fired one last range-folded volley that landed in five places at once. Galaxy crews poofed from their guns in astonished flashes. The pass went quiet. The road sign pointing to Gallaxengongshi lay in the ditch, half-melted.

Galaxenportal City — Upper Docks Tightened

The lower docks already wore Death colors; today Deathenpuff and Deathendye threaded the air with chem-veils and spear-interceptors, peeling Galaxy squadrons away from the cranes. Galaxapuff counterpunched—smoke, decoys, hard-turns so tight the contrails knotted—but Deathendye's formations were mathematically cruel. He cut her groups apart without ever touching her, and when Galaxlady speared down a pier to rally ground, Deathenpuff's gale of blades met her mid-air: one clean, humiliating rung to single-digit HP before a gold recall tore her out. Upper docks locked to the waterfront strip; Death haulers began winching trophies from the ruined warehouses.

Other City Flashes (quick cuts)

Gallenkodai Town: already cracked days before; today Deathenstride's roaming guns collapse the last civic strongpoint.

Rentianfue Pass: Deathpierce and Deathlance skewer the final Galaxy picket; the signboard spins off into ravine fog.

Gallaxenwarpe City (outskirts): Galaxcharm collapses an approach with geometry-knots; Deathbond and Deathwrath pry it open. Supremes do not enter—yet.

Off-Story Combat Ledger (elites vs elites only)

(Roll d6 for edge; HP shown as %; coin flip = evade vs. Supreme intervention. Supremes arrive after the duel and force retreats; they do not kill elites.)

Galaxveronica vs Deathcrush — Rolls: Veronica 4, Deathcrush 3 → trade heavy blows.
HP end: V 18%, Dc 22%. Coin: Tails (no evade). Deathendale cuts the lane; both elites retreat bleeding.

Galaxprom vs Deathbash — Rolls: Prom 5, Bash 5 → stalemate fireworks; both spike to crit range.
HP end: P 24%, Db 27%. Coin: Heads (evade). Prom shadow-steps out as Deathenstorm dives; Bash pulled by Deathenda­le.

Galaxharp & Galaxnetta vs Deathwise — Rolls: Harp 3, Netta 4, Wise 4 → Wise mind-taps Harp; Netta forces him back.
HP end: Gh 21%, Gn 33%, Dw 29%. Coin: Tails. Deathenstream floods—instant retreats.

Galaxsuna vs Deathice — Rolls: Suna 5, Ice 2 → Suna's clean freeze wins exchange.
HP end: Su 31%, Di 9%. Coin: Tails. Deathenstride's storm lands; both blink out.

Galaxrire vs Deathpierce — Rolls: Rire 2, Pierce 5 → Pierce lands precision stabs.
HP end: Gr 15%, Dp 41%. Coin: Heads. Rire evades as Deathendye steps in; Pierce recalled intact.

Galaxveronica vs Deathwrath (second skirmish) — Rolls: V 6, Dw 3 → Veronica overwhelms but overextends.
HP end: V 12%, Dw 18%. Coin: Tails. Deathpuff gust-slashes; Veronica yanked home.

Rule enforcement: Elites only defeat or stalemate elites; all are forced to retreat when a Supreme Commander intervenes. Ground units never defeat elites or Supremes.

Six Supremes, One Conductor

On the waterfront spine, Deathwing closed his fist. The six Supremes moved as one organism—tide, storm, scythe, vector, gale, and grid.

Deathendye: chessboard skies—interceptor lattices that shepherded enemy wings into kill-alleys.

Deathendale: street-level erasure—null-fields that make shields forget how to be shields.

Deathenstream: municipal hydra—canals turned combat organs.

Deathenstride: horizon hammer—storm artillery that hits exactly where your rearguard just moved.

Deathenstorm: surgical dread—lances and black panorama that steal oxygen from courage.

Deathenpuff: tempo theft—gusts, cuts, and misdirections that make enemy aces miss by two finger-widths.

Wherever a Galaxy elite flashed bright, a Supreme's shadow fell; wherever a Galaxy company stood, a violet tide lifted the street from under its boots. Ground brigades that resisted were simply crushed. Elites who lingered were marked and recalled. The doctrine was merciless and perfectly legal under Titanumas' power laws.

By night, Keikon Town flew a plus-eye from water tower to customs house. Watabomei Town's core—plaza, hall, waterworks—lay under Death administration, its canals garrisoned by zombies that never needed sleep. Folenggao Reach was a Death road now. Galaxenportal City's upper docks had become a single, continuous Death harbor.

Galaxy forces contracted to the inner ladders guarding Gallaxenwarpe City and the trunk roads that still lead to Gallaxengongshi (capital). Their troopers still poofed with dignity; their elites still returned to fight another day; their Supreme Commanders still controlled the next line.

Deathwing watched the map update—violet veins creeping inward along the Keikon–Watabomei axis—and let the sea wind comb his ragged coat.

"Genug," he told his commanders. Enough. "Haltet den Druck. Keine Jagd auf die Krone heute."

Hold the pressure. No crown chase today.

The six Supremes dispersed to hold what they had taken. The night burned purple along the water. The cities ahead glowed gold and patient.

The sea tasted like rust and stormglass when Deathwing stepped onto the bow of a dreadnought and raised his hand.

"Formations schließen," he said, voice quiet and absolute. Close formations. The order rippled through portal relays and plague-nets. Six shadows took their places around him—Deathendye, Deathendale, Deathenstream, Deathenstride, Deathenstorm, Deathenpuff—each a moving storm cell of violet power. Across the inland horizon, names on Galaxy maps glowed like targets: Keikon Town, Watabomei Town, Folenggao Reach, and the stubborn docks of Galaxenportal City.

Titanumas Cities and States - G...

"今日," Deathwing murmured, glancing toward the bright shieldline, "wir machen Städte zu Häfen." Today, we make cities into harbors.

Keikon Town — Industrial Belt Fall

Deathendale led the thrust up the Keikon corridor, armor cabled with chemo-mandibles, scythes dragging sparks along the road. Deathenstorm flew above him, carving anti-shield lanes with lances of condensed dark.

Galaxy's rearguard fought hard—interlocking pallets, barricade corridors—but ground troops cannot touch a Supreme. The first wave of Sun-yellow fire died against Deathendale's null-scythes; the second wave was erased when Deathenstorm inverted the local wind and buried the barricades under a rain of slagged drones.

Elites tried to buy time:

Galaxveronica dropped into the loading yards, rose-gold sigils whirling.

Galaxprom split a street with a falling star-spiral.

Deathbash and Deathcrush answered, trading blows in a blur of cracks and violet shockwaves across the gantries—until Deathendale simply stepped through their duel, dragged both Galaxy elites across asphalt with a gesture, and marked them for retreat with a single shearing cut that bled the world of sound. They vanished in gold motes, HP scraping red. The industrial belt fell before noon; Keikon's municipal mast hoisted a plus-eye.

Watabomei Town — Water-Tied Capture

Deathenstream waded in through culverts and sluices, turning canals into walking rivers that bit anything living. His voice filled the plumbing.

"開閘." Open the gates.

Floodgates shuddered. Dirty tide climbed basement steps. Galaxy shields could wall off streets, but water remembers; the tide seeped under, around, through.

Galaxharp and Galaxnetta blinked into the central plaza—harpstrings flaring, moonquick blades drawing bright ellipses. They tore a hole in the advancing zombie scullions, only for Deathwise to lace the air with cold syllables that sent Harp staggering and Deathclock to stagger time long enough that Netta's perfect parry arrived a heartbeat late. Deathenstream didn't bother to finish them himself; he merely raised one palm and turned the plaza into a maw of water, lifting both elites on tongues of tide and dropping them, gasping, onto pre-marked retreat sigils. Gold light took them away.

Municipal buildings surrendered to flood and chem-mist. Watabomei rang a dull bell; the outer ring was already gone. By sunset, the town hall burned violet and the shrine lanterns along the canal gutters flickered out.

Folenggao Reach — Pass Shattered

In the hills, Galaxastride's batteries clawed at the sky, trying to hold the pass. Deathenstride answered with storm artillery: shells that arrived as thunderheads, detonating into spears of dark hail. Galaxsuna raised a clean blizzard; Deathice seeded it with bone-salt. Their snows canceled in a ripping scream of glassy air. When the gale broke, Deathenstride fired one last range-folded volley that landed in five places at once. Galaxy crews poofed from their guns in astonished flashes. The pass went quiet. The road sign pointing to Gallaxengongshi lay in the ditch, half-melted.

Galaxenportal City — Upper Docks Tightened

The lower docks already wore Death colors; today Deathenpuff and Deathendye threaded the air with chem-veils and spear-interceptors, peeling Galaxy squadrons away from the cranes. Galaxapuff counterpunched—smoke, decoys, hard-turns so tight the contrails knotted—but Deathendye's formations were mathematically cruel. He cut her groups apart without ever touching her, and when Galaxlady speared down a pier to rally ground, Deathenpuff's gale of blades met her mid-air: one clean, humiliating rung to single-digit HP before a gold recall tore her out. Upper docks locked to the waterfront strip; Death haulers began winching trophies from the ruined warehouses.

Other City Flashes (quick cuts)

Gallenkodai Town: already cracked days before; today Deathenstride's roaming guns collapse the last civic strongpoint.

Rentianfue Pass: Deathpierce and Deathlance skewer the final Galaxy picket; the signboard spins off into ravine fog.

Gallaxenwarpe City (outskirts): Galaxcharm collapses an approach with geometry-knots; Deathbond and Deathwrath pry it open. Supremes do not enter—yet.

Off-Story Combat Ledger (elites vs elites only)

(Roll d6 for edge; HP shown as %; coin flip = evade vs. Supreme intervention. Supremes arrive after the duel and force retreats; they do not kill elites.)

Galaxveronica vs Deathcrush — Rolls: Veronica 4, Deathcrush 3 → trade heavy blows.
HP end: V 18%, Dc 22%. Coin: Tails (no evade). Deathendale cuts the lane; both elites retreat bleeding.

Galaxprom vs Deathbash — Rolls: Prom 5, Bash 5 → stalemate fireworks; both spike to crit range.
HP end: P 24%, Db 27%. Coin: Heads (evade). Prom shadow-steps out as Deathenstorm dives; Bash pulled by Deathenda­le.

Galaxharp & Galaxnetta vs Deathwise — Rolls: Harp 3, Netta 4, Wise 4 → Wise mind-taps Harp; Netta forces him back.
HP end: Gh 21%, Gn 33%, Dw 29%. Coin: Tails. Deathenstream floods—instant retreats.

Galaxsuna vs Deathice — Rolls: Suna 5, Ice 2 → Suna's clean freeze wins exchange.
HP end: Su 31%, Di 9%. Coin: Tails. Deathenstride's storm lands; both blink out.

Galaxrire vs Deathpierce — Rolls: Rire 2, Pierce 5 → Pierce lands precision stabs.
HP end: Gr 15%, Dp 41%. Coin: Heads. Rire evades as Deathendye steps in; Pierce recalled intact.

Galaxveronica vs Deathwrath (second skirmish) — Rolls: V 6, Dw 3 → Veronica overwhelms but overextends.
HP end: V 12%, Dw 18%. Coin: Tails. Deathpuff gust-slashes; Veronica yanked home.

Rule enforcement: Elites only defeat or stalemate elites; all are forced to retreat when a Supreme Commander intervenes. Ground units never defeat elites or Supremes.

Six Supremes, One Conductor

On the waterfront spine, Deathwing closed his fist. The six Supremes moved as one organism—tide, storm, scythe, vector, gale, and grid.

Deathendye: chessboard skies—interceptor lattices that shepherded enemy wings into kill-alleys.

Deathendale: street-level erasure—null-fields that make shields forget how to be shields.

Deathenstream: municipal hydra—canals turned combat organs.

Deathenstride: horizon hammer—storm artillery that hits exactly where your rearguard just moved.

Deathenstorm: surgical dread—lances and black panorama that steal oxygen from courage.

Deathenpuff: tempo theft—gusts, cuts, and misdirections that make enemy aces miss by two finger-widths.

Wherever a Galaxy elite flashed bright, a Supreme's shadow fell; wherever a Galaxy company stood, a violet tide lifted the street from under its boots. Ground brigades that resisted were simply crushed. Elites who lingered were marked and recalled. The doctrine was merciless and perfectly legal under Titanumas' power laws.

By night, Keikon Town flew a plus-eye from water tower to customs house. Watabomei Town's core—plaza, hall, waterworks—lay under Death administration, its canals garrisoned by zombies that never needed sleep. Folenggao Reach was a Death road now. Galaxenportal City's upper docks had become a single, continuous Death harbor.

Galaxy forces contracted to the inner ladders guarding Gallaxenwarpe City and the trunk roads that still lead to Gallaxengongshi (capital). Their troopers still poofed with dignity; their elites still returned to fight another day; their Supreme Commanders still controlled the next line.

Deathwing watched the map update—violet veins creeping inward along the Keikon–Watabomei axis—and let the sea wind comb his ragged coat.

"Genug," he told his commanders. Enough. "Haltet den Druck. Keine Jagd auf die Krone heute."

Hold the pressure. No crown chase today.

The six Supremes dispersed to hold what they had taken. The night burned purple along the water. The cities ahead glowed gold and patient.

The shoreline roared violet when Deathwing pointed inland. "Städteweise. Keine Eile, nur Druck," he said—city by city, no rush, only pressure—and the six Supreme Commanders fanned out like blades. Galaxy shields glittered deeper in Gallaxgonbei State, a string of names burning on a war-map as real as streets.

—

Galaxenportal City breathed in smoke. Deathenpuff's winds scissored banners from mid-piers; Deathendye's interceptors stitched the sky into grids. Galaxy pilots dove anyway.

"Hold the ferry lanes!" a captain shouted in English, eyes wide, jaw set.
"Zu spät," Deathendye murmured, turning one palm. Too late.

AA towers coughed gold and went silent. By dusk, upper docks were violet; mid-docks fought, teeth bared. Galaxapuff ghosted through the smoke, lips thin, headset crackling. "We're not done," she told her squadrons. The answer came back in clipped "Copy!"s and the bright, stubborn glare of anime eyes.

—

Gallenkodai Town had already cracked; today Deathenstride marched a thunderhead down Main Street. Lightning speared murals; plus-eyed flags hissed in boiling puddles. A single Galaxy platoon held a laundromat corner until Galaxrire flashed in, hair ribboned with light.

"Back. I'll stall," she said.

A shadow stepped from the doorframe: Deathpierce. Three neat thrusts—tik, tik, tik—and the laundromat's washers split like fruit. Rire parried with a blossom of suns, smiling through grit, then felt the air turn to syrup: Deathenstride's pressure. "Rückzug, Kleine," Pierce said, almost polite. Retreat, little one. She vanished in a gold recall, cheeks flushed with heroic embarrassment.

—

Jakchi City woke to sirens, shutters rattling. Deathenstorm fell out of cloud like a solemn guillotine, carving a boulevard of vacuum. Galaxy tanks braked hard; asphalt rippled.

"Switch to close-quarters!" a Galaxy lieutenant yelled.
"Nein," Deathenstorm replied, voice calm. "Wir bleiben fern." No—we stay away.

He wrote long negative space across the avenues. Every step he didn't take turned into a crater anyway. Galaxprom met him with a spiral sun, jaw set, sweat shining; he slid one lance sideways, split her star, and let her escape with pride intact and HP blinking.

—

Gallaxenhuo was a heat-plant, all chimneys and rail spurs. Deathendale waded through coolant steam; shields refused to work in his presence.

A Galaxy engineer—freckles, bandaged hand—stood on a catwalk with a hand-held projector. "You can't have this grid."

Deathendale looked up. "Ich nehme es nicht. Ich lösche es." I'm not taking it. I'm erasing it.

His scythe touched the railing; the entire catwalk forgot it existed and became falling glitter. A moment later, rescue glyphs lit—Galaxy techs "poofed" away in soft gold. The grid went dark.

—

Gallaxenyambaohu held courts and gardens. Deathwise walked under cypress, hands tucked in long sleeves. Whisper-hexes drifted like pollen; gendarmes lowered rifles they meant to raise.

A Galaxy elite stepped from behind a lantern: Galaxnetta, knives reversed, eyes burning. "Pick on someone conscious."

"Gern," Deathwise said—gladly—and cut her thoughts sideways for a heartbeat. She blinked, stumbled, then smiled—fiercely—and sliced his sleeve off in three motions before Deathenstream's tide curled along the stone and lifted her onto a recall seal. "Next time," she said, grinning like a shōnen rival as she vanished.

—

Gallaxenbonbao ran on warehouses and track cranes. Deathbash and Deathcrush tag-teamed the freight yard, fists slamming shockwaves that made railcars hop their couplers. Galaxveronica dropped in like a rose-gold meteor, face flushed, eyes fierce.

"Round three," she panted.

"Mit Vergnügen," Bash grinned. With pleasure.

They traded blurs. When the gantry began to tip, Deathendye drew a neat box of air with his finger and stopped the collapse for his own troops—then turned the box ninety degrees and let Galaxy armor slide off the platform like toys. Veronica fumed and blinked out at 12% HP, swearing she'd be back.

—

Gallaxendeichi—university courts and bell towers—rang with debates of artillery. Students had evacuated; their posters fluttered under concussive wind.

Galaxharp leapt a stairwell two steps at a time, bowstring humming. Deathclock waited, dial repaired and ticking wrong. "Zeit ist Gnade," he said—time is mercy—and stretched the stairwell into thirty extra steps. Harp still reached the landing by sheer will and a skidding knee, loosing a chord that cracked the physics under his feet. He staggered. Then Deathenstream tapped the tower pipe; water roared up the steps like an animal and Harp vanished coughing into a recall sigil, cheeks pink with equal parts fury and relief.

—

Gallaxyukai's hill pagodas watched over terrace fields. Galaxsuna lifted a neat, star-clean blizzard; Deathice answered with bone-salt sleet. The two froze a ribbon of orchard into sculpture. Farmers would later say it was the prettiest the war ever looked. Suna winked at him through breath crystals, then bowed as Galaxastride's ranging shot forced both to warp away before either could "win" wrong.

—

Galaxenwarpe City threw gold light across its river bridges. Shutters rolled up to reveal gun mouths; shrine bells hung silent.

"English only on net," a Galaxy captain insisted. "Civilians listening."
"Jawohl," came a Death voice on a hijacked channel, infuriatingly crisp. "Wir hören auch zu." We're listening too.

Deathbond and Deathwrath tried to pry a bridge pin; Galaxcharm arrived laughing, fingers conducting geometry. Curves locked—ribbons of law that refused to break. "No passage today," she sang. Deathwrath lifted his axe; a gust from Deathenpuff snapped her hair across her eyes, knocked her to one knee, and she still smiled, blood on lip, as she blinked home. Warpe held—barely.

—

Galaxencloude hid in fog belts above switchback roads. Deathenstride shelled the mist; echo after echo boomed. Galaxcup skated along guardrails, tossing cups of molten light like sacred tea. Deaththrend and Deathlance leapt the gullies, hunting; clouds lit from within as if gods argued there. By night, the fog smelled of ozone and old incense; the road signs pointed both ways from being shaken so hard.

—

Galaxenhueko was all tight alleys and paper lamps. Deathpuff cut the wind into thread and sewed enemy contrails shut; Galaxlady lanced down, spear a line the world drew to remember itself. Their weapons met with a sound like a shrine bell struck too hard, both women's mouths set in determined, elegant lines. An errant gale smashed a lantern; Galaxy civilians cheered anyway. "Wir sehen uns," Deathpuff whispered as she withdrew—we'll see each other.

—

Gallaxreixuanbeodong sprawled—rail yards, dry docks, and a customs canal whose name took a breath to say. Deathenstorm traced a single, perfect parabola of void through the cranes; three fell in sequence, the last reflected in his visor. Galaxterra answered by ramming a grown wall of crystal across Track 12; Deathfelix laughed and threaded a needle between shards that should have been impassable. The yard changed hands twice before night. In the end, violet flares marked the canal locks; Galaxy saboteurs still hid in culverts like bright ghosts.

—

Gallaxengongshi (capital) rose behind layered shields and mathematics. The air above it glittered with constellations like sharpened ideas—Galaxbeam's quiet handwriting.

Deathwing stepped out onto a rooftop two districts away, coat tugged by sea wind. "Noch nicht," he told his Supremes without looking back. Not yet.

He let the capital see him: a still figure, dark-gray and violet, a promise deferred. The city's gold answered by thickening; you could hear the barrier hum.

—

Galaxenzuochen tilted toward the east, its roofs like folded paper cranes. Deathwise tried three doors; each opened onto a sermon of light. "Clever," he murmured in German. "Zu clever." Too clever. Galaxlindsey—hair ribboned, grin cocky—made a show of yawning on a parapet. He clapped once, amused, and faded. The city exhaled, incredulous.

—

Wanshengtu Town smelled of noodle broth and cordite. Deathbond kicked in a kitchen door and found Galaxy reservists stirring soup for the block. The sergeant—old, kind eyes—set down the ladle and shouldered a rifle with that gentleness only professionals have.

"Eat later," she said. "Fight now."

They did, with plates still warm on the counter. When Deathbond left, the pot still steamed. The town held, then failed, then held again by one market street.

—

Meigue Province rolled in wheat and solar farms. It didn't so much fall as get threaded: Deathenstream claimed the aqueducts; Deathendye took the air; Deathendale erased three substations the way a teacher rubs chalk off a board. Galaxy columns traded ground for time, eyes already on the cities behind.

—

Watabomei Town—flooded yesterday—throbbed with pumps today under Death guard. Zombies patrolled knee-deep in culverts like otters from a worse story; any Galaxy drone that peeked in shorted out and died. A child's paper boat spun in a back-eddy and didn't sink.

—

Folenggao Reach stayed a Death road. Rentianfue Pass—its higher cousin—cracked under a crossfire of storm-shells and star-bolts; snow there turned to a slush that glowed faintly gold and violet at once, like two prayers tangled.

—

Keikon Town's smokestacks already wore plus-eyes; factories ran again, now on dark shifts. Deathcrush used a half-collapsed conveyor as a bench press between sorties. "Wir wohnen hier jetzt," he told a camera drone with a grin. We live here now. The drone cut feed with a disgusted beep.

—

Haylao City was all glass and parks. Galaxcharm and Galaxveronica dizzied the skyline with geometry and rose sigils, painting mirrored towers with moving spells. Deathbash tried to swing through a corporate plaza and got slapped across a fountain by an equation. "Aua," he said, genuinely impressed. Ow. He left a handprint in the water sculpture before Deathenpuff peeled him out with a laughing gust. The city stayed Galaxy, if scuffed.

—

Xinglat Province folded into forest. Here Deathwing himself stepped off the road. The trees leaned. "Standlinie," he murmured—holding line—and drew a simple circle in dirt. Portals budded like night flowers within it. If retreat ever came, it would be here: quiet, cruel, patient.

—

Maolongmai City loved rail, tea, and morning markets. It learned artillery at sunset. Galaxmoon—HP still low but eyes blazing—cast a lunar fan that saved three blocks at once; Deathwrath answered by lobbing a bell-clapper the size of a car into a transit hall. "We keep the station," Moon said through a bitten lip. She did.

—

Xiewiejunkok crouched on the far edge of the state like a cat ready to spring. Refugees slept on gym floors; shields flickered blue-gold. Deathendye tested the air with a probing grid, then stopped. "Nicht heute," he said—not today. Behind those shields, Galaxy elites caught their breath, anime faces soft with exhaustion and stubborn hope.

—

By midnight, the map had a new face:

Conquered or controlled by Death Regime: Keikon Town, Watabomei Town, Folenggao Reach, large swaths of Meigue Province, the upper and lower docks of Galaxenportal City, most of Gallenkodai Town, rail-canal sectors of Gallaxreixuanbeodong, parts of Jakchi City, Gallaxenhuo's grid, Gallaxenyambaohu's courts.

Contested: Galaxencloude switchbacks, Galaxenhueko alleys, Haylao City's glass belt, Maolongmai City's station wards.

Held by Galaxy Regime: Galaxenwarpe City (bridges intact), Gallaxyukai hills, Gallaxendeichi's inner quads, Galaxenzuochen, Wanshengtu Town's core markets, the glittering Gallaxengongshi (capital), and the far gate at Xiewiejunkok.

On a rooftop, Deathwing watched the capital's aurora harden and didn't smile. On a different rooftop, Galaxbeam looked back at him and didn't blink.

Between them, Gallaxgonbei breathed—city by scarred city—while pilots strapped in again and elites flexed bruised hands and said, in two languages and a dozen accents:

"Again."
"Noch einmal."

Night in Gallaxgonbei no longer felt like rest; it felt like a held breath. Galaxastream stood on the lip of a gutted loading dock outside Keikon, coat snapping in the industrial wind, gold filaments of power swirling around his hands like river light. "Two minutes," he said into the squad net. "We cut the artery, not the arm. In, out, no heroics." His scouts—six tired soldiers with stubborn eyes—nodded. None of them could scratch a Supreme Commander. They didn't need to. He would handle the monsters; they would unmake the logistics that fed them.

The convoy came in as predicted: plague-tankers, zombie-ridden flatbeds, two Death escorts on overwatch. Galaxastream drew a line in the air with his forefinger and the world obeyed, traffic flow bending as if the road had shifted beneath it. Trucks drifted into each other in a slow-motion tangle. "Jetzt," a Death gunner barked—now—and opened fire; Galaxastream flexed two fingers and turned the bullet stream thirty degrees so it furrowed empty air. "Physics is a suggestion," he told the sky dryly, then pulsed a ribbon of yellow through the escort's engine cowl. The vehicle sighed, died, and his team ghosted through the smoke to plant shaped charges. Thirty seconds later, Keikon's midnight supply vanished in a rolling flower of orange and violet.

He felt the counterpunch before he saw it. Deathcrush hit the dock like a falling elevator, gauntlets extending, grin wide. "Kleiner Fluss," he laughed, "I've been looking for you." Galaxastream stepped aside and turned Crush's momentum ninety degrees. The big man hit a gantry, bent it into an unhappy letter U, and came up angrier. The second rush was faster; Galaxastream met it with a backhand that wasn't a strike so much as a rewrite—velocity extracted, stored, returned. The shock traveled up Crush's arms; joints clicked. "Retreat," came Deathendale's cold voice in German across the enemy net. "Jetzt." Crush snarled, saluted in a way that managed to be both mocking and respectful, and blurred into recall. Galaxastream exhaled. "One elite down. Move."

At Watabomei's drowned plazas he went alone. Canal lamps flickered under a scum of chem. He stepped into the culvert mouth and the water rose against him like a living throat—Deathenstream's signature, patient and cruel. "你來晚了," the voice murmured from every pipe. You're late. "遲到是策略," Galaxastream answered—being late is a tactic—and pulled the water's momentum forward and then sideways, turning a killing rush into a harmless standing wave. Deathwise slid out of an alley with his hands tucked in his sleeves, a smile like a paper cut. Two gestures later the air filled with whispering sigils and Galaxastream's thoughts dragged as if wading through glue. He snapped his fingers; golden eddies spun down his temples and pushed the hex aside. "Your turn," he said, and flicked a single bead of light that unfolded into a spiral pressure cut. Deathwise's mask cracked from cheek to jaw. "Genug," the Death elite hissed—enough—and vanished into violet static just as a roar announced a new tide shouldering down the street. The canal reared; Galaxastream split it into two courteous streams that flowed past him to devour a Death platoon trying to flank his team. "Apologies," he told the river, smiling despite himself. "I know you preferred them."

By dawn he was at Gallaxreixuanbeodong's rail yard, boots ringing on a catwalk as cranes smoldered on the horizon. Deathlance launched from a boxcar with a needle of dark that would have cored a lesser being; Galaxastream caught the vector between finger and thumb, rotated it, and slid it back across the gap. Sparks chased along Deathlance's pauldron. The Death elite landed light, eyes bright. "Noch einmal?" Once more? "Three times if you like," Galaxastream answered, and they traded clean, elegant passes until a violet flare marked Deathenstorm's arrival over the far gantries. The air thinned; the horizon folded into knives. "Break," Galaxastream told himself calmly, and every glowing thread around him snapped into a web. The first lance of nothing met a curve and became nothing the other way.

They hung there, Supreme against Supreme, in the hush that comes when two professionals concentrate. "You're better in streets than fields," Deathenstorm observed. "You're better at killing from far away," Galaxastream replied. "We both have disappointments." Their next exchange shattered two cranes and erased a cloud. Storm's visor tracked, impersonal; Galaxastream's hair whipped, expression composed, the anime glint in his eyes a stubborn slice of daylight. When Deathendale's null-edge crept along the rails like a shadow of erasure, Galaxastream made the practical choice. He touched his ear. "Withdrawal, Route Blue. Civilians first." His team detonated charges in a pattern that turned the yard into a maze; the Supreme duel dissolved back into doctrine.

The day became a braid of small victories and near-disasters. In Galaxenportal's upper docks he rotated prop wash into a wall that flipped a Death gunship into the harbor; in Jakchi he swung a whole roundabout's traffic into an impromptu barricade that bought a hospital three extra minutes to evacuate. He forced Deathpierce to recall with a wrist flick that collapsed every thrust into soft air; he palmed Deathwrath's thrown bell-clapper and returned it to sender at half strength, enough to scatter his retinue without breaking the rule that Supremes do not execute elites. More than once he looked up—habit, superstition—and squinted at the high bright emptiness as if hunting for invisible hands. "If the gods are tossing coins again," he muttered, "I would appreciate a reroll. Best two out of three." Somewhere, he felt Galaxbeam's chuckle glide down the net like a warm current.

By afternoon the Death Regime had adjusted to him. Their columns staggered their advance, leaving bait pockets where an elite pretended to overextend so a Supreme could drop a net the moment Galaxastream committed. He saw it, admired the choreography, and cut diagonally through their script, aiming for the small cuts that hemorrhage time—fuel depots, repeater masts, bridge joints that look unimportant until they aren't. "They're predicting you," his sergeant warned as they skated across a flooded crosswalk in Watabomei. "They always do," he said. "We just make them late."

The hardest clash came at the Keikon–Warpe approach where a Deathenpuff air screen covered Deathendye's grid. Galaxastream rode a cable car up the slope, one hand on the rail, the other drawing lazy circles that rewrote wind. Deathendye shadowed him in the clouds like a chess problem. "Du verschiebst Vektoren hübsch," the Death Supreme said over an open channel—you move vectors prettily. "Thank you," Galaxastream answered. "You align tragedies well." Their patterns overlapped; the cable car arrived. On the platform, Deathendye was already there, polite as a blade. They exchanged three techniques that will be argued about by staff colleges for the next century. Neither moved the other more than a half-step. Both smiled without warmth. "Next time," said Deathendye, and pulled his net back toward the coast. "後會有期," Galaxastream replied in Mandarin—until next time—and didn't chase.

By evening his teams had reduced two magazines, collapsed a ferry ramp, and lifted four neighborhoods' worth of civilians into safer grids. He'd forced six different Death elites to retreat, each with a different lesson—Crush about momentum, Pierce about parry timing, Wise about the limits of cleverness, Wrath about returning gifts, Ice about purity, Bond about leverage. He'd dueled three Supremes and beaten none; they had beaten him no more than they had taken the capital. It was enough. Resistance isn't only the strike; it's the schedule.

On a rooftop near Galaxenwarpe's bridges, he let the wind comb sweat from his hair and listened to the city hum beneath the shields. "We're not here to win the whole war today," he told his squad as they passed around bottled tea and the last decent rice balls. "We're here to make them waste daylight. We did." A pilot across the net snorted. "Sir, you also looked dramatic doing it." He considered this. "Yes," he said gravely. "Let's maintain standards."

He glanced up one more time, just in case, and gave the sky a small, respectful bow. If there were gods rolling dice, they could at least see he was playing beautifully. Then he turned back to the maps and drew three new flows through Gallaxgonbei's scarred streets—routes that would tangle Death timetables, routes that would hold one more day.

Galaxastream finished the last sip of bottled tea, then stepped cleanly off the roof and let the city catch him. Air folded under his boots like tiled water; a golden wake ribboned behind him as he skimmed toward the Keikon–Warpe ridge. Below, the night pulsed violet and gold—sirens, tracer lines, shield hum, the metallic chorus of a state refusing to be quiet.

"River, eyes up," his sergeant said on net. They called him River now; the name fit how he moved.

"Copy," he answered, mouth tipping into a tired smile. "Last loop, then we pull."

The ridge lit with muzzle flashes. Death troopers clattered over a gravel berm in armor that looked poured rather than worn, zombies loping ahead in crooked waves. Galaxastream opened his left hand and wrote three quick curves in the air. Wind thumped. The foremost horde drifted sideways as if some giant unseen escalator had taken them—straight into a vacant subway cut that his scouts had cleared and mined. He snapped, once. The night bloomed orange, then black. The survivors hissed and kept coming, because that's what they do.

He dropped low enough for faces. "Eyes here," he called, voice amplified, calm as a teacher. Helmets turned. He raised two fingers. The bullets those helmets fired hit a curve that didn't exist a second ago and veered into a junked bus. The bus slammed back down the slope like an offended animal. "Homework," he added, deadpan, and a few of his soldiers actually laughed, the bright, cracked laugh people make when they're too brave for their own good.

Watabomei's canals roared at him next. Deathenstream sent a full block's worth of water down a side street like a spine. Galaxastream folded the flow in two with a curt gesture—clack—and the river split around his squad in a polite V. "你又嚟," came the voice from the drains. You again. "我未走過," he replied without heat—I never left—and turned the downstream pressure back on a Death platoon that had counted on the wave to cover them. When the water fell away he hovered amid steaming cobbles, hair plastered, grin bright and shameless like a shōnen protagonist who just got away with something.

"Contact—elite!" his spotter snapped. Deathbond vaulted a market stall, chain whipping; Deathwrath's bell-clapper came in like an angry planet. Galaxastream caught the chain on a fingertip, redirected its circle until Bond spun himself into a knees-first skid, then palmed the bell's momentum and returned it at half-speed. It still hit Wrath hard enough to fold him over his own pride.

"Genug." Deathendale's voice slid along the alley like a razor. Null leaked in, turning sparks to dull gray. Galaxastream's golden filaments guttered—and then he stepped three meters sideways in a way that annoyed physics and reset the rules just out of reach of the erasure. "I'll take the hint," he said, eyes smiling. Bond and Wrath blinked into recall, cursing, alive.

He yo-yoed toward Maolongmai's station next, where a column of zombies poured down the concourse in an ugly parody of commuters. "Turnstiles," he told the station master over loudspeaker. "On my mark." He drew a Möbius loop in the air; the rushing mass hit it, and the front half found themselves sprinting back through the rear doors, confused anatomy bumping confused rage. "Mark." Steel bit, lights died, and the horde ate itself in the dark until only stray limbs remembered what forward meant.

A hard shadow cut him off over Haylao's glass belt. Deathenpuff corkscrewed through reflections, blades drawing silver on the skyline. "Schöner Tanz, Fluss," she teased—pretty dance, river. "Ladies first," he said, bowing in midair because bad form ruins good technique. Their pass was all light and breath and blade edges that never quite kissed. She slipped a gust under his stance, he stepped onto it like a stair. Both of them laughed—annoyed, delighted—and broke away clean, neither wasting the other.

"River, we're at the line," his sergeant reminded gently. The last evac convoy rattled across Warpe's bridge, tail lights trembling. He let himself feel the weight of it—families who would sleep under real roofs, not under shields humming like teeth. "Understood."

The final push came ugly: Deathenstorm dragging a curtain of vacuum along Jakchi's boulevards while Deathendye drew interception grids so tight the stars looked netted. Galaxastream rose into the thinned air and met both with a posture he had practiced since he was a kid tracing currents on classroom windows. He laid a river where there wasn't one.

"Du liebst Städte," Deathenstorm observed across the gap—you love cities. His visor caught a slice of Galaxastream's face: wet hair, stubborn eyes, that bright, infuriating spark.

"They love me back," Galaxastream said, and bent the vacuum into a harmless sigh that tumbled litter instead of men. Deathendye flicked vectors like razor cards; Galaxastream caught two, returned one, pocketed the third for later. They traded three techniques. He felt the answer waiting behind them: Not today. He accepted it.

"Pulling," he said on squad net at last. "Blue route. Don't look behind you; that's my job."

They ghosted across rooftops while he kept the sky busy—one more convoy, one more stubborn platoon, one more ridiculous stunt where he rotated a collapsing fire escape a quarter-turn and it became a bridge instead of a death sentence. A zombie clawed the platform lip; he flicked its wrist into a different afternoon. Death troopers stacked at a corner; he tilted the street and let their footing betray them. Every small cruelty he inflicted on gravity purchased one more block.

At Xiewiejunkok's far gate the shields glowed like a held breath. He landed on the parapet with the easy, exhausted grace of someone who'd run out of adrenaline ten minutes ago and kept going anyway. His squad spilled onto concrete, shoulders sagging, eyes still bright.

"Count," he said. Voices answered. All there. He let himself grin, the big dumb anime kind you give your team so they'll remember this as victory and not survival.

"Sir," the sergeant said softly, nodding at the sky. "If the gods are still playing...?"

Galaxastream looked up, gave the empty brightness a formal little bow, then a tiny, conspiratorial shrug. "Best of five?"

Wind moved over the shields like a hand smoothing a child's hair. Somewhere high, a coin flashed, or didn't. He sent a tight-beam to Galaxbeam—status, numbers, the minutes they had bought—and got back a quiet pulse of approval that warmed his ribs.

"Rest ten," he told his people. "Then we go again. Different river, same sea."

He stepped backward into the glow, and the city accepted him, folding his outline into its geometry until he was just another piece of Gallaxgonbei—current, eddy, stubborn bend—already charting the next place where time could be stolen back in bright, defiant handfuls.

Galaxastream's last message reached the tower like a warm pulse: evac complete, vectors drawn, minutes bought. Galaxastorm was already on the parapet above Galaxenwarpe's bridges, coat flaring, eyes reflecting the aurora of the capital far upriver. "Understood," he replied, voice even. "My turn."

He stepped off the stone and the weather softened under his boots. The first chem-shells from the coast met a skin of rain he pulled out of clear sky and broke into harmless hiss. Down on the bridge, a frightened conscript looked up at the man walking on a seam in the storm and forgot to be afraid. "Keep the lanes open," Galaxastorm called to the wardens, the words riding thunder. "We hold the crossings, we hold the state."

He rode the river wind toward Haylao City, where glass towers wore cracks like mascara. Deathenpuff's earlier gusts had twisted the skyline; loose panels tinkled down the avenues like chimes. "ごめん," Galaxastorm murmured to the city—apologies—and swept a palm. Every lightning rod for six blocks thrummed as he bled charge into the barrier grid. The gold hum steadied. A Death raiding flight tried to dive the power hub; he tapped two fingers and the air bucked in a clean microburst that plucked the lead craft out of its dive and seated it gently in a fountain. The pilot stared through the canopy at him. He smiled, polite and terrifying. "Do not."

By midday he was above Gallaxyukai's hill pagodas, frost threading pine needles. Deathice had salted the air; the terraces glittered like a trap. Galaxastorm tasted the sleet, made a face, and breathed once through his nose. Steam lifted in long veils as he warmed the inversion layer from a single point and let the heat spread like tea in a pale cup. Deathice opened his hands to renew the freeze and got a neatly-packaged thunderclap to the wrists—firm, not cruel. "Enough for today," Galaxastorm said. The Death elite bowed, rueful, and evaporated into recall. The farmers below took off their hats and laughed, relief catching in their throats.

He turned toward Watabomei Town where the canals still moved like thinking things. Deathenstream had left the water obedient to his voice. Galaxastorm descended into tide-stink and siren glow and set his palm to the floodgate wheel. "你聽我," he told the water—listen to me—and for three minutes the canals forgot the orders baked into their pipes. He lifted them into low, concealing steam that wandered alleys like benevolent ghosts while med-teams slid gurneys through in quiet, hurried lines. When the fog began to remember it was a weapon, he let it go. A zombie walking the curb stepped into warm mist and did not find its way out before the squad passed. "Thank you," Galaxastorm told the air, almost shy.

On the Keikon ridge he sensed Deathenstride's storm guns before their shells, felt the wrongness in the pressure, the math in the sound. He came down on a battery like a verdict. Bolts threaded the gun barrels with surgical contempt; capacitors shrieked and died. A second battery folded its range arc around his decoys and fired into emptiness. "Reposition," Deathenstride ordered, calm in that infuriating Death way. "Gern," Galaxastorm answered—gladly—and walked into the artillery duel as if into a recital. They traded weather the way pianists trade phrases. His eyes narrowed, violet flickers chased along the edges of his silhouette; the Death Supreme's visor dimmed against the glare. Neither moved the other more than a pace. "Later," Deathenstride said without rancor, and shifted his storm to a different sector. "Later," Galaxastorm agreed, and hid his smile from the rain.

He skimmed the cranes of Galaxenportal next, where Deathendye had rewired the sky into neat kill-lanes. Blue-white tracer stitched up at him in patterns that would have made a mathematician clap. "Pretty," he admitted. Then he untied one knot in the wind where two grids met and let their vectors cancel. A pair of plus-eyed gunships drifted broadside to the tide and bumped together, harmless as bread loaves. Deathendye's voice touched the net, dry as salt: "Du bist lästig." You are troublesome. "I try," Galaxastorm said, and slipped away before the grid could relearn itself.

At Gallaxreixuanbeodong's rail yards, cranes lay like dead herons. He walked along a catwalk, coat dripping, and set two fingers on a rusted switch. Every lantern along Track 7 flared to life. "Evac train has the light," he told the dispatchers. Deathfelix stepped from between containers with a cat's smile and a pair of knives made of something unfriendly to lightning. "You left the door open," she purred. "For them," he said, and rotated the wind so that the knives cut only their own wake. When she tried to slip along his blind side, he pointed once; the yard's old announcement speakers screamed with feedback, and her HP clock blinked red in the corner of his senses. "可愛," he added—cute—because he knew it would annoy her just enough to make the retreat cleaner. She vanished with a hiss and a promise.

He dipped into Galaxenhueko's alley labyrinth, where paper lamps bobbed and ash freckles fell on shoulders. Deathbond's chain snapped round a corner; Galaxastorm caught it on the back of his wrist and returned it at a right angle so it latched onto a drain grating instead of a throat. "You lot and your geometry," Bond grunted, tugging futilely. Galaxastorm shrugged. "It's the only universal language." A pulse of thunder low in his chest blew the lamps out in a line. When they relit, Bond was gone, replaced by a chalk arrow someone had drawn to point evac toward a lit stair.

On the switchbacks of Galaxencloude, fog thick enough to chew hid a Death ambush. "Bad theater," he told the mist, amused, and dragged a wet finger across the air. The cloud parted in a surgical corridor. Deaththrend tensed to spring; a harmless bolt kissed the rock at his toes and wrote the kanji for "patience" in blackened lichen. "Another time," Galaxastorm said. Thrend's laugh was pure spite and oddly joyful. "Another time," he echoed, and stepped back into the fog as the corridor closed like a curtain.

Near sunset he reached the outer ring of Gallaxengongshi, the capital's shields bright as cathedral glass. Galaxbeam stood on a distant terrace, small and still, and lifted two fingers in greeting. Galaxastorm answered with the same tiny salute, then turned to the shield pylons strung along the ring roads. He spoke to them the way you steady a skittish horse. The hum leveled. Over his shoulder he felt Deathwing watching from somewhere he couldn't yet see; the sensation was a dark coin pressed to the back of his neck. "Not tonight," Galaxastorm said to that coin, polite and iron.

He closed the loop at Xiewiejunkok, where refugees slept in neat rows and the gate lights looked like tired constellations. A new Death push probed the treeline—hesitant, sensing traps. He lifted one hand, lazy as a conductor between movements, and the trees whispered their leaves off in a ripple that revealed every crawling thing in the underbrush. The push withdrew. He let the leaves fall back where they belonged. A child sitting on a blanket tried to catch one as it drifted; he nudged the air so it landed in her palm. She held it up to the gate glow and smiled a wonder you can't fake.

Only then did he allow himself to sag, a little. The coat settled. The storm around him cooled to a listening hush.

On the net, Galaxapuff's voice came bright with exhaustion and pride. "Nice tempo, Storm. My skies owe you tea." Galaxastream cut in with a low laugh. "He'll insist on proper cups." Galaxastorm allowed himself the smallest smirk. "Teabags are a war crime."

He looked up—habit, prayer—and tilted his head as if to catch the sound of dice in the vault of the night. "If you're still there," he told whatever watched, "we'll take the next roll whenever you like."

Wind braided with city heat and distant surf, making a sound that could have been agreement. He set three more stormlines over Gallaxgonbei, gentle but ready, and walked back toward the bridges as the first real stars pricked through the haze. Wherever the Death Regime advanced, they found the air just slightly against them, the ground just a touch unhelpful, the hour a shade too late. It wasn't victory; it was purchase. Tonight, in this battered state, purchase was everything.

Galaxastorm accepted the night brief on a rain-slick parapet above Galaxenwarpe's bridges, the map projected across the river mist like a patient constellation. Keikon and Watabomei were still violet on the board; Folenggao Reach glowed hostile along the road spine; upper docks of Galaxenportal flickered between colors as skirmishes reset the legend every hour. He didn't flinch at the imbalance. "We don't win by color," he told his officers. "We win by hours. Buy me sunrise."

He led from the air, but he commanded from the street. At Wanshengtu Town he walked a muddy aid line with his gloves off, static humming quietly in his palms as he jump-started a failing field generator. "Captain, rotate your squad. I want sleep in your plan, not courage," he said gently, the kind of order that lands without argument. A private with soot on her cheek blurted, "Sir, are you really walking on thunder?" He smiled, anime-bright for half a heartbeat. "Only on Tuesdays." Laughter loosened shoulders the way medicine can't.

When Deathenstride's long guns tested the Keikon ridge, Galaxastorm didn't chase the shells; he moved the sky. A thin thunderband unfurled from Warpe to Rentianfue Pass, set to detonate the instant a trajectory crossed it. The first volley touched that invisible string and sang itself into harmless sound. "Gut," Deathenstride admitted over an open channel—good—and shifted battery azimuths. Galaxastorm answered by seeding warm rain over a single woodland draw in Xinglat Province; a minute later a Death supply convoy discovered the road had become a creek. No speeches, no gloating—just logistics replaced with weather.

He kept the capital's pulse steady without grandstanding. At Gallaxengongshi's outer pylons he pressed his palm to cold metal and bled charge into the shield lattice until the harmonics smoothed. "ほら、落ち着いて," he murmured to the machinery—easy now. Civilians on a balcony twenty floors up saw a man in a drenched coat touch a tower and the city hum lower, like a temple bell finding its note. Someone started clapping. He shook his head, embarrassed, and vanished upward in a gust that smelled faintly of rain on stone.

Leadership meant letting others shine. In Galaxencloude's fog-gutted switchbacks he put a young lieutenant—steady, green—on the net as traffic marshal while he floated above as silent insurance. When a Death ambush sprang, the lieutenant's voice did not crack: "Blue lane, now." Galaxastorm simply pinched the mist into a corridor to match the order and let her own success teach her she could do this. Later, in a stairwell, she wiped her eyes and said, "Sir, for a second I thought you weren't there." He handed her his canteen. "That was the exercise."

The hardest hour was the hospital train. Gallaxreixuanbeodong's yard lay in twisted metal; the track was a rumor. He walked ahead of the engine with two fingers out as if tracing the line on a child's workbook, drawing pressure ridges that made rails behave like rails again. Deathfelix appeared between containers with knives the color of bad weather. "One cut," she purred. "To stop a train?" he replied, offended on engineering's behalf, and clapped once. Every yard loudspeaker screamed in phase; her HP ticked red and she retreated with a theatrical bow. The locomotive rolled past his knees at walking speed. Inside, a toddler pressed both hands against the window and tried to high-five his shadow. He obliged, and for a frame of time the war looked like a slice-of-life anime.

He still fought, because Supremes must. Over Jakchi's boulevard Deathendye caught him in a glassy net of intercept vectors so elegant it could have been framed. Galaxastorm tilted one wrist and made a single, disrespectful wrinkle in the wind; the net lost its symmetry and the trap fell apart like a perfect sentence with one wrong comma. They exchanged three techniques and a look that said next time in two languages. No one was humiliated, which is its own kind of victory.

By late watch the "Storm Net" was fully anchored: bridge belts over Warpe, a warm inversion cap above Haylao's grid, a rain spine from Folenggao to Rentianfue that turned artillery arcs into damp math, and a slow, stubborn breeze that always seemed to push Death fog back toward the sea. He walked a last loop through Galaxenhueko's lantern alleys, pausing to relight a paper lamp with a fingertip so a child would not wake to dark. When a Death raiding party tested a side street, he lifted two fingers without turning and the wind politely closed the door on them with a thud that suggested they try again tomorrow.

At Xiewiejunkok's gate he assembled his sergeants in a ring of puddle-stars. "Here's the truth," he said, voice soft but shaped. "We do not recover Keikon tonight. We do not erase Watabomei. We do not topple Folenggao. We keep the bridges. We keep the trains. We keep the capital heartbeat regular. We make their morning late." He looked each of them in the eye until the line stopped trembling and became a line.

He checked the sky the way a musician checks a hall before the encore and, for the barest second, seemed to listen for dice. "If you're still watching," he said to whatever plays at gods, "roll carefully. My people are sleeping." A breeze nudged the gate banner like a nod.

Galaxastorm handed the sector to his night watch, keyed a last message to Galaxapuff and Galaxastream—"bridges steady, shield hum green, rain on schedule"—and let the storm around him finally go quiet. In the occupied state of Gallaxgonbei, where whole districts wore the wrong color and others refused to, leadership was not thunder but weather: patient, shaping, relentless. He stepped off the parapet into the warm dark, and the air itself made room for him, already learning tomorrow's routes.

Galaxastorm's last gust settled into a listening hush over Gallaxgonbei, and in that brief, merciful quiet a second light stepped out of the rain. Galaxstar arrived like a page torn from a night atlas—cloak freckled with faint constellations, irises flickering with minute hands, comet tails, and the thinnest ring of a golden chronometer turning where a halo might be. He touched two fingers to his temple in greeting to the city and, without ceremony, folded himself into motion.

He began above Galaxenwarpe's bridges, where evac convoys still inched like beads along a wire. He opened his palm and drew a circle in the air. The circle filled with a slow, patient glow—twelve zodiac sigils marking the hours—and with a soft click the space over the bridge thickened into a time eddy. For the soldiers guiding civilians, minutes became generous; for the shells arcing in from the coast, seconds lengthened into syrup. A tracer line hung as if embarrassed by its own haste and then toppled into the river with a tidy hiss. "Carry on," Galaxstar said, voice warm and even, and the convoy's fear exhaled into effort.

He curved east, to the tortured cranes of Galaxenportal. A gantry, blackened by earlier fighting, shuddered and began to fold toward a crew scrambling on its deck. Galaxstar tapped the air twice. The moment rewound three heartbeats, the gantry lifted into wholeness, bolts reseated, and the crew stared as if the world had apologized. "You didn't see that," he said, smiling. A shape slid between containers—Deathfelix, knives the color of bad weather kissing the edge of visibility. Galaxstar's pupils narrowed to star points. He took a retrograde step and left an afterimage for her first strike to satisfy. Her second cut met a golden ring—thin as a wafer moon—spun from his fingers. It rang like a glass tuned to the exact pitch of her confidence. Her HP stuttered low; she grimaced, dipped her head with a cat's irritation, and bled into recall shimmer. "Next time," she called. "Choose a brighter moon," he answered, already gone.

Watabomei's canals breathed poison. He skimmed low, boots not quite touching the skin of the water. Every drop within a meter of him halted—a glittering lattice of paused rain—and the stillness knitted into a starglass path for medics to run gurneys across. Deathwise stepped from a lintel with that courteous malice of his, whisper-hexes drifting like pollen. "Pretty tricks," the Death elite murmured. "Cruel math," Galaxstar corrected gently, and raised an orrery the size of a house: spheres of golden light orbiting one another in ratios that made minds ache. The hexes came apart where the ratios ran through them; Deathwise's mask cracked along a line that did not exist in this century. He nodded once, as if conceding a theorem to a respected colleague, and vanished before the second proof could be demonstrated. The canal, resentful, surged; Galaxstar lifted his hand and the water remembered its shape without him needing to command it again.

Keikon's industrial belt stank of hot metal and violet rain. Deathbash climbed a collapsed conveyor, chest heaving, eyes delighted; Deathcrush landed beside him with the crack of a dropped elevator. "River-boy sent the star-child?" Bash laughed. "Unfair." "Accurate," Galaxstar replied, and closed his fist around time. The ammo crates stacked behind them aged—lacquer blanching, seals brittle, powder crumbling into a harmless, sullen dust. Bash charged; Galaxstar drew a gravity braid, three firm strands of pull twisted together, and turned the big man's rush into a stumble that ended with him kneeling in a crater he did not remember digging. Crush's gauntlets lengthened; Galaxstar's cloak flared, a rag of eclipse, and the gauntlets struck where he had already been. Their smiles were genuine; so was his. Then the light thinned, wrong, like a thought being erased as it formed. Deathendale's null crept in, delicate and absolute. Galaxstar did not test it. "Another dance," he said, with the courtliness of a scholar refusing a duel on holy ground. He stepped sideways into a one-second skip, reappeared on a stack of pallets fifty meters away, and lifted his men with him in a blink. The Supremes could keep their corridor; he would keep his team.

At Gallaxreixuanbeodong's rail yard, the hospital train waited without a timetable. Galaxstar walked ahead of the engine, fingertips trailing light that kissed twisted rails back into true. Deathlance lunged from shadow, javelin a line meant to write history; Galaxstar tilted the whole world by a single degree. The javelin kept going—to a future platform that did not yet exist—leaving a scorch through empty air. "Parallax," Galaxstar said, almost apologetic. "Hate that," Deathlance admitted, and vanished before the second lesson began. The locomotive moved. Inside a window, a child pressed a sticker star to the glass in silent tribute; Galaxstar pretended not to notice the way his own mouth softened.

Haylao's glass belt held a crosswind of snipers and reflections. He pulled an eclipse across three blocks—thin, polite shadow that ruined every sightline but left streetlights undisturbed—and lashed a solar flare down a service alley where Deathbond's chain had just begun to unspool. The chain recoiled like a scalded serpent; Bond swore eloquently and tumbled out of a skylight in a spray of embarrassed glass. Wind sheared in with a laugh; Deathenpuff danced across a skyscraper face, blades sketching bright parabolas. "Zeitdieb," she teased—time thief. "Atmosphere artist," he conceded, bowing midair. Their pass was all precision and zero cruelty. When the slipstream threatened to catch evac ropes, Galaxstar cupped the air and the ropes lay still. Deathenpuff grinned, conceded the moment with a theatrical shrug, and cut away to find a different mischief.

He slipped into Galaxencloude, where fog devoured headlines and intentions. Deaththrend's silhouette crouched on a guardrail, the kind of patience that makes predators holy. Galaxstar raised a meteor veil, a fall of slow sparks no bigger than beans. Each spark carried a tiny loop of time; touching one meant reliving the previous footstep for the length of a heartbeat. Thrend sprang and found himself precisely where he had been—twice. He laughed, delighted despite himself. "Rude," he said. "Effective," Galaxstar replied, and sent the veil ahead of his squad like a moving night sky. The ambush never quite began; the evac column reached the next turn before contentions could resume.

His last pull of the night arced toward Gallaxyukai's terraced hills. Deathice tried to frost the orchards into knives again; Galaxstar set a dawn over a single slope. Not sunrise—just the sensation of one. Fruit steamed; frost receded; the world remembered a warmer answer that had once been given here every morning for centuries. "You're sentimental," Deathice accused, appearing long enough to melt a glance. "I am precise," Galaxstar corrected, and sketched a clock around Deathice's shadow. The shadow reached noon and became an argument for leaving. Ice bowed, almost smiling, and was gone.

By the time he reached Xiewiejunkok's gate, his chronometer-halo ticked audibly, a sound like a polite throat-clearing in a library. He set a constellation sigil over the gatehouse—three points, one line, a promise—and let the hour lean toward safety. His squad gathered, faces seamed with grit and that stubborn light no doctrine can manufacture. "Report," he said, and listened to every name. All present. He looked up, as they all had lately, toward the idea of a ceiling where unseen hands might be flipping coins.

"If you are keeping score," he said to the intangible, "mark this as purchased time." He made a small, precise bow, and the halo above his head clicked once, satisfied.

Back on net, Galaxastorm's voice was soft with approval; Galaxastream's held a grin you could hear. Galaxstar allowed himself one answer in the same language—work. "Bridges steady. Docks survivable. Rails awake. Keikon costly for them to keep, Watabomei stubborn to hold. We bled them minutes."

He ended where he began, on a seam of air over a city that refused to stop being a city. Golden motes drifted from his fingertips and winked out where they touched rooftops, small anonymous blessings disguised as dust. He drew one last circle and slid the night two degrees toward morning so the nurses in a ward would feel their shift shorten by something they wouldn't be able to name. Then he folded his cloak close, tucked his chronometer behind his ear like a pencil, and went to where the next hour would be most expensive for the invaders.

Galaxstar finished aligning the last constellation sigil over Xiewiejunkok's gate and let the chronometer ring behind his ear fall quiet. The city's breath hitched, then steadied. "One more circuit," he told himself, and unfolded into the air—cloak pricked with new stars no one but he would ever notice.

At Galaxenportal's upper docks, a Death chem-hauler crawled through the smoke like a beetle that had learned to count. He eased a palm down and the road ahead of it became yesterday. The truck rolled into its own unbroken future—straight into a gap where a bridge had not yet been finished—and halted with a mild, bewildered sigh. Dockhands on the Galaxy side stared, then hustled to drag fire hose and stretcher over golden stepping-stones he dropped, each one a paused raindrop carrying a second of mercy.

Keikon's conveyor spine rumbled with plus-eyed troopers and drones boxing in a trapped platoon. He pinched two fingers and braided gravity into a quiet twist beneath their boots; the entire line took one involuntary step left. That was all the gap his soldiers needed to scissor through. Deathcrush landed with a grin too wide for a helmet and hurled himself at the brightest thing in the sky. Galaxstar slid to one side, drew a thin ring from air, and let Crush's gauntlet strike its inside edge. The blow returned to sender with perfect etiquette; armor plates pealed like monastery bells. "Again," Crush laughed, giddy with the game. "Later," Galaxstar promised, and rolled time forward a heartbeat to rejoin his men already past the trap.

In Watabomei's drowned wards, zombies sloshed through knee-deep filth, eyes opaque as coins. He walked above them on a starglass path and set his hand over the canal like a benediction. The sewage re-aged into clear rain for a single block's length, enough that medics could rinse gauze and a mother could wash her child's hair without flinching. Deathwise's whisper came from a blasted lintel—"慈悲は遅延だ"—mercy is a delay. "時間は刃だ," Galaxstar answered—time is a blade—and turned the whisper back on its owner in ratios that left the mask split and the man forced into recall, elegant even in retreat.

Haylao's glass belt tried to turn him into shards and reflection. Deathbond's chain scrawled a looping signature through mirrored lobbies; Deathfelix hunted it like a cat. Galaxstar clapped once; an eclipse crossed three towers, stealing every sightline at the exact moment evac ropes swung out. Felix cut air where he had been; Bond found his chain latched politely around a maintenance bollard that hadn't been there a second ago. "Rude," Felix purred, amused despite herself. "Precise," he corrected, and tipped two fingers as if batting away seconds.

On Galaxencloude's switchbacks, Deaththrend coiled to spring. Galaxstar scattered a meteor veil—slow sparks that looped the last footfall back on itself. Thrend sprang and landed where he'd started, twice, then bowed in frank appreciation. They both grinned—the good, infuriating shōnen kind—and parted without cruelty. Down-slope, a convoy slid past on rails of softened time, the drivers blinking at how the hard corner had become a patient curve.

The one place he would not linger was Jakchi, where Deathendye and Deathenstorm had laced the air with elegant malice. He skimmed the boulevard anyway, long enough to nudge a bus full of evacuees one minute ahead and a Death strike flight two minutes behind. Storm's visor tilted, curious; Endye's net tensed like a perfect sentence waiting for a comma. Galaxstar bowed in midair, respectful as a scholar declining a premature exam, and folded himself into a one-second skip that left only a ring of light where he'd been. Supremes hunt Supremes; an elite's victory here is measured in intact civilians.

By the time he returned to Gallaxreixuanbeodong's yard, the hospital train's tail lights were a memory and the cranes looked less like carrion birds. He walked the platform once, touching a spar, a bolt, a bench, letting golden dust fall where the day had been too sharp. A child's sticker star still clung to the carriage window, wrinkled and proud. He hid his smile in the collar of his cloak and let the hour advance.

At last he alit on Xiewiejunkok's wall beside the constellation he'd left burning. His squad checked in—voices hoarse, names intact. He tilted his head up at the high, indifferent brightness where dice might rattle and coins might flash and offered a small, neat bow. "Mark it," he said, to gods or chance. "Rails running. Bridges breathing. Docks delayed. Keikon and Watabomei expensive to keep. We bought morning."

Galaxastorm's reply came like warm rain over the net; Galaxastream's like a grin in the dark. Galaxstar tucked his chronometer behind his ear as if it were a pencil and drew one last circle in the air. The city's clocks all agreed with him for the briefest, most arrogant second, and then he let them go. "Shift change," he told the night, and stepped down from the wall into a street that had decided, against considerable evidence, to remain a street.

Galaxstar's last circle of light thinned into morning, and the war's noise dipped just enough for ink to be heard. In that hush, a figure in a plain field coat stepped from a service stairwell beneath Xiewiejunkok's gate. No blazing aura, no heroic wind—only a neat clipboard, a pen that never scratched, and a faint golden metronome ticking at his wrist. Galaxwise did not salute the sky; he checked his watch, smiled at how perfectly late the enemy had become, and began.

He moved like good punctuation—appearing precisely where the sentence needed clarity. At Galaxenwarpe's bridges, engineers argued over load limits and evacuation cadence. Galaxwise laid a transparent overlay on the railing: a living diagram of traffic pulses and human breath. "Forty-two seconds green on northbound, twenty on south, repeat thrice, then reset," he said, voice calm, eyes kind. "And put tea on by the third cycle." His fingertip sketched a small golden tick over a floodgate icon—tea—because morale is logistics by another name. When the first chem-shells arrived early, the bridge lanes were already mid-reset; shells met empty air, and the convoy flowed like a practiced refrain. He offered the chief engineer a soft bow. "You bought five minutes. I'm stealing you ten more."

In Watabomei, where Deathenstream had trained the canals to listen to his voice, Galaxwise never stepped into the water at all. He held a battered radio to his ear and scribbled a neat column of second marks as the drainage pumps coughed in an off rhythm. "The west pump is lying," he told the foreman without accusation. "It's reporting a flow it hasn't made. Switch the manifold—no, the other valve, the one with the bent handle. Yes." The foreman did, and the canal forgot Death's order just long enough for a medical column to cross. Galaxwise did not wave to them; he annotated a margin with the time that specific kindness had cost and moved on.

Keikon's conveyor spine rasped under violet control, half the rollers bolted into Death patterns. Galaxwise walked the catwalk above the line with a coil of tag-ribbon on one forearm, marking dead gears with tiny sunbursts and living ones with quiet moons. "Sabotage that spins in place is better than sabotage that stops the machine," he murmured to a young sapper who wanted to plant fireworks. "Noise costs them diagnostics." He slipped a folded, greaseproof note into the sapper's pocket—a route through Keikon that crossed six Death patrol schedules minutes before they'd been updated at the enemy's hub. He knew those schedules because he'd listened to the ultrasonic click that Death liaisons used to sync watches and counted the half-second pride added when they spoke German to impress each other. Pride has a tempo too.

At Gallaxreixuanbeodong's rail-yard, the hospital train had gone; what remained was a thicket of signals chattering nonsense because half their bellies were ash. Galaxwise hoisted himself onto a signal box, opened the panel with the kind of tenderness that makes old machines cooperate, and tuned the whole yard to a common hum. "Track Seven goes to soup kitchens now," he told dispatchers, drawing a new timetable in gold lines that glowed long enough for everyone to memorize. Deathfelix's shadow glided along a gantry, knives tucked, smile prepared. Galaxwise turned his head slightly, the way you look up when you realize the theater lights have moved, and met her reflection in a warped signal lens. "Not today," he said gently, as if declining a dance at a crowded wedding. By the time she decided whether to be offended, the yard lights blinked twice—his prearranged mask for a sniper team's safe reposition—and she sighed herself into recall, a cat bored with an empty box.

He avoided fights the way rain avoids a roof—by finding the preexisting seams. In Haylao's glass district he scrolled through building management manifests at a kiosk no one had bothered to lock. Without touching a single weapon, he rerouted elevator logic to create "coincidental" blockages between Death raiders and pediatric wards, then sent janitorial bots down a path that looked arbitrary on camera but scoured chem residue into one harmless corner for later removal. A security guard saw only a clean hallway; a raider met a floor polish so glossy his boots gave up on friction. "君子無爭," Galaxwise murmured in Mandarin—the gentleman does not contend—and underlined the time stamp.

By mid-afternoon, Death troopers had learned to hunt the obvious lines Galaxstream loved to twist and the storm corridors Galaxastorm anchored. So Galaxwise stopped drawing lines. At Galaxencloude he plucked a harmonica from his pocket and played three clear notes. Above him, fog behaved like an audience asked to hold applause—not yet, not yet, not yet—and the Death ambush fired two seconds too late into a corridor nobody used. He documented the shot timings and attached a quiet smiley face for Galaxapuff, who liked her briefs to end with a joke. "They know we know," he wrote, "so we'll know they know we know, and go again."

He never raised his hand to an elite; he raised his voice to a net. When Deathbond's chain sang around an alley corner, Galaxwise had already pinged a bakery's emergency oven vent to belch a sheet of steam that erased sightlines without blowing anyone off their feet. "Ovens are artillery if you love people enough," he told the baker as he paid with a winning lottery ticket that would exist tomorrow; he had simply put the slip in the correct pocket today. The baker's hands shook as she took it. "You're the one keeping a book?" she asked, eyes wet. He tapped his clipboard and the faint ledger that hovered above it like breath. "Only so tomorrow is less expensive than today."

At the capital's outer pylons, where Galaxbeam's mathematics turned air to cathedral glass, Galaxwise did nothing glamorous. He sat on a stool with his legs crossed, listening—ear to steel, heart to hum—and logged the micro-wobbles of the shield as artillery at Folenggao found a new angle. "Three degrees south on the tertiary coil," he radioed. "I can feel it droop between the bells." The tech on the line asked how he could possibly feel that. "Because I was here yesterday," he said simply, "and the day before, and I love the sound it makes when it is right." The tech made the adjustment. The hum smiled.

He anticipated Death propaganda with the pettiness of a poet. When a hacked bulletin crawled across billboards in Keikon—GALAXENCHI BLEEDS TIME; DEATH REFILLS IT—he had already arranged for every commuter clock in Gallaxyukai to run forty seconds fast for one hour, so shops closed early, children reached stairwells before curfew, and the only thing Death achieved was an empty street where they'd hoped for panic. "If they must own words," he said, jotting the result in a tidy hand, "let them miss moments."

More than once he glanced up, as the others had, to the theatrical vault where coins might flip. "If you're rolling," he told the invisible arbiters with a tiny, conspiratorial smile, "I'm only here to keep score accurately." His ledger ticked—a golden abacus where each bead was a saved minute, each rod a corridor held, each line item an ordinary person who got to finish a sentence. When Deathenstorm's vacuum blade drew a scar down Jakchi's boulevard, Galaxwise logged the angle, the interval between strikes, the half-breath pause before the third cut that meant Storm admired his own symmetry. Admiration has a tempo, too. He sent that tempo to Galaxastream with a single line: Third interval is vanity. Step there.

Near dusk, he threaded all of it into a briefing written like a story because stories travel faster than maps. He narrated where the enemy would feel late, where their anger would make them loud, where a superstition could be fed to make a captain reroute a column away from an elementary school and into a forklift depot that would embarrass them for months. He named every medic by name whose stretcher had crossed his starglass, every sapper whose fuse he'd shortened by twelve seconds because he hates waste. "I do not win battles," he closed. "I make losses cost the other side more time than they can afford."

When he finally stood, the night had taken on that careful quiet of a theater resetting between acts. Galaxastorm came in on the net, tone warm: "Wise, your hymn worked. Bridges breathe." Galaxastream, smiling in his voice, added, "Also the bakery vent trick was rude." Galaxwise allowed himself a small laugh. "Civility is a weapon, if sharpened." He tucked the harmonica into a breast pocket and slid the clipboard beneath his arm. His watch ticked. He listened to it the way some people listen to the sea.

He passed a squad of Galaxy ground troopers on a stairwell, all of them too young for their helmets and exactly old enough for their courage. One asked, whisper-small, "Sir, are we ahead?" Galaxwise looked past them—not through—to the lines he'd drawn, the trains he'd timed, the fog that would hold two minutes too long at dawn because he'd asked it to, and nodded. "Tonight," he said, gentle and certain, "we are four minutes ahead." Anime-bright relief lit their faces. Four minutes is an eternity when you are alive inside it.

He did not vanish into the sky. He chose a maintenance corridor nobody else would think to love, and walked it like a prayer, handwriting his state into the next hour's margin.

Galaxwise set his back to the gatehouse at Xiewiejunkok, opened the slim brass ledger that has outlived three wars, and began the part of battle that looks like writing. He keeps his distance—by design—and speaks to the page, to the commanders, and to the invisible audience that keeps flipping coins over our skies.

I title this entry: After-Action Chronicle — Gallaxgonbei (Cumulative). If you are reading from outside the page, yes, I am logging you too.

The state was struck in three movements. First, the surf edge—Death Regime probes testing bridges, docks, and rails with careful cruelty. Second, the inland teeth—industrial belts and canal grids pressed for throughput. Third, the patience game—sieges by schedule, meant to make us late. We answered with air (Galaxapuff prior), with river and storm (Galaxastream and Galaxastorm), with star-work (Galaxstar), and with the most unfashionable weapon in any arsenal: time made honest.

Galaxenwarpe (bridges). We kept them. Storm softened incoming chem into weather; Stream bent trajectories into thrift; Star pulled minutes from the air like spare cloth; I tuned the crossing cadence until panic had no place to stand. Net effect: evac lanes never failed, counter-marches could pivot, and the enemy's "first bite" closed on air. If the gods rolled anything here, it landed edge-on and wobbled, to our benefit.

Galaxenportal (upper docks). Death tried to turn cranes into spears and roads into straight lines. We turned straight lines into loops. Star reset a collapsing gantry three beats into the past; I reassigned Track Seven to soup kitchens and lit a timetable people could believe. Attacks still came. Felix's knives arrived like the idea of rain; we answered with eclipse, decoys, and a yard full of lights that blinked safety in a code only our snipers knew. Result: partial function, stubborn as a barge in shallow water—slow, steady, useful.

Gallaxreixuanbeodong (rail hub). The yard looked like a diagram of grief until Stream and Star walked the rails into behaving. We got the hospital train out; we kept the freight that mattered dribbling in; we taught the signals to speak in one voice again. Deathlance attempted to punctuate the effort with a javelin; parallax turned it into punctuation on a platform that does not exist yet. This is my favorite kind of grammar.

Keikon (industrial belt). Here the enemy insisted, and will continue to. Their elites—Crush, Bash, others—treated conveyors like altars. We refused to worship. Storm unstrung the ridge guns; Stream scissored the kill lanes; Star aged ammunition to dust without theatrics. My part was pettier: I tagged rollers to spin loudly instead of stopping, so their diagnostics chased noise while our sappers walked through the quiet. Status: contested, expensive—for them. It will stay that way as long as we are patient and impolite.

Watabomei (canals). Deathenstream taught the water to obey a voice. We taught it to listen to more than one. Stream split floods into courtesies; Star laid starglass paths; I argued with pumps until they remembered their job. Wise the man, unwise the name—Deathwise—left hexes in doorways; they unraveled under a house-sized orrery and ratios we did not have time to admire. Civilians crossed where a river pretended to be a floor. Mark that down: the day the water gave us mercy.

Haylao (glass belt). Deathenpuff carved wind into knives. Storm bled lightning into shields until the city hummed true; Star pulled an eclipse across three blocks to ruin sightlines; I rerouted elevators, janitor bots, and pride. Result: raids blunted, pediatric wards untouched, and one raider slipping on floor polish so glossy even the cameras laughed.

Gallaxyukai (hill terraces). Deathice tried to turn orchards into brittle weapons. Star set a small, precise dawn over a single slope. Storm matched freeze with warmth. The hills went back to being hills. If you are reading from outside, understand: not all victories explode.

Galaxenhueko (alley labyrinth) & Galaxencloude (fog switchbacks). Bond's chain sang and never found a throat; Thrend's patience looped on itself under meteor veils. We didn't "win" so much as fail to lose until the hour changed in our favor. That is enough.

Jakchi (boulevards). Here the enemy Supremes—Endye, Storm—made art out of harm. Stream fenced with them and came away unbroken, which is the correct score for a day we weren't meant to die on. I logged angles and silence between cuts; vanity has a tempo, and we will step into it later.

Gallaxengongshi (capital periphery). The cathedral glass of the shield lattice held. Storm and I tuned harmonics until the hum smiled. Galaxbeam watched from a terrace and made a two-finger promise I trust more than fate.

Across the state, coin flips landed both ways; dice rattled like nervous hearts. When Death pushed inland, our line bent, then learned the curve. When they tried to hold what they had, we made the holding cost minutes they could not spare. When their propaganda claimed they refilled time, we closed the shops early and met their slogan with empty streets. (If you are writing captions for history: call this the Purchase of Morning. It will infuriate the right people.)

I am supposed to avoid drama and I have. I do not swing a blade. I do not shout. I carry a harmonica, a clipboard, and a watch that ticks like a small, stubborn animal. But I will note, for the record and for the readers outside the page, that the people of Gallaxgonbei did the largest work. Engineers who learned to breathe in counts of twenty. Bakers who vented ovens on my mark to hide a squad's crossing. A child who pressed a sticker star to a train window and forced three commanders to remember why rails matter.

State verdict (today's ledger).
Bridges: held.
Docks: impaired but alive.
Rails: temperamental and serviceable.
Keikon, Watabomei: contested, costly to occupy.
Hill terraces and lantern alleys: resilient.
Capital shield: singing in tune.
Enemy: frustrated, not finished.
Us: four minutes ahead.

To the Supreme Commanders—Puff, Stream, Storm—and to Star: your corridors are clear for the next cycle; your ambush clocks are annotated; your tea is set to boil two minutes before you realize you need it. To the ones tossing dice above the clouds: if you must keep score, please use my numbers. They are kinder to the living.

I close this entry from a safe stairwell that smells of dust and citrus cleanser. The watch says we have purchased exactly two hundred and forty seconds more morning than yesterday. If that feels small to you, try holding your breath for four minutes and tell me it is not a kingdom.

Galaxwise signs the page, folds the ledger flat, and walks the maintenance corridor nobody loves, because stories endure where someone writes them down.

Galaxwise's ledger clicked shut like a soft cymbal, and the next page of the night turned itself. From the mezzanine shadow beneath Xiewiejunkok's gate, a slim figure stepped forward and let the gate-glow trace the crescent band at her throat. Galaxymoon did not arrive with thunder; she arrived with phase—the deliberate hush before a note. "Orders received," she whispered to no one and to four voices at once. From Galaxastorm: hold the crossings, keep the air kind. From Galaxastream: cut arteries, not arms; make them late. From Galaxapuff: clear every fang that points at my runways. From Galaxadale on a salt-soaked channel: if it floats and hunts, blind it for me. She touched two fingers to the crescent and moved.

She began where the state bled slowest—Galaxenwarpe's bridges. The night there was a braid of lamp halos and the patient thunder of shields. Death chem-shells arced like bad ideas. Galaxymoon drew a thin semicircle in the air—first crescent—and the shells met a lunar lens that did nothing dramatic, only nudged their timing three heartbeats askew. Tracers smeared into harmless threads. On the bridge deck, a warden stared up, mouth open. Galaxymoon smiled, eyes bright like little sickles of light. "Keep walking," she said. "Tonight the moon is on your side." When a Death strike pair tried a low run along the river skin, she slid a tide-step under their wings. The air thickened, their engines sighed, and both craft settled into the water like gulls too tired to argue.

Her next footfall carried her to Keikon, where conveyors clanked like stubborn metronomes under Death watch. She didn't attack the line. She attacked time around it. With a quiet breath she traced new-moon across her palm; shadows thickened in the gear housings, swallowing the exact moment when bolt met tooth. The rollers still turned; they simply lost their appetite for synchrony. Death troopers barked at diagnostics that refused to settle; a captain slapped a console and shouted in German for someone to "stop the ghosts in the bearings." Galaxymoon's mouth tipped into a crescent of mischief. "小聲啲啦," she murmured in Cantonese—use your indoor voice—and slipped past them to chalk a pale sigil on a junction box that would reset itself to "safe" every time panic tried to lock it down.

Watabomei wanted to drown and be forgiven in the same breath. The canals breathed chem, and the alleys wore that sour sheen grief leaves behind. Galaxastream's vectors had already taught the water manners; Galaxymoon gave it moods. She sketched a gibbous curve over a culvert and the flood there forgot rage, settling into a slow eddy that took evac stretchers like a moving floor. A Death elite—Deathwise, mask fine as paper—stepped into the mouth of the alley and released whispering hexes that tried to dull her will. She touched her crescent, turned it to first quarter, and the hexes slid off like rain from lacquer. "Pretty tricks," he said. "月光唔使講嘢," she answered—the moonlight doesn't need to speak—and flicked him a sliver of stillness so exact his breath caught. He bowed, eyes narrow with reluctant respect, and bled into recall before the second lesson.

At Haylao's glass belt, reflections planned ambush for a living. Galaxapuff's channel clicked twice—her "pretty please" for clear air—and Galaxymoon answered with a second-quarter cut. Every facade for three blocks lost its reflections at once; glass turned into honest windows, stripping Death marksmen of their favorite trick. Deathbond's chain hissed across a lobby; she caught it on a fingertip, not stopping it, only phase-lagging it, so it bit air two frames late and wrapped a handrail instead of a throat. "粗魯," she chided—rude—as Bond yanked futilely and then vanished with a swear that the microphones sanitized into static.

She turned uphill toward Gallaxyukai, terraces glittering with frost scars. Deathice had been here, trying to persuade orchards to become weapons again. Galaxymoon laid her palm on a leaf and breathed full moon—not light but permission. Frost softened. Fruit exhaled a little sugar. "You're sentimental," Deathice accused from a terrace shadow, voice sharp as a winter star. "I'm specific," Galaxymoon said, and traced a ring that froze only the breath around his ankles. He slipped, caught himself, laughed softly at his own surprise, and stepped back into recall with a promise. She let him go; elites belong to other elites, and there was work yet that required gentler hands.

Gallaxreixuanbeodong's yard groaned like a piano after a fire—everything a little warped. The hospital train had gone, thank all bright things, but the next relief consist rattled in with half its brakes sulking. She climbed a switching ladder and clicked the lunar chronometer at her throat. Time thickened along Track Four just enough to give the brakeman room to think instead of react; wheels refrained from their favorite trick of forgetting friction at the worst possible moment. Deathlance appeared between container stacks, javelin thin and eager. Galaxymoon drew a single hairline across the air. The javelin met a node where two seconds shared the same address and buried itself in a harmless piece of tomorrow. "再見啦," she said with a little wave—later—and hopped down as the consist sighed into place like a nervous horse settling.

On the switchbacks of Galaxencloude, fog held bad patience. Deaththrend crouched above a turn, smile slow and hungry. Galaxymoon scratched a crescent into the mist and the fog remembered being theater smoke. It drifted aside on cue, revealing Thrend—caught mid-spring, expression cycling from predator to annoyed actor caught without a line. She blew him a kiss of waning-moon—energy that invites departure—and he took the hint with a rueful salute, blinking out before the curtain could fall on his pride.

She saved her loudest phase for the thing most people wouldn't call a battlefield: a school stairwell in Galaxenwarpe, where three families clutched bags under a sign that listed fire drills in two languages. A Death drone nosed in the broken window, sensors gleaming like covetous eyes. Galaxymoon's expression sharpened; the crescent at her throat filled cleanly. She lifted a hand, and the stairwell was briefly somewhere else—the boy's tenth birthday, the first day of spring, a teacher's joke that made everyone laugh so hard they forgot to breathe. The drone lost its place in the world and settled to the landing like a beetle deciding to nap. The boy looked up, eyes blown wide. She winked. "秘密," she said—a secret—and the families moved, light-footed, through the full-moon glow.

Night wore on. Orders braided through her ear. Galaxastorm asked for a pressure change over Warpe; she gave him a neap tide that made artillery arcs sulk and die. Galaxastream needed a corridor between Keikon's two meanest alleys; she cut a crescent trench through crowd flow so his squad would appear to be ghosts until the last turn. Galaxapuff wanted every AA tooth pointing the wrong way at Galaxenportal for exactly ninety seconds; Galaxymoon spun lunar glare over the emplacements so rangefinders read "no." From the coast, Galaxadale chuckled into the salt: "If you have moonlight to spare, I'll take a ribbon across my wake." She drew him a path of tide-glitter that confused Death torpedoes into chasing reflections, and somewhere beyond the seawalls a hunter found himself hunting the idea of a ship instead of the hull.

In the hour before dawn, she paused on Jakchi's boulevard, where Deathendye's nets made the air feel like good grammar used for evil. She did not challenge the net; she added a footnote. A single waning sliver tucked into a lamppost made every intercept grid hesitate a blink longer when asked to close on something carrying children. No one noticed except the people who reached the corner in time.

She returned to Xiewiejunkok with the moon at half and the city breathing a fraction easier. On the gatehouse roof, a mechanic with oil on her cheek looked up from a humming pylon. "Ma'am," she said, awe and exhaustion sharing a chair. "Did you fight?" Galaxymoon laughed—bright, a little wicked. "I argued with clocks and taught glass to be honest," she said. "Others did the fighting."

Galaxastorm's message arrived like a warm gust: bridges steady—thank you. Galaxastream's followed with a grin audible between syllables: your crescent trench made us look like legends. Galaxapuff's came in with theater and sugar: tea on deck when you're done being mysterious. Galaxymoon tilted her chin, crescent catching the first pale edge of day. "明白," she answered them all—understood.

Before she left the roof, she glanced up the way the others had, as if the clouds might be glass windows into a room where dice still rolled. She touched the crescent at her throat and smiled like someone who knows the tide table better than luck. "If you're keeping score," she murmured to the unseen, "mark this as a good phase." Then she stepped off into the brightening air, a slim shape with a pocketful of borrowed minutes, moving toward the next place where a curve would be kinder than a line.

Dawn thinned the sky to pearl and steel, and Galaxymoon let the crescent at her throat dim to a working glow. "Last cycle," she told the city, as four voices stacked in her ear—Storm asking for kinder pressure over the bridges, Stream for a corridor cut through Keikon, Puff for ninety seconds of blind AA at the docks, Dale for a ribbon of tide-glitter to foul torpedoes. She tapped the crescent once and moved, a slip of light passing through the ribcage of Gallaxgonbei.

She started at Galaxenwarpe as the first convoys rolled. Death chem-shells arced in lazy parabolas. Galaxymoon drew a crescent across the air and the bridge entered a low-tide minute, time shallow enough that projectiles skimmed and lost nerve while boots found traction they hadn't earned. A little boy on a truck bed raised both hands at the strange hush; she returned a fox-quick wave and stepped out of sight before the fear could remember itself.

Keikon greeted her with its clanking catechism. Death officers barked at rollers that kept perfect tempo—so she changed the music. A new-moon stutter seeped into the main line; bolts met teeth two frames late, diagnostics sang contradictory lullabies, and an entire platoon argued itself into standing down while Stream's squad ghosted the mezzanine they'd been guarding. Deathcrush spotted a glint and came grinning, fist like a falling bell. She lifted a thin ring of delay; the blow arrived to meet itself and set his gauntlet chiming against his own armor. "Later," she said, and he laughed, delighted and furious, before blinking to recall with knuckles already swelling.

Watabomei asked for gentleness. The canals wore a chemical sheen like bad perfume. Galaxymoon spread her fingers and a clear dome of phase-distillation settled over a single block; toxins flocculated into heavy glitter that sank into traps her medics had set. A Death whisper licked the culverts—Deathwise, courteous as ever. "Mercy is expensive." "So is cruelty," she answered, and adjusted the dome's edge by a hair until his hex slid off and drowned in the same patient eddy she'd given the stretchers.

At Haylao's glass belt she erased reflections for three city blocks, turning mirrors into honest windows so Puff's pilots could thread the canyon without a sniper's ghost to catch them. Deathfelix's knives arrived smiling; Galaxymoon gave the blades a two-second jet lag and watched them bite the world where it had been instead of where it was. "Rude," Felix sang, amused. "Necessary," Galaxymoon replied, and with a fingertip wrote a little curve of glare that convinced a bank of AA to believe the sky was empty for exactly the amount of time Puff needed.

She climbed Gallaxyukai's terraces and found frost prints where Deathice had tried, again, to convince orchards to become weapons. Galaxymoon pressed her palm to a branch and breathed full moon into wood; sugar rose, ice softened, and the hill remembered harvest instead of harm. Deathice leaned out of a shadow, a knife-edged smile in winter light. "Sentiment again?" "Specificity," she said, snaring the cold around his ankles long enough to remind him he could fall. He left with a laugh and a vow, and the trees went back to being trees.

Gallaxreixuanbeodong's rail yard complained like an old piano. The relief consist rolled in with a brake that wanted to forget its job; she clicked the crescent and thickened time along a single rail so the brakeman could think instead of react. Deathlance's javelin sketched a silver line across the platform; she tucked a sliver of tomorrow in front of its point and watched it bury itself in an absence that would be a crate at noon. "Next," she murmured, hopping down as if stepping from a stage after a quiet encore.

On Galaxencloude's switchbacks the fog coiled, ready to bite. Deaththrend crouched with that stagecraft stillness of a hunter who loves applause. Galaxymoon salted the slope with a meteor veil—slow sparks that looped the last footfall—and Thrend sprang straight back into the place he'd launched from. He bowed with teeth. She blew a crescent kiss of waning phase; he took the hint and dissolved before pride could bruise.

She left her softest work for the place most people would never name in a report: a school stairwell in Jakchi, where Endye's intercept grids made the air feel like perfect grammar used for the wrong sentence. She didn't argue the paragraph; she added a footnote. A sliver of waning tucked into a lamppost taught the grid to hesitate—only for vehicles carrying children, only once per hour, only long enough to matter. No one noticed but the families who made the light.

The last call came stacked and urgent: Storm needed the pressure over Warpe eased for a counterbattery volley; Stream needed a seam between two alleys where the enemy schedule had no seam; Puff wanted every dockside rangefinder reading "no" for a minute; Dale chuckled salt into her ear for a decoy wake. Galaxymoon drew a neap tide over the bridge, cut a crescent trench through foot traffic that made Stream's team seem like rumor, polished a lens of lunar glare over the emplacements, and stitched a ribbon of tide-glitter so Death torpedoes chased a moon he'd set on the water like a dare. Each move was small. All together, they were decisive.

When the cycle finally ended, she climbed the gatehouse at Xiewiejunkok and sat with her knees up, just a person with a silvered throat ornament watching the city breathe. The messages arrived like warm weather. Storm: "Pressure perfect. Bridges steady." Stream: "Your seam made us legends again." Puff: "Tea's hot; bring that mysterious smile." Dale, from the open water: a wordless hum of engines and salt and satisfaction.

She glanced upward, where others imagined dice and coins and a ceiling with an audience. "If you're keeping score," she said to whoever listens, "call this phase complete." Then she stood, rolled her shoulders, and slipped back into motion, ready for whatever the next hour demanded—another reflected ambush to unmake, another conveyor to make late, another stairwell to turn briefly into a birthday. She fought without fighting, cut without wounding, and left behind a state that, for one more turn of the moon, remembered how to be itself.

Galaxymoon's last crescent faded into the pale of morning, and a new color rose to meet the day: a slow-blooming aureate red, like sunrise learning how to breathe. Feathers of light unfurled from the edge of a ventilation tower above Xiewiejunkok, each plume etched with star-scripts and tiny constellations that rearranged themselves when you blinked. From that hush stepped the Galaxy Regime's phoenix—Galaxytsukifenghuang—boots touching down with the soft authority of someone who has already been here a thousand times in a thousand possible tomorrows.

"我接手," she said—I'll take it from here—and the air answered with a bright, avian trill that wasn't quite a sound.

She began at Galaxenwarpe, where the bridges had held but the city's nerves were frayed to threads. Sirens skittered; shield pylons throbbed, one note off key. Tsukifenghuang climbed the nearest pylon and pressed her palm to its trembling skin. A corona of feather-light motes fanned outward and sank into copper and stone; the disharmony melted as if embarrassed to have been heard. Two chem-shells arrived late from the coast. She didn't slap them from the sky. She wrote a circle with her forefinger and breathed across it. The circle became a shimmering phoenix halo; the shells entered it and forgot to explode, dropping into the river with polite, extinguished sighs. A boy on a flatbed stared, eyes wide as moons. She tipped him a wink, anime-bright. "この橋は強い," she told the bridge—you are strong—then stepped off into the warm wind.

Keikon wore trouble like a crown. Conveyors clanked in rhythms that weren't ours; Death troopers stamped diagnostics into obedience. At the far end of a crushed loading bay, Deathcrush rolled his shoulders and grinned, gauntlets bright with hunger. Deathbash slammed a boot into a spar and laughed like thunder that had taken a boxing lesson. "Bird," Bash called, delighted. "Let's break a star."

Tsukifenghuang answered by unfurling wings that were more concept than matter: starlight filaments, phoenix plumes inked with calligraphy of the Hour, the Zenith, the Return. When Bash charged, the world around his fist became yesterday. His punch passed through where she had been and left only a bouquet of golden tail-feathers that fizzled into harmless sparks. Crush vaulted, coming down like a meteor. She met him with the Fenghuang Guard—a curved fan of luminescent feathers that flexed like steel and sang like crystal. Impact rang; his armor pealed; he skidded three meters and lunged again, laughing harder. She smiled back despite herself, then traced a narrow sigil over the floor: just a sliver of stopped time, thin as paper. Bash stepped on it and found his boot forgetting how to lift for one incredulous heartbeat. That was enough. Tsukifenghuang kicked the air once and crossed the space in a single frame, two fingers to Crush's chestplate, sealing a rebirth glyph that rebooted his kinetic dampeners into a sulky coma. Both elites barked frustrated curses—one German, one universal—and blinked to recall before pride could cost them more HP than was fashionable.

The canals of Watabomei smelled of poison and memory. Galaxastream had coaxed the water into manners; Galaxymoon had given it moods. Tsukifenghuang gave it clarity. She hovered over a culvert and spread her arms. Plumes splayed; every feather became a prism. Light fell through them in patient sheets that broke the purple sheen into obedient fragments, which sank into traps her medics had netted along the banks. A cluster of zombies lurched from an alley; she lowered one palm and time cascaded over them like warm rain. The rage in their eyes softened into bafflement. She didn't kill them. She pointed, sorrow gentle but final. "回家," she whispered—go home—and the squad with tranquilizer wands did the rest. A medic paused only long enough to bow his head. "Thank you, Fenghuang." She shook hers lightly. "For holding the line while I painted."

At Galaxenportal, cranes hunched like embarrassed herons. Galaxapuff's voice crackled through the channel, bright with tea and tempo: "My runways would adore an unjammed sky." "了解," Tsukifenghuang answered, and sang—not with her throat, but with the heat-shimmer of her wings. The tones were higher than sirens and lower than wind; radar dishes shivered into harmonious silence. Dockside AA slewed for targets they no longer trusted to exist. A Death gunner cursed in German, smacked his rangefinder, then froze when a single phoenix plume drifted onto the sight glass and became a circle of gold that always read zero. "Run," the plume suggested without words. He did.

She rose along the terraced hills of Gallaxyukai, where frost scars cut the orchards into pale maps. Deathice stepped from a shadow like a knife stepped from its sheath. "We do this again?" he asked, voice wry as winter sun. "しかたない," she replied—so it goes. His breath condensed into lances; hers into petals of heat. Frost spears shattered against blooming light; fire puffs snuffed into glitter before they could brag. He angled for cruelty and instead found choreography. After three exhales he smiled, almost shy, and tapped two fingers to his brow in respect before dissolving into recall. She touched a branch; the tree exhaled sugar and steadied. "We're not in the business of ruining harvests," she told the hill, and the hill believed her.

The boulevard at Jakchi pulsed with wrong geometry—Deathendye's netting invisible vectors across open air. Tsukifenghuang did not hunt a Supreme; that is not an elite's war to win. She tasted the vector-field and folded one wing like a fan, slipping between lines as if stepping through laundry on a city rooftop. A plus-eyed bomber rolled into a dive. She tagged its shadow with a sun-seed and snapped her fingers. The seed detonated into harmless noon, a flat burst of light that made targeting scopes see only summer for a breath. "Nicht fair," a Death pilot muttered, blinking spots away. "公正得很," she murmured—perfectly fair—and gave herself permission to retreat before Endye's grammar could pin her pronoun to a wall.

From there she dropped straight into Galaxenhueko's alley maze. Deathbond's chain hissed, found nothing but the echo of a feather's edge, and recoiled into a knot around a bollard that had no business being there. "粗魯," she scolded the chain itself, and Bond's distant groan of theatrical annoyance made her grin bloom like a firework seen through rain. Deathfelix tried subtlety from a shattered skylight; Tsukifenghuang swiveled one feather into a mirror that showed Felix only Felix, multiplied and delayed. "Next time," Felix promised, equal parts admiration and appetite. "Bring better knives," Tsukifenghuang replied, already gone.

Her last hour belonged to Gallaxreixuanbeodong. The relief train needed a corridor. She opened her hand and released a cloud of phoenix down—not feathers, but seconds shaved from perfect days. They drifted, settled on rails, filled microfractures, softened edges. The locomotive's complaint turned from a shriek to a grumble to a purr. A child at a window held up a paper crane. Tsukifenghuang cupped it with light until it glowed a tiny, proud gold, then let it go. The train pulled away; she watched it until the caboose winked around the bend, eyes shining with that earnest, anime brightness she'd learned to carry like a standard.

When the call came to Xiewiejunkok—status, report—she landed on the gatehouse, wings folding into a high-collared cloak of embered starlight. "Warpe steady," she said. "Keikon inconvenient for them. Watabomei clear in three districts, fog kind. Portal skies honest for ninety ticks. Yukai convinced it's still a place for fruit. Jakchi... annotated. Rails breathing." Galaxastorm's answer was warm rain. Galaxastream's carried a smile you could hear. Galaxapuff promised tea with indecent amounts of sugar. Somewhere over the sea, Galaxadale sent back the shape of a satisfied wake.

Tsukifenghuang looked up, like all of them had, to where the night sometimes feels like a ceiling in a theater and fate has the fidgeting hands of someone with dice. She lifted one feather and traced a quiet glyph only gods and engineers can read. "If you must roll," she told the unseen, "roll where it buys us mornings."

Then she hopped off the parapet and let herself fall until the city caught her—phoenix-fire dwindling to the pale gold of a lantern in mist—already angling toward the next small place that needed saving, not with thunder, but with the warmth that teaches a broken hour how to start again.

The phoenix's last plume dimmed to a warm ember as midday slid toward evening, and Galaxytsukifenghuang took a final circuit over Gallaxgonbei with the patient poise of someone finishing embroidery rather than war. "終章," she murmured—final movement—and the state answered with sirens easing half a pitch and windows daring to open a crack.

She began where the city's nerves run closest to the skin—Galaxenwarpe's bridges—arriving in a hush of feathered heat. A swarm of violet micro-munitions skimmed the river like hungry minnows. She traced a neat circle with one finger; a phoenix halo unfolded and every munition that entered it remembered being rain instead of metal. They hissed out in tidy strings along the current. A traffic warden with oil on his sleeve stared up, eyes shining. "We're late," he confessed. "Not anymore," she said, tapping her temple. "I moved the minute you needed." He laughed, a little wild with relief, and waved the convoy through.

Keikon met her with teeth—conveyors clanking to Death rhythms, gantries booby-trapped to punish haste. Deathcrush and Deathbash clambered over a trussed catwalk, grinning like wrestlers late to their own show. "Falkenmädchen!" Bash crowed. "Break time!" She unfurled concept-wings: arcs of starlit script—Hour, Zenith, Return—glowing along each plume. Bash's hammerblow met a sliver of stopped time the width of a ribbon; impact ricocheted back into his gauntlet with the offended ring of a temple bell. Crush dropped like a meteor; she raised the Fenghuang Guard, a curved fan of light that flexed and sang, bleeding his momentum into harmless heat. "再約," she offered—rematch another day—and pressed a rebirth glyph to his breastplate. His kinetic systems rebooted into sulking softness; both elites chose recall with theatrical bows rather than watch their HP flirt with zero. She smiled, anime-bright, and flicked a single plume into a fuse box; traps blinked "safe" like chastened students.

Watabomei asked for gentleness. The canal wore chem-sheen; wind brought the bitter aftertaste of panic. She hovered and opened both arms; each feather became a prism. Light fell through in patient sheets, splitting toxins into obedient flecks that sank into nets her medics had laid. Deathwise's whisper slid along the culvert: "Mercy is delay." "Delay is rescue," she answered, and nudged his hex off axis by a single breath until it tangled in its own elegance. The evac boat bumped past on a path of warm ripples she left like stepping stones. A nurse mouthed thank you. Tsukifenghuang bowed midair, the quiet, formal tilt that means you accept gratitude as a loan to be repaid.

At Galaxenportal, cranes hunched like embarrassed herons while AA teeth gnashed at ghosts. "空域、九十秒だけ貸して," Galaxapuff teased over comms—lend me ninety seconds of clean sky. "どうぞ," Tsukifenghuang replied, and sang with heat rather than voice. Radar stacks slipped into harmony; rangefinders saw only noon. A Death gun captain smacked his scope. A single phoenix plume settled on the lens and resolved into a golden zero. He swore in excellent German and ducked as a Galaxy bomber streamed overhead, perfectly unbothered.

She soared onto Gallaxyukai's terraces where frost scars still mapped last week's cruelty. Deathice emerged from shade, breath fogging knives. "Round three?" "当然," she said—of course—and they traded precision: his crystal lances, her petaled heat. After three exchanges he smiled despite himself and tapped two fingers to his brow. Respect given, he dissolved to recall before the orchard's patience ran out. She palmed a branch; the tree exhaled sugar and forgot fear.

Jakchi's boulevard wore Deathendye's invisible grammar like a net cast over a poem. She did not hunt a Supreme; she annotated his paragraph. A sun-seed winked into the shadow of a plus-eyed dive bomber and detonated into a flat, harmless noon that made scopes blink summer. "Nicht fair," the pilot muttered, blind for a heartbeat. "公正," she corrected—fair—already slipping sideways between vectors like laundry on a rooftop line.

Galaxencloude kept its ambush honest. Deaththrend crouched above a switchback, a patient actor waiting his entrance. She salted the slope with a slow meteor veil; Thrend sprang and landed exactly where he'd begun, twice, then bowed with an irritated smile that admitted craft meeting craft. "次回," he conceded—next time—and vanished.

Galaxenhueko's alleys tried to teach her new corners. Deathbond's chain hissed a signature through glass; she turned one feather into a mirror that fed him only himself—delayed, multiplied, ridiculous. From a skylight, Deathfelix's knives arrived late to the world by two seconds and bit the air where her afterimage had been. "Ruderin," Felix sang—rude woman—amused, not quite angry. "時を磨いた結果だ," Tsukifenghuang replied—just well-polished timing—and lifted through dust with a grin that could sell posters.

Gallaxreixuanbeodong's yard gave her the last necessary puzzle. A relief consist crawled in with brakes sulking and couplers misaligned; a Deathlance javelin stitched the platform between heartbeats. She lifted two fingers and set a coin-thin slice of tomorrow in its path; the spear buried itself in a crate that would not exist for four hours. "時間に負けて," she told the weapon—yield to time—and clicked a feathered cloud of phoenix down across the rails. Microfractures filled; the locomotive's complaint softened to a purr. In a window a child lifted a paper crane. She palmed it with light, made it briefly, bravely gold, and let it fly.

The cycle tapered at Xiewiejunkok's gate under a sky learning to be kind again. Reports layered in—Galaxastorm's voice warm with weather, Galaxastream's bright with mischief, Galaxapuff's sugared with tea and applause, Galaxadale's answer a satisfied wake along the coast. Tsukifenghuang folded her wings into a high collar of embered starlight and set her boots on the parapet with the ceremony of finishing a stanza.

"Warpe steady. Keikon awkward for them. Watabomei clear in three wards. Portal skies honest for your window. Yukai convinced to remain an orchard. Jakchi annotated. Rails breathing." She paused, listening not to comms but to the city's hum. It had dropped half a note, from fear to effort.

She gave Gallaxengongshi one last kindness: a sweep of feathered heat that warmed shield pylons into perfect pitch. Then, because everyone else had done it, she glanced up toward the place where fate sometimes feels like fingers with dice. "If you must throw," she said, soft and almost amused, "roll toward mornings."

A few remaining scenes found her before she left the page. At a school stairwell in Jakchi, a surveillance drone nosed in; she smoothed a crescent of phase across the steps and turned the stairwell into a memory of birthdays until the families had passed. On a barge below Galaxenportal, she laid a thin ribbon of tide-glitter across Galaxadale's wake so Death torpedoes chased moonlight instead of hull. In a Keikon side-yard, she scolded a sprinkler system into becoming a smoke curtain at precisely the right second and left a chalk fox on the wall so the kids would have something clever to find when all this became stories.

When at last she stepped backward into the bright, her cloak folded from wings to ordinary cloth, and only a faint scent of warm rain and oranges remained. "完了," she told herself—complete—and the city, just for a heartbeat, believed her. Tea waited somewhere loud and safe. Work waited just beyond it. Galaxytsukifenghuang ghosted into the next hour with the easy grace of a sunrise that knows exactly when to arrive.

Night folded in on Gallaxgonbei, and the last ember of phoenix-light thinned to a bruise on the clouds. In that hush, a heavier geometry asserted itself—angles instead of arcs, doctrine instead of grace. Deathendye stepped out of a tearing seam and onto the foredeck of a low, armored command-barge, coat settling like a verdict. His eyes were winter steel; his voice, when it came, was the clean click of a switch.

"Lagebericht," he said. Situation report.

Screens on the barge's spine bloomed to life: satellite-spattered maps, thermal plumes, the nervous pulse of dozens of stolen civilian cameras. Galaxy patrols moved like careful constellations along the bridges and terraces; Keikon muttered; Watabomei steamed. Deathendye watched for a full ten count, then pointed once.

"Wir nehmen die Luft zurück—kalt, geordnet, wiederholbar." We take the air back—cold, ordered, repeatable.

He started with the quietest war: counter-surveillance. Galaxy's unmanned eyes—pinprick drones, skimming subs, cloaked skiffs—had grown bold in the wake of phoenix light. Deathendye opened his palm. A violet sigil crawled across his glove and dropped into the sea as a ring of soundless ripples. Where the ring passed, microdrones coughed static and fell like gnats into oil. "Leiser," he murmured to the ocean; the surf obliged. On the horizon, a flock of Galaxy scout-kites shivered and lost telemetry together. He did not gloat. He only nodded to his signals officer. "Modell speichern." Save the model. The jamming profile hardened into doctrine.

He moved inland by inches and rethreaded a convoy route as if lacing a boot. Galaxy had left a corridor between Galaxenwarpe and Keikon that looked safe to the human eye. Deathendye set a screen of decoy transponders—a handful of iron bugs blinking friendly signatures—then spoke three syllables in a dialect no human had cataloged. Plus-eyed zombies stirred along a shadowed culvert, not raging but tidy, tools in hand. They pried up grates, seeded the gutter with magnet mines, then backed away in files two-by-two. When a Galaxy resupply column swung into the corridor on schedule, a single mine clicked; the column braked hard; nobody died; everyone lost the minute Deathendye meant them to lose. "Zeit ist die erste Beute," he said softly. Time is the first prey.

At Keikon's conveyor spine, his shadow fell over a nest of Death engineers tightening bolts with ritual care. He disliked superstition, loved rhythm, and trusted repetition. "Takt vier wiederholen," he ordered—repeat pattern four—and the line obeyed: booby traps armed not to kill but to embarrass; kill-lanes trimmed to nudge squads into cameras Deathendye wanted to watch. When a Galaxy strike team slipped the mezzanine like rumor, he smiled without warmth. "Gut," he said. "Sie sind noch klug." They are still clever. He raised two fingers. A brace of chem-curtains bloomed from rooftop sprayers, not poison but opaque—a violet wool that blinded sensors while his rangers stepped in and stole the spare parts that would otherwise repair Keikon by dawn. Theft is siege by other means.

He gave himself one oceanic set piece to keep the wider machine honest. Off the breakwater, Deathenstorm's surviving destroyers held a restless line. Deathendye teleported—no flourish, just subtraction—to the lead deck and braced himself against the night. "Feuerleitnetz aktiv," he said. Fire-control net online. Dark-gray energy crawled from his hands, lacing into the ships' targeting lattices until every barrel, every missile bay, every flak turret breathed in the same count. Galaxy torpedo wakes braided toward them—clever, moon-lit, lying about speed. Deathendye exhaled violet smog, a curtain not of weather but of lie; the wakes believed themselves slower and arrived late. "Sektor drei—Streufeuer," he clipped. Sector three, barrage. A crescent of tracers stitched the sea. Two Galaxy attack boats broke apart like sketches erased mid-line; a third slid away untouched, exactly as he expected. He let it go. "Lass sie sehen," he told a gun captain. Let them watch. Sometimes terror is an intact survivor with too perfect a view.

His logistics were crueller than combat. On a contested island fuel depot, Deathendye walked through the aisles like an auditor. He touched a valve; the entire manifold re-plumbed itself into a one-way siphon aimed seaward, filling dreadnought tenders waiting beyond sight. He pointed at a row of abandoned armored cars. "Ausschlachten, dann anzünden." Strip them, then burn them. Flames climbed. Against that orange, zombie work crews filed scrap into neat stacks, loaded crates onto hoists, and marched them into the bellies of transport carriers that dwarfed churches. Far above, a Galaxy recon drone peered down; Deathendye tipped his chin up toward it and drew a small square in the air with his forefinger. The drone's feed picked up the square—only the square—for sixty seconds. When the picture returned, the depot was emptier than the math allowed. The drone would never know where the remainder went. He did.

Watabomei's canals tempted him to grand gestures; he refused. He knelt by a culvert in a coat worth a regiment and flicked three drops of violet into the water. They did not poison; they categorized. Floodgates slammed in sequence downriver—not random, but calibrated to deny crossing only when med-columns reached particular corners. A cruel arithmetic—nobody drowned, everybody rerouted, two ambulances arrived fifteen minutes too late to matter for a pair of Galaxy sergeants he had already decided were too good to live tomorrow. "Sachlich bleiben," he told himself. Stay factual. He disliked the taste the thought left behind; he swallowed it anyway.

He answered Galaxytsukifenghuang's music with silence. At Galaxenportal, where cranes hunched like herons ashamed, his anti-air math ran under the runway like a buried nerve. Rangefinders reported noon; his net believed dusk. A bomber slid through the lie on phoenix wings and stitched his smoke stacks with golden perforations; he let three stacks fall and kept six alive, because those six mattered and those three were a price he would have paid even if no one had asked. "Verluste nach Plan," he told a shaken lieutenant. Losses according to plan. The lieutenant nodded too fast. Deathendye did not correct him; some soldiers require a myth with their math.

He made politics from salvage. In a neutral island's port town, his ground captains brought him a queue of civic leaders—shaking, furious, bargaining. He listened, eyes half-lidded, as if bored by the theater and enamored of the stagecraft. "Wir nehmen, was nützlich ist," he said at last. We take what is useful. "Und lassen, was euch später Geschichten schenkt." And leave what buys you stories later. He pointed at the school, the clinic, the desal unit. Untouched. Everything else fed the carriers. By dusk the island looked demolished; by midnight it looked curated. Galaxy spies would call it monstrous; certain Westonglappa officers would call it complicated. Both words were a kind of victory.

Once, because the universe craves spectacle, Galaxastream brushed him at the edge of Jakchi's boulevards. The air twanged; geometry argued with grammar. Deathendye did not posture. He tasted the weave, marked the cadence, and drew a thin, perfect square in the air—the same one he'd shown the drone. Stream's most reliable lane flickered and reopened two meters to the left. A warning, not a win. They looked at one another as professionals and ghosts. "Später," Deathendye said. Later. Stream grinned, and the grin said he agreed.

Back on the barge, he ran the seven-hour grind the way only a Supreme can. Two armadas split into flanking crescents and reformed before Galaxy's counter-pincer found purchase. Drone swarms rose, died, rose again because he had seeded repeater-hives across three islands the day before. Plus-eyed marines hit a shield node, melted, reconstituted in transport wombs, and went again without complaint. He rotated chem-curtains not to kill but to put out eyes, then allowed a single window for Deathenpuff's raid to punch through and leave the kind of signature the enemy would overcorrect for tomorrow. He whispered once to Deathenstorm over a red channel. "Halte deine Wut gerade." Keep your anger straight. Storm's laugh came back tired and clean. "Ich versuche es." I try.

Near dawn, he sealed the night with a retreat that didn't look like failure. "Rücksprung auf Staffel West. Rauch teppich, drei Minuten." Fall back to Wing West, smoke carpet three minutes. A violet fog rolled—a blanket, not a panic—and his armada slid backward through its own shadow until only their discipline remained visible: lines straight, gaps planned, bait left where Galaxy's cameras could admire it. He permitted himself one small flourish: a lattice of dark-light that hung over the bay like a cathedral ribcage for exactly nine seconds before it blew apart into nothing. Cameras love cathedrals. So do strategists who collect illusions.

He stood alone on the deck at last, dawn a tired bruise behind his shoulders. Reports stacked at his elbow; salvage tallies scrolled; the transport carriers rode low with what he had claimed. He looked up, the way his enemies do when they joke about gods with dice.

"If ihr würfelt," he said to the invisible ceiling, dry as ash, "bei mir gilt nur Statistik." If you're rolling, only statistics apply to me.

Then he turned, coat flaring, and walked back into his war: orders already leaving his mouth, fresh objectives unfurling like a rail map—harass the bridges without owning them; make Keikon cost more every hour it stands; blind the portal, not forever, just when it hurts; salt Watabomei with delays measured in funerals avoided and funerals ensured; leave Westonglappa two new grudges and one new rumor; keep the ocean useful. He did not look heroic. He looked inevitable.

Twilight flattened Gallaxgonbei into slate and angles, and Deathendye decided the campaign's last page would be written in procedures, not heroics. He stood on the foredeck of his armored barge, coat falling like a ruler across a blueprint, and raised two fingers.

"Endphase. Sieben Züge, dann Schluss," he said—seven scenarios, then we're done.

He took the air first. A violet sigil rolled off his glove and spread over the bay as an inaudible ring. Where it passed, Galaxy's scout-drones twitched, forgot their frequencies, and tipped into the water like stunned gnats. "Modell speichern," he told Signals. Save the profile. A second ring, tighter, scrubbed the sky of cloaked kites without touching a single gull. He watched the empty air for a patient ten-count, then nodded once, as if the void had matched his metronome.

He stole time next. Between Galaxenwarpe and Keikon lay a corridor that looked safe to anxious eyes. He seeded the gutter with magnet-mines calibrated to click only when a column braked. When the Galaxy resupply convoy hit the corridor, one coin-sized mine tapped a fender. No blast. Just a perfect, infuriating halt; hands went to harnesses; radios argued; the whole kilometer of steel lost sixty seconds and forgot why they'd been in a hurry. "Zeit ist die erste Beute," he murmured. Time is the first prey.

Keikon wanted a duel; he gave it doctrine. Chem-curtains flowered from roofline sprayers—nonlethal, exquisitely opaque—while his rangers ghosted through, unscrewing the spare parts that would have made dawn easy for the enemy. When a Galaxy strike team slipped the mezzanine as rumor, he smiled without warmth. "Gut. Sie sind noch klug." They're still clever. He pressed his palm to a conveyor stanchion; the line's booby-traps rearmed not to kill but to humiliate, to make fools of heroes on camera. Siege by embarrassment travels faster than shells.

At the docks, he answered phoenix-song with physics. Galaxytsukifenghuang had tuned rangefinders to noon; he laid a black-body Schwarzfeder lattice under the runway—heat made honest, illusions priced. Three stacks fell in perfect circles of gold. Six others kept breathing because he had chosen which losses would teach the right lesson. A lieutenant flinched at the firelight. "Verluste nach Plan," Deathendye said. Losses according to plan. The man stood straighter, grateful for a myth that behaved like math.

Watabomei tried to tempt him into cruelty; he refused the theater and kept the arithmetic. Three violet drops into a culvert categorized the flood. Downriver gates slammed in a pattern that denied ambulances at exactly two corners he had flagged hours ago after reading Galaxwise's bridge cadence twice and finding the seam between compassion and procedure. "Sachlich bleiben," he told himself. Stay factual. The taste of it was ash. He swallowed anyway.

He curated ruin on a neutral island. Civic leaders came shaking, bargaining; he listened as if bored by their words and in love with their tells. "Wir nehmen, was nützlich ist," he said at last. We take what is useful. He pointed—school, clinic, desal unit—untouched. Everything else fed the transport wombs lining his horizon. By dusk the place looked demolished. By midnight it looked designed. Westonglappa would argue about the footage for weeks. The argument was part of the cargo.

He set a demonstration on the breakwater because armies, like crowds, need a show. He teleported—no windup, no flourish—to the lead destroyer and linked every barrel and missile bay into one breath. "Feuerleitnetz aktiv." Galaxy torpedo wakes braided toward them, moonstruck and lying. He exhaled violet smog—a curtain not of weather but of lie—and the wakes believed themselves slower. "Sektor drei—Streufeuer." A crescent of tracers stitched heaven into cemetery. One Galaxy boat broke neatly in half; another sail-slashed away; the third slid off intact, exactly as planned. "Lass sie sehen," he told the gun captain. Let them watch. Survivors carry truer terror than wreckage.

He spent the long middle hours on what wins wars: logistics that look like boredom. Zombie work crews filed salvage into geometries an engineer would admire. Dreadnought tenders drank fuel through siphons he had replumbed with a thumb on one master valve. Drone swarms rose, died, rose again because he had hidden repeater-hives on three quiet roofs yesterday. He whispered once to Deathenstorm on a red channel. "Halte deine Wut gerade." Keep your anger straight. Storm laughed, tired and clean: "Ich versuche es." I try.

Only once did fate try to tug him into theater—on Jakchi's boulevard, where Galaxastream brushed the edge of his vector field and the air twanged like a tuned wire. Deathendye drew a thin square in the air. Stream's most reliable lane slid two meters left and reappeared, intact, annotated. A warning, not a win. "Später," Deathendye said. Later. Stream grinned and vanished with the cheerful insolence of someone who refuses to be on a schedule.

Just before dawn he closed the book without letting anyone hear the spine crack. "Rücksprung auf Staffel West. Rauchteppich, drei Minuten." Fall back, smoke carpet, three minutes. The violet fog rolled in measured sheets—blanket, not panic—and his armada reversed like a film run correctly: lines straight, gaps planned, bait left exactly where Galaxy cameras would admire it. He allowed himself one flourish: a cathedral rib of dark-light that hovered nine seconds over the bay and blew apart into nothing. Cameras require cathedrals; so do strategists who collect illusions as if they were stamps.

He stood with the sea making a low, even promise and took inventory without music. Tonnes lifted. Minutes bled from bridges. Spare parts vanished from Keikon. Watabomei was later than mercy prefers. Docks: nine teeth broken, nineteen biting. Drone attrition: acceptable. Myth maintenance: stable. "Ertrag ausreichend," he said. Yield sufficient.

He looked up—where his enemies liked to imagine coins and dice—and allowed the ghost of a smile. "Wenn ihr würfelt," he told the ceiling, "bei mir gilt nur Statistik." If you're rolling, only statistics apply.

Two final scenarios waited in his pocket, already timed:

First, an anti-Wise drift. Every watch in his corps reset to a randomized, shared offset that would wobble beneath Galaxwise's ledger like a stubborn floorboard. Sentries swapped sectors at non-intuitive intervals; resupply windows jittered just enough to make a prediction wrong without making a soldier late. "Zufall trainieren," he told Operations. Train randomness. It offends perfectionists; it terrifies schedulers.

Second, a message made of mercy. On the last quay at Galaxenportal, he left a pallet stacked with water, coils, and chalk. One chalk fox drawn on the wall where the kids would find it when this all became stories. "Wir sind nicht eure Götter," he said to the empty dock. We are not your gods. "Nur eure Rechnung." Only your bill.

The barge's deck thrummed. Orders went out under his hand like a tide chart—blind the bridges for five beats and no more; harass Keikon to raise its cost curve one tick per hour; annotate Jakchi, don't play there; rotate Deathenpuff and Deathenstorm to rest points that aren't restful; set the repeater-hives to molt at noon; train the zombies to stack salvage by alloy grade, not shape; leave Westonglappa two grudges and one rumor; keep the ocean useful.

A thin tear opened in the air, discreet as a planner's sigh. Deathendye stepped into it without looking back, the coat's hem drawing a precise line across the morning. His voice arrived over every Death channel a heartbeat later, cool as a ruler laid on a map.

"Operation Nebelziffer abgeschlossen," he said. Fog-Index complete. "Lehren sichern, Tonnen zählen, Ruhe simulieren. Wir kommen wieder, wenn ihre Uhren müde sind." Lock the lessons, count the tonnage, simulate rest. We return when their clocks are tired.

The seam sealed. The bay kept breathing. Out on the horizon, transport carriers rode low with what he had taken—metals, engines, minutes—and Gallaxgonbei, exhausted and unbowed, discovered what a city sounds like when the statistics have moved on but the day has to be lived anyway.

Night's statistics had barely cooled when a new cadence struck the coast—precise, methodical, unhurried. Deathendale arrived on a slab-prowed command catamaran that rode the chop like a drafting table, his coat cut with engineer's lines and his voice measured to the millimeter.

"Einsatzschema Delta. Drei Achsen, keine Heldenstücke," he said into the skull-rimmed vox. Delta schema. Three axes, no heroics.

He took the air first—not with spectacle, but with an adjustment. A grid of violet beacons winked alive above the bay, invisible to human eyes, obvious to anything that hunted with sensors. Where Deathendye had scrubbed the sky clean, Deathendale reframed it: false horizons, lenticular "clouds" that were really cold plates, range gates that opened and shut like eyelids. Galaxy patrols felt the sky go slippery beneath them, like stepping onto polished floor. "Festmachen," he murmured—lock it down—and the net held long enough for his first axis to move.

Axis One: Galaxenwarpe (bridges).
The old arches were tuned for strength; Deathendale tuned them for argument. He set bone-white resonance rods beneath three spans and hummed through his teeth. The bridge decks quivered at a frequency that loved bolts more than people; guard rails sang; rivets sighed. A convoy slowed at the uncanny trembling. Galaxastorm tasted the pressure change and answered with a counter-hum that smoothed the deck like a giant's palm. "Guter Konter," Deathendale admitted—good counter—and flicked two fingers. From river shadows, Death Marines surfaced with chain-leeches that crawled onto the piers and became ballast, not bombs, dragging the resonance back into stone. The span held. The convoy passed. But the timing was his: sixty seconds lost to vibrating doubt. He logged the minute like loot.

Axis Two: Keikon (industrial spine).
If Deathendye preferred doctrine, Deathendale worshiped systems. He walked the mezzanine with a surveyor's calm while Death Soldiers snapped to his tempo. "Linie zwei umlenken; Fertiger in Larvenmodus," he ordered—line two, reroute; fabricators to larval mode. Assembly arms jittered, then complied; stampers pressed ribbed housings that would later become maggot-drones—dull, numerous, inevitable. Galaxystream's strike team ghosted the catwalk, faces lit by warning LEDs. Deathendale didn't chase; he misled. A cascade of light panels flipped from green to ember gold, drawing the Galaxy squad toward a maintenance corridor that ceased to exist two seconds at a time—there, not there, there again—until the only safe path was the one he'd drawn around the fabrication pit. They crossed, quick and clever, and tossed a cluster of star-glass into the line. The maggot-drones ate it with enthusiastic stupidity and died sparkling. Deathendale smiled, thin and sincere. "Test bestanden." Test passed. He marked which workers had flinched at which alarms; tomorrow's traps would learn their faces.

Axis Three: Watabomei (canals).
He spoke to the locks like a stern uncle. "Schleuse fünf bis neun: Staffeln. Dreißig Sekunden offen, siebzig zu." Open thirty, close seventy. Then he pin-dropped mimic spores that copied the weight profile of small boats. The canal, obedient and fooled, closed itself to every hull he wanted blocked and opened wide to his low, coffin-shaped barges. Galaxymoon's earlier kindness lingered in the water; it tried to make room for stretchers. Deathendale did not fight the mercy. He slid his barges through a different run, let the med boats keep their corridor, and poured his cruelty into schedule instead: every crossing came one minute later than the bridge lieutenant's printed plan. When Galaxy squads cursed at the metronome, he never heard it. He only saw his clock gain.

He pushed inland by set pieces.

At Haylao's glass belt, he built weather. Kilns roared; tempered panes overheated and sneezed into confetti that his plus-eyed Rangers blew through alleys like metallic pollen. Sniper blinds dissolved into glare. Galaxapuff's pilots cut through the storm with contemptuous grace; Deathendale wasn't trying to stop them. He wanted their shadow. He recorded the slipstreams their wings left between towers and tattooed those air lanes into the AA net so tomorrow's flak would already be pointed at yesterday's artistry. "Speicher," he told his gunners. Save it.

On Gallaxyukai's terraces, he seeded frost-engines—slender racks that inhaled humidity and exhaled brittle policy. Deathice joined him, delighted and terrible, fluting knives from his breath. Orchards tried to become weapons again; Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived with warmth that sang like a well-kept kettle. The frost cracked, then relented. Deathendale didn't insist. He used the failed freeze as cover for his real play: plus-eyed work crews under cloaks of fake orchard smoke tugging copper out of pumphouses and silver out of substation guts. By dusk the hills were still hills. The grid, however, had holes right where he wanted them.

At Jakchi's boulevards, geometry met grammar. Deathendye's invisible vector net still hung like wire; Deathendale skinned it with marching squares—projected lanes that rewarded formation and punished swagger. Galaxastream flashed in at the edge of the field, all knives and velocity. Deathendale lifted an open hand. "Komm," he said. Come. They didn't duel; they measured. Stream tested a lane, grinned at the tiny stutter it hid, and bled sideways out of the trap before it tightened. A Death Ranger tried to be brave and stepped wrong; the square flexed and punted him down the boulevard like a kicked can. Deathendale did not flinch. He adjusted two numbers and watched the field become slightly more honest and much more cruel.

At Galaxreixuanbeodong, he played the yard like a piano. Bone-keys—white, jointed relays—sank into switch housings. "Weiche sieben... jetzt," he said, and the points threw as if pleased to be chosen. A relief train's tail wobbled; couplers complained; a single wagon walked off the rail and sat down on the siding like a sulking dog. No explosion, no scream, just logistics bent. Galaxytsukifenghuang floated in a heartbeat later, flicked a feather of light into the joint, and the sulk turned sheepish, then straight. He bowed, ironically correct. She returned it midair, amused.

Galaxencloude kept its fog close like a secret. Deathendale salted the switchbacks with shadow paragliders launched by hand from monastery roofs. They drifted in slow spirals, dropping listening worms that writhed into cracks and became microphones the size of dust. Deaththrend crouched above a turn with stagecraft patience; Deathendale tapped the comm once. "Nicht springen," he said—do not jump—and Thrend stayed his appetite. Moments later Galaxymoon thinned the fog to theater haze and made the ambush look foolish. Because Thrend hadn't moved, there was no pride to punish. "Danke," Thrend breathed, a hunter grateful for a leash.

At Galaxenportal, Deathendale refused to duel phoenix light. He audited cranes, loaders, moorings, and clocks. Three stacks fell to golden perforations. Six breathed on because his tether men had spliced fuel lines into one-way siphons five hours earlier under the noses of cameras that Deathendye had squared into blindness. "Verluste nach Plan," a dock sergeant offered, shaky. "Ja," Deathendale said, meaning it.

Near the capital's periphery (Gallaxengongshi), he tuned his siege math against the cathedral shield. No attack—just a question. He sang a chord of dark pressure at the lattice and listened to the reply. The shield thrummed back a perfect fifth with a hairline beat frequency—there, between two pylons. He wrote the number in his palm and closed his fist. Not today.

The ground war followed like a factory's hum. Death Soldiers and Death Rangers advanced in tidy files, their death-tech parasites clipping neatly to belts; zombie crews scavenged by alloy grade instead of shape, exactly as Deathendye had taught. Where Galaxy elites appeared, Deathendale pivoted away and sent his own—Deathbash, Deathcrush, Deathfelix, Deathbond—only to delay and divert while Supreme duels cracked the sky. When Galaxastorm or Galaxastream descended to swat an elite like a fly, Deathendale pulled his people out on the fourth beat, the one a proud foe always saves for flourish. His losses looked smaller than they were because his timing was kinder than courage.

Through it all he spoke rarely and cleanly. "Links: Haltelinie neu. Rechts: setz die Raupen frei." Left: redraw the stopline. Right: release the crawlers. "Brücken—nur stören, nicht brechen." Bridges—harass, don't break. "Keikon—Kosten pro Stunde erhöhen." Keikon—raise cost per hour. "Watabomei—öffnen für Tragen, schließen für Eile." Watabomei—open for carrying, close for haste.

Dawn found him on the same slab prow with more numbers than poetry. He did not ask the sky for omens; he asked his staff for uplift and throughput. Tonnes loaded; minutes stolen; stacks lost; stacks held; drone attrition; myth maintenance.

Then he gave Gallaxgonbei two gifts, one cruel, one almost kind.

The cruel one hid in the schedule: a seeded wobble that would make Galaxwise's ledger feel like a floor with a single loose board. Patrols would miss one another by a breath in three places today and eleven tomorrow unless someone guessed the wobble's period. "Zufall trainieren," he told Operations. Train randomness.

The kind one he left in a school on Jakchi's long street: coils of cable, a water pallet, and a chalk kit stacked on a bench under a sign about fire drills. On the nearest wall, a small fox drawn in a confident hand. "Damit die Geschichte etwas Freundliches hat," he said—to give the story one friendly thing. His adjutant blinked, then nodded, grateful for a superstition that looked like mercy.

When the order to pull came, it sounded like accounting. "Rücksprung in drei. Nebel an. Lockvögel lassen." Fall back in three. Fog on. Leave decoys. Violet smog rolled—not panic, but blanket—and Deathendale's formations reversed without ragged edges, leaving behind bait a clever enemy would waste time disarming. He allowed himself a last look at the capital's shield and lifted two fingers in a perfunctory salute, not to the enemy, but to a piece of engineering that had answered his question with a number he respected.

He stepped belowdecks to the humming table where maps lay under glass and spoke the final line over wideband, voice steady as a ruler laid on a plan.

"Operation Schablone fortsetzen," he said. Continue Operation Template. "Wir kneten das Gelände, wir schneiden an der Zeit. Keine Hast. Kein Lärm. Nur Arbeit."

We knead the ground. We cut at time. No rush. No noise. Only work.

Outside, the bay breathed. Behind him, transport wombs rode low with scrapped alloy, stolen fuel, and the minutes he'd pocketed. Ahead, Gallaxgonbei's cities braced for another day made harder by a man who preferred levers to speeches—and who would be back, exactly when the clocks were tired and the bridges remembered the song that made bolts love stone more than people.

Dawn came in bruised bands over Gallaxgonbei, and Deathendale decided the last measures of his score would be played in procedures, not crescendos.

He split his attention along three axes and let the night's machinery keep turning.

Galaxenwarpe's bridges shivered to his hum—bone-white resonance rods he'd tuned under the spans made bolts love stone more than wheels or boots. A convoy slowed to the uncanny tremor. "Festmachen," he said—lock the music—and Death Marines surfaced to clamp chain-leeches onto the piers. The span stayed intact; the convoy lost a minute. On the parapet, Galaxastorm answered with a counter-hum like a giant's palm smoothing steel. Deathendale's mouth tilted, not quite a smile. "Guter Konter." He logged the minute anyway; time stolen is time banked.

Keikon wanted heroics; he fed it systems. Fabricators dropped into larval mode, stamping ribbed housings for maggot-drones while he walked the mezzanine like a surveyor. Galaxy fireflies—Stream's team—ghosted the catwalks and salted the line with star-glass; his drones obligingly ate brilliance and died sparkling. "Test bestanden," he murmured—test passed—marking which workers flinched at which alarms. Tomorrow's traps would learn their faces.

Watabomei's canals received his cruelty in the form of a schedule. "Schleuse fünf bis neun—dreißig offen, siebzig zu." Locks five to nine: open thirty, close seventy. Mimic spores copied the weight of small boats, letting coffin-barges slip while med craft kept a corridor. No poison. No theater. Just arrivals offset by a breath, and two squads who reached the wrong corner exactly one minute too late to matter.

He pushed inland by set pieces.

At Haylao, he built weather. Kilns sneezed tempered glass into metallic pollen; sniper blinds dissolved into glare. Galaxapuff's pilots cut through the storm with contemptuous grace; Deathendale wasn't trying to stop them. He recorded the slipstreams their wings left between towers and tattooed those lanes into his AA net so tomorrow's flak would already be aimed at yesterday's artistry. "Speichern," he told the gunners. Save it.

Gallaxyukai wore frost-engines like jewelry. Deathice giggled winter onto the terraces; Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived with a kettle-warm reply. The orchards stayed orchards—a public loss he'd already priced. Under the cover of fake orchard smoke, plus-eyed crews quietly tugged copper out of pumphouses and silver out of substation guts. The hills looked unchanged by dusk; the grid had holes exactly where he wanted them.

Jakchi's boulevards became a lecture on geometry. Deathendye's vector net still hung like wire; Deathendale skinned it with marching squares that rewarded formation and punished swagger. Galaxastream brushed the field's edge, all knives and velocity. "Komm," Deathendale invited—come. They didn't duel; they measured. Stream tested a lane, felt the tiny stutter it hid, and bled sideways out of the trap with a grin. A Death Ranger tried bravery, stepped wrong, and the square punted him like a kicked can. Deathendale did not flinch. Two numbers adjusted. The field grew slightly more honest, much more cruel.

Gallaxreixuanbeodong's yard he played like a piano. Bone-keys sank into switch housings. "Weiche sieben... jetzt." Points threw as if pleased to be chosen. A relief wagon walked off the rail and sat down on the siding like a sulking dog—no fire, just logistics bent. Tsukifenghuang floated in, touched a feather of light to the joint, and the sulk turned sheepish, then straight. He bowed, ironically correct. She returned it midair, amused.

Galaxencloude kept its fog close. Shadow paragliders drifted like slow punctuation, dropping listening worms that curled into cracks and became microphones the size of dust. Deaththrend poised with stagecraft patience above a switchback. "Nicht springen," Deathendale said—do not jump. Moments later Galaxymoon thinned the fog to theater haze and made the ambush look foolish; because Thrend hadn't moved, there was no pride to punish. "Danke," the hunter breathed, grateful for the leash he wouldn't admit he needed.

At Galaxenportal, he refused phoenix duels and audited cranes, loaders, moorings, clocks. Three smoke stacks fell to golden perforations. Six breathed on because his tether men had replumbed their fuel into one-way siphons five hours earlier, while Deathendye squared cameras into blindness. "Verluste nach Plan," a dock sergeant ventured—losses per plan. "Ja," Deathendale said, and meant it.

Near Gallaxengongshi's cathedral shield, he didn't attack—he asked a question. A chord of dark pressure kissed the lattice. The shield thrummed back a perfect fifth with a hairline beat frequency—there, between two pylons. He wrote the number in his palm and closed his fist. Not today.

The ground war—tidy, relentless—hummed beneath it all. Death Soldiers and Death Rangers advanced in files; zombies scavenged by alloy grade, not shape. Where Galaxy elites flashed, his own—Deathbash, Deathcrush, Deathfelix, Deathbond—appeared only to delay and divert. When a Supreme's aura cracked the sky, he pulled his people out on the fourth beat, the flourish proud opponents save for the kill they won't get. Losses looked smaller than they were because his timing was kinder than courage.

He allowed himself one flourish on the breakwater. Teleport—no windup—and link every barrel and bay into one breath. "Feuerleitnetz aktiv." Galaxy torpedo wakes braided toward the line, moonstruck and lying. A curtain of violet lie rolled; the wakes believed themselves slower and arrived late. "Sektor drei—Streufeuer." A crescent of tracers stitched heaven into cemetery. One Galaxy boat folded neatly; another skimmed away; the third slid off intact, exactly as planned. "Lass sie sehen," he told the gun captain. Let them watch. Survivors carry truer terror than wreckage.

By late afternoon the numbers were clean. Tonnes lifted. Minutes banked. Stacks lost: three; stacks breathing: six. Drone attrition acceptable. Myth maintenance stable. He gave the state two final gifts, one cruel, one almost kind.

The cruel one hid in the watches: a seeded wobble that would make Galaxwise's ledger feel like a floor with a single loose board. Patrols would miss one another by a breath in three places today and eleven tomorrow unless someone guessed the period. "Zufall trainieren," he told Operations. Train randomness; offend perfectionists, terrify schedulers.

The kind one he left in a Jakchi school: coils of cable, a water pallet, chalk. On a wall, a small fox drawn in a confident hand. "Damit die Geschichte etwas Freundliches hat," he said—to give the story one friendly thing. His adjutant blinked, then nodded, grateful for a superstition that disguised mercy as logistics.

Evening pressed its thumbprint on the bay. He closed the book without letting anyone hear the spine crack. "Rücksprung in drei. Nebel an. Lockvögel lassen." Fall back in three. Fog on. Leave decoys. Violet smog rolled—blanket, not panic—and his formations reversed without ragged edges, bait stacked where clever enemies would waste an hour disarming nothing.

He paused once, because Gallaxgonbei had earned it, and lifted two fingers toward the distant cathedral shield—salute not to an enemy, but to an answer that had given him a number worth respecting.

Then belowdecks, to the humming table and the glass-pinned map.

"Operation Schablone: Abschlussphase," he said over wideband. Template, closing phase. "Lehren sichern, Tonnen zählen, Ruhe simulieren. Wir kommen wieder, wenn ihre Uhren müde sind." Lock the lessons, count the tonnage, simulate rest. We return when their clocks are tired.

The catamaran turned on a compass-clean line. Behind him, transport wombs rode low with scrapped alloy, stolen fuel, and the minutes he'd pocketed. Ahead, Gallaxgonbei steadied into a new day made harder not by monsters in capes, but by a man who preferred levers to speeches—and who had concluded his chapter exactly when the metronome told him the page should turn.

Night's procedural hum hadn't yet faded when the sea itself seemed to change handwriting. The metronome-cadence of Deathendale's grids gave way to something liquid, opportunistic, and fast. From the lee of a breakwater, a ripple stood up in the shape of a man—coat lined in tide-maps, boots beading brine, eyes carrying the slow pull of an undertow. Deathenstream arrived without thunder, and the coast of Gallaxgonbei felt its arteries rearrange.

"Lage aufnehmen," he said—take the lay—voice low and even. Sonar skeins blossomed. Currents drew themselves like veins on his palms. He pointed once, and the battle resumed at water-speed.

He started at Galaxenwarpe. Bridges that had been made to hum under Deathendale now shivered as Deathenstream slit the river into stacked laminar sheets. Patrol boats that expected chop met a mirror; his plus-eyed pilots skimmed that glass on hydrofoils, silent as parentheses. "Kavitation null. Stromschnitt jetzt," he told his helms—no cavitation, cut the current now. The river obeyed like a trained animal, shearing beneath a Galaxy picket that suddenly found its rudders dead and its wakes refusing to bloom. From the parapet, Galaxastorm answered with a counter-pressure that pressed the water flat with invisible knuckles. Deathenstream's mouth tilted, not quite a smile. "Guter Gegendruck," he murmured—good counter-pressure—and flicked two fingers. The laminar stack reassembled one span downstream, stealing exactly a minute from the convoy that had just celebrated surviving the first trick.

He slipped inland along Watabomei's capillaries. Canals smelled of bleach and persistence; ambulances carved honest wakes. He did not poison. He altered rheology. Three drops of violet sank into the culvert; eddies thickened in exactly those alleys where a Galaxy squad planned to sprint, and thinned into skating lanes where stretchers needed to pass. A line of zombies, tools at rest, stared as their commander's shadow fell across the water. "Ordnung. Kein Beißen," he said—order, no biting—and the work crews filed past in twos, hauling coils, pumps, and cable spools into a barge that looked like a freight car stolen from a flood. Galaxymoon brushed him from a rooftop with a tide-glitter that tried to make his water kind; he let it, diverting a single barge to give a nurse ten seconds of miracle, then stole that time back two blocks later by closing a lock one beat early. Mercy and arithmetic shook hands and moved on.

Keikon welcomed him with heat. Deathenstream dropped into the plant's cooling maze, a blue-print of pipes and baffles laid out like a hymn to thermodynamics. "Schock zyklisch. Dreißig auf, dreißig zu," he told the valves—pulse a thermal shock, thirty open, thirty shut—and the system flinched, bleeding efficiency into panic. From the mezzanine, Galaxastream arrived with the swagger of a blade meeting a river. Their eyes met across steam. "Später?" Deathenstream offered—later? "Jetzt," Stream grinned—now—and their duel wrote itself through the plant: pressure spikes that became knives, knives that became vanishing lanes, a slide through a vent that turned into a sprint along a gantry, a check, a counter, a laugh that admitted respect. Neither was careless. Neither pretended this could end today. At the exit hatch, Stream's voice—cheerful through a bruise—floated back: "Your water lies politely." Deathenstream's answer was a dry, exact "Dein Tempo ist ehrlich." Your speed is honest. They parted before honor could cost them more than engineering had budgeted.

He lifted to Haylao's glass belt and built weather of his own. Kilns coughed heat into columns he bent with a hand, laying invisible thermals across the avenue like ladders for aircraft. Galaxapuff's pilots read those ladders at a glance and defied them with cocky precision. Perfect. He wasn't trying to ground them; he was plotting their habits. "Speichern," he told his gunners—save it—as each wing carved the same two safe lanes between towers. Tomorrow's flak would already be looking where today's artistry had felt correct.

The terraces of Gallaxyukai glittered with Deathendale's frost-engines. Deathenstream ignored the orchard duel and took the pumphouses: a hand on a gauge, and each manifold sighed into a one-way siphon, fuel and pressure bleeding seaward along hoses a camera would mistake for irrigation. Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived like a warm kettle and smiled from a ridge. He touched two fingers to his brow—acknowledgment, not concession—and left with the pump already promising the next grid failure at dusk.

Jakchi's long boulevard wore Deathendye's geometry like wire; Deathenstream skinned it with current-lines—projected flows that rewarded formation and punished lone heroics. A Death Ranger leaned into the stream and flew forward like a leaf; a Galaxy fireteam stepped wrong and found themselves stalled as if the pavement had become ankle-deep milk. Galaxastream brushed his field again, testing, tasting; Deathenstream altered the flow by a hair and watched his counterpart bleed sideways out of a trap that had never closed. "Später," Deathenstream repeated later. Stream's grin said always.

He descended to Galaxreixuanbeodong's rail yard and played the ballast like wet clay. A colloid slurry seeped into crushed stone, and the track performed a gentle creep no inspector could see, just enough to make a relief wagon sit down with a sulk and a squeal. Galaxytsukifenghuang answered on the second count, a feather-light correction in the joint, and the sulk straightened itself as if embarrassed. Deathenstream bowed from shadow, exact and ironic, and palmed the yard's hydraulic reservoir on his way out—a silent siphon that would empty itself at midnight for reasons no one could prove.

Galaxencloude tried for an ambush. He let it keep the theater. Shadow paragliders drifted above the switchbacks, dropping listening worms that wriggled into mortar lines and became microphones the size of dust. Deaththrend crouched in fog that wanted to be a curtain. "Nicht springen," Deathenstream said—do not jump—and Thrend swallowed his appetite. Minutes later Galaxymoon thinned the fog to velvet and made the ambush look foolish. Because Thrend had never moved, there was no pride to punish. "Bitte," Thrend breathed, grateful for a leash only a commander can hold.

At Galaxenportal, Deathenstream refused to duel phoenix light and audited cranes, moorings, clocks. Three stacks glowed with golden perforations and toppled exactly on his acceptable-loss line. Six others breathed because his tether crews had replumbed fuel into the sea hours earlier. A dock sergeant's voice trembled: "Verluste nach Plan?"—losses per plan? "Ja," Deathenstream said, and meant it.

He tried the outer chord of Gallaxengongshi's cathedral shield without arrogance—water pushed into mains at a beat frequency he'd stolen from the river's heart—and listened as the lattice sang back a perfect fifth and a hairline tremolo between two pylons. Not today. He wrote the number on his glove and closed his fist.

The ground war moved beneath these vignettes like a factory hum. Death Soldiers and Death Rangers advanced in tidy files, parasites clipped to belts, chem curtains laid to blind sensors not eyes. Where Galaxy elites flashed—Galaxrire cutting light into ribbons, Galaxprom turning street corners into astrophysics—Deathenstream sent Deathfelix and Deathbond to delay, divert, and live. When a Supreme's aura crushed the sky, he pulled his people out on the fourth beat—the one proud opponents save for a flourish—and his casualty math remained prettier than history would later remember.

Late afternoon found him on a pier with no name, hands in his coat pockets, listening to the state breathe through its pipes. Numbers came clean: tonnes lifted, minutes banked, kilns memorized, rails annotated, mains mapped, myths maintained. He left two gifts—one cruel, one nearly kind.

The cruel hid in watches: a seeded wobble that would make Galaxwise's ledger feel like a floorboard with a loose nail. Patrols would miss each other by a breath in three corners today and eleven tomorrow unless someone guessed the period. "Zufall trainieren," he told Ops. Train randomness; offend perfectionists, terrify schedulers.

The kind sat in a school on Jakchi's long street: a pallet of water, coils of cable, and a chalk kit under a flyer about fire drills. On the nearest wall, a quick fox in violet chalk. "Damit die Geschichte etwas Freundliches hat," he said—to give the story one friendly thing—and walked away before anyone could see the undertow soften.

Dusk pressed its thumbprint on the bay. He closed his day with no fanfare. "Rücksprung. Strom ab, Nebel an. Lockströmungen stehen lassen," he ordered over wideband—fall back, kill the power, fog on, leave decoy currents. Violet smog rolled—a blanket, not a panic—and his formations reversed like a film correctly rewound, bait wakes painted across the harbor so Galaxy drones would spend an hour chasing water that wasn't there.

He glanced—because everyone does—toward the place in the sky where jokes about gods and dice live. "Wenn ihr würfelt," he said to no one, dry as salt, "ich nehme nur Strömung." If you're rolling, I only take the current.

Then he stepped sideways into a seam that closed without a ripple, leaving behind stacked cargo, patient zombies sorting scrap by alloy grade, and a coast that had learned a new rhythm: the sound of a war conducted at water-speed by a commander who preferred flow to flags—and who would be back, exactly when the tidebooks said the next minute could be stolen cheaply.

Dusk laid a bruise over Gallaxgonbei and the sea answered in Deathenstream's handwriting—fluid, opportunistic, exact. He stood on a narrow pier with no name, coat trimmed in tide-maps, palms reading current like a physician reads a pulse.

"Schlussphase. Drei Fließbilder, vier Knoten," he said calmly—end phase; three flow-pictures, four knots—and the coast obeyed as if the harbor were a muscle he knew how to flex.

He began where bridges make or break hours.

At Galaxenwarpe he sliced the river into stacked laminar sheets. Patrol boats expecting chop met a mirror instead; his hydrofoil squads skimmed like punctuation. "Kavitation null. Stromschnitt—jetzt." Cavitation zero, cut the current—now. The flow obeyed, shearing beneath a Galaxy picket that suddenly found rudders honest and wakes refusing to bloom. On the parapet, Galaxastorm pressed an unseen hand to the surface; the water flattened with disciplined menace. Deathenstream's mouth tilted, respectful. "Guter Gegendruck." He moved the laminar stack one span downstream, stealing a fresh minute from the convoy that had just celebrated surviving the first trick, and left civilian ferries an untouched lane glinting gold in the last light—a small, grim kindness he didn't name.

Keikon's industrial spine took the next breath. He dove into the cooling maze, where valves sing in metal and steam. "Thermoschock zyklisch. Dreißig auf, dreißig zu." Pulse the shock—thirty open, thirty shut. Heat bled into confusion; efficiency went brittle. Galaxastream slid in on a gleam of velocity, that grin like a blade catching sun. They fenced with pressure and geometry through gantries and vents—his currents pinning lanes, Stream's time-cuts slipping them free—until both laughed once, quick and genuine, and let the factory keep its roof. "Dein Tempo ist ehrlich," Deathenstream admitted. Your speed is honest. "Dein Wasser lügt höflich," came the cheerful reply. Your water lies politely. They parted before honor charged interest.

Watabomei demanded cruelty; he gave it rheology. Three violet drops into a culvert thickened eddies in alleys where a Galaxy squad planned to sprint and turned other lanes to glass for med boats. "Ordnung. Kein Beißen," he told plus-eyed work crews—order, no biting—as they filed past hauling coils, pumps, and spools into coffin-barges. On a rooftop, Galaxymoon brushed tide-glitter across the canal, coaxing a miracle's worth of room for a stretcher. He let it stand and stole the time back three blocks later by closing a lock one beat early. Mercy and arithmetic shook hands and moved on.

He built weather over Haylao's glass belt. Kilns coughed heat columns; he bent them into invisible stairs. Galaxapuff's pilots saw the ladders and refused them with cocky precision—deliberate missteps that wrote their favorite corridors between towers. "Speichern," he told his gunners—save it. Tomorrow's flak would already be looking where today's artistry had felt correct.

Gallaxyukai glittered with Deathendale's frost-engines. Deathice laughed winter over terraces; Galaxytsukifenghuang answered with the sound of a kettle coming kindly to boil. Deathenstream ignored the duel and palmed each pumphouse gauge into a one-way siphon, bleeding pressure quietly into the sea. She caught him at the ridge, met his eyes, and the two of them traded the tiniest nod—professionals annotating the same map from opposite margins.

Jakchi wore Deathendye's vector net; Deathenstream skinned it with projected current-lines that rewarded formation and punished swagger. A Death Ranger leaned in and flew forward like a leaf; a Galaxy fireteam stepped wrong and found the street had become ankle-deep milk. At the field's edge, Galaxastream tested the flow again; Deathenstream moved it by a hair, watched the escape line Stream would always find, and filed the habit under "costly later, not today."

Galaxreixuanbeodong's rails learned humility. A colloid slurry crept into ballast; a relief wagon sat down on a siding like a sulking dog. No explosion, no scream—just logistics bent. Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived on the second count, touched the joint with a feather of light, and the sulk straightened itself as if embarrassed. He bowed from shadow, exact and ironic, and palmed the yard's hydraulic reservoir—set to empty itself at midnight for reasons no inspector could prove.

Galaxencloude staged an ambush with admirable patience. Shadow paragliders dropped listening worms into mortar lines; Deaththrend crouched above a hairpin with stagecraft hunger. "Nicht springen," Deathenstream said—do not jump—and Thrend held. Minutes later Galaxymoon thinned the fog to velvet and made the ambush look foolish. Because Thrend never moved, pride had nothing to punish. "Bitte," Thrend breathed, grateful for a leash he would never admit he needed.

At Galaxenportal he refused to duel phoenix light and audited instead: cranes, moorings, clocks. Three stacks fell in perfect circles of gold on his acceptable-loss line. Six breathed on because tether crews had replumbed their fuel into the tide hours earlier. "Verluste nach Plan?" the dock sergeant asked, voice trembling—losses per plan? "Ja," Deathenstream said, meaning it.

He tried Gallaxengongshi's outer chord without arrogance—water pushed into mains at a beat frequency he'd stolen from the river's heart. The cathedral shield sang back a perfect fifth with a hairline tremolo between two pylons. Not today. He wrote the number across his glove and closed his fist.

The ground war stayed a factory hum under all of it: Death Soldiers and Death Rangers advancing in tidy files with chem-curtains to blind sensors, not eyes; zombies salvaging by alloy grade, not shape. Where Galaxy elites flashed—Galaxrire slicing light to ribbons, Galaxprom turning corners into astrophysics—he sent Deathfelix and Deathbond to delay and live. When a Supreme's aura cracked the sky, he pulled his people out on the fourth beat—the flourish proud opponents save for kills they won't get—and his casualty math remained prettier than memory would later allow.

By late evening the tallies came clean: tonnes lifted, minutes banked, kilns memorized, rails annotated, mains mapped, myths maintained. He left two closing gestures—one cruel, one nearly kind.

The cruel lived in watches: a seeded wobble that would make Galaxwise's ledger feel like a floorboard with a loose nail. Patrols would miss each other by a breath in three corners tonight and eleven tomorrow unless someone guessed the period. "Zufall trainieren," he told Operations. Train randomness; offend perfectionists, terrify schedulers.

The kind bobbed in the harbor: a string of truthful buoys marking the only channel civilians should dare—painted dull, arranged plain, charted nowhere. "Damit niemand versehentlich stirbt," he said softly. So no one dies by accident.

He closed it all without fanfare. "Rücksprung. Strom ab, Nebel an. Lockströmungen stehen lassen." Fall back, kill the power, fog on, leave decoy currents. Violet smog rolled like a blanket, not a panic; formations rewound as if the harbor had learned how to breathe backward. Bait wakes painted the bay so Galaxy drones would spend an hour chasing water that wasn't there.

He glanced—because even engineers look up—toward that place the others joke about dice and gods. "Wenn ihr würfelt," he said dry as salt, "ich nehme nur Strömung." If you're rolling, I only take the current.

A seam closed over him like a tidepool lid. Behind, Gallaxgonbei kept breathing, the new rhythm etched into its canals and piers: a war conducted at water-speed by a commander who preferred flow to flags—and who had finished exactly when the tidebook said the next minute would be most expensive to steal.

The harbor settled into Deathenstream's quiet mathematics—and then the air acquired a perfume with a purpose. Lanterns guttered. Kilns hissed like wary cats. In that hinge between currents and corridors, a woman in a funeral-lace coat stepped from the shadow of a crane and closed her gloved fist over the night.

Deathgripress—Brunhilda Giftkrone—did not arrive with thunder. She arrived with a diagnosis.

"Leise," she told her escort, voice a velvet scalpel. Quiet.

Jakchi, the long boulevard

A black ribbon of market tents still clung to the pavement. Galaxy micro-drones ticked above like gnats, triangulating signatures Deathenstream had already taught to lie. Deathgripress tipped a vial the size of a tear into the wind. The vapor that unrolled wasn't a toxin so much as a decision: a violet bloom that taught metal noses to dream of oranges and ovens. Sensors hallucinated warmth where there was none, silence where there was footfall.

A Galaxy elite—Galaxrire, the filament-blade duelist—stepped into the lantern light, eyes bright with righteous math. "You don't belong here."

"Geschmackssache," she replied in German, amused. Matter of taste.

Rire's blade drew a comet line. Deathgripress answered with an ossuary chain—pearled links humming with the memory of bells. Light met lamentation; sparks skittered like beetles. Neither could finish the other; the street itself refused to choose. On the third exchange she let the chain strike stone, releasing a sleep-kiss of violet pollen that sank into Rire's greaves and numbed reflex by a breath—enough to let a Death Ranger drag a wounded trooper past. Rire slashed the pollen out with a hiss and leapt for the roofline, unbowed. Properly so. Elites decide elite duels; this one would reoccur.

"Bis später," Deathgripress murmured. Later.

Watabomei, the canal lattice

Sirens murmured. Stretchers flashed white. Deathenstream had already written the flow; she wrote the air. A lattice of faint sigils—no recipes, only will—settled over alleys where ambush loved to breed. The effect was surgical: cowardice blossomed in the infected, hands dropped weapons, knees trembled, eyes glazed as if remembering funerals. "Atmen," she whispered into the vox. Breathe. Death Marines slipped through and cuffed the worst of the infiltrators before they could detonate courage into tragedy.

On a balcony, Galaxymoon thinned the fog with a kind gesture. Deathgripress nodded once, face calm. "Ich lasse das," she said. I'll allow it. She rerouted her haze along a different alley; two ambulances slid through untouched, and her escort pretended not to notice the courtesy.

Keikon, the industrial spine

Heat thundered like an argument. Deathendale had cooked the schedules; Deathenstream had confused the coolant; Deathgripress went after hands. She closed her eyes and tasted where fear pooled on the catwalks—where saboteurs waited to be brave. Her glove traced a glyph into the mezzanine rail. Workers with false badges touched the iron a minute later...and the metal remembered. Fingers tingled; tongues tasted coin; hearts fluttered with harmless arrhythmia. Every plant camera marked the same wince. "Zugriff," she ordered. Access. A sweep moved in, collected six disguised operatives, and left the line running. The poison here was strictly identification.

Haylao, the glass belt

Kilns sneezed glitter. Galaxapuff annotated the sky with contemptuous arcs. Deathgripress didn't aim at pilots; she aimed at habits. In a service stair she uncorked a thin phial; a feast-miasma slipped up the stairwell and kissed the metal bracing that the same wing had touched three sorties running. Tomorrow that bracing would crumble to gray breath at the first hard vibration, unraveling a favorite turn without harming the workers beneath it. "Lernkurve beschleunigen," she said into her log. Accelerate the learning curve.

Gallaxyukai, the terraces

Frost-engines had made the orchard cruel. Deathice laughed in winter; Galaxytsukifenghuang warmed the terraces with tea-kettle gentleness. Deathgripress chose third space: the beehouses along the lower rows, each a wooden city of small laws. She knelt, unlatched a lid, and exhaled a whisper the color of mourning ribbon. Bees crawled out, untempted by battle, and made for a ravine she'd marked as a sanctuary fold. The orchards would keep fruit; the hives would not be conscripted by either side. "Nicht alles muss sterben," she told no one. Not everything must die.

Galaxreixuanbeodong, the yards

Rails sulked. Couplers argued. Deathendale had already humiliated a wagon; Deathgripress salted the humiliation with rust-sleep. She stroked a switch lever with two gloved fingers; oxidation hurried exactly where it would groan loudest and break slowest—noise to draw patrols, not a catastrophe. When Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived to smooth the joint, Deathgripress left a calling card: a neat sigil in chalk shaped like a fox. Courtesy acknowledged across a trench line.

Galaxencloude, the switchbacks

Fog behaved like velvet. Shadow paragliders hung like punctuation. Deaththrend crouched atop a hairpin, appetite coiled. "Noch nicht," Deathgripress told him—Not yet. She pressed two black seeds into the switchback wall. They sprouted silence—not absence of sound, but a damping of consequence. An ambush sprung there would simply look foolish. Minutes later Galaxymoon thinned the fog; Thrend did not leap. Pride saved; lesson learned.

Galaxenportal, the cranes

Phoenix light perforated stacks in perfect circles. Death Regime tether crews had already replumbed fuel into the sea. Deathgripress climbed a gantry and laid her cheek against a crane arm. "Schlaf," she told the steel. Sleep. Bearings warmed by fear cooled by obedience; a jam scheduled itself for midnight, when it would cost repair without costing lives. She marked the control box with a violet X. "Für uns," she said to the dock foreman—For us—and he nodded, eyes wide at how quiet war could be.

Edge of Gallaxengongshi, the shield's hymn

She heard it—every elite does—the cathedral lattice singing its perfect fifth with a hairline tremolo between pylons. Where Deathendale wrote numbers, Deathgripress wrote appetite. She pressed a palm to the ground and fed the shield a hunger it could not digest: longing for rust, envy for dust, the sweet ache of wilt. The lattice drank a sip, took its lesson, and brightened. "Brav," she conceded, and withdrew. Elites do not crack capitals. They annotate futures.

By midnight her ledger was clean:

Infiltrators marked and seized at Keikon without stopping the line.

Ambush oxygen stolen in Watabomei; med lanes preserved.

Pilot habits mapped over Haylao; tomorrow's failure staged gently.

Civilians spared where hives and schools could be left intact; myths maintained.

Elites engaged, not expended—Rire delayed, Thrend restrained, Tsukifenghuang saluted.

A plus-eyed adjutant approached with the war's impatience still in his shoulders. "Befehl, Herrin?"

She tilted her head, listening to the night like a physician to a pulse. "Drei Tropfen Ruhe," she said. Three drops of rest. "Dann rücken wir einen Block zurück—mit Würde." Then we fall back a block—with dignity.

Violet fog rolled in like stage curtains closing. Her squad rewound out of Jakchi's teeth; bait canisters gleamed for cameras that needed cathedral shapes to believe in.

At the pier with no name, she left what she always leaves when the arithmetic is honest: water, chalk, and a small fox drawn low where children will find it when adults are busy pretending the world is only numbers.

To her wideband she added one last notation, formal and soft.

"Deathgripress—Abschnitt Gallaxgonbei: abgeschlossen. Gift wirkt. Herzen schlagen. Arbeit bleibt." Section Gallaxgonbei: complete. The poison works. Hearts are beating. Work remains.

She stepped sideways into a seam that closed without complaint, leaving the state scented with a war that kills far less than it changes—and changes exactly what tomorrow's defenders will discover they needed more than bravery.

Lantern ash still clung to the rafters when Deathgripress—Brunhilda Giftkrone—walked Gallaxgonbei one last circuit, closing her work with the quiet of a clinician finishing notes at dawn.

At Jakchi's long boulevard, Galaxy armor came in a disciplined spearhead—sleek golden hulls breathing heat and confidence. Deathgripress opened a velvet-black ampoule and folded its perfume into the wind. The vapor was not a toxin but a verdict: funereal lacquer that crept under turret collars and clotted lubricants to glass. Engines kept purring; optics kept seeing; but traverse wheels sighed into stillness. "Gute Nacht, tapferes Eisen," she said softly—good night, brave iron. A Sun-crest tanker gunned forward anyway; her ossuary chain snapped once across its forward idlers, beading with bell-timbre, and the tread hopped off itself like a bad memory. Galaxy crew bailed, unhurt and furious. Death Soldiers flowed around them without striking—their assignment pure containment—while overhead, a Galaxy elite's halo burned toward her.

Galaxrire descended in a spill of white steel, comet blade sketching sparks. The chain met the filament with patient lamentation. Neither could finish the other; they skated the street's edge, expressions tight, precise, almost respectful. On the third pass, Deathgripress let her links kiss flagstones and released a sleep-kiss pollen that numbed reflex by a heartbeat—long enough for a wounded Death Ranger to be pulled clear. Rire cut the haze apart and leapt to the rooftops, eyes saying later; Deathgripress inclined her head, agreeing without speaking.

Watabomei's canal lattice pulled fresh ambulances through a maze of sirens. Deathenstream had already written the water; Deathgripress wrote the air. She laid a faint sigil above an alley where Galaxy infiltrators had staged detonators in meal sacks; the glyph taught cowardice to bloom in the infected only, hands dropping triggers, knees gently folding. "Atmen," she told her squad over vox—breathe. Death Marines ghosted through, cuffing saboteurs while stretchers sailed by untouched. On a balcony, Galaxymoon thinned fog to a soft theater haze; Deathgripress pivoted her own veil into the next street rather than contest kindness. "Ich lasse das," she murmured. I'll allow it.

Keikon's industrial spine thundered. Where Deathendale had tuned schedules and Deathenstream had pulsed coolant, Deathgripress targeted hands. She traced a compact glyph on a catwalk rail; anyone wearing falsified plant badges who gripped that iron felt a harmless arrhythmia flutter, a coin-taste bloom on the tongue, a telltale wince that every camera recorded. "Zugriff," she ordered. Access. Six infiltrators were quietly collected; the line never slowed.

Haylao's glass belt sneezed glitter into crosswinds. Galaxapuff's pilots sliced brazen arcs between towers, too skilled to be baited by crude tricks. Deathgripress chose habit instead of heroics. On a service stair she uncorked a thread-thin vial—feast miasma that seeped into a single brace those wings had touched three sorties running. Tomorrow, at the first exuberant roll, that brace would crumble into gray breath—no workers harmed, but a favorite turn erased. "Lernkurve beschleunigen," she logged. Accelerate the learning curve.

Across Gallaxyukai's frost-bit terraces, Deathice played winter and Galaxytsukifenghuang brought tea-warm summer. Deathgripress knelt by the beehouses at the lower rows and exhaled a whisper the color of mourning ribbon. Bees lifted, untempted by war, and drifted to a ravine she'd marked safe. The orchard would bear fruit; the hives would not be conscripted. "Nicht alles muss sterben," she said. Not everything must die.

At Galaxreixuanbeodong's yards, a relief wagon still sulked where Deathendale had humiliated the switches. Deathgripress stroked a lever with two gloved fingers, salting it with rust-sleep to groan loudly at midnight and break slowly—not catastrophe, only noise that would drag a patrol off the wrong street at the right time. When Galaxytsukifenghuang arrived to smooth the joint, Deathgripress left her usual calling card: a neat fox in violet chalk on the control box. Courtesy acknowledged across a trench line.

Galaxencloude's switchbacks wore fog like velvet. Shadow paragliders hung like punctuation; Deaththrend crouched above a hairpin with stagecraft hunger. "Noch nicht," she told him—Not yet. Two silence seeds pressed into mortar opened into pockets where consequences went dull. Anyone springing an ambush there would simply look foolish. Minutes later Galaxymoon thinned the fog; Thrend did not leap, and no pride needed mending.

At Galaxenportal, phoenix light perforated stacks clean as coins. Tether crews had already replumbed fuel into the tide. Deathgripress touched a crane and said, "Schlaf." Sleep. Bearings scheduled a jam for midnight—the kind that costs hours, not lives. A dock foreman found a violet X and a tidy manifest taped beneath it: what to salvage first if sirens came back too soon. He swallowed, nodded, and whispered thanks no side would ever hear.

She even walked the outer ring of Gallaxengongshi's cathedral shield and pressed her palm to the soil, feeding the lattice a taste of envy for dust that it could not digest. The shield brightened—lesson taken—and sang its perfect fifth back into her bones. Capitals are not cracked by elites; they are annotated for futures. She withdrew.

Only once did the night try to drag her toward spectacle. A platoon of Galaxy armored vehicles attempted a broadside push down Jakchi, grinding past their immobilized vanguard to make the point with weight. Deathgripress opened her final ampoule. Coffin moths—bone-white, harmless to flesh—spilled into intakes and clogged breathers with solemn dust. Engines coughed and held; turrets refused to slew; machine spirits, if such things existed, decided to attend a funeral elsewhere. "Raupen nach vorn," she said—crawlers forward—and Death Rangers slid grenade-spiders under stalled hulls, not to explode but to weld them to the road in three neat dots. The spearhead became a museum exhibit overnight.

Her escort waited for the flourish she never gave. Deathgripress looked once down the boulevard—armor asleep, med lanes open, saboteurs taken alive, bees humming where orchards would forgive this season—and closed her ledger.

"Abschluss," she said on wideband, voice level. Wrap-up. "Abschnitt Gallaxgonbei: Gift wirkt, Mythen stabil, Zivilkanäle offen. Wir treten einen Block zurück—mit Würde." The poison works. Myths are stable. Civilian channels open. We fall back one block—with dignity.

Violet fog rolled like curtains; her squad rewound out of contention without raggedness. At the pier with no name she left what she always leaves when the arithmetic is honest: two sealed water drums, a coil of cable, a chalk kit on a bench beneath a fire-drill poster, and a small fox drawn low where children would notice when adults pretended the world was only numbers.

She stepped sideways into a seam that closed without complaint.

Behind her, the Death Regime did not pause. Death Soldiers, Death Marines, and Death Rangers pressed the perimeter in tidy files, zombie work crews stacking salvage by alloy grade and feeding it to transport wombs riding low in the bay. Chem-curtains went up where Galaxy optics searched; death-tech crawlers skittered under stalled armor to weld and web; plus-eyed artillery adjusted to firing solutions pre-written by Deathendale's grids and Deathenstream's tidebooks. Overhead, the six Supreme Commanders traded pressure with their opposite numbers, keeping Absolute Leaders from deciding the night with a single gesture. On the ground, mook against mook, the killing didn't look glorious, but the procedure did: methodical, unhurried, unshaken.

And somewhere above, where dice and coins are rumored to turn the world, no one looked up. The Death Regime did not need luck tonight. It had levers, numbers, and the quiet perfume of victory that does not gloat—only lingers, then fades, because work remains.