SUPREMACY- Clash Between Heroes and Villains Chapter 52:The BRD's Offenses

 The council chamber did not warm after Deathwing's monologue—it hardened.

The holographic map of Titanumas still hovered in the air like a suspended wound, its coastlines traced in cold light. Westonglappa pulsed at the edge of the projection, a continent-shaped nerve that refused to stop twitching. Darkwing stood with his arms folded, cloak heavy as a funeral curtain. Blackwing paced in half-circles like a predator denied his bite, the metal of his BMAIL blades whispering every time his hips turned. Shadowwing did not pace at all—he remained a stillness in the corner, a silhouette that looked less like a person and more like the absence of one.

And Deathwis—newly appointed, manic with ambition and terror—kept writing.

Not because he was asked.

Because he had seen what happened to the last scribes who stopped.

Deathwing watched the ink move. His eyes were pale and clinical, like a surgeon reading a chart that had already predicted the patient's death. When he finally spoke, his voice carried the same precision as a scalpel.

"You heard my philosophy," Deathwing said, and with two fingers he tapped the air. The map zoomed—Sollarisca flared orange in the corner of the projection, and the remembered shape of a theatre district appeared, marked with an old burn pattern like a bruise that never fully healed. "Now you will hear what it means in practice."

Darkwing's nostrils flared, offended by the implication that he needed instruction. Blackwing scoffed, trying to disguise that he was listening. Shadowwing's gloved hand rose slightly, two fingers hovering—continue.

Deathwing inclined his head.

"In the Sollarisca theatre campaign," he said, "Sunbeam killed me."

The sentence landed like a dropped instrument—simple, factual, and somehow grotesque in its calmness.

Blackwing's lips peeled back into a grin that wasn't friendly. "Man... what? You get dropped by Orange-Man and you tellin' it like it's weather."

Darkwing's voice was low, old pride sharpened into an insult. "Explain."

Deathwing did not look at Darkwing yet. He stared at the theatre icon as if the memory still contained data.

"Only Absolute Leaders can defeat each other," Deathwing said. "Not Supreme Commanders. Not elites. Not ground units. That is the law written under the world. It does not care about your courage. It does not care about your numbers."

He lifted his hand, and the projection changed again—an austere vertical scale, the Power Scaling Spectrum, pulsed into view. The lower bands were small and crowded, the upper bands thin as blades.

"T0L0 to GP10K+," Deathwing murmured, as if reciting a hymn. "A ladder that pretends to be mathematics. The masses keep climbing it in their dreams. In reality, they are rungs."

Deathwis' pen scratched faster. He wrote the letters as if they were sacred, as if the symbols themselves might bite him if he spelled them wrong.

Blackwing clicked his tongue. "So what, Doc? You tryna tell me the world got rules now? Like we in some clean little textbook?"

Deathwing's mouth twitched—almost a smile, but not quite. "No. I am telling you the world has limits. And I am the one who turns limits into weapons."

At that, Deathwing finally turned his gaze—slowly, deliberately—toward where the audience would be, toward where the air felt thinner, toward the invisible place where words became canon.

His voice cooled another degree.

"And I am also telling whoever writes this history: spell the names correctly. Record the genders correctly. When you misname a man as a woman, or turn a Lunar Supreme Commander into a 'Moon' caricature, you do not merely make an error—you invite correction."

Deathwis' pen stuttered.

Somewhere behind the wall of the chamber, a faint sound—like paper tearing, like throats clearing—flickered and stopped.

Deathwing blinked once, satisfied, and the moment passed as if it had never happened.

Then he looked back at the three tyrants, and the room belonged to them again.

"I returned," Deathwing said. "Not by mercy. Not by chance. By biology."

He snapped his fingers, and the map vanished. In its place: rotating models of organs, blood chemistry, spore-like particles, and a violet-black pathogen schematic that pulsed with predatory elegance. It was not a spell diagram. It was a laboratory dream with teeth.

"You want fear?" Deathwing asked softly. "Then understand this: the next war will not only be fought with blades and tanks. It will be fought with lungs. With marrow. With the immune system screaming in a language the soul cannot translate."

Blackwing's grin faltered into something more cautious, more interested. Darkwing's posture sharpened—anger, yes, but also hunger. Shadowwing's fingers moved in a minimal sequence—bio... weapon... mass—and then stilled.

Deathwing leaned forward just enough to make the chamber feel smaller.

"I am not building an army," he said. "I am building a condition. A plague that obeys. A hunger with a uniform."

And while Deathwing spoke, the BRD did not wait for permission. Across the four villain continents, industry and cruelty moved like a synchronized heartbeat.

In Echumeta—occupied, scarred, repurposed—darksoldiers marched in rows so tight their boots sounded like a single creature walking. Darkmarines drilled in flooded trenches under storm-lamps. Darkmarauders practiced urban breaches through hollowed memorial halls where names had been carved into the stone and then scratched out. Rail yards screamed as armored columns rolled forward: darktanks with angled plating, darkcarriers with rotating turrets, darkartillery wagons hauled by engines that stank of oil and incense.

Darkenedye—male, Supreme Commander in everything but patience—walked the line with tyrant posture, his gaze slicing left and right as if each recruit was a defect waiting to be punished. Darkvizier stalked beside him like an advisor who had swallowed a knife and learned to speak around it. Darkjagged inspected weapon teeth and bayonet edges with the intimacy of a jeweler. Darkvangelist preached discipline without religion, turning fear into a schedule. Darkgunner counted ammunition like prayer beads. Darkvampire supervised night drills so long that dawn became an insult. Darkmatos—female, cold-eyed, unblinking—stood atop a watch platform and watched the whole base breathe, as if the entire army were a single animal she was training not to flinch.

And among them, the darkened elites moved like private nightmares given rank. Darkyra—female, newly awake to a memory gap she could not explain—stood under a floodlight at the edge of a barracks and watched soldiers multiply like shadows under pressure. Darkhit and Darkhitter staggered out of a transport crate marked with Westonglappan salt, their eyes too wide, their hands trembling as if the last thing they remembered was a sky splitting. Darkhitless, Darkhitgurl, and Darkhitress followed, breathing hard, whispering the same question like a curse: What happened?

They were escorted at blade-point to the nearest command pavilion, where Darkwing—wine in hand, smoke curling around his crown of rage—listened without blinking.

"I remember the coastline," Darkhit whispered. "We were in—then we weren't. Like somebody folded time."

Darkwing exhaled smoke, slow and contemptuous. "Then somebody interfered," he said. "And if it was the Galaxy Regime again, I will peel their cleverness off the bones."

In Nirrough and Jollhovalhn, the Blackened Regime turned mobilization into spectacle. Blacksoldiers marched beneath neon propaganda towers. Blackmarines loaded into amphibious transports with their rifles held like musical instruments. Blackrangers practiced rooftop leaps while blackdrones hummed overhead like insects. The shipyards hammered day and night—blackwarships sliding into the sea with their hulls still steaming, blacksubmersibles disappearing beneath the foam like secrets returning to the mouth that made them.

And the Supreme Commanders of the Blackened Regime treated the whole continent like a street corner they owned.

Blackraider walked with a swagger that made even officers step aside, his eyes always scanning for weakness like he was hunting debt. Blackgothic laughed at discipline until his soldiers learned that laughter was a warning. Blackreedraider talked in fast, venomous bursts, turning simple orders into chants that sounded like threats. Blackhive oversaw logistics like a king of insects—every unit numbered, every route mapped, every betrayal anticipated. Blackbomb inspected explosives with affectionate patience, whispering to them like pets. Blackshiv moved through the barracks with quiet hatred, his presence sharp enough to cut morale into obedience.

They barked at their troops in street-wise cadence, the kind of language that made violence sound casual and casual sound lethal.

"Ain't no lazy marchin'," Blackraider snapped, slamming a fist against a transport hull. "If you breathin', you movin'. If you movin', you trainin'. If you ain't trainin', you useless."

Blackbomb leaned toward a young blacksoldier, smiling like a friend, eyes like a trap. "You ever held a future in your hand? This right here? This is the future. Don't drop it. It gets mad."

Blackwing arrived like a headline made flesh, surrounded by elites carrying cameras and signal jammers and portable broadcast rigs. Blackwis—male, quiet, constantly recording—kept his lens on the soldiers' faces, searching for angles that made hunger look heroic. Blackmirelle—female, elegant in her cruelty—reviewed propaganda scripts with the same attention others gave to prayer.

"Make the fear look like confidence," Blackmirelle said softly. "Make the chaos look like leadership."

In Shadowatranceslenta, the mobilization was almost worse because it was quiet.

Shadowsoldiers did not shout. They did not chant. They stood in perfect lines beneath violet-pink skies, their helmets matte, their breath invisible, their eyes unreadable behind dark lenses. Shadowtanks rolled out of hangars like moving tombstones, their treads barely audible over the ambient hum of the dimension itself. Shadowwarplanes—sleek, angular, wrong in a way that made the brain itch—lifted into the air without afterburner flames, their engines sounding like distant whispers. Along the coast, shadowwarships phased in and out of visibility, hulls flickering as if reality could not decide whether to admit they existed.

The Supreme Commanders trained espionage the way other regimes trained marksmanship.

Shadowbashi stood in a dim operations room, watching live feeds without blinking. Shadowlis traced trade routes with a gloved finger as if drawing a noose. Shadowakugata supervised sabotage drills in a mock city built entirely for destruction practice—doors that opened into traps, walls that hid crawling teams, streetlights that could turn into signal beacons. Shadowdante conducted interrogation simulations with no raised voice at all—only pauses long enough for fear to grow its own legs. Shadowtsukuyomi coordinated infiltration schedules in moonless time blocks, every step measured, every error punished by silence. Shadowgothic inspected spy gear with artistic care, making sure every blade, every wire, every capsule looked like something a ghost might carry.

Their language was hand-signs and posture, a choreography of malice. When Shadowwing appeared among them, it was like the room's shadows suddenly remembered they had a master. He spoke without sound—only gestures—yet every commander understood, and the entire base moved as if struck by the same invisible hammer.

In Deathenbulkiztahlem, the Death Regime did not mobilize so much as multiply.

Deathsoldiers emerged in waves from manufacturing halls that looked like cathedrals built by autopsy. Their helmets were dark-gray with a violet hue, stamped with a skull-and-crossbones icon that didn't symbolize danger—it promised it. Deathguards lined the corridors of bio-labs. Deathmarines marched through chemical fog. Deathrangers practiced firing drills while syringes hung from their belts like medals. Every barracks smelled faintly of antiseptic and decay, a sterile rot that made the throat tighten.

Deathsavage barked orders in English that snapped into German without warning, like a mind switching blades mid-sentence. "Faster! Schneller! If your form is sloppy, your body is useless—und useless bodies become resources." Deathmust inspected respirators and vials, his tone flat. "Mask on. Seal check. Again. Nein, again. Your lungs are not yours anymore." Deathhagesh oversaw combat medics and reanimation crews, his gaze always calculating the point where injury became supply. Deathdyo ran chemical drills with the cold enthusiasm of a scientist who had stopped believing in mercy. Deathsorcery supervised the necro-serum distribution lines with hands that never shook.

And over all of it, Deathwing walked through his Palace of Autopsies with the calm of a man strolling through a garden.

On one balcony, he watched the shipyards where bone-plated carriers were being loaded with armored vehicles. On another, he watched laboratory teams refine a new strain of reanimation agent—something that did not merely raise the dead, but recruited them. He spoke in low tones to no one and everyone.

"Umbrella protocols," he murmured, and a technician flinched because the reference sounded like a joke, and Deathwing did not joke.

Then the envoys arrived.

Deathweskers—male, sharp-eyed, immaculate—stepped first, his coat clean enough to offend the surrounding decay. Deathumbrella—female, a zombie-human hybrid whose expression had learned to mimic warmth without ever fully achieving it—followed with a case of sealed vials cradled like a sacred object. Behind them came Deathplague, Deathblight, and Deathhollow—three elites whose names sounded like diagnoses.

They were not here to fight.

They were here to finance the fighting.

Deathweskers met with Shadowgothic in a silent exchange of documents and encrypted drives, trading bio-tech for shadow-anchors. Deathumbrella personally delivered serum cases to Blackhive's logistics offices, her smile gentle, her eyes dead. Deathplague shook hands with Darkvizier in Echumeta and left behind pallets of chemical canisters labeled in codes that made the darkened engineers whisper prayers they didn't believe in. Deathblight negotiated with Blackwing's media apparatus, offering undead relay towers that could broadcast through jammed frequencies. Deathhollow walked the shipyards with Darkgunner and pointed out structural weaknesses in hull designs like he was giving friendly advice.

They were all helping each other, and that unity was the true horror—because it looked almost like peace, and it was not peace at all. It was cooperation in the name of obliteration.

Hours passed. Days blurred. The BRD grew so fast it began to feel like a new weather system.

And then Deathwing decided it was time to speak publicly—not to negotiate, not to plead, but to announce.

Blackened press rigs were rolled into a fortified broadcast hall carved out of Eastoppola's occupied infrastructure. The cameras were not subtle; they were proud. Blackened elites filled the control booths, fingers dancing across panels, cutting angles, adjusting lighting, making tyranny look cinematic. Blackwis stood behind the primary camera and whispered, "We're live," with the reverence of a man opening a door he couldn't close.

Deathwing stepped into frame first.

Behind him, Darkwing stood like a resurrected aristocrat of war—wine traded for wrath, smoke traded for promise. Blackwing leaned against a console with a grin that carried too many teeth. Shadowwing stood half-visible, as if the lens itself had trouble agreeing he was there.

The BRD broadcast went out across Eastoppola, across Shadowatranceslenta, across Deathenbulkiztahlem—and, if the signal leaked, across any unlucky AES relay that happened to be listening.

Deathwing's voice carried without strain.

"Titanumas has been declining since the Dominance Era of 5007," he said, tone clinical, eyes unblinking. "Not because villains exist. Because salvation became a fashion."

He lifted his hand, and behind him the screens displayed the AES sigils—the four lights, the four pillars. "Allied Evolution Salvation," he continued. "Light. Love. Logic. A triangle masquerading as a cure."

Blackwing snorted into the microphone and then leaned in, speaking like he was addressing a crowd at a hostile block party. "Man, look—AES be actin' like they the universe's babysitters. Like everybody gotta sit down, hold hands, and sing. Nah. We done with that."

Darkwing stepped forward next, his voice long and proud, fury dressed in ceremony. "They called our empires chaos. They called our dominion cruelty. They called their conquest romance and expected history to applaud." His eyes narrowed. "We have learned something since the early clashes. Since the prologue. Since the first blood on foreign soil. Peace attempts fail because peace is a story told by those with the luxury of distance."

Shadowwing did not speak.

Instead, he raised his hands.

Two fingers touched his throat—silence. A palm turned outward—warning. His hands drew shapes in the air: a broken sun, a cracked crescent, a star with a bite taken out, a spiral unraveling.

Blackwis' translated captions scrolled across the feed, precise and cold: THE LIGHTS CAN BLEED. THE SKY CAN BE TAKEN. THE ROUTES WILL DARKEN.

Deathwing returned to the center like a scalpel reclaiming its place.

"We are the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency," Deathwing said, and the acronym appeared behind him like a brand burned into the screen. "BRD. A mockery, yes. Because heroism's moral superiority is a performance—and we are tired of clapping."

His gaze sharpened, and for a moment he pointed directly into the camera—not at the audiences in Titanumas, not at the AES, but at the reader, at the watcher, at the one hiding behind narrative distance.

"If this broadcast reaches the Allied Evolution Salvation," Deathwing said softly, "then understand: you should be afraid. Not because you will lose a battle. Because you will discover the war is irreversible."

Blackwing leaned close, voice low and poisonous with confidence. "And if you think you safe behind your little continents? If you think Westonglappa's a shield? Nah. Westonglappa's a stage."

Darkwing's smile was thin. "And we are done waiting for applause."

Shadowwing's hands moved once more—slow, deliberate—like a guillotine falling without sound.

Deathwing inhaled as if tasting the air through the camera.

"Echumeta," he said. "Nirrough. Shadowatranceslenta. The first cities to be refined into weapons."

His lips curved into something that might have been called joy if joy did not require warmth.

Then he dismissed the broadcast with a final, clinical promise.

"The invasion begins soon."

The feed cut.

Across the BRD continents, the reaction was not celebration in the heroic sense. There were no parades of hope. There were only engines roaring louder, drills tightening, and soldiers standing straighter because the world had finally been told out loud what it already felt in its bones.

In Echumeta, Darkenedye turned to his commanders and spoke like a man issuing a verdict. "Double the training cycles. Darksoldiers do not sleep until their fear is useful."

In Nirrough, Blackraider slapped a recruit's helmet and laughed without humor. "You heard the boss. We movin'. We takin' routes. We takin' screens. We takin' breath."

In Shadowatranceslenta, Shadowtsukuyomi drew a line through a trade corridor and looked up at his silent squads. No words. Only the gesture that meant: go.

In Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathmust lifted a vial to the light and watched it glow like captive moonfire. "Gut," he murmured. "Now we see what the world does when the cure is worse than the disease."

And high above it all, Deathwing stood on his balcony again, overlooking docks, laboratories, and endless marching lines that seemed to stretch into the horizon's throat. Behind him, Deathwis kept writing, his hand aching, his mind frantic, his heart terrified of missing a single detail that might save him from being "corrected."

Deathwing did not look back at him.

Deathwing watched his empires—Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, Death—moving in warm mutual embrace the way predators share a kill. Supreme Commanders and elites crossing borders, trading resources, synchronizing schedules, sharpening each other into a single blade. The BRD was no longer a set of regimes.

It was a machine.

And Deathwing—Absolute Leader, nihilist, endgame—smiled as if he could already smell Westonglappa's panic on the wind.

The Chronometric Autopsy

Darkhitler did not wake up; he snapped into existence.

One moment, the salt-heavy air of the Turreyatch coast was whipping against his command visor, the roar of Darkened engines providing the overture to the invasion of Highbarrow. The next, he was staring at the reinforced durasteel ceiling of a fortified barracks in occupied Eastoppola.

Beside him, Darkhit and Darkhitter jerked upright, their hands instinctively reaching for weapons that weren't there. Across the room, Darkhitless, Darkhitgurl, and Darkhitress convulsed in unison, gasping as if their lungs had forgotten how to process the stale, recycled air of the barracks.

"Status!" Darkhitler barked, his voice rasping. He checked his gear; it was pristine. No carbon scoring from the coastal batteries. No blood.

"Sir... the fleet," Darkhit stammered, checking his tactical HUD. "The calendar. It says we've been back for a full day. But we were just at the shoreline. We were mid-exchange with the AES defenders!"

They compared memories in frantic, clipped sentences. The experience was identical: a reel of film had been cut from the universe. Darkhitler looked out the viewport. Below, the city was a hive of industry: darksoldiers marching drills, darkmarines loading massive blacksteel transports, and darkmarauders tuning heavy engines.

"This is above our pay grade," Darkhitler said, his eyes narrowing with a dark, cold realization. "We're going to the Spire. I need to speak with Lord Darkwing immediately."

As the six of them marched down the hall, the camera pulled back to reveal the staggering scale of the mobilization—a sea of black armor and iron stretching to the horizon.

Audience With Darkwing – "Something Edited the War"

Lord Darkwing stood on his command balcony, a glass of dark wine in one hand, the smoke from a heavy cigar curling around his crown. Below him, the war foundry roared. Darkrangers tested shimmering cloaking rigs in the ruined alleys below, while rail-pylons groaned under the weight of Death Regime necro-artillery being integrated into Darkened hulls.

Darkhitler knelt, reporting the "gap" with crisp, military formality.

"You're telling me you were mid-assault, and now you are here?" Darkwing's voice was like grinding stones. "You're telling me my vanguard turned tail and forgot the flight?"

"No, my Lord," Darkhitler stood his ground, his tone steady. "There was no retreat. There was only... a hard cut. And then we were here, stripped of the outcome."

Darkwing turned to the male scribe beside him. "Darkwis, check the telemetry."

The scribe consulted a glowing tablet. "My Lord... the records show the fleet departed on schedule. But the combat logs for the last twelve hours are... blank. Causal telemetry shows the ships 'spliced' back into port yesterday. It is as if that branch of the timeline never happened."

Darkwing's anger cooled into a terrifying, icy stillness. "This smells like Galaxbeam's handwriting. Or that golden professor." He turned back to Darkhitler. "You aren't a soldier right now. You're a case study. Get to the necro-portal. Deathwing will want to see what a deleted timeline looks like."

Deathenbulkiztahlem – Autopsy of a Missing Battle

In the clinical, bone-white labs of Deathenbulkiztahlem, Darkhitler was wired into a chronometric chair. Deathwing hovered over him like a surgeon reading a terminal chart. Deathwis projected the soldier's memories onto a wall of bone-screens.

"There," Deathwing pointed a skeletal finger. On the screen, the memory of the Westonglappa coast flared—then flickered with a faint, golden geometric pattern.

"Galaxbeam," Deathwing murmured to the other three tyrants—Darkwing, Blackwing, and Shadowwing. "He didn't fight them. He folded the local timeline. He rewound the assault and spliced the fleet back into its pre-launch state to avoid a PSS collapse."

Deathwing turned to them, his eyes glowing with a clinical violet light. "This is our reality. They do not just fight battles; they edit history. When Sunbeam first went GP10K+ in the Sollarisca theatre... I died. Briefly. A distant echo of his Absolute eruption decapitated my consciousness at range. Only my necro-science allowed me to reboot."

 The BRD Private Conclave

"We change the strategy," Deathwing declared, the PSS rules flashing behind him.

"The Law is written: only an Absolute can kill an Absolute. Do not waste your armies trying to land a killing blow on Sunbeam or Galaxbeam. You cannot. Instead, we make them drown in responsibilities. While they are busy saving a city, we take a continent."

The accord was struck:

Darkwing: Hammer the frontlines to draw the heroes' focus.

Blackwing: Own the information war, riots, and propaganda.

Shadowwing: Seed "Shadow-anchors" to make the timeline harder to rewrite.

Deathwing: Manage biological escalation—the "hunger with a uniform."

 Armies in Motion – Cross-Continental Mobilization

Across the four continents, the machine accelerated.

Darkened: Darkmatos stood atop a watch platform, watching the base breathe like a single animal. Darkyra watched soldiers multiply under floodlights, feeling a memory gap she couldn't explain.

Blackened: Blackraider snapped orders at rows of recruits, while Blackmirelle (female) reviewed propaganda scripts to turn chaos into "leadership."

Shadow: Shadowapuff watched spectral fleets phase in and out of reality, while Shadowdante conducted silent interrogation drills.

Death: Deathmust and Deathsavage barked orders in German-laced English, while Deathumbrella delivered serum cases to logistics offices with a dead-eyed smile.

The Villain Broadcast

The broadcast hit every screen in Titanumas simultaneously. Deathwing stood at the center.

"Titanumas has been declining since 5007," Deathwing said, his voice cold. "Not because villains exist. Because salvation became a fashion. We are the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency—BRD. A mockery? Yes. Because heroism is a performance, and we are tired of clapping."

Blackwing leaned in with a jagged grin. "Man, AES be actin' like they the universe's babysitters. Nah. We done with that."

Darkwing added, his voice imperial: "Peace is a story told by those with the luxury of distance. We are closing that distance."

Shadowwing raised his hands, his sequence of gestures translated by Blackwis: THE LIGHTS CAN BLEED. THE ROUTES WILL DARKEN.

Deathwing pointed directly into the camera. "If this reaches the Allied Evolution Salvation... understand: the war is now irreversible. The invasion begins soon."

Morale Night

As the feed cut, the reaction across the continents was a grim, unified heartbeat. In the shadow of the Palace of Autopsies, Deathwing watched the horizon. Thousands of ships and spectral entities moved toward the Westonglappa coastline.

"The invasion begins at Westonglappa," Deathwing murmured, the necro-winds carrying his words across the world. "Let the Four Lights come. This time, we are ready for the edit."

The screen in the heart of Westonglappa's capital didn't flicker; it bled. Across a continent that had enjoyed a fragile neutrality, the absence of any Allied Evolution Salvation military presence was suddenly a vacuum that the darkness was more than happy to fill. Every household television, every sleek metropolitan billboard, and even the emergency maritime frequencies in the ports of Turreyatch were overriden by a single, high-definition signal originating from the Eastoppolan state-media hubs. Blackwing appeared on every surface at once, his face carved from shadows and lit by the erratic blue glare of digital static. He didn't speak with the measured weight of a politician or the righteous fury of a soldier; he spoke with the easy, terrifying confidence of a predator that had already won. He looked into the lens, addressing the millions of citizens in Westonglappa with a jagged grin, mocking the distant gods of light who had left them undefended while claiming to be their saviors. His voice carried across the ocean, a menacing declaration that the age of the AES was an edited fiction, and that the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency was here to restore the world to its raw, unpolished truth.

Thousands of miles away, within the crystalline spires of the Galaxy Regime, Professor Galaxbeam stood before a holographic projection of the planet's ley lines and causal streams. He did not need the news to tell him what was happening; he had already felt the temporal anchors dropping into the seabed like heavy stones. He was a man of logic and infinite anticipation, and he knew that Westonglappa was the prize the BRD sought to claim. He didn't wait for a quorum or a committee. With a quiet, resonant command to Galaxadye, he initiated the full mobilization of the Galaxy naval armada. Huge, shimmering vessels that looked more like falling stars than ships began to fold the space between their ports and the center of the vast ocean separating the villainous territories from the neutral continent. Galaxbeam's goal was a feat of strategic engineering: he intended to create a "Great Wall" layer of defense, a blockade of thousands of ships stretching from horizon to horizon, effectively splitting the sea in two to ensure no BRD hull touched Westonglappan soil.

The call for aid rippled through the PSS network like a flare. In the Solar Regime, Sunbeam gave the order to Solardye, whose massive golden destroyers surged forward to take the center of the line. From the Star Regime, Starbeam Charmley dispatched Starradye with a fleet of high-velocity interceptors that occupied the northern flanks, their hulls glowing with celestial energy. Finally, Moonbeam and the Lunar Regime brought their silent, silver-clad armada into the formation, with Lunarstride positioning the lunar cruisers to cover the southern reaches. Together, the four AES fleets formed an unbreakable barrier of steel and light, a maritime Great Wall that stood as a testament to their unified resolve. The ocean, once a vast empty expanse, was now a corridor of war, with millions of sailors and elites staring toward the darkened horizon, waiting for the first wave.

But in the cold, clinical heart of Deathenbulkiztahlem, Deathwing watched the hero blockade on a wall of bone-screens and smiled. He sat in a high-backed throne of obsidian, flanked by Darkwing, Blackwing, and Shadowwing. The heroes had done exactly what he expected; they had concentrated their greatest assets in a single, predictable line. Deathwing leaned forward, his violet eyes glowing as he coordinated the counter-strategy. He knew that to break the blockade, he first had to break the heroes' focus. He didn't order the main invasion fleet forward; instead, he issued the command for the diversions. This was not a move for territory, but a move to bleed the AES of their time and morale.

Under the cover of Blackwing's ongoing media blackout, the BRD launched their elite "slow-down" squads. Darkenedye was dispatched toward the Solar continent, leading a spearhead of darkcarriers meant to set the outer coastal cities of Sollarisca ablaze, forcing Sunbeam to consider turning back. Blackendye and Blackmirelle were sent into the heart of the Star Regime's territories to spark urban uprisings and sabotage the energy grids that powered their orbital defenses. In the south, Shadowapuff moved like a ghost, her spectral forces infiltrating the Lunar Regime's ancestral forests to vanish entire garrisons in the night, sowing a terror that Moonbeam could not ignore. Finally, Deathwing sent Deathendye and the lethal Deathumbrella to the borders of the Galaxy Regime, tasked with contaminating their vital supply lines with a slow-acting necro-spore that would turn their logistical hubs into quarantine zones. As the diversions took hold, the "Great Wall" of the AES began to tremble, the heroes suddenly torn between the blockade at sea and the fires burning in their own homes. The pieces were moving exactly as the Doctor had planned, and the true invasion of Westonglappa was finally ready to slip through the cracks.

The horizon of the neutral sea was a wall of gold and silver steel, but the BRD had no intention of hitting it head-on. As the "Great Wall" of the AES naval blockade held its breath, the first cracks appeared thousands of miles away, deep within the heroes' own sovereign territories. The diversions were not mere skirmishes; they were surgical strikes designed to paralyze the heart of each regime.

In the Solar Regime, the sky over the Cosmott Island began to choke with black soot. Darkenedye, Supreme Commander of the Darkened Regime, descended upon the state of Solyenchanpoll. Leading a lean but lethal aerial-naval strike force, he targeted the coastal hub of Solnarapolis. Beneath his command, elites like Darkhand and Darkskewer tore through the initial Solar naval defenders. They didn't just sink ships; they shredded the logic of the defense. As the Solar cruisers buckled, Darkenedye slammed a massive, obsidian-magical spawning flag into the sands of the beachhead. The air rippled with violet lightning, and instantly, the shoreline was no longer empty; thousands of Darksoldiers teleported directly onto the sand, bypassing the blockade entirely.

Simultaneously, the Star Regime felt the jagged edge of the Blackened Regime. Within the Idolparadogopolis State, the city of Starratempis became a digital graveyard. Blackendye arrived not with an army, but with a virus and a vanguard. Elites Blackstrike and Blackdred led high-speed boarding parties that neutralized the Star naval platforms before they could fire a single railgun. On the docks of the city, they planted the Blackened spawning flags. In a montage of flickering light, legions of Blackraiders stepped through the void, claiming the streets while the Star naval armada was still miles away at the blockade.

The Lunar Regime faced a more terrifying, silent assault. In the Blucrestmay State, specifically the waters of Lunavirellis Moonveil Bay, the spectral Supreme Commander Shadowadye manifested. His elites, Shadowstealth and Shadowlight, moved like ink in the water, dragging Lunar defenders into the crushing depths without a sound. When the moon-blessed flags were driven into the cliffs of the bay, the Shadow Regime ground units phased into existence, their eyes glowing in the misty dark as they began the march toward Lunarblureen City.

The most gruesome diversion hit the Galaxy Regime in the Galaxenhaikenshai State. Deathendye and Deathumbrella led a grotesque fleet of bone-ships into the harbor of Galaxukyōragi. The Galaxy naval defenders, used to logic and space-time equations, had no answer for the sheer biological rot brought by elites like Deathcrush and Deathpierce. As the Galaxy ships were consumed by necro-rust, the Death Regime flags were raised atop the ruins of the port. In an instant, the dead from the previous day's skirmish stood back up as fresh ground units, reinforced by teleported Death-marines.

Across the globe, the montage of war was a symphony of chaos. The AES "Great Wall" in the ocean sat idle, its massive cannons pointed at an empty horizon, while the heroes received frantic distress calls from their home states. The BRD hadn't just bypassed the defense; they had forced the AES to watch their own continents burn. With the magical flags firmly planted and ground units surging into the heart of the four regimes, the true invasion of Westonglappa was no longer a threat—it was an inevitability.

The shock of the BRD's multi-continental breach sent a tremor through the Allied Evolution Salvation's leadership, but the panic was short-lived. In the command centers of the four regimes, the "Absolutes" realized that while their Great Wall at sea remained unchallenged, the war was already being fought on their own doorsteps. The montage of destruction quickly shifted into a montage of desperate, high-powered defiance as the AES mobilized their elite defenders to uproot the BRD's magical beachheads.

In the burning streets of Solnarapolis, the obsidian flags of the Darkened Regime were met with a blinding counter-flare. Sunbeam, coordinating from the Solar throne, authorized the immediate deployment of Solardye. The Supreme Commander descended from a Solar gunship like a falling sun, his heat-blade clashing against the shadowy geometry of Darkenedye. Behind him, Solar elites like Sunbond and Sunlance charged into the fray, their weapons glowing with concentrated solar energy. They met the Darksoldiers in the city squares, turning the cobblestones into a furnace. The clash was a binary struggle of light and void, with Solardye pushing to melt the obsidian spawning flag even as Darkenedye's elites, Darkhand and Darkskewer, fought to keep the teleportation portal open.

Across the ocean in the Idolparadogopolis State, the digital silence of Starratempis was broken by the thunderous arrival of the Star Regime's heavy hitters. Starbeam Charmley signaled Starrastorm to lead the counter-assault. The Supreme Commander's armor crackled with kinetic electricity as he slammed into the Blackened Regime's vanguard. Blackendye stood his ground, his dark-tech weapons parrying Starrastorm's star-forged strikes with rhythmic precision. In the neon-lit alleys, Star elites Starconservation and Starevangel engaged in high-speed duels with Blackstrike and Blackdred. The city became a kaleidoscope of gold and black energy, a high-stakes tug-of-war over the Blackened spawning flags that continued to hiss with the arrival of fresh raiders.

The misty silence of Moonveil Bay was shattered by the song of Lunar steel. Moonbeam dispatched Lunarpuff to cleanse the Blucrestmay State of the Shadow infection. The female Supreme Commander moved through the fog with a fluidity that rivaled the spectral movements of Shadowadye. As their blades crossed, the impact sent ripples of lunar mana across the water. Beneath the cliffs, Lunar elites Moonshire and Moonrire hunted the elusive Shadowstealth and Shadowlight, using silver lanterns to reveal the hidden assassins. The battle for the bay was a dance of ghosts and moonbeams, a struggle to tear the shadowy flags from the earth before the Shadow Regime could fully entrench their ground units.

In the Galaxenhaikenshai State, the biological rot of the Death Regime met the cold, mathematical precision of the Galaxy defenders. Professor Galaxbeam sent Galaxastream to reclaim the port of Galaxukyōragi. The Supreme Commander wielded the power of gravity itself, crushing the necro-ships before they could fully dock. However, Deathendye and Deathumbrella were resilient, their undead physiology allowing them to endure wounds that would have killed any human. Galaxy elites like Galaxmon and Galaxyy fought a gruesome war against Deathcrush and Deathpierce, using energy shields to keep the necro-spores at bay. The port became a charnel house of warped space and decaying flesh, as Galaxastream fought to collapse the void-gate created by the Death spawning flags.

This global counter-strike transformed the map of Titanumas into a tapestry of endless, localized wars. There was no single front line; instead, there were thousands of microscopic battlefields within the heart of every regime. While the naval armadas remained locked in their "Great Wall" formation, waiting for a fleet that hadn't yet arrived, the true strength of the AES was being tested in their own cities. The BRD's diversion had succeeded in making the war personal, forcing every hero to fight for their own home while the masterminds in Eastoppola watched the clock, waiting for the AES's focus to finally snap.

The global sky over Titanumas had become a fractured mirror of the chaos below. As the Allied Evolution Salvation's "Great Wall" armada sat paralyzed in the mid-ocean, the battle for the four continents transformed into a series of high-octane duels. The initial diversions were no longer mere distractions; they were the primary theaters of a war that pitted absolute light against primal deficiency.

The Solar Front: The Furnace of Solnyxtalben

In the golden-paved capital of Solnyxtalben, the air was a shimmering haze of extreme heat. Solardye, the Supreme Commander of the Solar Regime, stood amidst the melting architecture of the central plaza. His Greatsword of Helios was buried in the marble, radiating a light so intense it bleached the shadows from the nearby buildings. Facing him was Darkenedye, whose very presence seemed to devour the surrounding color.

"You speak of majesty, Solar whelp," Darkenedye hissed, his voice like the grinding of tectonic plates. He raised a hand, and a swirling vortex of negative matter materialized, spinning with the force of a black hole. "But majesty is just a mask for the fear of the dark! Darkened-Void Devastation!"

The blast of shadow collided with Solardye's thermal shield, creating a shockwave that shattered every window within five miles. Solardye roared, his muscles bulging as he pushed against the encroaching void. "Ggg-GAAAAAAH! You think a little darkness can snuff out the sun? I am the dawn of this world! SUPERNOVA BURST!"

The resulting explosion of white-hot plasma sent Darkenedye skidding across the plaza, his shadow-cloak tattering into smoke. He grunted, his feet digging furrows into the scorched stone. "Tch... persistent cockroach. But while you burn, your people drown!"

The Star Front: Digital Ruin in Starratempis

The neon-soaked district of Starratempis had become a graveyard of high-tech dreams. Starrastorm was currently locked in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with Blackendye. The Star Supreme Commander flickered with kinetic electricity, his movements a blur of gold light, but Blackendye moved like a digital glitch, appearing and disappearing through the city's hijacked mainframe.

"You're out of time, Star-born!" Blackendye taunted, his arm shifting into a high-frequency vibrating blade. He lunged, the weapon humming with a pitch that made the air itself vibrate. "Blackened-Grid Execution!"

Starrastorm pivoted, but the blade caught his shoulder plating, shearing through the reinforced alloy like paper. "Nngh! Cough... A lucky hit, scavenger!" Starrastorm clutched his arm, sparks flying from his damaged suit. "You've infected the city, but you haven't broken its spirit! NEBULA COLLAPSE!"

He slammed his fists together, releasing a localized gravity distortion that crushed the surrounding pavement and forced Blackendye to phase out of reality to avoid being flattened. Blackendye reappeared atop a nearby skyscraper, laughing as he watched more Blackened raiders teleport onto the streets below.

The Lunar Front: The Crimson Tides of Moonveil Bay

The silver mists of Moonveil Bay had turned a bruised purple. Shadowadye drifted over the water like a wraith, his dual daggers glowing with a cold, spectral light. Lunarpuff met him with her Crescent Fan, her movements a deadly dance of pressurized water and lunar mana.

"Your moon is a hollow shell, little girl," Shadowadye whispered, his voice echoing from every shadow in the bay. "The Shadow was here before the first light, and it will be here after you are forgotten."

"SHAA!" Lunarpuff screamed, swinging her fan with enough force to part the bay itself. "My moon brings the tide that will drag you to the abyss! LUNAR CRESCENT: ASCENDING WAVE!"

The massive wave of silver water crashed into Shadowadye, but he simply dissolved into ink, reforming on the cliffs above where the Shadow spawning flags were already firmly planted. Lunarpuff fell to one knee on the sand, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Nnngh... they're... they're everywhere..."

The Galaxy Front: The Collapse of Galaxukyōragi

At the Galaxukyōragi harbor, the logic of the universe was being unmade. Galaxastream was desperately trying to maintain a series of gravity wells to hold back the necro-fleet of the Death Regime. Deathendye and Deathumbrella led the charge, their boots treading on a carpet of rotting seaweed and rusted steel.

"Mathematics cannot solve death, Galaxastream," Deathendye growled, his jaw hanging at an unnatural angle. He raised a staff of bone, and a wave of necro-spores swept across the harbor. "PLAGUE-BORN ERUPTION!"

Galaxastream coughed violently, the spores clogging his lungs. "Guh... the... the pressure... GURGH!" He vomited blood as the gravity wells he was maintaining flickered and died. Deathumbrella twirled her parasol, laughing as she drove its sharp point into a Galaxy defender's heart.

"Look at the pretty colors!" she giggled as the Galaxy soldier withered into a husk. "Your 'perfect' regime makes such lovely fertilizer!"

The Great Convergence

The montage of war reached its peak as the BRD's magical spawning flags hummed with malevolent energy. In a synchronized movement across the globe, the ground units of the Darkened, Blackened, Shadow, and Death Regimes marched out of the teleportation rifts.

In Solyenchanpoll, the sky rained black ash as the Solar defenders were pushed back into the capital. In Blucrestmay, the silent screams of the Lunar guards were swallowed by the rising mist. In Idolparadogopolis, the Star Regime's energy grid finally went dark, plunging the continent into a technological dark age. And in Galaxenhaikenshai, the very soil began to rot as the Death Regime claimed the land.

The AES had been successfully split. As the Supreme Commanders struggled to hold their ground, their eyes turned toward the empty sea, realizing that while they stood at the Great Wall, the enemy had already walked through the front door. The true war for the continents had begun, and the heroes were bleeding on their own soil.

The battle for the heart of the four regimes had escalated from a strategic diversion into a full-blown supernatural catastrophe. Across the continents of Sollarisca, Starrup, Lunna, and Galaxenchi, the air was thick with the scent of ozone, rot, and the metallic tang of blood. The initial "Great Wall" naval blockade remained a silent witness in the distance, but the real war was being fought in the streets, on the docks, and within the very spirits of the Supreme Commanders.

The Solar Front: The Siege of Solnyxtalben

In the golden-paved capital of Solnyxtalben, the sky had turned a sickly violet as the Darkened Regime's obsidian flags pulsed with rhythmic malice. Solardye, his eyes burning like miniature stars, slammed his Greatsword of Helios into the ground, sending a shockwave of thermal energy toward the encroaching shadows.

Darkenedye laughed, a cold, hollow sound that seemed to come from the ground itself. "Your light is an eyesore, Solar whelp! Let's see how you handle the weight of a thousand forgotten nights!" He raised his hands, and the shadows around him solidified into jagged spears. "Darkened-Void Pierce!"

Solardye gritted his teeth, the heat from his own armor blistering the air. "Nngh! Hah... hah... You talk of nights while standing in my territory? I'll show you a dawn you won't survive! SOLAR FLARE: MAX OUTPUT!" The beam of pure, white-hot plasma erupted from Solardye's chest. "GAAAAAA-HAGH!" Darkenedye screamed as the light bypassed his shadow-shields, melting his armor into his skin. "My... my eyes! Everything is... too bright!"

The Star Front: Chaos in Starratempis

The neon-lit megacity of Starratempis was a graveyard of sparking wires. Starrastorm found himself cornered in a high-tech plaza, his kinetic shields failing under the relentless digital and physical assault of Blackendye.

"Your systems are ancient, little star," Blackendye taunted, his arm transforming into a high-frequency vibrating blade. Beside him, the elite Blackstrike moved like a blur, cutting down Star defenders before they could even draw their sidearms. "I've already rewritten the code of this city. You're just a bug waiting to be deleted."

Starrastorm spat out a mouthful of blood, his armor sparking. "Guh... cough... A bug? I'm the lightning that resets the circuit! SYSTEM OVERDRIVE: NEBULA CRASH!" Blackendye's blade sliced through Starrastorm's shoulder plating. "Nnngh! Gasping... Damn you..." Starrastorm groaned as he collapsed to one knee. "Not today... not today!"

The Lunar Front: The Massacre at Moonveil Bay

The mist over Lunavirellis Moonveil Bay was no longer silver; it was stained a deep, murky crimson. Shadowadye moved through the air like a ghost, his dual daggers glowing with a cold, spectral light. Lunarpuff countered with her Crescent Fan, sending waves of pressurized lunar water to keep him at bay.

"Why do you fight for a dead moon?" Shadowadye whispered, appearing inches from her ear. "The Shadow is eternal. The Moon is just a rock in the sky."

"The Moon... governs the tides!" Lunarpuff screamed, her voice cracking with effort. "And the tides will wash your filth away! LUNAR TIDE: ABYSSAL CRUSH!" Shadowadye vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared behind her, driving a dagger into her side. "KYAAAAAAH!" Lunarpuff's scream echoed across the bay. She tumbled into the shallow surf, her silver dress torn and soaked in red.

The Galaxy Front: The Fall of Galaxukyōragi

The mathematical sanctuary of Galaxenchi was being unmade by filth. Galaxastream stood at the center of the harbor, his hands trembling as he tried to maintain a gravity well to keep Deathendye and the elite Deathumbrella from making landfall.

Deathendye stepped off his bone-ship, his rotting flesh knitting back together every time a gravity pulse tore it apart. "Mathematics cannot solve death, Galaxastream. You calculate... I decompose." Deathumbrella twirled her parasol, laughing as a cloud of necro-spores drifted toward the Galaxy elite. "Look at them! Your soldiers are becoming my garden!"

Galaxastream felt the spores hitting his lungs. "Hacking cough... No... the logic... it's failing... GRRR-HAA! GRAVITY COLLAPSE!" The gravity well imploded, sending a backlash of energy that shattered Galaxastream's ribs. "GURGH! Splutters blood... The... the port... is lost..."

The Great Spawning: A World in Chains

As the Supreme Commanders of the AES were pushed to their limits, the montage of war accelerated. In every coastal region, the BRD's magical spawning flags hummed with a terrifying resonance.

The sky tore open. In Solyenchanpoll, thousands of Darksoldiers marched out of the violet rifts, their boots trampling the Solar gardens. In Blucrestmay, the Shadow-raiders phased through the castle walls of Lunarblureen, their eyes glowing in the dark. In Idolparadogopolis, the Blackraiders seized the communication hubs, broadcasting Blackwing's laughter to a crumbling world.

The AES was in a state of total fracture. The naval armada, the pride of the four regimes, remained stuck in the middle of the ocean—a Great Wall guarding an empty house. The diversions had become the main event, and as the ground units of the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency secured their beachheads, the message was clear: The gods of light had been outplayed, and the world belonged to those who embraced the deficiency.

The global sky over Titanumas was no longer a symbol of hope, but a tapestry of fractured light and encroaching shadow. As the Allied Evolution Salvation's "Great Wall" armada sat paralyzed in the deep ocean, watching a horizon that remained stubbornly empty, the true war was being fought within the very marrow of the four hero regimes. The BRD's diversions had transitioned into a full-scale occupation, forcing the Supreme Commanders into desperate, high-stakes duels for the survival of their homelands.

The Solar Front: The Ashes of Solnyxtalben

In the capital of Solnyxtalben, the once-golden marble was stained with the soot of a thousand magical fires. Solardye, his golden armor dented and radiating a frantic, pulsating heat, stood his ground in the center of the Imperial Plaza. Opposite him, Darkenedye moved with the weight of a collapsing star, his "Abyssal Maw" blade carving grooves of pure nothingness into the air.

"You call this a 'Regime of Light'?" Darkenedye taunted, his voice a jagged rasp that echoed against the crumbling pillars. "It looks more like a funeral pyre from where I'm standing! Darkened-Void Devastation!"

He swung his blade, releasing a crescent of violet-black energy that devoured the sunlight. Solardye roared, his voice cracking with the strain as he raised his Greatsword of Helios to parry. "Ggg-GAAAAAAH! Hah... hah... You think... a few shadows... make a king?" The impact threw Solardye backward, his boots skidding across the white stone until he hit the base of the Emperor's statue. Blood trickled from his visor, and his breath came in ragged, wet hitches. "I am the sun's last stand! SOLAR OVERLOAD!"

He erupted in a blinding flash of white-hot plasma, momentarily pushing back the void, but the cost was visible—his armor was melting into his skin, and his movements grew sluggish. Sensing the weakness, the Darkened Regime's elite, Darkhand, signaled the ground troops. As Solardye collapsed to one knee, the obsidian spawning flags hummed with power, and a fresh wave of Darksoldiers flooded the plaza. The capital had fallen; the Solar banner was torn down and replaced by the jagged mark of the Darkened.

The Star Front: The Binary Struggle of Starratempis

The neon-lit cityscape of Starratempis flickered like a dying heartbeat. Starrastorm was trapped in the central data-sanctum, his kinetic shields sparking under the relentless pressure of Blackendye's digital-physical hybrid assault.

"Your logic is flawed, Starrastorm," Blackendye said, his arm shifting into a high-frequency blade that hummed at a pitch capable of shattering glass. "You're fighting for a system that's already been deleted. Blackened-Grid... EXECUTION!"

Starrastorm pivoted, but the blade caught his shoulder, shearing through the reinforced alloy. "Nngh! Guh-HAA! Curse you... and your viruses!" He slammed his fists into the floor, releasing a massive kinetic pulse. "RAAAAAH! REBOOT!" The shockwave sent Blackendye flying through a holographic display, but the villain merely laughed as he landed.

Unlike the other fronts, the Star Regime's technical resilience held. As elites Starconservation and Starevangel arrived with a fleet of high-velocity interceptors, they managed to encircle the Blackened spawning flag. With a synchronized strike of starlight and kinetic force, they shattered the magical pylon. "Tch... another time then," Blackendye hissed, dissolving into a stream of data as the BRD forces were forced into a tactical retreat. Starratempis remained secured, a lone beacon of light in a darkening world.

The Lunar Front: The Crimson Fog of Moonveil Bay

The silver mists of Moonveil Bay had turned a bruised, sickly purple. Shadowadye drifted over the water like a ghost, his dual daggers glowing with a cold, spectral light. Lunarpuff, her silver dress torn and her Crescent Fan trembling in her hand, stood knee-deep in the surf, surrounded by the spectral elites Shadowstealth and Shadowlight.

"The Moon is a reflection of a lie," Shadowadye whispered, appearing behind her in a puff of ink. "The Shadow is the only truth."

"SHAA!" Lunarpuff screamed, spinning in a desperate circle of lunar mana. "My moon brings the tide... that will drag you... to the ABYSS!" She unleashed a massive Abyssal Crush, but the shadows simply flowed around the water. Shadowadye's daggers found their mark, piercing her side. "KYAAAAAH! Sobbing grunt... Moonshire... get the civilians... out..."

She tumbled into the water, her blood swirling into the tide. As the Shadow Regime's spawning flags were driven into the cliffs of the bay, the Blucrestmay State was officially declared a territory of the BRD. The lunar defenders retreated into the deep forests, leaving their coastal jewel to the darkness.

The Galaxy Front: The Mathematical Decay of Galaxukyōragi

At the Galaxukyōragi harbor, the air itself tasted of copper and rot. Galaxastream was a broken figure, leaning against a rusted crane as Deathendye and Deathumbrella advanced through a cloud of necro-spores.

"Mathematics... cannot... solve... this..." Galaxastream coughed, his lungs burning with the plague-smoke.

"Mathematics is a dream for the living," Deathendye growled, his jaw clicking with every word. "Death is the only constant. PLAGUE-BORN ERUPTION!"

Deathumbrella twirled her bone-parasol, giggling as the spikes at its tips glowed with necrotic energy. "Let's see if your gravity can hold your bones together!" She lunged, her parasol-blade piercing Galaxastream's chest. "GURGH! Splutters blood... Professor... it's... over..."

As Galaxastream was pulled into the air by a teleportation beam at the last second, the harbor was consumed by a tide of undead and mechanical rot. The Galaxy Regime's flags were burned, and the Galaxenhaikenshai State was renamed under the banner of the Death Regime.

The Aftermath

The montage of war concluded with a horrifying new map of Titanumas. The BRD had successfully conquered the Solar capital of Solnyxtalben, the Lunar sanctuary of Moonveil Bay, and the Galaxy hub of Galaxukyōragi. Only the Star Regime stood defiant.

As the ground units of the BRD marched through the conquered streets, planting their flags and establishing teleportation hubs for the next wave, the four Absolute leaders—Sunbeam, Moonbeam, Starbeam, and Galaxbeam—watched from their distant command centers. Their Great Wall at sea was a useless monument to their arrogance. The enemy wasn't coming from the horizon; the enemy was already home.

The war for Titanumas shifted from a struggle of steel to a relentless war of the soul as the sun began to set on the era of heroes. At the heart of the "Great Wall" naval blockade—the pride of the AES alliance—the world suddenly died. On the bridge of the Blackendark Leviathan, Blackwing raised his hand, his fingers twitching as if playing an invisible piano. Beside him, Shadowwing stood as a flickering tear in reality, his presence acting as a cold, spiritual vacuum. Together, they unleashed the "Void-Static Eclipse," a dual-layered assault that severed the world's nerves. Blackwing's viral code hijacked every digital frequency, replacing tactical data with a haunting, distorted image of a hooded figure laughing, while Shadowwing's spiritual aura spread a psychic fog over the ocean. Within minutes, the trillions of soldiers aboard the Armada were cut off; radars went black, psychic links snapped like glass, and a terrifying, unnatural silence fell over the sea. The heroes were no longer an army; they were blind, deaf, and isolated in a world of static.

While the blockade withered in the silence, the BRD deployed a masterstroke of psychological horror. Using the bio-regenerative vats of Doctor Deathwing and the soul-mimicry of the Shadow Regime, they birthed Absolute Clones—physical duplicates designed to shatter the morale of the AES leadership. In the ash-choked ruins of the Solar palace, General Sunbeam crashed through the ceiling in a comet of orange light, only to find his heart freezing in his chest. Sitting on his throne was Darkwing Shadowsypher—the man Sunbeam had personally slain chapters ago. The clone looked identical, wielding the same demonic axe with a terrifying familiarity. Sunbeam's voice cracked with shock as he screamed that it was impossible, that he had watched the light burn Darkwing to cinders. They clashed with a bitter, violent intensity, but every strike Sunbeam landed felt hollow as the clone mocked him with private memories of their childhood friendship, driving the Solar leader into a blinded, sobbing rage. Simultaneously, in the Crimson Fog of Moonveil Bay, Lady Moonbeam stood with her long, vibrant blue hair flowing like a tidal wave. She faced a Shadowwing Clone that emerged directly from her own shadow. As she radiated a deep, oceanic blue aura, she realized the deception, yet the clone's ability to mimic her movements made every Lunar Burst she fired feel like she was attacking her own reflection.

With the Absolute Leaders locked in these psychological duels, the real BRD masters launched the hammer blow. The real Darkwing and Doctor Deathwing led the Dread-Naught Armada—ships built from the bones of prehistoric sea monsters and reinforced with Darkened-iron—smashing through the paralyzed Great Wall blockade like a hot knife through wax. As the naval wall crumbled, the BRD unleashed its Elite Detachments to add fuel to the global fire. Darkhitler and Darkhit led squadrons of Dark-Raptors, raining Void-Bombs onto Solar cities already reeling from the first invasion. From the stratosphere, Deathweskers and Deathendye dropped Necro-Pods, infecting the Galaxy Regime's surviving research hubs with spores that turned the living into intelligent zombie defenders for the BRD. Even the Star Regime, which had successfully held its borders, found itself under a campaign of internal sabotage as Blackstreet, Blackgold, and Shadowstealth infiltrated the continent to dismantle its defenses from within.

The climax of this treachery reached a fever pitch simultaneously across all four fronts. Sunbeam, pushed to his absolute limit, unleashed a Supernova Overload that drove his blade through the Darkwing Clone's chest. But instead of blood, a black, oily sludge leaked from the wound. The clone began to melt, its face distorting into a laughing mask as it asked Sunbeam if he enjoyed the warm-up before telling him to look up. Sunbeam gazed toward the sky just as the clouds parted to reveal a massive, obsidian aerial fortress. Standing on the prow was the Real Darkwing, resurrected and restored, looking down with eyes full of cold malice beside Doctor Deathwing, who held a syringe of glowing violet fluid. The realization hit the AES leaders like a physical blow: the enemies they had been fighting were mere phantoms, designed to exhaust them.

The map of Titanumas was now a testament to absolute despair. Sollarisca was occupied, with Sunbeam trapped in his own capital by the Real Darkwing's fleet. Lunna was falling as Moonbeam's blue light was drowned by the psychic fog, and Galaxenchi was conquered, with Professor Galaxbeam in full retreat as Deathwing's plague-born army claimed the harbor. Only Xtreme Vice Colonel Starbeam Charmley remained as the last line of defense in Starrup, desperately holding the only continent not yet fully consumed. The BRD had not just won a battle; they had overwritten the rules of the world. As the Real Darkwing raised his axe toward the Solar sun, he declared that the era of heroes was a deleted file, welcoming the world to the New Absolute.

The battle for Sollbac Island became the defining crucible of the Solar Regime's collapse. As the Void-Sigil Flags pulsed with malevolent gravity, the very air of Solnyxtalben grew cold, the sun's warmth stripped away by the Darkenedye's presence. The Supreme Commander stood upon the scorched balcony of the former governor's palace, watching as Darkmarcus and Darkraiko orchestrated the systematic dismantling of the island's infrastructure. Every Solar soldier who fell was a testament to the "Mirror Treachery"—they weren't just fighting an army; they were fighting the crushing realization that their leaders were occupied by phantoms while their homes were being erased.

In the skies above Solmaris, the dogfight was a chaotic dance of light and void. Solar Elites Sunraiko and Sunmike were blurs of frantic orange energy, their solar wings sparking as they intercepted volleys of shadow-bolts. "Move! Get the evacuation ships to the Solmora Reach!" Sunraiko screamed, his voice barely audible over the roar of crashing gunships. He lunged forward, his blade glowing with a dying brilliance, only to be met by Darkenedye himself, who had warped into the airspace with a sickening ripple in reality.

"GURGH!" Sunraiko let out a strangled cry as Darkenedye's hand closed around his throat, the Void-Shatter energy instantly neutralizing his solar aura. "Such a pitiful flicker," the Darkened Commander hissed, his eyes two pits of endless night. With a casual flick of his wrist, he unleashed a pulse of dark matter that sent Sunraiko hurtling toward the sea, his armor shattering like glass upon impact. Sunmike roared in grief, attempting a desperation tackle, but he was intercepted by a barrage of dark-raptors, their Void-Bombs turning the sky into a hellscape of black fire.

Down in the narrow streets of Solterisca, the ground war was a grisly war of attrition. Sunwise and Sunfelix stood back-to-back at the city's main gate, their energy shields flickering as they blocked a relentless tide of Darksoldiers. "Hah... hah... is that all you've got?" Sunfelix taunted, though blood was leaking from beneath his cracked visor and his left arm hung uselessly at his side. He parried a strike from a Darkened elite, the vibration of the impact rattling his teeth. "Nnngh! I can... do this... all day!"

"Save your breath, Felix," Sunwise grunted, his boots sliding back on the blood-slicked cobblestones. He unleashed a final, straining Sun-Burst that blinded the front line of the attackers, buyng them a few more precious seconds. "We are the wall. If we fall, the reach falls." But even as he spoke, the massive obsidian fortress of the real Darkwing loomed over the horizon, casting a shadow that stretched across the entire island. The Solar heroes were gasping for air, their mana pools drained to the dregs, yet they remained anchored to the soil. They were the last embers of an empire, grunting in pain and screaming in defiance, while the New Absolute prepared to snuff them out forever.

The fall of Sollbac Island served as a grim blueprint for the BRD's systematic dismantling of the Solar Regime's smaller territories, even as the vast, sprawling mainland of the Sollarisca continent continued to burn with the fires of a stubborn, continent-wide resistance. In the dying moments of the island's defense, the Solar Elites initiated the "Last Light" Protocol, a desperate fighting retreat toward the Solmaris docks where the last evacuation ships waited. However, the sky itself betrayed them. Darkenedye, standing atop the ruins of the capital, reached upward with a clawed hand, activating his "Eclipse Hand" superpower. With a sickening, grinding sound, he appeared to physically seize the sun-rays above the island and pull them down into the abyss of his palm, plunging the entire region into a localized, artificial night.

In this unnatural darkness, the terrifying efficiency of the BRD reached its zenith. As the "Flag Saturation" took hold, Void-Sigil Flags were driven into the soil of Solterisca and Solveraine Hold. The Darkened armies did not march; they "popped" into existence inside command centers and private living rooms, ending the struggle before the Sunmarines could even draw their blades. From his distant mainland command center, General Sunbeam was forced to watch his tactical map turn from a vibrant orange to a cold, suffocating black. He could do nothing to intervene; he was locked in a brutal stall against a Darkwing Clone who utilized "Mirror Despair," forcing Sunbeam to fight a soulless reflection of himself that mimicked his every move without the burden of his morals.

As the light faded from Sollbac, the narrative "camera" panned across the Sea of Tranquility toward Celebluu Island, the bioluminescent jewel of the Lunna Continent. Here, the warm oranges of the Solar Regime were replaced by deep, oceanic navies and pulsing blues, but the serenity was a mask for a different kind of horror. The Blackened Regime did not arrive with flags; they arrived through the "BMAIL System Corruption." At Lunlight City and the capital of Lunascendoria Falls, the invasion began with a terrifying "Static-Shift." Blackened Elites Blackcon and Blackpro moved through the streets like corrupted data, flickering in and out of reality. They were glitches in the physical world, making it impossible for the local Moonmarines to land a single physical strike as the invaders phased through bayonets and bullets alike.

The digital eclipse of Celebluu Island accelerated as Supreme Commander Blackendye ascended the Lunascendoria Spire. He stood not with a blade, but with a black terminal of pulsing obsidian glass, activating his "System Delete" superpower. Below him, the Lunar Regime's own automated turrets and robotic guardians let out a collective, mechanical shriek as their code was overwritten, spinning their barrels to fire upon the very citizens they were built to protect. "GAAH! My own sentries... they're targeting us!" screamed a Lunar officer as the streets became a crossfire of traitorous machinery.

At Lunamyth Port, the resistance was led by Moonshire and Moonetta, but their grace was stolen by the "Lag-Field Generation" deployed by Blackstreet and Blackgold. To the Lunar Elites, the very air felt as thick as cooling lead; their movements were delayed by agonizing seconds, while the Blackened forces moved at a predatory, doubled speed. Moonshire swung her blade in a slow-motion arc, only to be met by a hail of blows she couldn't even see coming. "Nngh... my body... it won't... move!" she grunted, coughing as a Blackened blade grazed her side.

While her island was being digitally reformatted, Lady Moonbeam remained pinned in Moonveil Bay, trapped in a psychological cage. Her Shadowwing Clone utilized "Abyssal Oceanic Gravity," making the very seawater she commanded feel like molten mercury. She gasped for air, her long blue hair matted with salt and blood, unable to lift her hands as the water itself held her down. High above the cities of Lunamaris and Lunacove, massive, flickering holographic "X" marks were projected into the clouds—a cold, digital signal that these territories had been "Deleted and Replaced" by the New Absolute. The heroes were standing their ground on the mainland, but one by one, their islands of hope were being wiped from the map.

The fall of Celebluu Island was no longer a battle; it was a systematic execution of a culture, a digital rot that ate through the bioluminescent heart of the Lunar territory. As the "BMAIL System Corruption" took hold, the air didn't just turn cold—it turned loud with the swagger of a conqueror. In the neon-drenched streets of Lunlight City, the invading Blackmarines didn't move with military silence; they moved with the rhythmic, aggressive energy of a street takeover, their presence flickering like a corrupted broadcast.

"Yo, check the refresh rate on these Moon-fools!" Blackcon barked, his form stuttering in a trail of jagged pixels as he stood in the center of the Lunascendoria Falls plaza. He adjusted his tactical visor, spitting on the shimmering, wet pavement. "They really thought they could hold the block with some glowing water and a prayer? Man, delete these bums. They're straight-up laggin'!"

Beside him, Blackpro laughed, a sound like a skipping CD. "Word. They out here movin' in 30 FPS while we're on that god-tier overclock. Look at 'em. Stay still so I can clip you, bruh!"

The transition from the serene, spiritual blue of the Lunar Regime to the chaotic "Static-Shift" of the Blackened Regime was a physical assault on reality. At the capital, the elite defenders Moonsphere and Moonrire finally stepped into the crossfire, their faces twisted in anime-expressive masks of fury and desperation.

"Enough of your digital filth!" Moonsphere screamed, her voice a piercing melody that resonated with the tides. She threw her arms wide, manifesting a shimmering, high-gravity orb of lunar energy. "This world is flesh and tide! It is the breath of the ocean, not the cold silence of data! LUNAR ART: TIDAL SINGULARITY!"

"Flesh is a bug, sweetheart," Blackcon countered, his voice dripping with street-wise arrogance. He didn't dodge the gravity field; he "popped" through it, his pixels deconstructing and reconstructing inches from her face. He sneered, his eyes glowing with red binary code. "And we the patch. Binary Entanglement, homie—catch this fade!"

The duel became a blur of neon blue and suffocating black static. Moonrire swung her light-blades with desperate, flowing grace, but Blackpro flickered through the steel like a ghost in the machine. "Nngh! Guh! Why... why can't I touch you?!" she grunted, her breath coming in ragged gasps as a pixelated strike caught her in the ribs.

"Too slow, sis! You're playin' on a dial-up soul in a fiber-optic era!" Blackpro mocked, his psychological barbs cutting deeper than his blades.

High above, atop the Lunascendoria Spire, the true horror reached its peak. Supreme Commander Lunarstride faced Blackendale in a clash that shook the foundations of the island. Tidal energy surged against the obsidian terminal's output, creating a vortex of steam and sparks.

"You're deleting a civilization!" Lunarstride gasped, her hands trembling as she poured her last reserves into a protective shield. "Millions of lives... memories... gone!"

Blackendale didn't even look up from his pulsing glass screen, his fingers moving across the keys with predatory precision. "Nah, we just clearin' up disk space. You're obsolete, lady. The 'New Absolute' don't do 'pretty.' It does 'Efficient.'" With a final, heavy keystroke, he whispered, "Format: C."

The massive holographic "X" marks ignited in the clouds above Lunamaris and Lunacove, pulsing with a terminal red light that signaled the finality of the "Deleted and Replaced" protocol. The screams of the Moonmarines were cut short, replaced by the humming silence of a wiped hard drive.

The narrative "camera" pulled back with a sickening lurch, leaving the glitching remains of Celebluu behind. The map of Titanumas zoomed out until the islands were mere data points in a sea of darkness. In the high-tech, clinical silence of the Starrup Continent, the green-lit command deck of Starriyuld provided a stark, cold contrast to the chaos.

Xtreme Vice Colonel Starbeam Charmley stood with his hands behind his back, his posture rigid as he watched the tactical display turn a cold, digital black. "Celebluu is gone," an analyst whispered, the sound of shaking breath filling the room. "The Lunar Regime's data-structure has been completely overwritten. They're... they're gone, sir."

Starbeam Charmley narrowed his eyes, his voice steady and devoid of the fear that had gripped the other continents. "The Solar Regime burns, and the Lunar Regime is deleted. The Galaxy Regime falls to rot. It seems the 'Allied Evolution Salvation' has failed its primary objective."

He turned away from the screen, his heavy cape sweeping across the floor like a comet's tail. "Enough of this retreat. Initiate the 'Supernova Contingency.' If the BRD wants a world of darkness and static, we will provide them with a light so blinding it will burn the very code from their veins. The Stars are the only thing left to guide this world. ALL SYSTEMS TO MAXIMUM!"

The fall of Celebluu Island left a void in the global network that the Star Regime felt instantly. On the high-tech, clinical bridge of the Starriyuld, the silence was heavy, a stark contrast to the glitching screams of the Lunar neighbors. Xtreme Vice Colonel Starbeam Charmley stood rigid, his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the holographic display. He was a man of cold logic and introverted intensity, and though his face remained a stern mask, the vein pulsing in his temple betrayed the immense stress of a leader watching the world's variables fail one by one.

The tactical display didn't just flicker; it bled. Before Charmley could issue the command for the "Supernova Contingency," a jagged, skeletal silhouette materialized over the global map—the projection of Deathwing, Absolute Leader of the Death Regime. His eyes were not filled with the Blackened Regime's chaotic street-fire; they were pale, surgical, and terrifyingly calm.

"Colonel Charmley," Deathwing's voice rasped, vibrating through the ship's internal sensors like dry leaves on a coffin. "You calculate the stars, yet you fail to see the rot at your feet. Your 'Allied Evolution' is a corpse. I am merely here to sign the death certificate. Do not move to assist the Solar or Lunar remnants. If you leave your skies, your people will not die in battle—they will dissolve in their beds."

"Necrotic frequencies... he's bypassed our triple-layer encryption," a technician gasped, his fingers trembling over a console that was beginning to sprout black, fungal growths.

Starbeam didn't flinch. "I do not negotiate with pathogens, Deathwing. Tactical! Lock the Nova-Pulse Star-Breaker on the BRD teleportation signatures. Wipe them from the sector!"

In the industrial heart of Starrengrade State, the massive, continent-sized railgun hummed to life. But the sound changed from a high-pitched power-up to a sickening, metallic crunch. On the monitors, the shimmering alloys of the weapon began to turn a deep, rusted orange. Deathwis, the Elite Scribe of the Death Regime, had already infiltrated the firing chamber. Utilizing his "Chronological Rot," he aged the Star-Breaker's firing pins by ten thousand years in a single second. The pride of the Star Regime—the weapon meant to save the world—shattered into a mountain of brittle, rusted iron dust.

"The weapon... it's gone, sir! The Star-Breaker is offline!"

"Then we hold the line with steel and light!" Starbeam's voice cracked like a whip as he drew his photon-sidearm. "All units to Starrengrade! Defend the Starrforge factories at any cost! If the forge goes dark, the stars go out!"

The invasion of the Starrup continent was a nightmare of biological entropy. Deathendye, Supreme Commander of the Death Regime, led the march into the city of Starrfield. Unlike the loud, flickering Blackmarines, his "Plague-Marines" moved with the slow, inevitable pace of a funeral procession. At the center of the industrial district, the Star Elites Starradye and Starrastream met the tide.

"STAR-GENESIS ART: PHOTON OVERLOAD!" Starrastream screamed, her eyes glowing with the fierce intensity of a dying sun. She unleashed a blinding wave of pure energy that should have incinerated any organic life.

But Deathendye simply walked through the white-hot light, his zombie-flesh sloughing off in charred chunks and regenerating in a horrific cycle of undeath. "Your mathematics cannot solve the equation of the grave," he growled, his jaw clicking as he advanced. "Death is the only constant. PLAGUE-BORN ERUPTION!" He slammed his staff down, releasing a cloud of black spores that melted through the Star-Regime's environmental suits like acid.

Nearby, Starrastride clashed with the Elite Deathweskers in a high-speed blur. Starrastride moved like a comet, but Deathweskers deployed his "Total Zero Stasis," an aura that sucked the kinetic energy right out of the air. Starrastride felt his limbs grow heavy, his high-tech armor frosting over as the very heat of his body was harvested by the void.

"You're lookin' a little cold, Star-boy," Deathweskers whispered, his voice a chilling rasp as he raised a jagged necro-blade. "Let's put that fire out for good."

As the factories of Starrforge began to burn with green, sickly flames, Starbeam Charmley stood amidst the falling ash of his command center. His weapon was gone, his allies were silent, and his continent was being reclaimed by the earth. But as the shadows of the Death Regime closed in on the Starriyuld, his introverted reserve shattered into a fierce, terminal light.

"Deathwing thinks he has solved the equation of our extinction," Starbeam whispered, the glow of his armor intensifying until it was painful to look at. "He forgot one variable: A star is brightest right before it goes supernova. ALL SYSTEMS TO MAXIMUM! WE DIE IN THE LIGHT!" The ship groaned as it began to transform into a vessel of pure radiance, preparing to meet the rot with a final, blinding judgment.

As the Star-Breaker railgun crumbled into a mountain of oxidized dust, the atmospheric sensors over the Starrup Continent screamed in a high-pitched symphony of failure. The clinical, high-tech order of the Star Regime was being violently overwritten by a dual-regime invasion that felt like the world itself was being buried alive under a layer of soot and silence.

In the industrial heart of Starrengrade State, the air grew thick with a green, necrotic fog that tasted of copper and old graves. Supreme Commander Deathendye touched down in the center of Starrlight City, his presence a focal point of biological decay. His "+" shaped pupils glowed with a clinical, cold light as he watched the architecture rot at his touch. Behind him, Elites like Deathbond and Deathpierce moved through the streets, their mottled gray-violet armor clinking softly. Their mere proximity caused the Star-Marines' hard-light barricades to flicker, hiss, and melt into puddles of useless energy. The defending ground units fought with the mechanical, introverted precision typical of the Star Regime, but they were resisting an enemy that refused the logic of the grave. For every Plague-Marine blasted apart by green-tinted photon fire, two more seemed to stitch themselves together from the blackened soil, rising with wet, snapping sounds.

Then, the true horror unfurled. As the Star forces were pushed back by the rot, they didn't find safety in the alleys—they found the Shadow Regime. Like a liquid ink-bleed, Shadow-Marines began to emerge from the corners of buildings. They moved in eerie, ritualized silence, their deep violet banners marked with the central "watching eye" flapping in the stagnant wind. They occupied the territory the moment the light of the Star Regime dimmed, communicating only through sharp, mocking gestures and deliberate, cold glares.

Near the Starrforge factories, the high-speed duel between Supreme Commander Starrastride and the Elite Deathweskers reached its violent peak. Starrastride was a blur of relativistic motion, a green comet of justice that should have been untouchable.

"RAAAAAH! Get out of my city, you walking corpse!" Starrastride screamed, his voice booming like a sonic crack as he lunged.

Yet, Deathweskers was a master of the "Dirty Stall." He threw his mottled-gray body into the path of the Commander, utilizing "Total Zero Stasis" to create invisible friction-walls in the air.

"Too fast for your own good, 'Commander'!" Deathweskers rasped, his jaw clicking as his body was literally torn apart by the sonic booms of Starrastride's proximity. "Ggg-GAAAAH!" He sustained catastrophic injuries; his ribs shattered into dust and his necrotic flesh scorched white, but the Elite laughed through the blood. Just as Starrastride prepared a finishing "Supernova Impact," Deathweskers triggered a "Self-Disintegration." His body exploded into a cloud of toxic, entropic ash, fending off the Commander and buying the precious seconds needed for the Shadow Regime to fully encircle the sector.

Meanwhile, aboard the Starriyuld, the heavy silence of the command deck was violated. Xtreme Vice Colonel Starbeam Charmley didn't look up as the reinforced blast doors rotted off their hinges, turning into flakes of rust. He had expected this; his calculations had already predicted the breach. A Deathwing Clone stepped into the room, its skeletal face twisted into a mocking grin, "+" pupils fixed on Starbeam.

"You look stressed, Colonel," the Clone hissed, its voice a hollow echo of the Absolute Leader. "All those equations, and you couldn't calculate a way out of the dirt."

With a casual wave of a decaying hand, the Clone unleashed a "Necrotic Pulse." The high-tech deck of the Starriyuld didn't just break; it decayed. Monitors sprouted black fungal spores; steel beams rusted and snapped with a series of groaning metallic screams. The entire command center collapsed, forcing the battle out into the burning, ash-covered ruins of Starrengrade.

Outside, the two titans clashed. Starbeam was a powerhouse of stern logic and brilliant green light, his every move a calculated counter.

"Hmph... calculations don't fail. They just account for the end!" Starbeam grunted, his voice disciplined and serious even as he dodged a swing of the Clone's rusted blade.

He blocked with shimmering precision, his "Stellar Judgment" beams shredding the Clone's physical form. The Clone took massive damage—his left arm was severed in a spray of dark sludge, his chest pierced by a beam of light—but he showed no pain, no flinching. He was a mindless, necrotic tank designed only to distract.

Starbeam's focus was absolute—until the silence of the Shadow Regime intervened. Without warning, the shadow beneath Starbeam's feet liquified into a pool of neon-magenta ink. A Shadowwing Clone emerged blindly from the ground behind him, a blade of solidified void-energy extended in a soundless strike.

SQUELCH.

The shadow-blade pierced through Starbeam's back, emerging through his chest.

"Gah...!" Starbeam's eyes went wide, his pupils shrinking. The vibrant green glow of his armor began to flicker and die as "Abyssal Venom" surged through his veins, locking his joints like frozen gears. "Nnngh... a pincer... I... I missed a variable..."

Mortally wounded and gasping for air, the Colonel realized the trap. He wasn't fighting a war; he was being processed for deletion. Utilizing a desperate, soul-burning "Light-Warp," Starbeam vanished in a flash of dying, blinding radiance, retreating into the unknown.

With the Vice Colonel gone, the Shadow Regime swept through the remaining cities—Europhanstar, Starrlume, and Starrbrook—in minutes. They planted their magenta banners in the center of every plaza, the "watching eye" staring out over a conquered land. Any remaining Star Elites, like Starradye and Starrastream, were intercepted in brief, brutal skirmishes. They fought with the courage of dying suns, but against the combined entropy of Deathendye and the silent efficiency of the Shadow commanders, they were left broken and bleeding in the soot.

The Starrup Continent, once the beacon of science and progress, was now a silent, rotting graveyard of shadows. The New Absolute had claimed its third throne.

As the Star-Breaker railgun crumbled into a mountain of oxidized dust, the atmospheric sensors over the Starrup Continent screamed in a high-pitched symphony of failure. The clinical, high-tech order of the Star Regime was being violently overwritten by a dual-regime invasion that felt like the world itself was being buried alive under a layer of soot and silence.

In the industrial heart of Starrengrade State, the air grew thick with a green, necrotic fog that tasted of copper and old graves. Supreme Commander Deathendye touched down in the center of Starrlight City, his presence a focal point of biological decay. His "+" shaped pupils glowed with a clinical, cold light as he watched the architecture rot at his touch. Behind him, Elites like Deathbond and Deathpierce moved through the streets, their mottled gray-violet armor clinking softly. Their mere proximity caused the Star-Marines' hard-light barricades to flicker, hiss, and melt into puddles of useless energy. The defending ground units fought with the mechanical, introverted precision typical of the Star Regime, but they were resisting an enemy that refused the logic of the grave. For every Plague-Marine blasted apart by green-tinted photon fire, two more seemed to stitch themselves together from the blackened soil, rising with wet, snapping sounds.

Then, the true horror unfurled. As the Star forces were pushed back by the rot, they didn't find safety in the alleys—they found the Shadow Regime. Like a liquid ink-bleed, Shadow-Marines began to emerge from the corners of buildings. They moved in eerie, ritualized silence, their deep violet banners marked with the central "watching eye" flapping in the stagnant wind. They occupied the territory the moment the light of the Star Regime dimmed, communicating only through sharp, mocking gestures and deliberate, cold glares.

Near the Starrforge factories, the high-speed duel between Supreme Commander Starrastride and the Elite Deathweskers reached its violent peak. Starrastride was a blur of relativistic motion, a green comet of justice that should have been untouchable.

"RAAAAAH! Get out of my city, you walking corpse!" Starrastride screamed, his voice booming like a sonic crack as he lunged.

Yet, Deathweskers was a master of the "Dirty Stall." He threw his mottled-gray body into the path of the Commander, utilizing "Total Zero Stasis" to create invisible friction-walls in the air.

"Too fast for your own good, 'Commander'!" Deathweskers rasped, his jaw clicking as his body was literally torn apart by the sonic booms of Starrastride's proximity. "Ggg-GAAAAH!" He sustained catastrophic injuries; his ribs shattered into dust and his necrotic flesh scorched white, but the Elite laughed through the blood. Just as Starrastride prepared a finishing "Supernova Impact," Deathweskers triggered a "Self-Disintegration." His body exploded into a cloud of toxic, entropic ash, fending off the Commander and buying the precious seconds needed for the Shadow Regime to fully encircle the sector.

Meanwhile, aboard the Starriyuld, the heavy silence of the command deck was violated. Xtreme Vice Colonel Starbeam Charmley didn't look up as the reinforced blast doors rotted off their hinges, turning into flakes of rust. He had expected this; his calculations had already predicted the breach. A Deathwing Clone stepped into the room, its skeletal face twisted into a mocking grin, "+" pupils fixed on Starbeam.

"You look stressed, Colonel," the Clone hissed, its voice a hollow echo of the Absolute Leader. "All those equations, and you couldn't calculate a way out of the dirt."

With a casual wave of a decaying hand, the Clone unleashed a "Necrotic Pulse." The high-tech deck of the Starriyuld didn't just break; it decayed. Monitors sprouted black fungal spores; steel beams rusted and snapped with a series of groaning metallic screams. The entire command center collapsed, forcing the battle out into the burning, ash-covered ruins of Starrengrade.

Outside, the two titans clashed. Starbeam was a powerhouse of stern logic and brilliant green light, his every move a calculated counter.

"Hmph... calculations don't fail. They just account for the end!" Starbeam grunted, his voice disciplined and serious even as he dodged a swing of the Clone's rusted blade.

He blocked with shimmering precision, his "Stellar Judgment" beams shredding the Clone's physical form. The Clone took massive damage—his left arm was severed in a spray of dark sludge, his chest pierced by a beam of light—but he showed no pain, no flinching. He was a mindless, necrotic tank designed only to distract.

Starbeam's focus was absolute—until the silence of the Shadow Regime intervened. Without warning, the shadow beneath Starbeam's feet liquified into a pool of neon-magenta ink. A Shadowwing Clone emerged blindly from the ground behind him, a blade of solidified void-energy extended in a soundless strike.

SQUELCH.

The shadow-blade pierced through Starbeam's back, emerging through his chest.

"Gah...!" Starbeam's eyes went wide, his pupils shrinking. The vibrant green glow of his armor began to flicker and die as "Abyssal Venom" surged through his veins, locking his joints like frozen gears. "Nnngh... a pincer... I... I missed a variable..."

Mortally wounded and gasping for air, the Colonel realized the trap. He wasn't fighting a war; he was being processed for deletion. Utilizing a desperate, soul-burning "Light-Warp," Starbeam vanished in a flash of dying, blinding radiance, retreating into the unknown.

With the X Vice Colonel gone, the Shadow Regime swept through the remaining cities—Europhanstar, Starrlume, and Starrbrook—in minutes. They planted their magenta banners in the center of every plaza, the "watching eye" staring out over a conquered land. Any remaining Star Elites, like Starradye and Starrastream, were intercepted in brief, brutal skirmishes. They fought with the courage of dying suns, but against the combined entropy of Deathendye and the silent efficiency of the Shadow commanders, they were left broken and bleeding in the soot.

The Starrup Continent, once the beacon of science and progress, was now a silent, rotting graveyard of shadows. The New Absolute had claimed its third throne.

The shadow of the Starrup Continent's collapse had not yet reached the shimmering horizons of Galaxenchi when the heavens themselves began to vibrate with a different kind of frequency—one of cold, unyielding logic. On the continent of Galaxenchi, the "Infinite Calculation" had long been the ultimate shield of the Galaxy Regime, a web of quantum foresight so dense that time itself seemed to bow to the Professor-Prince's will. For hours, the battle was not a war, but a demonstration of divine foresight.

Galaxbeam stood at the epicenter of the Chronos-Star hub, his long robes flowing in a phantom wind, his eyes reflecting the shimmering light of a billion variables as they cascaded across his vision like falling stars. Beside him, the command deck hummed with an introverted, focused intensity. Under his mental orchestration, the Supreme Commanders—Galaxadye, Galaxadale, Galaxastream, Galaxastride, and Galaxastorm—moved across the theater of war like pieces on a board where the opponent's moves had already been written in the past.

In the Gallaxgonbei State, the initial invasion by the Blackened and Darkened regimes was a spectacular, almost insulting failure. At Galaxenportal City and Jakchi City, the BRD fleets exited warp only to find themselves perfectly intercepted by Galaxastride's relativistic kinetic strikes, his form a streak of emerald light that shredded metal before it could even deploy. At Gallenkodai Town, enemy troops were phased into the very bedrock by Galaxastorm's gravitational manipulation, their screams silenced by the sudden densification of the earth. The Galaxy Regime anticipated every bullet, every tactical shift, and every desperate gamble with an introverted, cold efficiency that bordered on the mechanical.

"Your efforts are a mere rounding error," Galaxbeam whispered, his voice resonating through the quantum-comm links like the chime of a distant clock. "The future is a solved equation. You have already lost because you are fighting against the inevitable."

But then, the atmosphere over the Galaxenchi-Tenkūjō (Sky Castle) turned a sickly, bruised violet, and the hum of the Chronos-Star hit a discordant, flat note. The calculation failed. A hole appeared in reality—not a rift in space, but a void where a person should be. A Deathwing Clone landed in the Sky Castle's central plaza, the impact sending out a wave of gray-violet mist. His "+" shaped pupils pulsed with a rhythmic, entropic light that didn't just jam the Galaxy's sensors; it rotted the very concepts of "future" and "possibility."

The Clone was a Necrotic Void. Because he was technically already dead, a vessel of "zero" in a world of "one," Galaxbeam's foresight could not latch onto him. The Professor's eyes widened, the cascading variables in his vision turning into static.

The duel was a clash of cosmic math against absolute entropy. Galaxbeam unleashed "Dimensional Severance," his hands tracing complex geometric patterns in the air to attempt to slice the Clone into separate, harmless timelines. But the Deathwing Clone walked through the rifts as if they were nothing more than cobwebs, his mottled-gray armor smoking with a "Despair-Frequency" that caused Galaxbeam's hands to tremble for the first time in centuries. With a brutal, clinical strike, the Clone drove a necrotic palm into Galaxbeam's chest. The "Necrotic Zero" pulse shattered the Prince's celestial aura, the sound like a thousand mirrors breaking at once. Galaxbeam was sent crashing through the marble pillars of his own palace, his breath hitching in a pained gasp.

"The Professor... has been corrected," the Clone hissed, its voice a hollow rattle that seemed to echo from inside Galaxbeam's own mind.

As Galaxbeam hacked up stardust-colored blood, his vibrant blue and purple robes stained with the dark sludge of the rot, he realized the equation had changed. "Retreat..." he choked out, his voice cracking with a rare, raw emotion. "All units... to the inner sanctum... the calculation... is broken!"

The floodgates of Gallaxgonbei and Galaxenshu states burst open as the retreat began. The Death Regime and Shadow Regime swept through the continent like a spreading infection. Gallaxengongshi, the proud capital of the north, was the first to fall. Its golden towers, once symbols of eternal progress, were draped in deep violet banners marked with the "watching eye" emblem. Galaxenzuochen and Wanshengtu Town were overrun by silent Shadow-Marines who emerged blindly from the very reflections of the retreating soldiers, communicating their victory through ritualized taps on their armor. In the south, Bekikonshu City—the industrial heart of the Galaxy—was seized and plunged into darkness, its particle accelerators repurposed for the production of necrotic weaponry.

The legendary Supreme Commanders, Galaxastorm and Galaxastride, attempted a desperate last stand at the Galaxenchi-Jikūzan (Space-Time Mountain). Galaxastorm roared, his voice thick with the strain of holding back the tide, swinging his constellation-blade to create localized supernovas that incinerated the leading edge of the Plague-Marines. Beside him, Galaxastride moved so fast he became a blur of green light, a physical manifestation of kinetic energy. They were unstoppable—until the Shadowwing Clone appeared.

Emerging blindly from the shadow cast by the very mountain they defended, the Shadowwing Clone moved in a soundless blur. It didn't speak; it didn't even breathe. It delivered two ritualized, silent stabs of void-energy. The void-blades pierced through their cosmic armor, laced with an "Abyssal Venom" that turned their celestial energy into lead.

"N-not... like this..." Galaxastride gasped, his god-like speed failing as his legs turned to stone. He collapsed into the soot of Galaxenchi-Kōryū, his hand reaching out toward the mountain peak one last time.

The lights of the Galaxenchi-Eienmachi (Eternal Town) were snuffed out one by one. The Castle of Time was officially occupied by the "Watching Eye" banners of the Shadow Regime, their magenta accents dripping like neon blood against the gray-violet fog of the Death Regime. As the BRD's combined forces converged on the final sanctuary of Gallaxenaikolani, the Galaxy Regime's history was being systematically deleted, rewritten by the clinical, silent peace of the grave.

Titanumas was no longer a world of four regimes. It was a world of four graves, and the "New Absolute" was the only constant left in the silence.

The horizon between the fallen continents and the final sanctuary of Westonglappa was no longer a sea, but a boiling cauldron of steel, magic, and death. The Allied Evolution Salvation (AES) had reinforced their "Great Wall" with desperate, limitless waves, pouring every remaining resource into the churning waters. From the Starrup Continent, massive Starratempis and Starragravion class cruisers arrived, their emerald "Gravity-Lances" humming with enough energy to stabilize tectonic plates. The sky was a frantic mosaic of Solar Sol-Destroyers and Lunar Crescent-Bombers, while high-tech Galaxy Nebula-Jets warped through the clouds, their pilots' hearts pounding as they searched for a gap in the nightmare.

Floating at the vanguard, the four Absolute Leaders of the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency (BRD)—the Blackened Regime—watched with clinical detachment. They didn't need ships. They were the storm.

The Divine Carnage of the Absolute Leaders

Darkwing was the first to unleash his fury, his maroon aura flaring with the heat of a collapsing star. "INFINITE WAVES... INFINITE TARGETS!" he roared, his voice shaking the very atmosphere and cracking the cockpit glass of nearby jets. He raised both hands, and the ocean floor groaned. With a jagged motion, he unleashed the "Abyssal Trench" magic, tearing miles-long chasms into the seabed. Thousands of AES ships—carriers and destroyers alike—tumbled into the lightless void, their sailors screaming into the dark. Then, with a savage grin, Darkwing slammed his hands together. The sea slammed shut like a heavy book, pulverizing the fleet instantly in a pillar of white foam and iron shards. When a concentrated Solar "Super-Sun" beam struck him directly, he didn't even flinch; he caught the incandescent light with his bare hand, crushed it into a ball of dark-red fire, and tossed it back. "YOU ARE NOT SLOWING US DOWN! YOU ARE JUST GIVING US MORE TO BURN!"

Beside him, Blackwing leaned back in mid-air, his movements fluid and full of street-wise swagger as he snapped his fingers to a rhythmic, heavy beat. "Yo, check the refresh rate on these L's! Error 404: Hope Not Found, bruh!" he barked, his voice cutting through the comms of every AES vessel. With every snap of his fingers, he triggered a "Frame-Rate Crash" pulse. Entire AES aerial squadrons frozen in time—suspended mid-flight like insects in amber—before shattering into jagged purple pixels that dissolved into the salt spray. "Stay still so I can clip you, man. You're straight-up laggin'," he laughed, his form flickering with chaotic purple energy and the raw intimidation of the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency.

Shadowwing remained a silent, terrifying void, his presence expanding a massive Neon-Magenta Eye across the entire sky. It was the Shadow Regime's ultimate authority, a ritualized signal that the world was being watched—and erased. Every AES pilot who dared look upon the eye was simply deleted from existence, their bodies vanishing and leaving empty ghost-planes to fall like rain into the sea. Simultaneously, Doctor Deathwing raised his hands, his "+" shaped pupils glowing with a surgical violet light. The "souls" of the recently destroyed ships rose from the acid-violet waves as "Ghost-Fleet" hybrids—twisted metal reanimated by necro-technology. These undead husks turned their rusted guns on their own reinforcements, firing shells filled with entropic spores.

The Pincer of the Supreme Commanders

The Supreme Commanders led the joint fleet to finish the stragglers. Blackendye, Blackendale, Blackenstream, Blackenstride, and Blackenstorm navigated street-tactical warships equipped with "Bass-Cannons" that shattered Lunar hulls with raw, vibrating sound. Elites Blackstreet and Blackraid led boarding parties onto Galaxy Nebula-Jets, physically ripping the cockpits open with their bare hands in mid-air and tossing the pilots into the clouds. Meanwhile, Blackgold and Blackheat utilized "Thermal Glitch" magic to melt Solar wings before a single photon could be fired, turning high-tech alloys into molten slag.

In the center of the carnage, the Darkened Supreme Commanders—Darkenedye, Darkenedale, Darkenedstream, and Darkenedstride—formed the "Dread-Formation," generating a dark-red forcefield that was utterly impenetrable. Darkenedpuff, her eyes wide with a manic rage, floated alongside Darkwing. "FEEBLE LIGHT! WATCH AS YOUR HOPE TURNS TO DUST!" she shrieked, her voice a jagged blade. She conjured "Enraged Aero-Bursts"—massive, darkening tornadoes that sucked up Lunar Moon-Gliders and shredded them into scrap metal within seconds. Below her, Elites Darklance and Darkskewer acted as human railguns, their bodies wreathed in maroon fire as they pierced through entire Solar carriers from bow to stern.

Biological Decay and Silent Execution

The water itself had become a weapon of biological horror. Deathwesker and Elites Darktomb and Darkdeath dropped "Necro-Anchors" into the sea, turning the ocean into a corrosive violet acid that dissolved AES hulls in seconds. High-grade titanium bubbled and hissed, while pilots watched in horror as their engines grew organic, rotting "growths" that caused their planes to stall. "The cycle of life is an inefficiency," Deathwing rasped, his voice a dry rattle. "I am merely correcting the error."

Finally, the Shadow Regime ensured the silence was absolute. Shadowadye, Shadowadale, Shadowastream, Shadowastride, and Shadowastorm moved with ritualized grace through the smoke. Shadowapuff, the female Supreme Commander, glided silently behind Shadowwing, her neon-magenta accents dripping like light. She utilized "Neon-Friction" magic, causing the air around Galaxy jets to become physically solid. The high-speed crafts, unable to compensate, crashed into invisible walls of hardened air, exploding into brilliant green fireballs. Elites Shadowkeen, Darkpenumbrio, and Darksombrán emerged from the shadows cast by the AES ships' own masts, executing captains with silent, magenta-bladed precision before vanishing back into the dark.

The "Great Wall" was no longer a defense; it was a fuel source. The AES was throwing bodies and metal into a meat grinder just to buy minutes for Westonglappa. The ocean was a graveyard of orange, silver, green, and blue scrap, all being slowly pushed back by the relentless, four-colored tide of the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency. Titanumas was witnessing not a battle, but a planetary foreclosure. The era of heroes was a flickering candle, and the Absolute Leaders were the darkness that had finally arrived to blow it out.

The air above the Great Wall was no longer oxygen; it was a pressurized mixture of ozone, digital static, and the copper tang of blood. The Allied Evolution Salvation (AES) had fallen headfirst into the trap of the "Grand Deception." Every radar screen from the Starrup Continent to the shores of Westonglappa was screaming red, fixated on the four God-like silhouettes tearing the sky asunder, while the true knife was being pressed against the world's throat in the darkness below.

In the upper atmosphere, Blackwing and Shadowwing conducted a chilling symphony of aerial dominance. Blackwing's "Systematic Deletion Pulse" had forced the AES High Command to divert every available Galaxy Nebula-Jet and Star Astro-Carrier to the exosphere, fearing a planetary-scale data wipe that would reset their civilizations to the stone age.

"Yo, they really sent the whole fleet to the cloud just to get deleted? That's wild," Blackwing laughed, his voice a smooth, urban rasp echoing through the scrambled comms of the dying fleet. He leaned back in mid-air with effortless swagger, his street-tactical boots resting on a platform of hardened purple pixels. "Ayo Shadow, look at 'em tryin' to reboot! It's over for these clowns. Just hit 'em with the alt-f4 and let's go."

Shadowwing did not respond with words, maintaining his ritualized silence as his deep violet field pulsed with neon-magenta light. Instead, the Neon-Magenta Eye stared down from the void, its slow, deliberate blinking causing entire fleets to simply vanish into a soundless vacuum. There was no fire, no debris—just the terrifying, absolute silence of the Shadow Regime.

While the heavens were being dismantled, Darkwing and Doctor Deathwing pinned the Solar and Lunar navies in a "Meat-Grinder" of oceanic horror on the surface. Darkwing's Abyssal Trenches acted as a secondary distraction, forcing the AES to constantly reposition their massive carriers to avoid falling into the literal center of the earth.

"YOU THINK YOUR BOATS CAN FLOAT ON NOTHING?! FALL! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT WOOD AND WEAKNESS!" Darkwing bellowed, his maroon aura flaring with enough heat to boil the surrounding sea.

Doctor Deathwing added to the psychological trauma by reanimating the sunken Solar wreckage. Below the surface, mottled gray-violet light pulsed from his "+" shaped pupils as "Ghost-Fleet" hybrids—metal reanimated by necro-technology—rose from the depths. The AES soldiers wept, their eyes wide and anime-expressive with grief, as they were forced to fire upon ships that still bore their own flags and the reanimated corpses of their brothers.

The horror was not limited to the front lines; the Starrimind News Network and every other global feed had been hijacked. Across the screens of Westonglappa, the population watched a broadcast of their own extinction, curated by the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency (BRD). They watched in high-definition as Blackenstorm and Blackenstride performed high-speed "Aerial Graffiti" maneuvers, tagging the sides of AES carriers with corrosive maroon sigils that dissolved reinforced armor on live television. In another feed, the camera panned to Blackgoldmouth, a female Elite of the BRD. She leaned over the edge of a gunship with a chilling, arrogant smirk and began a low-frequency hum—a "Sonic Distortion" that caused the bridge glass of a Lunar destroyer to explode inward, sucking the command staff into the acid-violet sea as she waved a mocking goodbye.

While the world's eyes were glued to this "loud" war, the true threat moved in the "Abyssal Fog" created by the entropic breath of Deathwing's decay. Leading a specialized, low-profile naval-aerial strike force were the Darkened Elite Core: Darkhitler, Darkhit, and Darkhitter. Moving at sea level, their vessels were coated in a non-reflective, matte-black "Darkened" paint that absorbed all light and radar signatures. This was the "Darkened Dagger," a silent strike meant to bypass the Great Wall entirely.

Coordinating the stealth signature was Darkgurl, who floated at the prow of the lead stealth-ship. She utilized "Null-Wave" magic, her eyes glowing a deep maroon as she smoothed the ocean's wake and synced the fleet's engine hum with the natural rhythm of the tides. To any sensor, they were nothing more than a passing, natural wave. They moved like a silent ripple through the Star-Regime's blind spots. By the time the AES Solar and Galaxy commanders realized the "Great Wall" was a mere stage for a performance, Darkhitler's unit was already a quarter of the way to the Westonglappa coastline—undetected, unchallenged, and ready for the killing blow.

Aboard the final AES Command Nexus, the three leaders—Sunbeam, Moonbeam, and Starbeam—were caught in a terminal paradox. Starbeam, his face pale and eyes narrow with the weight of a thousand failed variables, gripped the edge of the tactical table.

"If we retreat to intercept the stealth units at Westonglappa, the Absolute Leaders will collapse the Great Wall and annihilate our main force from the rear," he whispered, his serious, disciplined mind calculating a survival rate that was rapidly approaching zero.

Sunbeam, normally the bold gambler, stood beside him, his orange solar armor dented and smoking. He looked at his "twin-like" counterpart, the doppelgänger effect striking in the dim light of the failing command room. "And if we stay... we watch the capital burn while we're stuck in this grinder. They aren't just fighting us, Starbeam. They're foreclosing on the planet."

The "New Absolute" was no longer just a threat. The Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency was at the door, and they were tired of knocking.

The digital takeover didn't just override the signal; it rewrote the very reality of every living room in Westonglappa. From the neon-lit, rain-slicked skyscrapers of Havenjade City to the quiet, fog-heavy streets of Mistbarrow, every screen began to flicker with a rhythmic, violent distortion. First, the airwaves were choked by a haunting, neon-magenta static—the signature of the Shadow Regime—before being forcibly overwritten by the jagged, street-tactical aesthetic of the Bullying Revolutionary Deficiency.

The image finally stabilized on Blackwing, who was lounging with predatory ease in a high-tech throne of cracked obsidian. "Yo, Westonglappa. Hope y'all recorded the last sunset, 'cause the server's about to go offline," he said, his voice a smooth, urban drawl that dripped with effortless malice. He leaned forward, gesturing toward a scrolling, high-definition feed of Eastoppola—or the smoldering crater where it once stood. The footage showed a continent being systematically deleted, turned into a silent graveyard of dissolving purple pixels and bleached bone. "Your AES 'heroes' are currently busy getting clipped at the Wall. They can't hear you scream, and they definitely can't save you. But me? I'm a good listener. I'm coming to collect that debt, and I don't take installments. Best get your affairs in order before the lag catches up to you."

Across the continental states, the common chatter of a fearful public turned into a dissonant choir of pure desperation. In the capital of Damont, an elderly archivist named Kenji—his spiky silver hair standing on end and his amber eyes glowing with a dim, panicked intensity—let his tablet slip from his numbed fingers. The device clattered against the marble floor, but he didn't blink. His face contorted into a mask of wide-eyed dread, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. "They're using the same virus they used on the Galaxy Regime..." he whispered, his voice trembling like a leaf in a gale. "If Prince Galaxbeam's Infinite Calculation couldn't stop the deletion, what hope does a civilian state have? The math... the math is already finished."

In the industrial hub of Brimvault, a young tech-runner named Lila frantically hammered at a terminal, her vibrant, twin-tailed azure hair whipping around her face. Her emerald eyes brimmed with tears that refused to fall, reflecting the "Connection Failed" messages scrolling across her visor. "I've tried reaching the Star Regime! I've sent fifty pings to Starbeam! Why isn't he responding?!" she screamed at the uncaring machine, her fingers bruising against the keys. "Is the Starrup Continent already gone?! Is there no one left in the sky?!"

Nearby, in the glowing plazas of Arclumen City, a group of citizens huddled beneath a giant holographic display that usually broadcasted weather patterns. One woman, her flowing violet hair tangled by the rising wind and her sapphire eyes fixed on the horizon, gripped a solar-pendant around her neck until her knuckles turned white. "The Solar Regime... General Sunbeam promised we were safe behind the Wall," she sobbed, her knees buckling as she watched the distant flashes of the "Great Wall" battle. "But look at the sky! That's not a sunrise... that's a funeral fire. The sun is setting for the last time."

Deep within the Halcyon Bastion, the atmosphere was a sterile, suffocating cold. The President of Westonglappa remained a rigid silhouette behind a massive wall of tinted, reinforced glass, watching the same hijacked feeds with a hollow expression. Though they did not speak, the rhythmic clicking of their direct-line comms device betrayed their terror; their hand trembled with a subtle, frantic energy. They knew the crushing truth the public had yet to grasp: the "Great Wall" was nothing more than a theatrical distraction, a loud and bloody stage for the Absolute Leaders to hold the world's attention.

Outside the Bastion's view, slicing through the thick, salt-heavy mists of the Auttumotto State, the true killing blow was already in motion. The "Darkened Dagger" stealth fleet, led by the lethal coordination of Darkhitler and the "Null-Wave" magic of Darkgurl, glided over the waves like a silent shadow. They were undetected by the radars that were currently overwhelmed by Blackwing's digital noise, and unchallenged by the fleets currently being pulverized by Darkwing's trenches.

The cosmic battle at the Command Nexus had successfully paralyzed the AES leaders. While Sunbeam and Starbeam struggled with their terminal paradox, the very people they were sworn to protect were already undergoing psychological annihilation. The "New Absolute" was no longer winning a war; they were conducting a planetary foreclosure, and the first payment was due on the shores of Auttumotto.

The sky above the four allied continents was no longer a void, but a canvas of atmospheric slaughter where the last remnants of the AES pride fought against a tide of absolute certainty. In a synchronized "Steel Phalanx" formation, the remaining Elites and Supreme Commanders of the light moved with the desperate grace of a final ritual. In Sollarisca, Solardye and Solarstorm stood atop the glowing Sun-Spires, their hands raised as sweat beaded on their brows. Behind them, a single corps of Solar Elites channeled their very essence into a massive, shimmering orange-gold dome. As BRD bombers dived like vultures, the Elites unleashed "Solar Flare Intercepts," vaporizing the incoming metal into a scalding, molten rain before it could touch the terrified civilian sectors below.

Simultaneously, in the silver-drenched landscape of Lunna, Lunarstride and Lunarpuff coordinated a dance of death. Their ground units, wreathed in a cold lunar mana that made their armor glow like fallen stars, fired "Moon-Beam Javelins" that hissed through the air, piercing the hulls of the Death Regime bio-ships attempting to breach the stratosphere. Across the churning oceans of Starrup and Galaxenchi, Starrastream and Galaxadye worked in a flawless tandem of green kinetic barriers and violet gravity wells. BRD naval fleets were pulled into artificial whirlpools, crushed by the crushing weight of their own arrogance as the AES ground-to-air units maintained a defensive grid that seemed, for a brief moment, impenetrable.

But deep within their respective regrouping points, the four Absolute Leaders of the AES were trapped in a symphony of psychological violence. They were not fighting men; they were fighting the hollow concepts of their enemies. Sunbeam, his breathing heavy and his orange cape singed from a hundred near-misses, parried a flurry of obsidian blade strikes. The clone of Blackwing moved with a street-wise swagger that defied the laws of physics, flickering like a corrupted video file.

"You move like him... you talk like him... but you lack the weight of a soul!" Sunbeam roared, his eyes wide and burning with a desperate anime-intensity as he lunged forward. "Why won't you fall?!"

The Fake Blackwing let out a low, predatory chuckle, a digital grin stretching across his static-laced face. "C'mon, General. You too smart for this, homie. I ain't a soul, I'm a deadline. Every swing you take at me is another minute your 'precious' Westonglappa loses. You gamblin' with lives you already lost. You just laggin' behind the reality of your own funeral."

Elsewhere, amidst a swirl of violet petals and desaturated gray smoke, Moonbeam stood tall against the Fake Deathwing. The construct adjusted his glasses, his "+" pupils glowing with a cold, medical light as he observed her fatigue.

"This clinical horror... this sterile death... it is an insult to the peace I protect!" Moonbeam declared, her voice trembling with righteous fury. "I will purify this nightmare!"

"Purification is merely a delay of the inevitable decay, Duchess," the clone rasped, his voice a perfect, hollow imitation of the Doctor. "Your heart rate is elevated. Your mana is leaking. You are struggling against a ghost while the real Surgeon is already opening the chest of the world. You aren't winning; you're just dying in slow motion."

Back-to-back in a collapsing sanctuary, Starbeam and Galaxbeam stood surrounded by neon-magenta static and maroon-black rage. The Fake Darkwing slammed a spiked mace into the ground, the force cracking the foundation of the continent and sending tremors through the tectonic plates. "STILL BREATHING?! YOU STUPID DUCKS! I'LL GRIND YOUR CONTINENTS INTO DUST AND SNORT THE ASHES!" the clone screamed in a distorted, all-caps fury.

Starbeam's eyes narrowed, his mind calculating at five times the normal human speed. He watched the Fake Shadowwing remain perfectly silent, the construct tapping a void-blade against his palm in a rhythmic Morse-code: B-R-E-A-C-H. B-R-E-A-C-H. "The math... it's wrong," Starbeam whispered, a cold dread settling in his stomach. "This Darkwing is too impulsive, even for him. And Shadowwing... he's signaling something else. Galaxbeam, they're keeping us here! The Great Wall! We have to—"

"YOU AIN'T GOING NOWHERE BUT THE MORGUE!" the fake Darkwing bellowed, cutting off the escape route with a wall of dark-red fire.

While the gods fought ghosts, the "Lesser Humans" of Westonglappa faced the true Absolute Leaders. At the Auttumotto shoreline, the Westonglappa military unleashed everything they had. "Apex-Class" shells and railgun fire saturated the air in a desperate attempt to hold the line. But as the smoke cleared, the soldiers' faces turned pale. Darkwing Shadowsypher and Darkhitler were walking calmly through the craters, the massive plumes of fire not leaving a single scratch on their matte-black armor.

"Fire again! Why won't they stop?! We hit them directly!" a human commander shrieked, his voice breaking with terror.

Darkhitler paused, sighing with an aristocratic boredom that was more terrifying than any shout. "Your 'bullets' are made of lead and hope, Commander. Ours are made of Authority. You cannot harm what you cannot comprehend."

Darkgurl stepped forward, her hands glowing with a shimmering maroon "Null-Wave" magic. With a gentle, almost bored flick of her wrist, the entire Westonglappa frontline didn't explode—they simply ceased to function. Massive tanks turned into rusted, vine-choked husks in seconds; thousands of soldiers fell into a dreamless, vegetative sleep as their neural pathways were gently disconnected.

The "Darkened Dagger" fleet glided over the silent harbor, the black-painted ships looking like predatory sharks in the mist. The Great Wall had not been broken by force; it had been bypassed by a reality the humans were never meant to survive. High above the carnage, the real Blackwing lounged on his throne, watching the AES leaders struggle with their clones on his monitor. He let out a sharp, mocking chuckle, his eyes reflecting the purple static of a dying world.

"Checkmate, 'heroes.' Hope y'all like the view from the ground, 'cause the sky belongs to the Regime now. GG, no re."

The docks and shoreline of the Auttumotto State had transformed into a silent graveyard of smoking steel, where the very atmosphere seemed to thicken with the weight of an inescapable "Authority Zone." Darkwing Shadowsypher remained seated upon his obsidian throne on the deck of the Darkened Dagger, his chin resting on a gloved hand in a posture of profound aristocratic boredom. He looked down upon the remnants of the Westonglappa military not as enemies, but as a minor clerical error to be corrected. When the human commanders ordered a "Last Stand Salvo," the air hissed as hundreds of Apex-Class shells and railgun slugs tore through the mist. The probability of their success was not just low; it was nonexistent, overwritten by the presence of a god. Instead of a thunderous explosion, the projectiles entered the Darkened Regime's proximity and simply withered; high-velocity metal turned into brittle orange rust in mid-air, crumbling into dust before it could even graze the hull of the lead ship. Darkwing Shadowsypher didn't even blink, his eyes fixed on the horizon as he signaled a "Hold Position" maneuver with a lazy flick of two fingers. He wasn't interested in a quick conquest; he wanted to let the incoming hope of the world rot until it was unrecognizable.

Leading the ground assault from the front, Darkhitler walked through the lingering fires of the beachhead with his hands clasped behind his back, his matte-black armor absorbing the heat of the explosions as if they were nothing more than a summer breeze. Flanking him were the "Twin Hammers," Darkhit and Darkhitter, who operated with a terrifying, synchronized brutality. Darkhit moved in a blur of high-speed kinetic strikes, his fists shattering the hulls of heavy tanks like they were made of glass, while Darkhitter utilized heavy gravity-maces to flatten entire platoons into the sand, the pressure turning the earth into a cratered wasteland. Behind them, a black wall of Darksoldiers and Darkmarines marched in a rhythmic, terrifying stomp, while Darkrangers positioned on the heights began picking off human officers from miles away with "Null-Bolts" that erased the target's consciousness upon impact. Those who survived the initial slaughter were systematically "processed" by the Darkpolice, who moved through the smoke to place any remaining resistance into a cold, magical stasis, prepping the population for the inevitable foreclosure.

While the slaughter at Auttumotto ground the human resistance into the dirt, the AES Absolute Leaders remained trapped in the high-intensity "Clone Paradox," their mana pools draining with every desperate heartbeat. Sunbeam's Solar Mana had plummeted to 40%, his once-vibrant orange cape now heavy with grime and his breathing ragged. He parried another strike from the Fake Blackwing, whose movements were a fluid, taunting dance of obsidian blades and street-wise swagger. The clone leaned in close, his digital-hued eyes flickering with purple energy as he whispered, "You huffin' and puffin' for real now, General. Your spirit is flaggin' while I'm just findin' my rhythm. Me? My weight in this game is eternal, and I'm just gettin' started on your final exit." Beside him, Starbeam pushed his brain to a 5x speed calculation, his eyes darting frantically as he realized the trap. Every second they spent dueling these shadows, another thousand lives were snuffed out on the Westonglappa coast. He attempted to initiate a "Tactical Retreat" maneuver, but the clones slammed their hands into the earth, invoking "Anchor Magic" that sealed the sanctuary doors with chains of violet energy, locking the gods in a cage of their own making.

Contrastingly, the "Steel Phalanx" of the Supreme Commanders showed the true peak of AES military discipline across the four continents. In Sollarisca, Solardale, Solarstream, and Solarstride gathered the remaining Solar Elites, including Sunbrass and Sunalain, into a massive ceremonial circle. Combining their collective mana pools, they projected a "Sun-Fire Net" across the archipelago—a shimmering orange-gold grid that vaporized any Blackened Regime naval vessel that dared to approach the inner islands. High in the stratosphere above Lunna, Lunarstride and Lunarpuff coordinated with Elites like Moonshire and Moonetta to maintain a relentless "Stratospheric Guard." They fired rhythmic "Crescent Volleys" into the sky, creating a glowing minefield of lunar energy that forced the BRD bio-ships to remain in high orbit, unable to deploy their terrifying Plague-Marines. Between the continents of Starrup and Galaxenchi, Starradye and Galaxadye utilized gravitational pressure to churn the very sea. They coordinated a seamless defense, creating a massive, swirling whirlpool zone that trapped the BRD's heavy cruisers in a perpetual, crushing spin, effectively halting their advance toward the capital.

The heroic defense of the Supreme Commanders was a masterpiece of coordination, but it was built upon a tragic foundation of misinformation. As the battle raged, the real Darkwing Shadowsypher stood from his throne and hijacked every global frequency once more, his voice cold and devoid of the manic rage his clones displayed. He didn't speak to the AES; he spoke directly to the citizens of Westonglappa. "YOUR GODS ARE CURRENTLY FIGHTING SHADOWS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS," he declared, his image appearing on every screen in the capital. "LOOK AT YOUR SHORELINE. WE ARE THE ONLY REALITY LEFT TO YOU." At that moment, Starbeam glanced at his tactical map and felt his heart go cold. He saw the "Great Flare Wall" holding, he saw the "Crescent Volleys" protecting the sky, and he saw the whirlpools stopping the cruisers. But he also saw the one thing he had missed: the "Darkened Dagger" fleet had already bypassed every single one of those defenses through the Auttumotto breach. The Supreme Commanders were brilliantly defending the wrong places, and as the realization of the "Checkmate" hit him, the sanctuary doors began to creak under the weight of an approaching, absolute darkness.

The sanctuary doors did not simply creak anymore—they groaned, as if the building itself had learned fear.

Violet Anchor Magic chains ran like living veins across the stone, tightening in rhythmic pulses that matched the clone-paradox heartbeat. Each pulse stole something: a fraction of breath, a fraction of clarity, a fraction of mana. Sunbeam's cape—once a proud orange banner—hung heavy with grit and ash, his shoulders rising and falling in a controlled, ragged cadence that betrayed how hard he was working just to remain upright. Starbeam's eyes were a storm of math and dread; his tactical map still glowed behind his retinas with the same impossible realization: every brilliant defense line, every ocean net and skyfield, had been defended in the wrong place. The "Darkened Dagger" had already slipped the knife in through Auttumotto.

And somewhere far away, on that very shoreline, the air itself had become an inescapable "Authority Zone."

Darkwing Shadowsypher sat upon his obsidian throne on the deck of the Darkened Dagger like a bored monarch judging an accounting error. The human commanders had ordered a last stand; the mist had screamed with Apex shells and rail slugs—then the ammunition had withered into brittle orange rust mid-flight, crumbling to dust before it could even graze the lead hull. Darkwing didn't blink. Two fingers flicked lazily: hold position. Let hope rot. Let the world taste inevitability until it forgot what defiance felt like.

Below, the beachhead burned.

Darkhitler walked through the fires with his hands clasped behind his back, matte-black armor drinking in heat as if it were sunlight. The "Twin Hammers," Darkhit and Darkhitter, moved with synchronized brutality—one a blur of kinetic strikes shattering tanks like glass, the other a gravity-mace executioner flattening platoons into the sand, pressure turning the earth into a cratered wasteland. Darksoldiers and Darkmarines marched in a rhythmic stomp that sounded like a verdict being read aloud. Darkrangers on the heights fired Null-Bolts that didn't just kill; they erased consciousness. Darkpolice followed, methodical and cold, "processing" survivors into magical stasis like paperwork being filed, the population prepared for foreclosure.

And in the sanctuary—locked in violet chains—four gods were being made to bleed time.

The Fake Blackwing leaned close to Sunbeam's ear, obsidian blades humming with swaggered rhythm, digital-hued eyes flickering purple. "You huffin' and puffin' for real now, General," it whispered, voice like a taunt wrapped in a grin. "Your spirit flaggin' while I'm just findin' my rhythm. Me? I'm eternal weight in this game. And I'm just gettin' started on your final exit."

Starbeam's jaw clenched. He attempted a Tactical Retreat calculation—an exit vector, a warp-safe corridor, anything—only for the clones to slam their palms into the earth in unison. Anchor Magic surged. The sanctuary doors sealed again, chains layered on chains, violet energy clamping down like a prison remembering how to be a prison.

The worst possible second arrived.

The Anchor Magic reached peak tighten.

The sanctuary did not lock.

It fractured.

A sound like glass being taught to scream split the air, and the entire chamber—walls, floor, ceiling—became a single mirrored surface that reflected not one reality but hundreds. The reflections didn't behave like reflections. They moved. They watched. They reached out.

Four mirror-corridors ripped open at once, each one a different color of wrong.

Sunbeam felt a Resonance Chain snap around his solar core—cold, violet, invasive—then yank him forward as if the sanctuary had decided to vomit him back into the world. Moonbeam's lunar aura flared in alarm, silver-blue light colliding with mirrored shards; Starbeam tried to stabilize with pure discipline, only to feel the floor drop out of existence beneath him; Galaxbeam remained standing for an extra heartbeat, calm eyes measuring the phenomenon like a professor facing a new theorem—until the chain hooked his spine of reality and pulled.

The clones were dragged with them.

Not as passengers.

As prey being dragged behind the hook.

Sunbeam reached out—and his fingertips brushed Starbeam's for a single instant, a spark of orange and green—before the corridors slammed shut between them like guillotines.

No farewell.

No regroup.

Only separation.

Only escalation.

The trap evolving.

Sollarisca took Sunbeam first.

He hit the ground hard enough to crater sun-baked stone, orange light bleeding from his body in violent shockwaves that scattered ash and shattered glass from nearby windows. The sky above Sollarisca did not look like a sky; it looked like a broadcast failing. Clouds stuttered. Light clipped. The horizon pixelated for half a second, then snapped back, as if reality were buffering.

"GLITCH DOMINION," a voice purred, and the air itself responded like an audience.

The Fake Blackwing landed upright, almost graceful, boots skidding with theatrical precision across the broken ground. Its twin obsidian blades spun once—an idle flourish—and the motion produced an audible rewind in the air, a half-second rollback of dust and debris like the world was being forced to repeat the same moment.

Sunbeam pushed himself up, breathing visibly heavier, cape dragging in the grit. His Solar Mana flickered in his own senses like a dying torch: 40% and falling, the drain already carved into his muscles.

He glanced upward—and saw it.

A floating, translucent overlay across the sky like a livestream: faint silhouettes of faces, crowds, citizens across continents watching through hijacked frequencies. The clone had brought the audience with it.

"You wanted to protect your people?" Fake Blackwing spread its arms as if embracing the world. "Then do it in public. Let 'em see you sweat."

Sunbeam's eyes hardened. "I don't perform for villains."

"Yeah?" The clone's smile sharpened. "Then why everybody watchin'?"

Sunbeam made the straightforward move first—the move that had ended wars before.

He drew Solar fire into his palm, compressing heat and light into a dense, disciplined sphere meant to annihilate. His posture was a shield, a promise: he would burn through the glitch, burn through the mockery, burn through the stall.

He thrust forward.

The attack clipped.

Not "missed."

Clipped—like the world refused to render it.

The Solar sphere stuttered mid-flight, its trajectory snapping sideways as if a hand had grabbed the timeline and dragged it two frames to the left. The blast hit nothing—and the momentum behind Sunbeam's strike was stolen.

Sunbeam's body lurched forward unexpectedly, balance compromised, and the clone was suddenly behind him, blade whispering past his ribs with a laugh that sounded like a beat drop.

"Predictable," Fake Blackwing taunted. "You throwin' the same chapter like it's gospel."

Pain didn't pierce him—not meaningfully; an Absolute's body didn't give that kind of permission. But the cut did something else: it siphoned his tempo. His next breath felt heavier. His cape felt heavier. His feet felt like they were standing in wet cement.

Momentum stolen.

Fear in the broadcast feed spiked—he could feel it like static crawling along his skin—and the obsidian blades glowed darker, biting deeper in their aura, feeding on the audience's rising panic.

Sunbeam steadied, jaw tight. "So you're a parasite."

Fake Blackwing tilted its head. "Nah. I'm a mirror. I show your people what you really is when the lights stay on."

Sunbeam stopped trying to overpower the glitch with volume. He slowed.

His orange aura tightened, becoming cleaner, more geometric—less flame, more verdict.

Solar Verdict technique was not about burning hotter. It was about declaring a law and enforcing it.

He raised two fingers, mirroring Darkwing's lazy signal but with the weight of a different authority. "No more stolen tempo."

The air vibrated.

For half a second, the broadcast stuttered—and the clone's smile flickered, just barely, like a loop struggling to maintain itself.

Sunbeam saw the imperfection: the clone's taunt rhythm repeated on the same beat, always returning to the same cadence like a song stuck on a chorus. It wasn't improvising. It was looping.

He lunged again, not with brute force—so the glitch couldn't clip the predictable arc—but with a sudden, off-beat pivot that broke the pattern.

A quick internal check flashed through his mind like a soldier's instinct made visible:

d20 (feint to break loop): 16 — success.

His fist drove into the clone's chest with solar pressure that didn't explode outward—it branded inward, a searing glyph that tried to latch onto the clone's core glitch-pattern.

The clone hissed, surprised, blades whipping up. "Oh—so you learnin'."

Sunbeam leaned in, voice low, fierce. "I don't need to win the show. I need to win the war."

A faint orange symbol began to burn under the clone's skin—unstable, incomplete, but present.

The first reach toward the Paradox Key had begun: a Sunbrand Resonance Mark, trying to imprint itself onto the glitch's heart before the domain could clip it away.

Lunna took Moonbeam second.

She landed in a field of pale frost and shattered marble, where the air smelled wrong—too clean, too cold, too antiseptic. The world around her reorganized itself in a sterile geometry: invisible lines snapping into place, distances measured, angles corrected, as if the battlefield were being prepared for surgery rather than war.

A chime sounded—soft, clinical.

A translucent readout floated at the edge of her vision like an uncaring nurse: respiration rate, micro-fatigue, mana expenditure, blood-analogs rendered into cold numbers even though she was divine.

"CLINICAL QUARANTINE," came a calm voice.

The Fake Deathwing stood across from her, coat-like armor pristine, eyes marked with the signature glowing "+" pupils that made staring at it feel like being evaluated under a microscope. Its tone was not angry. Not triumphant. Merely procedural.

"Subject: Lunar Absolute," it said. "Condition: emotionally compromised by population threat. Prognosis: exploitable."

Moonbeam's silver-blue aura flared, regal and furious. "You will not speak of my people like specimens."

The clone inclined its head, polite in the way a scalpel is polite. "Compassion is a liability in containment events."

Moonbeam made her straightforward move first—she reached outward with lunar warmth, a protective wave meant to shield civilians fleeing nearby villages, to heal the wounded Moon Soldiers caught in the domain's sudden sterilization.

The moment her healing light touched the air, the clinical readout spiked.

A red warning blinked:

HEALING COST: EXTRACTED.

Moonbeam's chest tightened. The warmth she poured out didn't just leave her—it was taxed, siphoned, documented, and converted into something cold.

The Fake Deathwing's hand turned slightly, as if adjusting a dial. The antiseptic wind sharpened into a cutting chill that made even divine breath feel like it was being filtered.

"Thank you," the clone said softly. "Your empathy has funded my escalation."

The ground split open in neat, surgical seams. Bio-horror rose in controlled measures—no chaotic gore, no wild thrashing, only "approved" monstrosities emerging like tools from a tray: pale tendrils that moved like retractors, spore-mist contained in perfect spheres, reanimation glyphs hovering in sterile circles.

Moonbeam's eyes narrowed. Her maternal mercy did not vanish—but it sharpened into something terrifying.

"Then I will become the quarantine," she said, voice like moonlight over a blade.

She stopped feeding the domain with instinctive healing and instead pulled lunar power inward, condensing it into a crescent barrier with rules of her own: protection without leakage, care without taxation.

The clone watched, interested. "Adaptation observed."

Moonbeam moved with fierce grace, striking not at the horrors but at the protocol lines that guided them, severing procedures like cutting sutures. She realized the imperfection by listening: Fake Deathwing couldn't help narrating its own steps in clinical terms. Every action had to be "logged," "approved," "processed." It craved the cleanliness of procedure.

So Moonbeam gave it something procedure could not tolerate.

She feigned collapse—one knee touching frost, breath visibly shaking—letting her aura flicker as if her compassion had finally broken her.

d20 (deception under clinical observation): 14 — success.

The clone stepped closer, calm. "Subject entering critical. Prepare harvest."

In that instant, Moonbeam snapped her hand upward and forced the clone to inhale its own sterile spore-mist through a reversed lunar current—an inversion so precise it didn't look like magic; it looked like a lab error.

A single droplet of ichor—dark, luminous, containing a trace of that "+ pupil" discharge—spattered into the air.

Moonbeam caught it in a crescent of light, sealing it inside a shimmering vial formed from lunar mana itself.

The first reach toward her Paradox Key: a Necro-Sample Vial, proof—traceable—of where the real Deathwing's master anchor stock was being manufactured.

Fake Deathwing's gaze sharpened, the first hint of irritation beneath the calm. "Unauthorized extraction."

Moonbeam rose fully now, regal, terrifying. "Unauthorized tyranny."

Starrup took Starbeam third.

He landed in silence.

Not peaceful silence—wrong silence. The kind of quiet that happens when sound has been removed rather than absent. The city around him—green-lit towers, disciplined grids, the proud geometry of Starrup—was present and not present. Lights blinked. Signs half-rendered. Street markings faded as if someone had erased them mid-paint.

"DELETION NIGHT," Starbeam whispered, and the words felt like an affront to the air.

A shadow moved—except it wasn't movement. It was absence repositioning.

The Fake Shadowwing appeared without appearing, a shape defined by what it removed: light, sound, certainty. Its banner colors—deep violet and neon-magenta—didn't wave; they simply existed, oppressive as a stare. The clone did not speak. It raised two fingers and tapped them against its palm in a steady cadence.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Starbeam's mind surged into 5x calculation automatically. He mapped angles, sightlines, expected vectors—

—and the data vanished mid-thought.

Not disrupted. Deleted.

His tactical overlay became blank. The variables he had just assigned evaporated as if they had never existed. For a fraction of a second, he couldn't remember whether he had already moved his left foot.

That was the horror: not stealth, but removal.

Starbeam made the straightforward move first anyway—he threw up a star-lattice scan, flooding the area with structured light geometry meant to reveal any hidden entity.

The lattice formed beautifully—

—then sections of it disappeared, as if someone had cut holes out of reality with scissors. Starbeam's own scan results returned as empty files.

He felt a chill crawl under his stern discipline. If the data could be deleted, then his greatest weapon—information—was being used against him.

The clone raised one hand and traced a small gesture in the air, ritual-like, then stared at him with a deliberate blankness that felt like being judged by a void.

Starbeam's memory skipped.

A half-second of time vanished from his perception, and when his mind caught up, he was already mid-dodge, body reacting faster than his awareness.

d20 (reflex dodge without data): 12 — partial success.

A shadow-blade—more concept than metal—passed close enough to shear a strip of fabric from his uniform, leaving behind not a cut but a gap, a missing line in the world where the fabric should have been. The edge didn't wound him meaningfully, but it proved the rule: the clone wasn't trying to bleed him. It was trying to unmake the conditions that allowed him to lead.

Starbeam's mouth tightened. "You want me to doubt my own eyes."

The clone responded with three taps, slower now.

Tap... tap... tap.

Starbeam forced himself to stop relying on what could be deleted. He anchored his mind to something the domain couldn't erase easily: rhythm. Pattern. The same way a soldier remembers a cadence under artillery fire.

He began counting the taps, matching them to micro-shifts in the deletion field. He watched the clone's gestures not for meaning but for timing—when it lifted two fingers, when it paused, when its gaze lingered.

The imperfection revealed itself in the smallest crack: Fake Shadowwing's deletion wasn't infinite. It had to be maintained by cadence. The taps were not style. They were a key.

Starbeam's eyes sharpened with the frightening focus of someone who refuses to lose his mind.

He tapped back.

Not loudly—just enough for the air to carry it, just enough for his own memory to cling to it.

The clone's head tilted, the first sign of acknowledgment.

Starbeam's glove recorded the vibration signature, embedding it into his suit's internal memory as a sequence that could be replayed.

The first reach toward his Paradox Key: the Silence Cipher, the tapping cadence used to maintain Deletion Night.

He still couldn't see the end of the fight. But he could now see the shape of the lock.

Galaxenchi took Galaxbeam last.

He landed inside a place that felt like a courtroom built from space itself.

The ground was polished obsidian inscribed with legal glyphs that pulsed like statutes. Doors stood in the air without walls, each one marked with a single word: PERMITTED, DENIED, APPEALED. Even the wind felt restricted, as if it needed authorization to move.

A bell rang—slow, aristocratic.

"AUTHORITY COURT," a voice said, bored and cold.

The Fake Darkwing stood at the far end of the chamber, seated as if he had always been there, chin resting on a gloved hand, posture of profound aristocratic disinterest. He looked at Galaxbeam the way one looks at a small mistake in ink: not hateful, just inconvenient.

"Professor Prince Galaxbeam," the clone drawled. "Your presence is... contested."

Galaxbeam's expression remained calm, almost kind, the way a teacher looks at a student about to fail a test they wrote themselves. "Contested by whom?"

"By reality," Fake Darkwing replied, and the word carried weight.

Galaxbeam attempted the straightforward solution first—not to escape, but to reclaim authority over his own movement. He stepped forward and folded space, preparing a clean teleport vector to reposition behind the clone and seize control of the court's geometry.

The moment he tried, a massive glyph ignited above him:

DENIED.

The teleport collapsed, not explosively but humiliatingly, like paperwork returned with a stamp.

Fake Darkwing sighed. "Movement without permission is trespass."

Galaxbeam nodded slowly, as if learning the classroom's rules. "So you've written a contract over my abilities."

"Foreclosure," Fake Darkwing corrected, bored. "I am repossessing your options."

Galaxbeam's eyes softened, and somehow that softness was terrifying. "Then this is not combat," he said gently. "It is an argument."

The clone's gaze narrowed by a fraction. "You may appeal."

Galaxbeam did not raise his voice. He did not flare his power. He simply began walking—not forward, but sideways, toward a door labeled APPEALED, testing the court's logic with deliberate patience.

The air trembled. A statute line formed across his path like a chain made of words: UNAUTHORIZED PATH.

Galaxbeam stopped, then smiled faintly. "Interesting."

He turned back toward the clone. "If I am foreclosed, then you acknowledge ownership."

Fake Darkwing's boredom deepened. "Correct."

"And if you acknowledge ownership," Galaxbeam continued, voice calm as a lecture, "then ownership is a relationship. A relationship implies definitions. Definitions imply clauses."

The court's glyphs flickered.

For the first time, Fake Darkwing's posture shifted—only slightly—but enough for Galaxbeam to see the imperfection: the clone's authority was not natural. It was written. Constructed. Dependent on a writ.

Galaxbeam raised one hand as if holding a piece of chalk. "Show me the clause that binds me."

The clone's smile was thin. "Denied."

Galaxbeam nodded, as if expecting that answer. Then he did something subtle: he stepped exactly onto the boundary line between PERMITTED and DENIED, the thin seam where the court's logic had to decide what he was allowed to be.

d20 (jurisdiction edge-step): 17 — success.

The court stuttered—just once.

In that stutter, Galaxbeam reached into the seam with time-space finesse not as an act of force, but as an act of interpretation—like pulling a thread from a contract.

A shard of glowing text tore free from the air, burning with violet-black authority.

A clause.

A writ fragment.

Galaxbeam closed his fingers around it, and the shard stopped moving, captured like a dangerous thought held in a steady mind.

The first reach toward his Paradox Key: a Writ Shard Clause, revealing how the Authority Echoes were tethered—and hinting at where the convergence point lived in the deep world.

Fake Darkwing's boredom cracked, revealing something colder beneath. "You are... insolent."

Galaxbeam's voice remained kind. "No. I am attentive."

Across the world, the wars that were not the main fight continued to tighten like nooses.

On Westonglappa's Auttumotto shoreline, Darkhitler's march advanced toward the Halcyon Bastion with the patience of a machine that does not fear time. Sollbac Island—already scarred by earlier conflict—fell again under BRD pressure, a second fall that tasted more bitter because it proved the enemy learned. Celebluu's islands stuttered and vanished under Blackened system warfare, "deleted" and overwritten until maps lied and compasses laughed. In Galaxenchi, ports were repurposed into occupation arteries, cities bent into supply corridors, and the Castle of Time flew Shadow Regime banners like a blasphemy nailed to history. Gallaxenaikolani sanctuary pulsed under convergence threat, as if the world itself were being guided toward a single choke point.

But the main stage—the Four-Front Paradox War—held its breath in four different kinds of terror.

Sunbeam, in the glitching sky of Sollarisca, felt his Sunbrand mark trying to latch while the clone's blades grew hungrier with public fear.

Moonbeam, in Lunna's clinical frost, held a Necro-sample vial like a fragile promise while the surgeon-clone recalibrated, annoyed by unauthorized extraction.

Starbeam, in Starrup's deletion night, tapped a cadence into his own memory like a lifeline, realizing his mind was the battlefield.

Galaxbeam, in Galaxenchi's authority court, held a writ clause that burned his fingers with oppressive law, knowing he had just stolen a piece of the enemy's tether.

And then—

All four of them froze at the same instant, miles and continents apart, as if the universe had struck a tuning fork against their bones.

A low, distant pulse throbbed through the deep world.

Not a sound.

A signal.

The Anchor lattice "pinged" once—clean, absolute—like something enormous had just been activated beneath oceans, beneath cities, beneath the logic of the continents themselves.

The clones reacted in unison.

Fake Blackwing's grin widened as the broadcast sky flickered. Fake Deathwing's "+" pupils brightened with clinical satisfaction. Fake Shadowwing's tapping cadence changed by a single beat. Fake Darkwing's bored gaze lifted, as if receiving confirmation of a filed decree.

Sunbeam's breath caught. Moonbeam's aura tightened. Starbeam's calculations tried to restart and found new gaps. Galaxbeam's calm eyes narrowed, not with panic, but with recognition.

Whatever the real BRD had begun in the deep world, it had reached its next step.

And the mirror corridors were no longer just cages.

They were countdowns.

In four different skies, four different kinds of silence followed the same kind of ending.

On Sollarisca, the Glitch Dominion flickered like a dying broadcast. Sunbeam's final strike did not explode; it declared. The Sunbrand Resonance Mark on Fake Blackwing's chest flared orange-white, and for one clean instant the clone's swagger froze—caught mid-taunt, mid-performance, mid-loop. Sunbeam drove the Verdict through the exposed core like a judge's gavel through rotten wood. The Echo cracked, then shattered into obsidian pixels and purple static that evaporated in the wind.

The livestream-overlay in the sky stuttered.

Citizens who had been forced to watch saw the impossible: their leader, exhausted and filthy, still standing with his fists trembling, still refusing to kneel. Sunbeam didn't raise his arms. He didn't celebrate. He simply turned his head, scanning the horizon with a protector's hunger, as if asking the world where the next wound would open.

"Was that enough for you?" he rasped into the empty air.

The air answered with a soft, ugly laugh.

Not from the clone.

From the lattice.

In Lunna, the Clinical Quarantine snapped as the Fake Deathwing collapsed—not like a body falling, but like a procedure being terminated. Its "+" pupils dimmed as Moonbeam's crescent finisher severed the last sterile seam holding the Echo together. For a breath, the battlefield's antiseptic chill wavered, and the real night air of Lunna returned—salt, frost, smoke, and fear.

Moonbeam stood tall, silver-blue aura held tight like a mother pulling her children behind her skirt. In her palm, the Necro-sample vial hovered, sealed in moonlight, a small object carrying the weight of a continent's survival. Her eyes flicked toward distant villages, distant refugee lines, distant Moon Soldiers still holding the Stratospheric Guard above.

"We do not die in neat rows," she whispered, voice low and dangerous. "We do not become your study."

She felt the quake under her feet before she saw it: a pulse in the deep world that made every ritual seal in the soil tremble like teeth chattering.

In Starrup, Deletion Night did not lift when the Fake Shadowwing fell. That was the cruelty. Starbeam's final constellation lock forced the Echo's absence into a single, undeniable point—then he crushed that point with disciplined finality. The clone disintegrated without a scream, without blood, without sound, as if it had been erased by its own law.

And yet the city around him stayed wrong.

Street signs remained half-blank. Surveillance feeds remained empty. A section of skyline simply failed to resolve, as if the world had forgotten the shape of its own buildings. Starbeam's jaw tightened so hard it looked like it might crack.

"This wasn't just a duel," he said, voice clipped, controlled. "It was a payload."

His glove replayed the tapping cadence he had stolen—the Silence Cipher—over and over, the only stable rhythm left in a landscape designed to unmake memory. He forced himself to breathe through the anger, because anger was also predictable, and predictable things clipped.

In Galaxenchi, the Authority Court shuddered when Fake Darkwing died.

Galaxbeam's finishing move was not a blast. It was an adjournment. He used the stolen Writ Shard Clause like a scalpel, slicing through the clone's legal existence at the seam where "allowed" became "assumed." The Echo's aristocratic boredom finally cracked into something like disbelief as its body split into drifting black paper and violet ink, dissolving into a rain of meaningless statutes.

For half a second, Galaxbeam expected freedom.

Instead, the doors in the air relabeled themselves.

PERMITTED became PERMITTED (LOCAL ONLY).

DENIED became DENIED (EXTERNAL).

APPEALED became PENDING (INDEFINITELY).

The court was gone, but the jurisdiction remained. The trap did not require the clone to live. The trap required Galaxbeam to stay busy proving he deserved to move.

Galaxbeam looked down at the Writ Shard Clause in his hand, eyes calm, voice soft, terrifying in its patience.

"So," he said, "the lesson is not 'defeat the Echo.' The lesson is 'defeat the system that prints them.'"

Then the deep-world pulse hit again.

All four Absolutes felt it at once—an identical ping that vibrated through bone, aura, and thought. The Anchor lattice did not merely confirm activation; it broadcast a status update. Something had just begun, somewhere far below oceans and capitals, with the clean inevitability of a machine switching from standby to execution.

On Westonglappa's Auttumotto shoreline, the Darkened Dagger still sat like a blade laid across the sea. Darkwing Shadowsypher remained on his obsidian throne, chin on his gloved hand, gaze fixed on the horizon as if waiting for the world to understand it had already lost. The graveyard docks smoked. The Authority Zone thickened.

Darkhitler's march did not slow. Darkhit and Darkhitter moved like synchronized calamity beside him. Darksoldiers and Darkmarines advanced in rhythmic stomp. Darkrangers erased minds from afar. Darkpolice swept through the ruins, placing survivors into cold stasis—processing life into inventory. The Halcyon Bastion gates loomed ahead, and the capital's panic screamed into the night like a siren with no rescue coming.

And the cruelest truth sharpened inside the heroes' minds as their defeated clones failed to matter.

They had won.

They had executed the Echos.

They were still losing time.

On Sollarisca, Sunbeam's Sunbrand Resonance Mark suddenly flared in his chest—hot, directional, tugging like a compass needle forced toward a hidden magnet. He realized with a sinking cold that the brand was not only a trophy. It was a tracer. A map. A leash.

Moonbeam's Necro-sample vial pulsed once with faint violet contamination—then stabilized. The sample had become a coordinate, an accusation pointing toward wherever the real Deathwing was manufacturing master anchor stock. It was proof. It was also a countdown.

Starbeam's Silence Cipher cadence shifted by one beat, and his skin prickled. The domain wasn't gone. It was updating. His stolen rhythm had forced a crack in the deletion field—but the deletion field was now learning how to delete the crack.

Galaxbeam's Writ Shard Clause bled a new line of text into itself—ink forming words with the slow cruelty of a verdict being drafted. He did not need to read it to know what it meant: the Anchor lattice was issuing new "terms." The war was becoming contractual, and the BRD was writing the paperwork with blood.

Across four continents, the air changed. Not with weather. With intent.

New pressure lines awakened. New corridors of invasion unfolded. New "emergencies" ignited like flares—each one crafted to keep each Absolute Leader at home, defending their own soil, chasing their own fires, too busy to unite and strike at the true heart of the conquest.

Sunbeam clenched his fists, breathing hard, eyes burning with fury that refused to become panic.

"They used us," he said, voice thick with the kind of rage that comes from caring too much.

Moonbeam's gaze lifted toward the sky, where the Crescent Volleys still glowed like mines in the stratosphere.

"Then we stop being predictable," she answered quietly.

Starbeam's eyes narrowed, discipline hardening into something almost feral.

"They share data," he said. "They adapt. Which means... we cannot win sequentially."

Galaxbeam closed his hand around the Writ Shard Clause, calm as a teacher holding a blade behind his lecture.

"Correct," he replied. "We will need a synchronized finishing window. Seconds. Not minutes."

The deep world pulsed again, louder this time, as if whatever had been activated had reached the next stage.

In that moment, each of them—alone on their own continent—felt the same awful certainty settle into their ribs:

Even after killing the clones, the diversion was not over.

It was evolving.

And somewhere beneath everything—beneath Westonglappa's smoking shoreline, beneath the deleted islands, beneath the occupied ports and the stolen banners—something in the Anchor lattice was turning, tightening, preparing to lock the world into a new shape that even gods might struggle to rewrite.

Outside the chamber, the alarms did not rise like noise.

They rose like a heartbeat that had learned to hate.

The high-altitude AES emergency war room in Starrup trembled under the pressure of a world being pulled in four directions at once. Green steel plates vibrated. Lunar chill-seals flashed and stabilized. Solar reinforcement ribs glowed orange to keep the room from buckling. Galaxy geometry—thin gold lines in the air—held the space together like a mathematician holding a collapsing proof.

Sunbeam stared at the map corridor Galaxbeam had drawn—an impossibly thin path measured in seconds, not minutes.

Moonbeam's fingers tightened at her side, knuckles pale under lunar glow.

Starbeam didn't blink. His eyes were already calculating failure modes.

Galaxbeam's voice remained steady.

"This window is not mercy. It is a blade-edge. If we miss it, the lattice updates. If it updates, it prints new Echoes with countermeasures. You will not get the same fight twice."

Sunbeam stepped forward, armor creaking softly.

"Then we don't miss."

Starbeam's tone cut in, clipped and cold.

"We need two layers. One to stop the flag-spawn chain locally. One to strike the printer."

Moonbeam's gaze lifted to the Westonglappa feed—billboards screaming, stairwells packed with civilians, the shoreline smoking under Authority.

"And we need to stop the capital from falling before we even arrive."

Galaxbeam nodded once, then raised his hand.

A new overlay formed above the war table.

Four Paradox Keys hovered in the air as symbols, not objects—because Galaxbeam treated everything as a system first.

The Sunbrand Resonance Mark burned orange like a brand waiting to bite.

The Necro-sample vial floated in a crescent of silver-blue light, pulsing with controlled contamination.

The Silence Cipher manifested as a tapping rhythm translated into a visual waveform, precise as a heartbeat.

The Writ Shard Clause hovered as a strip of glowing violet text—legalistic, oppressive, alive.

Galaxbeam pointed to each one like a teacher assigning weapons.

"Sunbeam. Your mark is not only a tracer. It is a firewall. It can force Glitch Dominion to reveal its seams. That means it can also force spawned flags to render their origin signature."

Sunbeam's eyes narrowed.

"So if a flag spawns inside our perimeter..."

"You can brand the origin pattern," Galaxbeam finished. "And the next flag that tries to spawn will stutter. It will hesitate. A hesitation is enough for Elites to uproot it."

Sunbeam nodded once, already turning that into action.

Galaxbeam turned to Moonbeam.

"Your vial is proof. But it is also a map. Necro-stock has a chemical lineage. The reagent in that sample ties back to manufacturing vats. We can triangulate the master stock location."

Moonbeam's voice was calm, regal, and merciless.

"Then point me toward the surgeon."

Galaxbeam's gaze shifted to Starbeam.

"Your cipher is the only stable rhythm we have against Deletion Night. If we broadcast it in reverse—through Starrup's data lattice—we can force deleted zones to 're-remember' their missing geometry."

Starbeam's jaw flexed.

"And restore public trust by showing the truth on live feed."

Galaxbeam nodded.

"Correct. Shadow warfare cannot survive when its silence becomes readable."

Finally, Galaxbeam lifted the Writ Shard Clause, eyes thoughtful.

"This clause tells us where the Echo tether routes converge. The printer is not everywhere. It is one machine with many veins."

The war table zoomed again.

Westonglappa lit up like a wound.

Under the Halcyon Bastion, deep beneath the capital's foundations, a faint ring of anchor points appeared—like nails hammered into the bedrock of reality.

Starbeam's breath slowed further.

"The printer is under the capital."

Moonbeam's eyes went cold.

"Of course it is."

Sunbeam's fist tightened.

"Then we go."

Galaxbeam held up one finger.

"Not all of you. Not yet."

Sunbeam bristled immediately.

"We don't split."

"We don't split blindly," Galaxbeam corrected softly. "We split intentionally. If all four of you appear over Westonglappa at once, the lattice will interpret it as a 'convergence event.' It will auto-lock the corridor. It will try to mirror-sunder again. It will try to exile you back home."

Starbeam spoke, clipped.

"So we need decoys."

Galaxbeam shook his head.

"Not decoys. Anchors. We need each continent stabilized long enough for the corridor to open clean."

Moonbeam's voice dropped.

"You want us to hold our own fires with Supreme Commanders while we cut the heart."

Galaxbeam nodded.

"That is leadership. Choosing what to burn and what to save first."

Sunbeam stared at the Westonglappa feed again. The Halcyon Bastion gates were visible now through smoke—vast, proud, trembling under the approach of an organized nightmare.

His voice turned rough.

"Then give me the assignments."

Galaxbeam's hand moved.

The room filled with four simultaneous orders, crisp and sharp.

"Solar Front: Solardale, Solarstream, Solarstride—deploy Elites to hunt flags on Sollbac immediately. Do not chase ships. Chase the spawn points. Sunwis coordinates from MI7 Suntre. Sunbeam's Sunbrand will be relayed as an anti-spawn signature."

Sunbeam's visor flickered as his comms connected, voice firing like a command shot.

"Solardale. You hear me. Flag-hunt doctrine. No glory, no duels. You uproot. You burn the base. You erase the sigil. Protect civilians second by second."

"Understood," came the answer—tight, disciplined.

"Lunar Front: Lunarstride, Lunarpuff—maintain Stratospheric Guard. Silver lantern routes remain priority. Moonbeam's vial lineage will be broadcast to your medics and your intelligence corps. Any trace of that reagent gets reported immediately."

Moonbeam's voice followed, steady and maternal, but sharp as ice.

"Lunarpuff. If you collapse, the sky collapses. I will not lose Lunna's children to orbit."

Lunarpuff's bruised face tightened, proud and stubborn.

"I stand. Even if I stand bleeding."

"Star Front: Starrup command tower—Starbeam's Silence Cipher goes live. Reverse broadcast through your data lattice. Recover your blank zones. Restore public trust by force of truth. Any Blackened virus payload gets isolated, not fought."

Starbeam's reply was immediate.

"Starradye. You will not 'win' by killing the virus. You win by cutting its network. No emotional decisions."

A stern, green-lit voice answered.

"Yes, X Vice Colonel."

"Galaxy Front: Quarantine remains absolute. No heroics. No breaches. Galaxbeam's writ clause will be used to pinpoint the printer's convergence veins. Your Supreme Commanders defend the Castle of Time as a symbolic line—if it falls, morale collapses."

Galaxbeam's gaze didn't flinch.

"And if you see Shadow banners," he added, voice quiet and terrifying, "do not look away. Document. Track. We will cut the system that allows them to fly there at all."

The war room's alarms spiked again.

A new feed punched through the table without permission.

WESTONGGLAPPA — OUTER HALCYON DEFENSE LINE.

Smoke. Broken steel. Civilians running in tight corridors between barricades. A line of Westonglappan soldiers—human, exhausted—holding rifles that looked too small for the war they were in.

And then the camera shook as the ground began to vibrate.

Rhythmic.

Terrifying.

A black wall approached.

Darksoldiers and Darkmarines marched in perfect stomp, armor matte as night. Darkrangers on distant rooftops fired Null-Bolts into the defense line; soldiers dropped without wounds, eyes empty as if their minds had been switched off.

Darkpolice moved behind the front line with cold efficiency, raising their hands to cast stasis seals—processing survivors as if the act of living had become illegal.

At the center of it all walked Darkhitler, hands clasped behind his back, posture upright and calm like a general attending a ceremony. Darkhit and Darkhitter flanked him, Twin Hammers moving in synchronized menace.

A Westonglappan officer screamed into the camera.

"THEY'RE AT THE OUTER GATES—!"

The feed cut to static.

Sunbeam's breath hitched.

Moonbeam stood fully now, aura compressing into controlled blue fire.

Starbeam's eyes narrowed until the whites nearly disappeared.

Galaxbeam spoke once, calm as physics.

"The printer is buying him time."

Sunbeam's voice came out like a vow.

"Then we take it back."

Galaxbeam raised his hand again. Gold geometry flared above the war table, forming a corridor like a knife blade stretched through space.

"The corridor opens in twenty seconds," he said. "It stays open for seven."

Starbeam's tone snapped.

"Who goes?"

Galaxbeam looked at them all.

"Two go now. Two remain as stabilizers until the corridor is safe to reopen. We rotate."

Moonbeam's eyes flashed.

"Sunbeam and I."

Starbeam's jaw tightened.

"Galaxbeam must be present to cut the writs."

Galaxbeam nodded.

"He's correct. If I am not there, the court will reassert itself."

Sunbeam's fist tightened.

"Then it's me and Galaxbeam."

Moonbeam did not argue with pride. She argued with stakes.

"If you go without lunar containment, Deathwing's stock will spread. If Westonglappa becomes contaminated, evacuation corridors become coffins."

Galaxbeam's eyes softened slightly, the only sign of empathy he allowed himself.

"Moonbeam will be second wave," he said. "We need your Quarantine discipline at home for these seven seconds. Then we reopen."

Moonbeam's gaze held him for a long beat.

Then she nodded once, controlled.

"Seven seconds," she repeated, as if turning it into a promise she would enforce.

Galaxbeam turned to Starbeam.

"You remain to stabilize Starrup's lattice. If Deletion Night expands, our corridor collapses."

Starbeam's voice was clipped, but the anger under it was clean and focused.

"I understand."

Sunbeam inhaled, harsh.

"Fine. I go first."

The corridor began to glow brighter.

Seven seconds.

A blade-edge.

Sunbeam stepped onto the threshold, armor humming with solar pressure. He turned his head just once—looking at Moonbeam and Starbeam.

"Hold the line," he said.

Moonbeam's voice was a cold blessing.

"I will."

Starbeam's reply was discipline given teeth.

"Do not die in a place I can't calculate."

Galaxbeam stepped beside Sunbeam, calm as a lecture with a knife behind it.

"Do not fight the war," he murmured to Sunbeam as the corridor opened. "Fight the machine that makes the war repeat."

Then they vanished into the corridor.

CUTAWAY — WESTONGGLAPPA — HALCYON BASTION OUTER GATES.

The Halcyon Bastion gates were not merely doors.

They were an idea: civilization insisting it still had borders.

They trembled under the approach of organized oppression.

Darkhitler stopped three meters from the gate, hands still clasped behind his back, as if pausing for applause. Darkhit and Darkhitter halted with him, synchronized like the end of a ritual dance.

Behind them, Darksoldiers and Darkmarines continued their rhythmic stomp, then stopped on command, the sudden silence louder than any scream.

Darkhitler tilted his head slightly, listening.

He felt it.

A corridor opening.

A subtle distortion in the air—orange and gold—like the world inhaling.

He smiled faintly.

"Ah," he murmured. "They finally stop running in circles."

He lifted one hand.

The air thickened as dark sigils began to form—a spawn-flag sequence preparing to slam into the ground behind the gate. If the flag planted, the Bastion would be invaded from within.

Darkhitler's finger twitched.

"Begin foreclosure," he said softly.

And then—

The space above the gate split open.

A razor-thin gold corridor flashed like a sword slash across the sky.

Sunbeam erupted out first, landing on the cracked stone before the gates with a shockwave of orange heat that rolled through the battlefield like a sunrise that hurt to witness. His boots scraped. His cape snapped behind him, still heavy, still grimy, still real.

Galaxbeam stepped out beside him, cloak barely moving, eyes already reading the invisible contract lines in the air.

The Westonglappan soldiers who were still conscious stared.

Some fell to their knees without understanding why.

Because even in a world of regimes and gods, there was something instinctive about seeing two Absolute Leaders appear in the middle of a human last stand.

Darkhitler's expression didn't change.

He simply regarded Sunbeam like an approaching storm.

"So," he said, voice calm, oppressive, systematic. "You are late."

Sunbeam's orange aura tightened, the Sunbrand mark burning faintly under his armor like a tattoo of war.

"Not late," Sunbeam replied, voice low and burning. "Just done wasting time."

Galaxbeam's gaze lifted past Darkhitler, past the battlefield, toward the distant sea where the Darkened Dagger waited like a blade on the horizon.

He could feel the Authority Zone's thickness even from here—like walking into a law that hated you.

He spoke softly.

"Darkwing is watching."

As if summoned by the statement, every billboard screen still functioning in the city flickered.

A bored aristocratic face appeared on them.

Darkwing Shadowsypher, seated upon an obsidian throne on the deck of the Darkened Dagger, chin resting on his gloved hand, eyes fixed on the horizon as if he had been waiting for this moment the way one waits for a clock to strike.

His voice slid through the city, cold and effortless.

"Professor," he said, not shouting, not raging—simply declaring. "You have come to court."

Galaxbeam's eyes narrowed slightly.

"And you have built your court under someone else's home," he answered.

Darkwing's bored smile sharpened.

"It is mine now."

Sunbeam stepped forward, one foot cracking the stone.

"You want Westonglappa?" he growled. "Then you come take it from me."

Darkhitler lifted his hand again.

The spawn-flag sequence behind the gate intensified, violet lightning gathering.

Galaxbeam's fingers moved.

The Writ Shard Clause in his mind lit up like a blueprint.

He pointed—not at Darkhitler, not at Darkwing.

He pointed at the ground.

"At the printer," he said softly. "It's below us."

Sunbeam's eyes widened a fraction.

"Under the Bastion."

"Yes," Galaxbeam replied. "And the lattice is already active."

The air pulsed again—deep-world signal, identical to the one that had hit them in their separate battles.

A clean ping.

A status update.

Darkwing's voice came again, almost amused.

"You see it now," he said. "You are intelligent. That is why this will hurt."

Behind Darkhitler, the spawn-flag began to descend like a guillotine.

Sunbeam's aura flared.

"Then we cut it," Sunbeam said, teeth clenched. "Right now."

Galaxbeam's voice remained calm, but the room-temperature of the universe seemed to drop around him.

"Seven seconds," he reminded Sunbeam. "We have seven seconds before the corridor closes and Moonbeam can't follow."

Sunbeam nodded once, brutal.

"Then we make seven seconds count."

He raised his hand.

Orange radiance tightened like bandages made of light around his sternum. His Solar Mana stabilized—not high, not full, but steady enough to kill what needed killing.

He turned his head toward Darkhitler.

"You and your hammers," Sunbeam said, voice like an oath. "You're not the heart. You're the knife."

Darkhitler's smile faded.

"And you," he replied, calm, oppressive, "are a delay."

The spawn-flag slammed down—

—and Sunbeam moved.

Not to destroy the army.

Not to win the battlefield.

But to stop the flag from turning the Bastion into a doorway to hell.

He struck the flag mid-descent with a Solar Verdict palm that branded the sigil pattern, forcing it to stutter, forcing it to hesitate, forcing it to render its origin signature into the air like a confession.

The flag's violet lightning flickered.

Galaxbeam's eyes flashed gold as he read the confession instantly.

He reached down into the ground with time-space precision—not force, but interpretation—finding the convergence vein beneath the Bastion like a surgeon finding a pulse.

And in Starrup's high-altitude war room, Moonbeam and Starbeam felt the corridor shiver.

Moonbeam's fingers tightened around the Necro-sample vial.

Starbeam's glove replayed the Silence Cipher, reversing it through the lattice as his commanders watched blank zones begin to "remember" themselves.

Both of them felt the same thing at once:

The corridor was closing.

The seven seconds were nearly gone.

In Westonglappa, above the trembling gates, Darkwing's bored gaze sharpened into something colder.

"Proceed," he said quietly.

The Anchor lattice pinged again.

And something beneath the Halcyon Bastion began to turn.

Not like a machine starting.

Like a machine entering execution.

Sunbeam's eyes burned.

Galaxbeam's hand pressed deeper into the world's hidden veins.

And the city held its breath—because whatever happened next would decide whether the Four-Front Paradox War became a prison... or a battlefield the gods could finally move through again.

The clone-shards did not leave behind triumph.

They left behind vacuum.

Across four continents, the moment the Authority Echoes collapsed, the air did not feel "freer." It felt exposed—like a roof had been torn away and the world now had nothing between it and the next catastrophe. The deep-world pulse still throbbed under the soles of their feet. A clean, identical ping that carried one message in four different languages of fear:

The machine was still running.

So the AES Absolute Leaders did what gods rarely admit they must do.

They returned home.

They recovered.

They took command.

Because a strike against the heart meant nothing if their homelands became doors while they were gone.

SOLLARISCA — COASTAL RIDGE OUTSIDE THE GLITCH DOMINION

The sky above Sollarisca still flickered with broken livestream static, as if the Glitch Dominion had died but refused to stop broadcasting. The wind carried ash and salt and the faint metallic taste of corrupted signal.

Sunbeam hit the ridge hard. Blackened rock cracked under his boots. His cape hung heavy, caked with grime that refused to burn off, and his chest rose in harsh, uneven pulls that made even his victory look expensive.

He did not fall.

He lifted one hand to his sternum. Orange radiance tightened across his torso like bandages made of light—clean, disciplined, sealing the ragged aura back into a usable form. The burn marks on his armor drew shut. The Solar Mana stabilized, not full, not comfortable, but steady enough to command a war.

A gust rolled across the ridge.

Then—POOMF.

A Solar Elite teleported in, dropped to one knee, and spoke too fast to hide panic. "GENERAL. SOLLBAC IS COMPROMISED. DARKENED PRESENCE CONFIRMED. VOID-SIGIL FLAGS. THE ISLAND IS AN OCCUPATION ZONE."

Another POOMF.

A second Elite appeared, visor cracked, breath ragged. "CELEBLUU IS FALLING TOO. BLACKENED DIGITAL TAKEOVER. COMMUNICATIONS ARE GETTING ERASED. NAVAL POSTS ARE GOING DARK."

Sunbeam's eyes sharpened. He turned his head toward the sea line, listening the way a predator listens—quiet, still, measuring what the wind won't admit. In the far distance, the water glinted like a blade. Islands that should have been stable looked suddenly fragile, like stepping-stones over a pit.

He spoke low, voice burning through the static.

"Security. Now."

The air split again.

Sunsoldiers arrived first, marching in tight formation, orange visors forward, rifles up. Sunmarines followed, heavier armor, heavier footsteps, spreading into a protective ring around Sunbeam and the reporting Elites. Their discipline was a kind of warmth. It made the ridge feel less lonely.

A Solar officer saluted. "PERIMETER IS LIVE. SKY WATCH IS LIVE. PORTAL WATCH IS LIVE."

Sunbeam nodded once. No speech. No ceremony. He did not waste seconds pretending the universe cared about pageantry.

"Fast-travel. MI7 SUNTRE HQ."

His aura flared. The world bent orange.

SOLLARISCA — MI7 SUNTRE HQ, SUBTERRANEAN COMMAND COMPLEX

Sunbeam appeared inside a hardened corridor of solar-steel. Sirens hummed. Warning lights strobed against reinforced plating. The air smelled like heat treated metal and sleeplessness.

In one clean motion, he changed—grime and cape giving way to heavy armored orange battle regalia: thick plating, Solar crest, reinforced gauntlets that looked less like armor and more like an oath.

He entered the war room.

Holographic maps spun above a central table like living terrain. Red-orange markers pulsed. Black markers multiplied. The ocean lanes looked like veins under pressure.

Sunwis stood at the table. SunM was already filtering feeds, stacking signal layers, isolating enemy interference like a surgeon isolating infection.

Sunwis didn't greet with emotion. He greeted with data.

"General. Here is the situation."

He tapped the table. A red-orange island flashed.

"Sollbac. Occupied. Darkened naval pressure pins our cruisers in a contest zone. Ground presence is not normal infantry movement." His finger traced a pattern that looked wrong. "They are anchoring. They are trying to chain-hop—one island to the next—until the archipelago becomes a permanent door."

SunM pulled up a second layer. A sea corridor lit up with black markers like punctures in a map.

"Solar naval is skirmishing at the edge of their approach lane. But they are not pushing with ships first. They are pushing with flags first."

Sunbeam leaned forward, eyes fixed. His voice hardened.

"Show me the breach."

Sunwis flicked the clip onto the air.

A shoreline. Sand. An obsidian spawning flag slamming down like a verdict. Violet lightning. Then—thousands of enemy ground units appearing instantly inside what should have been secured territory.

Sunbeam's jaw tightened.

"Teleport invasion."

Sunwis nodded. "They bypass Great Wall logic. They do not sail into guns if they can spawn inside the perimeter."

Sunbeam's fist clenched once, slow and dangerous.

"Then we uproot the flags."

Sunwis raised a hand. "Not with a heroic charge. With doctrine."

Sunbeam didn't hesitate.

"FLAG-HUNT DOCTRINE," he said, words clean and sharp. "Cut the spawn points. Ignore the bait."

He pointed to Sollbac on the table.

"Solardale takes ground retake. You land Elites first—sweep sigils, uproot nodes, then bring the wedge. Solarstream holds the contest zone and blocks reinforcement ships. Solarstride stays rapid—intercept any elite drop attempts, protect evacuation corridors."

Sunwis watched him carefully. "And if they try to bait you into duels?"

Sunbeam's eyes burned. "No glory duels. You do not chase screams. You chase symbols."

He turned to the next feed—foreign broadcast bleeding into their room like poison.

Westonglappa emergency billboards. Maritime frequencies hijacked. Civilian phones showing smoke, panic, stairwell stampedes.

A grin spread across every surface: Blackwing's confident, hateful joy.

Sunbeam's eyes widened just a fraction.

"Westonglappa."

Sunwis answered without drama. "Yes. Neutral continent. Real target."

Sunbeam turned away from the broadcast like it offended him.

"Get me Moonbeam. Get me Starbeam. Get me Galaxbeam."

Sunwis nodded. "Galaxbeam already moved."

CUT.

LUNNA — FROSTED CITY SAFEHOUSE, HOLDING STATE

Moonbeam sat upright on a reinforced medical dais, posture regal even in recovery. Lunar Elites stood around her like silver statues. A medic pressed a moonlight seal to her shoulder; the glow calmed, tightened, and closed the injury with quiet precision.

Moonbeam inhaled. The air was cold. The air was real. No sterile illusion. No procedural cage. Just the bitter honesty of a homeland under pressure.

She opened her eyes.

Lunarpuff stood near the front—armored, bruised, refusing to lean on anyone. Lunarstride was present too, gaze fixed, the weight of the Stratospheric Guard still sitting on their shoulders like a second spine.

Moonbeam spoke first.

"Report. No poetry."

A Lunar Elite bowed. "Moonveil Bay is contested. Shadow presence confirmed. Flags planted in cliff lines. Ground units phased into existence."

Moonbeam's expression tightened. "Civilians?"

Another Elite answered. "Evacuation corridors are active. Silver lantern routes are holding. But the sky is a minefield. We maintain the Stratospheric Guard only because your command never broke."

Moonbeam stood. Her aura rose, not wild, not theatrical—controlled blue flame, the kind that freezes and burns at the same time.

"Then we do not break now."

A second report slid in like a knife.

"Celebluu," the Elite continued, voice lowered. "It isn't just occupied. It's being rewritten. Roads stutter. Maps lie. Broadcast spires whisper despair. Blackened infrastructure with Shadow logic on top."

Moonbeam's eyes went colder.

"Then we contain the spread first."

She lifted her hand, and the lunar light in the room tightened into a clean symbol—half crescent, half barrier.

"CRESCENT CONTAINMENT," she declared. "Freeze the corruption. Stabilize navigation. Then retake."

Her gaze cut to Lunarstride. "Keep the sky sealed."

To Lunarpuff: "Hold the lantern routes."

Lunarpuff's jaw tightened. "Give me the line. I will hold it."

Moonbeam's voice softened—only slightly—then hardened again.

"You will. And you will live. I need your voice on the line when fear tries to speak louder."

A signal chime cut through the room.

GALAXBEAM'S ENCRYPTED CALL REQUEST.

Moonbeam accepted.

CUT.

STARRUP — NEON-GREEN COMMAND TOWER ABOVE A DIGITAL GRAVEYARD ZONE

Starbeam stood before a city map that looked sick. Corrupted sections pulsed. Some streets were blank. Some buildings didn't render correctly in the feeds, as if the city had forgotten its own bones.

Star Elites and Supreme Commanders watched him in silence, waiting for certainty.

Starbeam's voice was clipped.

"The clone was a payload. Not a battle."

He lifted his glove. A tapping cadence played—precise, measured—his stolen Silence Cipher. The sound felt like a spine being restored to a system that had been forced to kneel.

A commander spoke. "Blackened infiltration confirmed. Virus and vanguard. They planted flags. They tried to claim docks before our fleet could return."

Starbeam nodded once. "I know."

Another commander's voice carried strain. "Starrup is holding, sir. But trust is destabilizing. Citizens see blank feeds and think we are lying."

Starbeam's eyes narrowed.

"Then we show them truth."

He turned slightly, the green light catching the edge of his stern expression.

"TRUTH LATTICE PROTOCOL," he said. "Recover geometry. Expose silence. Reverse broadcast the cipher through the data lattice until the city remembers itself."

A commander hesitated. "If the payload fights back—"

Starbeam cut him off, tone cold with precision.

"We isolate it. We cut its network. We do not duel a virus."

A signal flashed.

GALAXBEAM'S EMERGENCY SUMMONS.

Starbeam accepted.

CUT.

GALAXENCHI — INNER SANCTUM OBSERVATORY, QUARANTINE LIGHTS ACTIVE

Galaxbeam stood before a planet-wide projection of ley-lines and causal corridors. Anchor points glowed like nails hammered into reality. The map was beautiful in the way a blade can be beautiful—clean, intentional, dangerous.

Galaxy Supreme Commanders reported in the background. Their faces held controlled fear, the kind that doesn't scream because it cannot afford to.

A Galaxy Elite spoke. "Galaxukyōragi port was hit. Necro-spores. Death flags. The dead rose and fought again."

Galaxbeam did not flinch. His voice was soft.

"They are turning logistics into a weapon."

Another report hit immediately. "Gallaxengongshi has fallen. Shadow banners visible. Castle of Time occupied."

For one moment, Galaxbeam closed his eyes.

Then he opened them.

"Symbols matter," he said quietly. "If they own the idea of our future, they don't need to defeat us today."

He raised his hand. Quarantine geometry tightened around the room like a calm noose—protective, cruel, necessary.

"TEMPO-QUARANTINE," he ordered. "Seal first. Cut veins second. No breaches. No heroics. We accept their anger and keep them alive."

Then his gaze lifted toward the map's convergence veins—toward a pattern that had started to look less like four separate crises and more like one machine lighting four fires.

"Summon the AES leaders," he said. "Now. We end the confusion."

CUT.

SUMMIT — STARRUP CONTINENT, HIGH ALTITUDE AES EMERGENCY WAR ROOM

A circular chamber of green steel and layered defenses. Solar reinforcement plating. Lunar chill seals. Galaxy geometry lines that held space steady. Star data lattice shimmering like a net of truth.

Sunbeam arrived first in full battle regalia, flanked by Sunsoldiers and Sunmarines.

Moonbeam arrived next, silver-blue cloak flowing like controlled winter, Lunar Elites silent behind her.

Starbeam appeared last of the three, posture rigid, eyes already calculating. No wasted movement. No wasted breath.

Then Galaxbeam stepped into the room like a quiet law of physics.

He did not waste words.

"You all fought clones," he said. "The BRD wanted that. They wanted you tired. They wanted you predictable."

Sunbeam's voice was rough, still carrying the grit of the ridge. "Show us."

Galaxbeam flicked his fingers.

The room filled with feeds.

Westonglappa billboards. Hijacked maritime frequencies. Civilians screaming in stairwells. Ports burning. A shoreline turning into an Authority Zone.

Then the angle shifted.

A black fleet.

A throne.

Darkwing Shadowsypher seated with aristocratic boredom.

And on the ground—Darkhitler marching.

Darkhit and Darkhitter flanking him like synchronized disaster.

Darksoldiers and Darkmarines advancing in rhythmic stomp.

Darkrangers erasing minds from distance.

Darkpolice sweeping survivors into stasis.

Sunbeam's fists tightened.

Moonbeam's eyes went cold.

Starbeam's breathing slowed, discipline compressing into lethal focus.

Galaxbeam continued.

"The Great Wall was not broken by force alone. It was bypassed by method. Spawning flags. Anchor routes. Diversions across our homelands. While you fought the clones, real detachments seeded breaches."

He shifted the map.

Sollarisca lit up. "Sollbac compromised. Second fall."

He shifted again.

Lunna lit. "Shadow flags in coastal waters. Celebluu being rewritten."

He shifted again.

Starrup lit. "Internal sabotage. Deletion payloads. Trust erosion."

He shifted again.

Galaxenchi lit. "Necro-spore quarantine zones. Castle of Time under Shadow banners. Gallaxenaikolani under convergence threat."

Sunbeam stepped forward. "So what do we do?"

Galaxbeam's voice stayed calm.

"We stop treating the clone battles like the war."

Starbeam spoke, clipped. "They share data. They adapt. If we respond one-by-one, we lose sequentially."

Moonbeam nodded once. "Then we move together."

Galaxbeam pointed to Westonglappa.

"This is the heart. But you cannot strike the printer until your home fronts stop bleeding. If you leave now, your continents become doors. The machine wants you to panic-jump."

Sunbeam's eyes burned. "They used us."

Galaxbeam answered without mercy. "Yes."

He paused, then gave the new objective.

"We do not chase every fire," he said. "We choose the fire that burns the whole world."

Moonbeam's aura tightened. "Westonglappa."

Starbeam's jaw flexed. "Synchronize."

Sunbeam lifted his chin. "Give me the plan."

Galaxbeam raised his hand.

Anchor points glowed. A thin corridor appeared. A window measured in seconds.

"We strike the system that prints the Echoes," he said. "And we strike it together. One synchronized finishing window."

Then he lowered his hand—because the plan was not permission to run.

"First," he added, "you stabilize."

The room turned colder with the weight of the truth.

Sunbeam's voice came out like a vow. "No more time stolen."

Moonbeam's reply was quiet and lethal. "No more coffins."

Starbeam's voice was discipline sharpened into steel. "No more blind spots."

Galaxbeam's tone stayed soft, and that softness was frightening. "No more repeatable war."

CUTAWAY — WESTONGGLAPPA, HALCYON BASTION APPROACH

While gods spoke in a reinforced chamber, Westonglappa kept bleeding.

The Halcyon Bastion's outer defense line trembled under smoke and panicked footsteps. Human soldiers held rifles that looked too small for what marched toward them. A child's crying echoed somewhere inside a stairwell where civilians packed themselves shoulder to shoulder, praying the walls were thick enough to mean something.

Then the ground began to vibrate.

Rhythmic.

Organized.

Darksoldiers and Darkmarines advanced in perfect stomp. Null-Bolts from distant Darkrangers erased minds without leaving blood. Darkpolice followed, hands raised, stasis seals forming like paperwork in the air.

At the center walked Darkhitler, hands clasped behind his back, calm as a system that does not fear time. The Twin Hammers flanked him, synchronized menace incarnate.

Above the shoreline, the Authority Zone thickened so heavily the air felt like it had become law.

And far out at sea, the Darkened Dagger remained still—Darkwing seated upon his obsidian throne, bored and godlike, watching the coast like a man watching a clock he already owns.

CUT BACK — SUMMIT, STARRUP

Galaxbeam let the Westonglappa feed hang in the air until it hurt.

Then he began assigning war in a way that made it readable—because readable war could be won.

"Operation Sun Reclaim," he said, eyes on Sunbeam. "Uproot all spawn sigils on Sollbac within twenty-four hours. Make it impossible for their flags to settle."

Sunbeam nodded once, the decision already becoming an order. "Solardale leads the wedge. Solarstream holds the sea lane. Solarstride intercepts drops. Flag-hunt doctrine. No glory."

"Operation Crescent Lantern," Galaxbeam said, eyes shifting to Moonbeam. "Stabilize navigation zones. Destroy broadcast spires. Plant silver lantern pylons before your landing wave two. Freeze the spread first."

Moonbeam's gaze remained steady. "We will not deliver our people into coffins disguised as corridors."

"Operation Truth Lattice," Galaxbeam continued, turning to Starbeam. "Reverse the Silence Cipher through Starrup's infrastructure. Restore geometry. Restore feeds. Restore trust. Do not chase what cannot be verified."

Starbeam's answer was immediate. "We broadcast truth until silence has nowhere to hide."

"Operation Tempo Quarantine," Galaxbeam finished, voice calm as a scalpel. "Hold Gallaxenaikolani sanctuary. Enforce quarantine without exception. Map the printer veins through the anchor network. No breaches."

A Galaxy commander in the feed overlay looked as if he wanted to protest.

Galaxbeam's eyes did not soften.

"If panic spreads," he said quietly, "we lose without being defeated."

Outside the summit chamber, the alarms intensified again—not because their plan was wrong, but because the world did not pause to respect planning.

A new deep-world ping rolled through the chamber, identical in frequency to the one they had felt in their separate battles.

Moonbeam's hand twitched at her side.

Starbeam's gaze sharpened.

Sunbeam's shoulders tightened.

Galaxbeam looked at the anchor corridor window again.

It was still there.

Still thin.

Still measured in seconds.

But the numbers beneath it were changing, like a clock learning to run faster.

"The corridor will not remain generous," Galaxbeam said. "Once your operations report stable, I will open it. Then we go to Westonglappa together. Not as a panic reaction—as a synchronized strike."

Sunbeam's eyes stayed on the Westonglappa feed.

"Then we move now," he said, voice low. "We stabilize fast."

Moonbeam nodded once. "My people will hold."

Starbeam didn't nod. He simply spoke like a locked weapon. "Starrup will remember itself."

Galaxbeam's voice turned softer, and that softness carried a blade.

"Then begin."

And as the four continents executed their named operations—flags hunted, spires targeted, lattices reversed, quarantines sealed—the Westonglappa feed worsened by the minute.

Because while the AES stabilized, Darkhitler kept marching.

And somewhere beneath Halcyon Bastion, the unseen machine that printed the Echoes continued to turn—quietly, steadily—preparing the next repeatable war as if it were already certain the heroes would arrive one second too late.

Starbeam's eyes had been darting franticly the moment he realized the trap. Every second they spent dueling those shadows, another thousand lives were snuffed out on the Westonglappa coast. He attempted to initiate a "Tactical Retreat" maneuver, but the clones slammed their hands into the earth, invoking "Anchor Magic" that sealed the sanctuary doors with chains of violet energy, locking the gods in a cage of their own making.

Contrastingly, the "Steel Phalanx" of the Supreme Commanders showed the true peak of AES military discipline across the four continents. In Sollarisca, Solardale, Solarstream, and Solarstride gathered the remaining Solar Elites, including Sunbrass and Sunalain, into a massive ceremonial circle. Combining their collective mana pools, they projected a "Sun-Fire Net" across the archipelago—a shimmering orange-gold grid that vaporized any Blackened Regime naval vessel that dared to approach the inner islands. High in the stratosphere above Lunna, Lunarstride and Lunarpuff coordinated with Elites like Moonshire and Moonetta to maintain a relentless "Stratospheric Guard." They fired rhythmic "Crescent Volleys" into the sky, creating a glowing minefield of lunar energy that forced the BRD bio-ships to remain in high orbit, unable to deploy their terrifying Plague-Marines. Between the continents of Starrup and Galaxenchi, Starradye and Galaxadye utilized gravitational pressure to churn the very sea. They coordinated a seamless defense, creating a massive, swirling whirlpool zone that trapped the BRD's heavy cruisers in a perpetual, crushing spin, effectively halting their advance toward the capital.

The heroic defense of the Supreme Commanders was a masterpiece of coordination, but it was built upon a tragic foundation of misinformation. As the battle raged, the real Darkwing Shadowsypher stood from his throne and hijacked every global frequency once more, his voice cold and devoid of the manic rage his clones displayed. He didn't speak to the AES; he spoke directly to the citizens of Westonglappa.

"YOUR GODS ARE CURRENTLY FIGHTING SHADOWS IN A HOUSE OF MIRRORS," he declared, his image appearing on every screen in the capital. "LOOK AT YOUR SHORELINE. WE ARE THE ONLY REALITY LEFT TO YOU."

Starbeam glanced at his tactical map and felt his heart go cold. He saw the "Great Flare Wall" holding, he saw the "Crescent Volleys" protecting the sky, and he saw the whirlpools stopping the cruisers. But he also saw the one thing he had missed: the "Darkened Dagger" fleet had already bypassed every single one of those defenses through the Auttumotto breach. The Supreme Commanders were brilliantly defending the wrong places, and as the realization of the "Checkmate" hit him, the sanctuary doors began to creak under the weight of an approaching, absolute darkness.

And then the mirrors broke.

The Mirror Sundering did not feel like escape. It felt like punishment evolving.

The sanctuary did not simply unlock—it fractured into four mirror-corridors, and each AES Absolute Leader was force-ejected back to their home continent with a Resonance Chain wrapped around their core like a sentence. The chain dragged their clone opponent with them, not as a mercy, but as a reminder: the trap could move. The trap could follow. The trap could scale.

They fought. They bled. They executed.

They won.

And still, the deep world kept pinging—identical tone, identical spacing—like something beneath the planet was tapping its finger and waiting for them to make the next predictable move.

So they did the one thing the machine did not want.

They stopped chasing the illusion of "now."

They returned home, recovered, and took command—because they could not strike the printer until their home fronts stopped bleeding.

Sunbeam and Galaxbeam had not arrived in Auttumotto yet. The corridor was still a promise—thin geometry on Galaxbeam's map with a timer that refused to slow down for courage. The operations had been named and the orders had been spoken, but the work was still in motion across the four home continents. Westonglappa kept bleeding while the AES stabilized.

SOLLARISCA — MI7 SUNTRE HQ, SUBTERRANEAN COMMAND COMPLEX

The war room did not feel like a throne room. It felt like a factory line for decisions. Screens layered the walls. Sound dampeners swallowed panic. Analysts sat with straight backs and red eyes, hands moving like prayer on keyboards. Every few seconds, the same deep-world ping chimed from the central console—identical tone, identical spacing—like something under the planet was tapping its finger and waiting.

Sunbeam stood at the central table and did not move until the reinforced door opened again.

Six footsteps entered in sequence. Not rushed. Not hesitant.

Six Supreme Commanders.

Solardye. Solardale. Solarstream. Solarstride. Solarstorm. Solarpuff.

They took positions around the table like pillars taking their weight.

Solardale's eyes locked on the Sollbac marker. "Give me the wedge. I will take the beach and rip the flag out of the sand."

Solarstorm flexed his gauntlet once. "Give me authorization to delete any new spawn the moment it hits ground."

Solarstride kept his gaze on the airspace overlay. "Give me intercept priority. I will keep their elite drops from touching civilians."

Solarstream's finger hovered over the contest zone. "Give me the sea lane. I will deny reinforcement routes."

Solarpuff studied the shelter icons and the heat map of civilians clustered in stadiums, transit tunnels, and school basements. "Give me the people. I will keep them breathing."

Solardye did not speak yet. He watched the portal grid and the distortion alerts with quiet severity. "Give me internal control. No one spawns in our throat."

Sunbeam nodded once. He did not perform a speech. He gave assignments.

"Solardale," Sunbeam said, "you lead the landing wedge on Sollbac. Elites first. Sweep sigils. Uproot nodes. Soldiers land only when the ground is clean."

Solardale's chin lifted. "Understood."

"Solarstream. You hold the sea lane. The contest zone becomes a wall."

"It becomes a wall," Solarstream replied.

"Solarstride. You become the net. Any elite drop attempt, you catch it."

"I catch it," Solarstride answered.

"Solarstorm. You are my counter-drop hammer. You delete flags the moment they appear. No hesitation."

Solarstorm's grin was brief and ugly. "No hesitation."

"Solarpuff. Shelters. Corridors. Morale. If panic spreads, the enemy doesn't need to win a fight."

Solarpuff nodded slowly. "They will not take our lungs."

Sunbeam finally turned to Solardye. "Internal security. Anti-teleport perimeter logic. Portal watch does not blink."

Solardye's voice stayed quiet and absolute. "It will not blink."

Sunbeam leaned forward and tapped the table. Sollbac expanded into a shoreline clip: sand, an obsidian flag, violet lightning, and a spawn wave pouring into the perimeter like a stampede through a ripped seam. Sunbeam's eyes burned.

"Flag-hunt doctrine," he said. "Symbols first. Civilians alive. No glory duels."

Then he looked at Solardale and made the next truth explicit—heavy and clean.

"You are the General here when I am gone."

Solardale's expression tightened with pride and pressure. "Yes, Sunbeam."

Sunbeam lifted his hand and traced a line on the map toward Westonglappa. The line stopped short, because it could not cross without a corridor. That corridor was not his to open yet.

Sunwis pulled up Westonglappa again. Halcyon Bastion. Smoke. Running bodies. A marching column that did not slow.

Sunbeam stared at it until his jaw tightened once, then he spoke into the encrypted channel.

"Moonbeam. Starbeam. Report your holds."

LUNNA — PALACE SAFEHOUSE WAR CHAMBER, HOLDING STATE

Moonbeam's war chamber was colder than MI7 SUNTRE, but the cold did not make it quiet. It made every small sound feel like it mattered. Lantern flame hissed softly. Med tools clicked. A projector hummed and painted blue-white geometry across the ceiling like frozen constellations.

Six Supreme Commanders stood in front of her.

Lunardye. Lunardale. Lunarstream. Lunarstride. Lunarstorm. Lunarpuff.

Lunarstride's armor held frost along the edges as if air itself obeyed him. Lunarstream stood over sea charts, eyes pinned to Celebluu's lanes. Lunarstorm carried a blizzard's anger behind his stillness. Lunarpuff watched refugee lanes with ink-stained fingers from signing orders. Lunardale had wet boots from the coast. Lunardye watched Shadow misdirection overlays multiply like weeds.

Moonbeam rose from the dais. Her shoulder seal glowed once; the injury closed clean. She did not smile at recovery. She treated it like a tool returning to her hand.

"Celebluu is being rewritten," she said. "Blackened infrastructure. Shadow logic layered on top. Maps lie. Roads stutter. Feeds whisper fear."

Lunardye spoke first. "Shadow wants us chasing ghosts. Wrong corridors. Wrong targets."

Moonbeam nodded. "Then we do not chase ghosts. We pin truth into the ground."

She raised her hand. Silver points appeared across the projection—pylon sites.

"Operation Crescent Lantern," she declared. "Containment first."

She pointed at Lunarstride. "Sky seal stays active. Stratospheric Guard does not drop."

"It does not drop," Lunarstride replied.

She pointed at Lunarstream. "Sea lanes around Celebluu. Secure evacuation boats. No ambush routes."

"No ambush routes," Lunarstream answered.

She pointed at Lunardale. "Ground containment. Plant lantern pylons. Stabilize navigation. Force the island to remember its own shape."

Lunardale's jaw set. "We will make the truth stand."

Moonbeam looked at Lunarstorm. "Freeze-and-break. You take spires. You do not chase bait."

"I take spires," Lunarstorm said.

Then she turned to Lunarpuff. "Lantern routes. Refugee stability. Broadcast resilience. Keep fear from becoming their weapon."

Lunarpuff nodded, throat tight. "I keep the line."

Moonbeam's voice softened only enough to sound human, then hardened again.

"You keep it, and you live. I need your voice alive."

The encrypted channel chimed.

Sunbeam.

Moonbeam answered without delay.

"My people will hold," she said. "Containment is active. Retake comes after the island stops lying."

STARRUP — NEON-GREEN COMMAND TOWER, CITY-WIDE RECOVERY GRID

Starrup's command tower smelled like hot circuitry and cold coffee. Under the glass floor, server racks pulsed with green lights fighting to stay steady. Technicians moved in silent lines. Above the central platform, the city map hovered with sections glitched into blank squares, as if reality had missing pixels.

Six Supreme Commanders stood behind Starbeam.

Stardye. Stardale. Starstream. Starstride. Starstorm. Starpuff.

Starstream traced data lanes with quick hands. Stardye watched intrusion patterns like footprints in snow. Starstride stood near the hospital grid. Starstorm stared at quarantine zones like he wanted permission to burn them clean. Stardale watched public broadcasts and panic metrics. Starpuff watched power, water, and evacuation guidance—the boring systems that kept a city from becoming a riot.

Starbeam did not pace. He stood still like a locked weapon.

"The clone battle was a payload," he said. "They want blank feeds. They want citizens uncertain. They want trust to collapse so we surrender to silence."

Stardale spoke carefully. "Civilians think we are hiding truth, sir. They see geometry loss."

Starbeam's eyes narrowed. "Then we show them truth. Operation Truth Lattice."

He pointed at Starstream and Stardye. "You run counter-cyber. Restore geometry. Reverse the Silence Cipher. Push verified truth through every node."

Starstream nodded. "We rebuild the lattice."

Stardye's voice stayed quiet. "We cut the parasite."

Starbeam pointed at Starstride. "Rapid response. Hospitals, data centers, water plants. Panic spreads where people feel abandoned."

Starstride answered. "They will not be abandoned."

Starbeam looked at Starstorm. "Hard reset. Quarantine sectors only. Only after verification. We do not burn our own city out of fear."

Starstorm held still, then nodded. "Understood."

Starbeam turned to Stardale. "Public truth broadcasts. No performance. No posture. Just proof until silence has nowhere to hide."

Stardale's eyes hardened. "We speak with proof."

Starbeam looked at Starpuff. "Civilian continuity. If the city stays functional, the fear campaign fails."

"The city stays functional," Starpuff replied.

The encrypted channel flashed.

Sunbeam.

Starbeam accepted.

"Starrup will remember itself," he said. "Truth lattice is active. We are not dueling a virus."

GALAXENCHI — INNER SANCTUM OBSERVATORY, QUARANTINE RING ACTIVE

Galaxbeam's observatory was not a palace. It was a surgical room for time. Quarantine lights drew gold lines across the floor, geometry that made the air feel disciplined. A planet-wide projection hovered above a circular dais, showing anchor points, ley-lines, port routes, and repeating convergence veins—patterns that looked less like chaos and more like a machine blueprint drawn onto the world.

Six Supreme Commanders stood near the projection.

Galaxendye. Galaxendale. Galaxenstream. Galaxenstride. Galaxenstorm. Galaxenpuff.

Galaxenstream watched port collapses. Galaxenstorm watched necro-spore outbreaks with controlled fury. Galaxenstride studied corridor math. Galaxendale watched symbolic captures—the Castle of Time icon blinking under Shadow banners. Galaxendye watched probability knots tightening into traps. Galaxenpuff tracked humanitarian logistics, medicine lanes, refugee movement.

A report window trembled open. "Galaxukyōragi port is contaminated. Necro-spores. Dead rising."

Galaxbeam's voice stayed soft. "They are turning logistics into a weapon."

Another window snapped on. "Castle of Time occupied. Shadow banners visible."

For a moment, Galaxbeam closed his eyes. Then he opened them.

"Symbols matter," he said. "If they own the idea of our future, they don't need to defeat us today."

He raised his hand. Quarantine geometry tightened around the room—protective, cruel, necessary.

"Operation Tempo Quarantine," he ordered.

He assigned enforcement to Galaxenstorm, port security to Galaxenstream, symbolic defense planning to Galaxendale, prediction to Galaxendye, corridor scouting to Galaxenstride, and humanitarian stability to Galaxenpuff.

Then he accepted the AES channel and listened.

SUMMIT LINK — AES ENCRYPTED WAR CHANNEL (LIVE)

The summit chamber existed as a shared link now, layered with Star lattice shimmer, Solar reinforcement plating, Lunar chill seals, and Galaxy geometry holding space steady. The corridor window hovered on Galaxbeam's projection. Beneath it, a countdown ran in clean numbers that refused to lie.

Sunbeam's report came first. "Sollarisca has commanders in place. Sollbac flag-hunt has begun. Portal watch locked. Shelter corridors stable."

Moonbeam's report followed. "Crescent containment is active. Sky seal holds. Lantern pylons are being planted."

Starbeam's report arrived clipped and precise. "Truth lattice is active. Quarantine sectors identified. Verified feeds rebuilding."

Galaxbeam shifted the projection to Westonglappa and made it concrete. Auttumotto State expanded into named routes and city labels. Halcyon Bastion blinked on the corridor between coast and capital. March icons moved closer with indifferent certainty.

Galaxbeam's voice remained calm, but the chamber felt colder.

"Perfect stability is a fantasy the machine sells you while it takes the world," he said. "A full corridor invites breach. That becomes a door for them as well as for us."

A smaller timer appeared under the corridor window.

A micro-corridor.

Two signatures only.

Sunbeam understood immediately. "You and me."

"Yes," Galaxbeam replied. "Moonbeam, your crisis is systemic. Containment and navigation require time and precision. Starbeam, your crisis is a virus wearing a flag. Proof must starve it. Westonglappa's crisis is collapse. Frontline stabilization. That is what Sunbeam is built for."

Moonbeam spoke fast and clean. "Once Celebluu's corridors stop lying, I send a Lantern Expedition to Auttumotto. Lunar Elites. Moon Rangers. Barrier pylons. Evac guidance."

Starbeam followed immediately. "Once verified feeds stabilize, I send a Truth Relay Team. Rebuild comms. Expose propaganda. Restore maps."

Galaxbeam nodded once. "Support teams. Not glory teams."

Sunbeam's voice dropped. "Where do we land?"

Galaxbeam tapped a junction near the Halcyon Bastion approach. "Here. Close enough to shield evacuations. Close enough to intercept the march. Far enough from the capital that we do not drag breach into its throat."

Sunbeam's jaw set. "We keep the capital breathing."

"We keep it breathing," Galaxbeam agreed.

Then he demanded proof, not hope.

"Homefront commanders are holding?"

The channel crackled with voices like steel.

Solardye: "PORTAL WATCH LOCKED."

Solarstream: "SEA LANE DENIAL ACTIVE."

Solardale: "WEDGE DEPLOYING. FLAGS WILL BE UPROOTED."

Lunarstride: "SKY SEAL HOLDING."

Lunarpuff: "LANTERN ROUTES HOLDING."

Stardye: "INTRUSION PATTERNS CONTAINED."

Starstream: "TRUTH LATTICE PUSHING VERIFIED FEEDS."

Galaxbeam listened. Then he spoke the bridge out loud so it could not be mistaken.

"This is not desperation," he said. "This is delegation."

Sunbeam stepped toward the corridor window. His Sunsoldiers and Sunmarines tightened formation instinctively, as if they could follow. They could not. This was an Absolute Leader move. A scalpel strike.

Sunbeam looked back once. Solardale held his gaze—no fear, just duty.

Sunbeam nodded.

Then he faced the corridor again.

"Open it," Sunbeam said.

Galaxbeam raised his hand. Gold geometry tightened into a doorway no wider than two bodies. The timer beneath it began to run faster—not generous, not romantic—just real.

"Now," Galaxbeam said.

Sunbeam stepped forward. The world bent. Not with poetry—with purpose.

CUTAWAY — WESTONGGLAPPA, AUTTUMOTTO STATE, HALCYON BASTION APPROACH (LIVE)

The march reached the outer line.

Human soldiers gripped rifles with white knuckles. Civilians packed stairwells and prayed concrete could be holy. Havenjade's outbound road clogged with cars, buses, and running feet. Fortborter's sirens wailed like the town itself was begging.

At the center of the advance, Darkhitler walked with hands clasped behind his back, calm as a system that did not fear time. The Twin Hammers flanked him. The Authority Zone thickened above the shoreline until the air felt like law.

Far out at sea, the Darkened Dagger remained still. Darkwing sat on his obsidian throne, bored, watching the coast like a man watching a clock he already owned.

Then a thin gold crack appeared in the air behind the defensive line.

A corridor measured in seconds.

A doorway that meant the AES had finally decided—this time—not to arrive one second too late.

Then a thin gold crack appeared in the air behind the defensive line. A corridor measured in seconds. A doorway that meant the AES had finally decided—this time—not to arrive one second too late.

The crack widened with a clean, geometric scream. Light folded inward like a blade being drawn. The air behind the Halcyon Bastion line flashed gold, and two silhouettes stepped out as if they had always belonged on that road.

Sunbeam landed first. His boots hit shattered asphalt and gravel. His orange regalia caught the flickering sky like a warning flare. His cape snapped once in the sea wind and then hung heavy again, dragged by smoke and salt. He did not stagger. He did not look around in confusion. He looked forward, because forward was where the civilians were running.

Galaxbeam followed with less impact and more inevitability. His boots touched down as if the world had been waiting to accept the weight. The gold geometry around him tightened, then loosened, then vanished—like a lock testing its key.

Behind them, the corridor snapped shut immediately.

It did not close like a door.

It closed like a cut.

The gold line folded into itself and disappeared, leaving only scorched air and a faint, repeating chime on a handheld command tablet one of the defenders held near his chest. The tablet's screen jittered with interference, but the sound was clear. A single tone. Then silence. Then the same tone again. Identical spacing. Identical pitch. Like a metronome that belonged to something under the earth.

A Westonglappa officer turned his head and froze mid-breath. His hands shook on his rifle. His eyes locked on Sunbeam's crest. He looked like he wanted to speak and couldn't decide what language to use.

Sunbeam did it for him.

"Evac routes," Sunbeam said. "Havenjade and Fortborter. Which one is choking."

The officer swallowed hard. "Havenjade is choking. Cars are gridlocked. People are running around them. Fortborter is still moving but barely."

Sunbeam nodded once. "Keep Fortborter moving. Open Havenjade by force."

A burst of Darkened artillery slammed into the barricade line in front of them, and the ground jumped. Concrete dust sprayed into the air. The nearest human soldiers flinched and ducked, but Sunbeam did not.

A wave crested out of the smoke.

It was not a scattered push. It was a system wave.

Heavy Darkened infantry marched in slabs. They carried siege plates and blunt, crushing weapons. Their armor was thick and matte like it drank light. Their boots hit the road in a brutal rhythm that matched the deep-world ping like the march had been tuned to it. Behind them, spawn-flags glowed violet along the shoreline approach, planted like stakes in lawless ground. Each flag hummed. Each flag dragged the Authority Zone outward with invisible pressure that made the air feel heavy and wrong.

Sunbeam stepped forward to meet it.

He raised one hand, palm down.

The orange radiance around him tightened. It did not explode. It compressed, controlled, and surgical. Heat rolled outward in a flat sheet. The front line of Darkened heavy infantry hit it and began to deform like metal left on a forge. Their siege plates softened at the edges. Their weapons sagged. Their march rhythm broke into uneven stutters.

The humans behind Sunbeam stared.

They had seen fire before.

They had not seen fire used like doctrine.

Sunbeam took another step and swung his arm in a clean arc. A band of solar flame cut across the road at waist height. It did not touch the fleeing civilians behind the barricades. It did not spread into the alleyways. It only swept the march lane, and the heavy infantry in that lane collapsed into slag and crumbling ash as if their bodies had been unmade by judgment rather than burned by heat.

"Hold the line," Sunbeam said without looking back. "Move the civilians now."

The Westonglappa officer snapped out of his shock. He raised his radio, voice breaking. "Move! Move now! Fortborter outbound stays open! Havenjade foot lanes only! Keep the stairwells moving!"

Sirens wailed in the distance. A bus engine screamed as it tried to push through clogged road. People ran with bags and children and nothing else. Some stumbled over broken concrete. Some turned their heads to look, because seeing the gods arrive made the panic feel real in a different way.

Galaxbeam did not chase the infantry. He watched the ground.

He watched the symbols.

His eyes tracked the violet lines that ran beneath the asphalt like veins. Anchor pylons. March-route sigils. The invisible structure that fed the Authority Zone like a heart feeding a limb.

He walked forward and lifted two fingers.

The world responded.

A thin gold grid flashed into existence under the road, as if the asphalt had become glass and someone had revealed the mathematics beneath it. The grid tightened around a cluster of violet anchor pylons half-buried near the roadside, disguised as broken street fixtures. The pylons pulsed once, trying to resist. The deep-world ping chimed again, louder now, and the nearest humans clutched at their ears like the sound had weight.

Galaxbeam spoke softly. "There."

Sunbeam followed his gaze. His eyes narrowed. "Feeding the march."

"Yes," Galaxbeam said. "Feeding the certainty."

Another wave rose behind the first. Darkened shock lines. Brutal, thick-bodied troops carrying hooked chains and ground spikes. They slammed spikes into the road, and the Authority Zone pressure thickened. The air pressed down. Human knees buckled. Radios crackled. Screens glitched. A hijacked broadcast flickered across a cracked billboard near the Bastion, showing Darkwing's bored silhouette on a throne at sea, as if the screen itself was kneeling.

Sunbeam's jaw tightened. "They're trying to pin fear in place."

"They are trying to make surrender feel like physics," Galaxbeam replied.

The Darkened troops surged closer, and then the ground in front of Sunbeam snapped upward.

Anchor Magic.

The asphalt rose in jagged slabs like the road itself had been ordered to arrest him. Chains of violet energy lashed out from embedded spikes, snaking toward Sunbeam's limbs—not to hurt him, because it could not, but to lock him, delay him, trap him in a posture that would cost minutes.

Minutes were bodies.

Sunbeam did not fight the chains like a man trying to break ropes.

He fought them like a leader refusing to be scheduled.

He planted his feet and let the chains wrap his arms. The violet energy tightened and screamed, trying to hold him. Sunbeam looked past it to the civilians packed into a stairwell entrance behind the barricade. A mother clutched a child against her chest. The child's face was streaked with dust and tears. The mother's mouth was open in a silent prayer.

Sunbeam breathed once, steady, and lifted his arms anyway.

The chains did not snap from strength.

They snapped from authority.

Orange radiance surged through Sunbeam's forearms like molten veins, and the violet links crystallized into brittle glass. He flexed once, and the Anchor Magic shattered into purple dust that blew away in the sea wind.

He stepped forward and slammed his heel down. The jagged asphalt slabs dropped back into place as if the road had been corrected.

Behind Sunbeam, a human soldier whispered, "He didn't even—"

Galaxbeam cut him off with calm instruction. "Do not worship. Move."

The soldier blinked, embarrassed, then ran to pull civilians through the open lane.

Two figures moved through the smoke toward Sunbeam and Galaxbeam with predatory precision.

Darkhit came first, fast enough to look like a smear. His kinetic strikes cracked the air like whips. He aimed not at Sunbeam's body, but at the space around him—trying to disrupt the ground, collapse the barricade lanes, force civilians into bottlenecks that would demand rescue.

Darkhitter followed with heavy gravity-maces that did not swing like weapons. They swung like verdicts. Each impact drove pressure into the road, creating cratered pits that swallowed cars and folded the defensive line inward.

Sunbeam reacted instantly.

He did not chase Darkhit.

He shielded the civilians.

He threw a solar wall down Havenjade's outbound road. It was not a flame wall meant to kill. It was a controlled barrier of heat that forced the Darkened shock lines to stop advancing while the civilians ran behind it. The air shimmered. The road became a furnace border. The humans felt the heat and moved faster because they understood, in their bones, that the barrier was a promise.

"Fortborter stays open!" Sunbeam barked. "Keep them moving!"

Darkhit blurred toward the barricade edge and tried to strike a support beam that held a stairwell door open. The beam would have snapped. The stairwell would have collapsed. People would have been trapped.

Galaxbeam lifted one hand.

The beam froze.

Not in ice.

In time.

Darkhit's fist hit an invisible boundary and recoiled as if he had punched a wall of law. His eyes flicked up, surprised for the first time.

Galaxbeam's voice remained soft. "Denied."

Darkhitter slammed a gravity-mace into the ground near Fortborter's approach lane, trying to pull the asphalt upward into a ridge that would stop buses.

Sunbeam's aura flared. He stepped into the pressure like stepping into wind, and he punched downward once.

Solar force drove into the ground. The gravity ridge collapsed flat. The pressure buckled and rolled away like a wave hitting a seawall. The bus engine screamed again and then surged forward.

A Westonglappa driver leaned out his window, eyes wide. "GO! GO!"

Civilians poured into the moving gap.

Darkhit and Darkhitter changed tactics.

They stopped trying to break the line directly.

They attacked the clock.

They planted new anchor spikes along the road in quick succession, each one pulsing violet. The deep-world ping started to come faster, and each chime made the humans tense like they were hearing a bomb timer. The hijacked billboards flickered again. The broadcast tried to paint the scene as hopeless, inevitable, owned.

Sunbeam clenched his jaw. "They're feeding the zone through repetition."

Galaxbeam nodded, watching the grid under the road. "The march is not marching. It is being printed."

A violet chain shot from a newly planted spike toward a bus, trying to lock the wheels and flip it into the crowd. Sunbeam flicked his fingers.

A thin solar lash snapped the chain mid-air and burned the spike into slag without touching the bus.

The humans cheered for half a second, and then the next ping chimed, and the cheer died into fear again.

Galaxbeam stepped closer to the buried anchor pylons he had identified. He crouched slightly, as if listening to the ground. The gold geometry around his fingers formed a narrow lattice that sank into the asphalt like needles.

He spoke like a professor explaining a mistake. "This chain is upstream."

Sunbeam glanced toward the march lane. "Meaning if we cut it..."

"The Authority Zone loses pressure," Galaxbeam said. "The spawn-flags lose stability. The march loses its rhythm."

Darkhit saw what Galaxbeam was doing. His body blurred, and he surged toward him in a straight line. He did not aim to hurt Galaxbeam. He aimed to interrupt the cut.

Sunbeam moved without thought.

He stepped between them.

He did not swing wildly.

He struck once, a simple forward punch coated in compressed solar radiance. The impact was silent at first. Then the air cracked. Darkhit was launched backward down the road, skidding through shattered asphalt and smoke until he slammed into a ruined concrete divider. He rose again immediately, because he was Absolute-grade in presence, but the stall failed.

Galaxbeam did not look up.

He finished the cut.

The gold lattice tightened beneath the anchor pylons. The violet glow flickered. The deep-world ping stuttered for the first time, like a metronome losing a beat.

Then the pylons cracked.

Not from force.

From contradiction.

Galaxbeam pulled, and a thin, invisible line emerged from the ground like a tendon being extracted. It shimmered violet and black, vibrating with Authority pressure. It was the anchor chain feeding the march.

Galaxbeam held it up between two fingers like a thread.

Sunbeam's eyes narrowed. "Cut it."

Galaxbeam's voice stayed calm. "Not yet. Watch what happens when it realizes it is exposed."

The air pressure shifted.

The Authority Zone hesitated.

For one breath, the oppressive heaviness loosened, and human soldiers around the line straightened as if they had been allowed to inhale again. The hijacked billboards flickered. The broadcast glitched. The march rhythm stuttered. A few Darkened heavy infantry froze mid-step like puppets whose strings had been tugged wrong.

Sunbeam used that breath like a weapon.

"Push them back," Sunbeam said. "Clear Havenjade. Clear Fortborter. Now."

Human commanders shouted orders. Marines dragged barricades forward. Rangers repositioned. Civilians ran faster because the air felt less crushing.

Darkhitter roared and slammed a gravity-mace down, trying to reassert pressure.

Sunbeam lifted his palm, and a solar shockwave rolled forward. It did not harm him. It did not need to. It shoved the entire Darkened shock line backward like a door being slammed in their faces. The heavy infantry stumbled. Siege plates clanged. A few spawn-flags snapped at their bases and fell over, their violet light sputtering.

Darkhit rose from the divider and moved again, faster, angrier, trying to plant spikes around Sunbeam's feet.

Sunbeam did not chase him.

Sunbeam stamped the road once.

Orange radiance spread in a precise circle. Every newly planted spike inside that circle turned brittle, then crumbled into dust. Anchor Magic failed to "take." The trap lost its grip.

Galaxbeam watched the extracted chain vibrate harder. He heard something in it. A pattern. A command signal.

He spoke quietly, almost to himself. "He is about to override."

Sunbeam's eyes sharpened. "Who."

Galaxbeam did not answer with a name.

He answered with the feeling.

A stillness rolled across the shoreline like a slow wave.

The broadcast on the billboards changed.

The screen steadied.

The static cleared.

For the first time, the hijack did not feel like chaos. It felt like ownership.

Darkhit and Darkhitter stopped moving for half a heartbeat and turned their heads toward the shoreline approach road, as if a superior had entered the room.

Then the humans felt it too.

It was not pain.

It was pressure.

Like a courthouse ceiling lowering. Like a contract being signed in the lungs.

A figure walked into view through the smoke with hands clasped behind his back, matte-black armor absorbing the orange firelight like it was insulted by brightness.

Darkhitler arrived.

He did not sprint. He did not posture. He walked like the march itself was an extension of his will. The Authority Zone thickened around him without needing spikes or chains. The air recognized him and bowed.

He stopped at the edge of the stalled march lane and looked at Sunbeam and Galaxbeam like they were inconvenient variables that had appeared in his equation.

His voice carried without shouting. It was calm. It was oppressive. It was procedure.

"Return to compliance," Darkhitler said, and the words hit the humans like cold water. "This territory is under foreclosure."

A few Westonglappa soldiers flinched at the word like it had magic in it. A civilian sobbed in a stairwell. The hijacked billboards flashed the same phrase in repeating text, as if the city was being stamped.

Sunbeam's voice stayed level. "Civilians are evacuating. That's not negotiable."

Darkhitler tilted his head slightly, as if surprised someone had spoken out of turn. "Evacuation is a privilege granted by authority."

Galaxbeam lifted the extracted chain slightly higher. His eyes stayed calm. His tone stayed soft. "You are feeding your march through an external anchor. That is not sovereignty. That is dependency."

For the first time, Darkhitler's gaze focused on the chain.

The Authority Zone tightened in response. The deep-world ping chimed again, louder, as if something under the planet had noticed the argument.

Darkhitler raised one hand, not in anger, but in paperwork. Violet pressure rolled forward. Not to harm Sunbeam or Galaxbeam, but to crush the humans behind them into surrender. The air tried to push people to their knees.

Sunbeam stepped forward and widened his stance.

Orange radiance spread behind him like a shield canopy.

The pressure hit the radiance and stopped.

It stopped because Sunbeam refused to allow it past his back.

He did not need to be hurt for this to matter. He needed to be delayed. He needed to be forced to choose between crushing the march and holding the civilians. The system was trying to make him spend time.

Sunbeam's jaw tightened. "Keep moving," he said to the human commanders behind him. "Do not stop. Do not look back. Fortborter stays open."

Galaxbeam watched Darkhitler's hand position. He watched the way the Authority Zone responded like a trained animal. He saw the symbolic object at the center of it.

It was not the soldiers.

It was not the maces.

It was the printed certainty.

A thin, obsidian seal rose from the ground behind Darkhitler like a black pillar made of paperwork and law. It had runes like clauses. It pulsed with the same rhythm as the deep-world ping, and each pulse strengthened the march.

Galaxbeam spoke softly. "That pillar is the stamp."

Sunbeam nodded. "Break the stamp."

Darkhitler's calm voice cut through. "You cannot break what is already filed."

Galaxbeam stepped forward one pace. He did not rush. He did not flare. He lifted his hand and drew a small gold shape in the air, like writing on an invisible board.

The gold shape wrapped around the obsidian pillar.

Then it tightened.

The pillar resisted. Violet pressure surged. The Authority Zone screamed without sound.

Galaxbeam remained calm. "You are not filed. You are replicated."

The gold lattice cut through the pillar's runes like a scalpel through tissue. The pillar cracked down the middle. The deep-world ping stuttered again. The hijacked billboards flickered. The repeating foreclosure text glitched into broken characters.

Darkhitler's head turned a fraction, and for the first time his calm looked strained.

Sunbeam saw the opening and acted like a leader who had waited for it.

He lunged forward, not to duel, not for glory, but to end the stall.

He swept his arm in a controlled arc, and a solar shockline tore across the march lane and carved the ground in front of the Darkened heavy infantry. The road split into a trench of glowing orange heat, deep and wide, forcing the shock lines to stop or fall. The march rhythm broke again.

The human defenders behind the Halcyon Bastion line screamed orders and pushed civilians through the breathing gap. Havenjade's outbound road unclogged by inches as soldiers dragged cars aside and people sprinted through alley lanes. Fortborter's sirens continued, but now they sounded like movement, not doom.

Darkhit and Darkhitter attempted to surge again.

Sunbeam lifted one hand toward them and did not even look angry.

"Sit," Sunbeam said.

A burst of solar pressure hit the ground in front of them like a wall appearing instantly. Darkhit's blur smashed into it and rebounded. Darkhitter's gravity-mace swing hit the wall and splintered the pressure field into sparks, but it did not move Sunbeam an inch. They could not hurt him. They could only waste time. And Sunbeam refused to donate time.

Galaxbeam held the extracted anchor chain up again. It vibrated violently now, trying to reconnect. The chain was not only feeding the march. It was reporting.

Galaxbeam spoke quietly, precise. "If we cut this fully, the Authority Zone here collapses. But it will scream across the network. Someone else will feel it."

Sunbeam's eyes stayed forward. "We cut it anyway. Damont City does not fall."

"Agreed," Galaxbeam said.

In Lunna, Moonbeam's lantern pylons went into the ground with steady hands while Lunardale's containment teams moved through streets that tried to lie to them. The pylons glowed silver-blue, and the stuttering roads stabilized. Lunardye's counter-misdirection overlays updated in clean lines instead of smeared shadows. A Lunar operator's radio crackled once, and her voice stayed controlled as she spoke into the line.

"Lantern nodes are holding. Routes are real again."

In Starrup, Starbeam stood over a grid of blinking terminals while Starrastream and Starradye pushed verified feeds through the truth lattice. The blank squares on the city map began to fill with real geometry. Cameras stabilized. Emergency routing stopped looping civilians into dead ends. A technician gulped cold coffee and spoke fast.

"Verified feed restored on Sector Nine. Silence Cipher interference dropping."

Starbeam's voice stayed clipped. "Keep pushing. Proof is a weapon."

Moonbeam's message hit the shared AES channel as a clean, calm signal. "Lantern–Truth Matrix is online. Propaganda effectiveness is collapsing. Panic is reducing."

Starbeam followed immediately. "Truth lattice stabilized. Blank feeds replaced. Civil trust recovering."

In Sollarisca, Solardale's wedge deployed onto Sollbac while Solarstream denied sea lanes and Solarstride intercepted elite drop attempts before they could land near civilians. Solardye's portal watch grid chimed with warning and then with confirmation.

"Anti-teleport perimeter holding."

Solarstorm's voice came in harsh and confident. "New spawn detected. Deleted on contact."

Solarpuff's voice came softer but just as necessary. "Shelters are calm. Morale is steady."

Those were not speeches.

They were proof-flashes.

Proof that delegation was working.

Back on the Auttumotto road, Sunbeam heard the radio confirmations in his ear and used them like fuel. He did not smile. He simply tightened his stance.

"Now," Sunbeam said.

Galaxbeam's fingers closed.

He cut the extracted anchor chain in half.

The cut made no sound at first.

Then the world reacted.

The Authority Zone above the shoreline shuddered like a curtain losing its rods. The oppressive pressure loosened by a full step. The hijacked billboards glitched into static. Several spawn-flags along the march route flickered and fell over as if their roots had been severed.

Darkened heavy infantry froze mid-step again, their march rhythm broken. Human soldiers behind the Halcyon Bastion line straightened as if they had been allowed to breathe for the first time in an hour.

Darkhitler's gaze snapped to the broken chain halves in Galaxbeam's hand.

His calm face held, but the system behind him trembled.

Sunbeam stepped forward and spoke in the simplest doctrine he had.

"Fall back," Sunbeam ordered the humans. "Evac keeps moving. We hold here."

He turned his head slightly toward Galaxbeam. "Seal the door."

Galaxbeam nodded once. "I will cauterize the math."

He lifted his hand, and gold geometry spread under the road in a thin, controlled lattice. It wrapped around the broken anchor remains in the ground and tightened, preventing reconnection. It did not look like magic. It looked like a lock being built in real time.

Darkhitler raised one hand again.

The Authority Zone tried to surge back.

But the stamp pillar was cracked, and the anchor chain was severed, and the surge came out uneven. It pushed humans to their knees in pockets, then released them, like a fist that could not decide where to land.

Sunbeam seized the instability and crushed the remaining shock line with controlled solar strikes that cleared the march lane without spilling into the evacuation routes. Each strike mattered because each strike opened another ten meters of road. Each opened space for people to run.

Cars moved again in Havenjade. Sirens shifted from stationary wailing to moving cadence. Fortborter's outbound road breathed. The Halcyon Bastion line stabilized.

For the first time since the Darkened landing, the defenders felt something close to control.

That was when the sea wind changed.

It carried no salt.

It carried something older.

The billboards did not glitch this time.

They went silent.

Every screen in the area—phones, cracked kiosks, emergency displays—showed the same image for one breath: the obsidian throne on the Darkened Dagger, empty.

Then the image cut to the shoreline.

A single figure stepped onto Auttumotto soil as if stepping off a private deck.

The Authority Zone tightened instantly, not in panic, but in recognition.

It recognized its owner.

The air pressure dropped into a colder, heavier law. The ground sigils brightened. The deep-world ping chimed once, perfectly on time, like it had been waiting for the correct hand to hold the gavel.

Darkwing Shadowsypher walked forward with aristocratic boredom so complete it looked like mercy. His gaze passed over Darkhitler without urgency, as if subordinates were furniture. His eyes settled on Sunbeam and Galaxbeam.

Sunbeam's cape lifted in the sudden pressure change and then fell again, heavy as a vow. He did not retreat. He did not posture. He stood between the evac routes and the approaching owner of the zone.

Galaxbeam's gold lattice tightened under their feet. His posture stayed calm. His eyes stayed sharp. He did not look surprised. He looked like a teacher who had reached the real lesson.

Darkwing stopped close enough that the civilians behind the line could see his face clearly.

He finally spoke.

"YOU CUT MY SYSTEM," Darkwing said, and the FULL CAPS filled the air like a stamped verdict. "NOW YOU STAND IN MY YARD."

Sunbeam's voice stayed even. "Damont City doesn't fall."

Galaxbeam's voice stayed soft. "The corridor is gone. The only way out is forward."

Darkwing's mouth curved with bored ownership, and the Authority Zone tightened one more time, not as an attack, but as a promise.

"THEN WALK," he said.

And the world held its breath, because the next chapter was no longer a choice.