In Auttumotto, Westonglappa, the war stopped pretending it was "approaching" and started behaving like it had already moved into the streets—quietly, efficiently, and with the kind of confidence that only immortal regimes could afford.
Fortborter Town woke to a harbor that no longer belonged to the ocean. Black smoke rolled low over the water, thick enough to sting the eyes and erase the horizon. Blackened skimmer-craft cut across the surf like blades, dropping shock charges into piers and mooring points—not to conquer the sea, but to corrupt the idea of escape. Each detonation wasn't aimed at ships so much as the belief that ships could still save anyone. Lifeboats rocked in their cradles, useless in a world that had decided "departure" was a rumor.
Above that harbor, on a high overlook where the wind tasted like burned salt, Darkwing Shadowsypher watched with calm, merciless patience. He allowed the cameras to exist. He allowed the press corridor to remain open. Not because he feared scrutiny—but because fear travels faster when it has footage.
A cameraman tried to pan toward a hidden evacuation barge tucked behind a fractured seawall.
A single stray blast snapped the dock in half.
The camera shook. The recording continued anyway—breathless, trembling—because stopping felt more fatal than dying.
Sidetown City became the opposite of Fortborter's wide-open terror. Here, the war narrowed into alleys and stairwells, into whispered routes and hurried hands gripping children by the sleeves. Exhausted Westonglappa soldiers tried to shepherd civilians through back passages, shielding them with bodies and broken riot shields, praying for one more turn that wasn't blocked.
Then Blackcraven and Blacknyxen dropped into the grid like street-tactical nightmares.
Black haze poured into intersections, slicing sightlines apart. Shutters were pried open. Supply crates were yanked into the open in plain view—comms gear, medical packs, fuel canisters—looted with the casual swagger of people who knew no one could punish them. Their laughter wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It simply carried the message that scarcity itself had become a weapon.
When the last route folded into a dead end, gold-yellow light broke through the smoke like a verdict.
Galaxfengzaemon arrived in a flare that felt less like landing and more like the world being rearranged. Distance "folded" around him—space taught a hard lesson and obeyed. Families vanished out of a trapped corridor in a blink, reappearing behind safer rubble lines with stunned, tear-streaked faces that hadn't yet processed the fact they were still alive.
Behind him, Galaxfengri and Galaxryujin held the line with disciplined cosmic pressure. Their movements were clean, geometric, almost surgical—shields built out of arranged air, counter-angles, and timed pulses. It didn't look like a brawl. It looked like a lecture delivered at full force: this is where you stand, this is where you do not.
Kropolis—media hub, nerve center, the place where truth used to feel like a public right—tried to do what it always did: broadcast routes, casualty counts, emergency maps, names of shelters that hadn't collapsed yet. For a few precious minutes, it worked.
Then Blackyasira and Blackenstride hit it like a coordinated blackout.
The feed didn't simply cut. It was replaced—poisoned with false emergency scrolls, reroutes that led into sealed streets, "safe zones" that were nothing but waiting rooms for capture. Meanwhile Blackenstride moved through the tower's defenses with terrifying speed, turning the building into a vertical battlefield. Stairwells became choke points. Each floor shuddered with impact pulses, as if the structure itself was being taught to fear what lived inside it.
And then the temperature of the fight changed.
Galaxadye arrived, and panic became calculation.
His presence didn't erase chaos—it organized it. Gold radiance laid itself across the signal layers like a stabilizing hand, forcing coherence through the jamming long enough for one honest transmission to punch through the noise. One clean line, spoken like a heartbeat, reached the wider world before the corridor tried to close again:
"Auttumotto is collapsing—Fortborter sealed—Sidetown burning—Kropolis compromised—Pendammal taken—Clattermoor threatened."
Pendammal Town was where the horror learned to speak politely.
No screaming. No cinematic rubble storms. Just "clean" occupation—Blackened squads marching civilians into makeshift compliance lines with courteous megaphones, smiling as they directed people into neat lanes. Trucks loaded stolen medical crates like routine inventory transfer. Local defenders stood with fingers tight on triggers, forced into a choice that scraped the soul raw: fire into crowds or watch their town get hollowed out in silence.
The only thing worse than the quiet was the fact that the quiet was working.
And then there was Clattermoor Keep—the symbolic holdout, the stubborn stone promise Westonglappa hadn't yet surrendered.
The assault there wasn't subtle. It didn't need to be.
Blackenstride led a spearhead up fractured approaches, moving like a blade through rubble, every step a statement that the keep's age and legend meant nothing against supremacy. Above the battlements, Galaxadye met him in open air, and their Supreme-Commander clash cracked the sky with heavy fantasy-magic force—gold time-pressure versus black kinetic dominance.
Galaxadye's anticipation tightened the battlefield into lanes he could predict, routes he could punish, angles he could close before they opened.
Blackenstride shattered those lanes anyway—speed and impact breaking "predictable" into fragments, turning certainty into a guessing game. Each exchange sent ripples down into the keep's stone like drums of judgment. Every defender below felt it in their teeth, in their ribs, in the way courage started to sound like a thin voice trying to keep up with thunder.
And while Clattermoor shook, the news hit every AES continent at once.
Screens lit across Sollarisca, Lunna, Starrup, and Galaxenchi. Warrooms absorbed the transmission with the kind of silence that precedes decisions, not grief. In Sollarisca, General Sunbeam watched the footage with his jaw set so hard it looked capable of breaking steel. He didn't wait for speeches. He didn't ask for permission from fear.
He dispatched Solarstream—along with Sunwhoop and Sungrettga—as an emergency relief spear.
Orange flame cut through storm clouds as they arrived near Clattermoor's outskirts, a bright line of intent against maroon pressure. Not a promise of victory. A promise of time bought at a cost they were willing to pay.
Far offshore, the larger war never stopped breathing. BRD naval-aerial groups continued their relentless raids against the AES continents—strikes designed for terror, headlines, exhaustion. And the AES responded the same way they always did: interception, denial, survival.
They didn't "win" the air.
They refused the BRD the result.
Air wings rose. Naval screens tightened. Barrage patterns met counter-patterns. A brutal loophole of supremacy settled in—neither side fully landing the killing blow from sea or sky, so the BRD kept striking to be seen, and the AES kept blocking to keep people alive.
And in that gap—between headlines and shelter corridors, between immortal pressure and human lungs—the chapter's truth became simple and painfully personal:
Supreme Commanders and elites were the real hands on the battlefield, trading power like thunderstorms at arm's length.
Ordinary people ran beneath them, hoping the gods would choose rescue one more time.
Auttumotto, Westonglappa — Clattermoor Keep
Clattermoor Keep did not look "saved."
It looked like a wound that refused to close.
Ancient stone still glowed where solar glass had fused into it—orange-white veins trapped beneath spreading maroon fractures, as if the Keep's own bones had learned to burn. Wind dragged smoke across the battlements in ragged curtains, revealing glimpses of the lower city: streets cut into Compliance blocks, alleyways breathing like trapped lungs, and frightened clusters of civilians moving only when someone stronger than fear told them to move.
Above the fractured approaches, Blackenstride came up the rubble slope the way a blade slides out of a sheath—quiet, smooth, unstoppable. The air behind him snapped with black kinetic pressure, and each step made loose stone forget how to be stable.
He didn't shout. He didn't need to.
The battlefield already knew his language.
A gold-yellow shimmer peeled open in the sky above the battlements—clean, precise, like the world was being unfolded along an invisible hinge.
Galaxadye appeared.
Not as an entrance.
As an answer.
His radiance didn't roar. It measured. It spread in a calm field that made falling debris slow just enough to be dodged, made chaotic movement suddenly feel like it had rules again. In his presence, panic didn't disappear—but it stopped being random. It started becoming predictable.
Blackenstride looked up, eyes sharp.
Galaxadye's voice carried with controlled weight. "Turn around."
Blackenstride smiled, a thin cut of amusement. "You think you can teach speed manners?"
Galaxadye's gaze did not blink. "I think I can teach it consequences."
The next second wasn't a second.
It was a collision.
Blackenstride surged forward, and the air detonated—black kinetic dominance slamming into gold time-pressure with a sound like metal striking the sky. The shockwave rippled down into the Keep's stone, making torch brackets ring and loose masonry jump as if the fortress itself flinched.
Blackenstride's motion was violence made elegant—too fast to track cleanly, too heavy to ignore. He cut through the open air with a strike meant for the battlements, meant to split the defense line in one decisive breach.
Galaxadye moved first.
Not faster.
Earlier.
His gold field tightened. Invisible "lanes" appeared—subtle corridors of inevitability—so that when Blackenstride committed to a direction, the direction suddenly became a trap. The strike landed near Galaxadye instead of on him, carving a crescent scar through the air, shattering a parapet edge into a spray of stone.
Civilians below screamed.
Westonglappa soldiers ducked by reflex.
Galaxadye did not look down. He spoke through the clash like a surgeon explaining where the knife would go. "Your next angle is the left shoulder. Your next step breaks the third stone. Your next mistake is thinking I'm guessing."
Blackenstride's grin twitched—almost insulted—and he answered by refusing the lane.
He broke it.
Black kinetic pressure cracked across the gold corridor like a boot through glass. For a breath, the future stopped behaving. The air stuttered, and even Galaxadye's field trembled under the audacity of it.
Then the sky tore orange.
A comet of solar flame punched through the smoke layer, trailing heat like a banner.
Solarstream arrived over the Keep's outskirts—orange radiance boiling the haze away in a widening ring—and with him came two streaks of fierce, disciplined motion: Sunwhoop and Sungrettga, elites riding the edge of his heat wake like blades carried by the same storm.
Solarstream didn't announce himself with speeches.
He announced himself with light.
A solar lance snapped out—compressed heat, bright enough to paint the battlements in white-gold glare—aimed not at the fortress, not at the city, but at the exact pocket of air where Blackenstride's momentum would have to pass.
Blackenstride twisted, the move razor-tight, but the solar strike still clipped him—just enough to scorch the edge of his pressure field and shove him off his ideal line.
For the first time, his feet didn't land exactly where he intended.
It wasn't a fall.
It was a correction.
And corrections were expensive.
Sunwhoop swept in low over the broken rampart, boots skimming stone as he whipped a curved arc of solar force across the approach—an orange crescent that cut rubble into a defensive berm, sealing one breach path and forcing the BRD spearhead to re-route.
Sungrettga followed with a heavier, grounded style—solar shock pulses driven into the cracked walkway like hammer blows, each strike sending a ripple that rattled enemy ground units off-balance and cleared space for Westonglappa defenders to pull the wounded behind cover.
Below, someone shouted, "MOVE! MOVE NOW!"
Medics ran with stretchers. Civilians were ushered through a gap the elites had carved. Boots slapped stone. Breath came out as steam.
Overhead, the Supreme Commanders continued their argument in thunder.
Blackenstride snapped forward again, rage contained inside speed, aiming to split Solarstream's approach with a kinetic shatterwave. The strike landed like a slammed door—air compressing, then exploding outward.
Sunwhoop barely cleared it, skidding behind a broken wall as hot dust washed over him. Sungrettga took the edge of the wave hard, shoulders jolting as if the world itself had thrown a punch. He braced on one knee, teeth clenched, and forced himself back up with a sound that was half breath, half defiance.
Solarstream's eyes hardened. "Stay standing."
Sungrettga spat dust. "I'm standing."
Galaxadye lifted one hand, gold light narrowing into a blade-thin line across the sky—so precise it looked like a rule drawn by an unforgiving teacher.
Blackenstride tried to sprint through it.
The line didn't stop him like a wall.
It stopped him like a decision.
For the smallest fraction of time, his body's intent failed to match reality. His momentum fought itself. The air around him tightened, and the gold field forced him into an angle he hadn't chosen.
Solarstream took that fraction and made it count.
A second solar lance slammed the space beside Blackenstride—not to kill him outright, not to gamble on impossible outcomes—but to drive him into Galaxadye's prepared corridor, where prediction became pressure and pressure became a noose.
Blackenstride's breathing changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
He could still win a dozen exchanges.
But the price was rising, and the lane was shrinking.
From somewhere beyond the smoke, a sanctioned broadcast tower crackled alive for a heartbeat—just long enough for a voice in FULL CAPS to arrive like a stamp on the moment.
"WITHDRAW AND PRESERVE," Darkwing's command boomed, cold as welded iron. "THIS IS NOT YOUR END."
Blackenstride's jaw tightened.
For one heartbeat, he looked like he wanted to disobey out of pride alone.
Then the gold corridors tightened again, and the Keep's stone trembled under another near-miss that could have been catastrophic if it landed clean.
Blackenstride exhaled, sharp.
"Fine," he said, and his smile returned—this time thinner, meaner. "Enjoy your minute."
Black light folded around him—not a flashy escape, not a panicked flee—an executive retreat. The air snapped. The pressure that had been choking the battlements released in a sudden loosening, like a fist unclenching.
Blackyasira, watching from the signal shadows, turned the same instant the Supreme Commander vanished. Her false scrolls died mid-roll. The poisoned emergency feed stuttered, then fell quiet.
The BRD spearhead withdrew with him—elites and ground units pulling back not in chaos, but in practiced obedience, leaving behind broken stone and burning routes like receipts.
For a moment, Clattermoor Keep simply... breathed.
Wind moved again like wind.
Smoke lifted enough to reveal the lower evacuation corridor still standing.
Galaxadye lowered his hand slowly, as if setting something fragile down. His gold radiance dimmed from battlefield brightness to a calmer glow.
Solarstream hovered closer, heat rolling off him in slow waves. "He'll come back."
Galaxadye's eyes stayed on the retreating darkness. "Of course he will."
Sunwhoop leaned against a cracked wall, shoulders rising and falling. "How long did we buy?"
Sungrettga, still standing, answered through grit. "Long enough for somebody's kid to keep living."
Below them, Westonglappa soldiers moved with a new urgency—not hopeful, not triumphant—just alive, and aware that "alive" was the currency the war demanded most.
Far away, across oceans and continents, bombardment raids continued to gnaw at the AES skies. Interceptors rose. Defense lines held. The stalemate kept grinding.
But here, on this battered stone spine of a fortress in Auttumotto, the truth was immediate and human:
The gods didn't end the war.
They fought to buy the next breath.
And tonight, for Clattermoor Keep, the breath held.
Fortborter Town woke to a harbor that no longer belonged to the ocean.
Smoke rolled low across the water, thick enough to sting the eyes and erase the horizon. Lifeboats rocked in their cradles—ready in the way a prayer is ready—while the pier lights flickered through haze like they were trying to remember what "normal morning" meant. And beneath it all, the sound that made people swallow hard wasn't the distant blasts.
It was the quiet.
The kind that happens when a place realizes it is being watched by something that can afford patience.
Kellan Varr's hands shook around the camera rig. Not because he was new. Not because he was weak. Because his body was still human, and his instincts could feel the rules changing in the air.
"ANN Fortborter Bureau," he whispered into the mic, the words tight and careful. "We are... live. Harbor district. Refugee presence estimated—" He swallowed. A family ran past behind him, carrying bags that looked too light to be anyone's entire life. "—estimated in the thousands."
He panned slowly. The lens found the overlook.
Darkwing Shadowsypher stood above the docks like a verdict that didn't need to raise its voice. No frantic movement. No theatrical laughter. Just maroon presence, steady and quiet enough to be worse than rage. Around him, the world behaved like it was trying to be polite.
Kellan realized something that made his stomach twist: nobody stopped him from filming.
Not a guard. Not a bullet. Not a shout.
A press corridor.
A permission.
He took one cautious step toward a fractured seawall where evac crews had tucked a small barge behind broken concrete—an ugly little attempt at hope—and his boot halted mid-motion like it had met invisible glass.
Not pain. Not force.
Refusal.
Kellan's breath hitched. He lowered the camera enough to catch the pier surface. A hair-thin seam ran across the boards—a line that wasn't painted, wasn't carved, wasn't anything the eye could fully accept.
But his body accepted it.
"Denial line," he murmured, and hated that the words came out like a fact.
A reporter two meters away—someone younger, still believing courage could bully physics—tested the seam with a foot.
The air tightened.
The reporter stumbled back, face whitening as if the pier had whispered a warning directly into his bones. He didn't cross. He didn't argue. He simply learned.
Kellan lifted the lens again and kept recording, because stopping felt more fatal than dying.
Over the harbor channel, a new voice cracked through—human, urgent, brave in that raw way that comes from people who don't have immortal options.
"This is Leblaela Coastal Reinforcement, Captain Marrow speaking. Fortborter, we see you. Hold your positions. We're pushing to the pier."
A cheer rose from the crowd—thin, cracked, desperate, but real. Soldiers in dust-streaked helmets appeared between smoke gaps, banners snapping wetly in salt wind. Medics followed. Trucks crawled onto the dock. For ten seconds, Fortborter looked like it might remember how to resist.
Kellan zoomed in on Captain Marrow's face—jaw set, eyes scanning, mouth moving fast with orders.
Then the harbor tried to deny the concept of "arrival."
Radios hissed into nothing. Navigation lights blinked out of sequence. Signs that had been pointing toward shelter corridors flickered, updated, and turned... wrong. A truck that should have rolled straight suddenly angled left as if the pier itself had become confused.
No—worse than confused.
Rekeyed.
A figure moved at the edge of the haze—Darkenedye, calm and immaculate, gaze traveling across the docks like he was counting systems instead of people. He didn't roar. He didn't swing. He simply existed with the quiet confidence of someone who knew that exits were a privilege.
Captain Marrow shouted, "Hold the lane! Push through!"
His front line tried.
And the dock refused to cooperate.
The first wave of soldiers hit an invisible seam and staggered like they'd run into deep water on dry land. Boots slipped. Knees hit boards. Weapons clattered—not knocked away by force, but betrayed by traction that no longer agreed.
Kellan's camera caught the moment a man tried to stand and couldn't.
Not because his legs were broken.
Because the ground had decided he wasn't authorized.
A blur cut through the smoke.
Darkenedstride didn't announce himself. The footage barely captured his approach—one frame of empty pier, the next frame of sudden absence where a squad had been. Not gore. Not spectacle. Just a horrible new spacing in the world where humans had been standing a second ago.
The reinforcement push began to fold.
People screamed. Orders tangled. Civilians surged backward, pressing into each other, crushing breath out of ribs. Kellan pulled the lens wide, catching panic at scale—and his heart broke at how predictable it looked.
Then the sky flashed orange.
Solarstream descended like a disciplined sun, not wild fire—controlled heat with a purpose. The air around him shimmered. His eyes were bright and hard, because you can't lead rescue missions gently. Two Solar elites dropped with him—Sunwhoop and Sungrettga—moving immediately toward civilians, toward medics, toward the places that would collapse first.
Solarstream didn't waste time with speeches.
He fired a solar-lance down the pier, a clean corridor of light that carved smoke and forced space open long enough for people to run. Sunwhoop swept a bright arc across debris, shoving a broken section of dock into a new shape that could be crossed. Sungrettga hammered the boards with a flare of orange energy that stabilized a trembling support long enough for a stretcher team to pass.
For a minute—just a minute—Fortborter breathed.
Darkenedye answered by tightening Denial Lines across the corridor like stitches. Darkenedstride tried to cut the lane in half with speed that felt like insult. Solarstream surged forward anyway, meeting the cut with heat and pressure, refusing the BRD the satisfaction of a clean slaughter.
Kellan recorded all of it—every footstep, every scream, every miracle measured in seconds—because this was what the world needed to see.
His lens found the hidden barge again.
A battered evac craft tucked behind the fractured seawall, loaded fast—too fast—hands grabbing rails, bodies shoving aboard, children lifted like luggage because time was cutting them into pieces.
Kellan zoomed in.
"Over there—" he breathed, not to command, but to witness. "They're—"
A shockwave hit.
Not aimed at him. Not personal.
Just war, careless and vast.
The seawall bucked. The pier snapped a new crack. The camera jolted violently as Kellan stumbled backward, boots scrabbling for traction that wasn't promised anymore. He tried to steady the rig. He tried to keep the barge in frame.
He managed—barely—one last shot of civilians leaping onto the deck, faces twisted with terror and hope colliding at once.
Then the dock under him collapsed by inches.
Kellan fell.
The camera hit the boards hard, the lens spiderwebbing, the live light still blinking red. The frame skewed sideways, showing only knees and boots running past, the underside of a railing, the smoky sky cutting across the top edge of the image like a dirty blade.
Kellan's breath rasped into the mic—sharp, wet, struggling.
His hand reached once into frame, fingers flexing like he was still trying to hold the shot.
Then his hand went still.
The camera kept recording.
Footsteps thundered by. Someone shouted Kellan's name, once, too late. A medic's boots stopped near the rig; a hand hovered, then withdrew, like touching the camera felt forbidden.
In the distance, a maroon silhouette remained on the overlook—unchanged, unhurried.
The broadcast did not cut.
The world watched the still frame for seven long seconds.
Then a Westonglappa emergency overlay stamped itself across the feed:
FORTBORTER LIVE — SIGNAL DEGRADED
FIELD OPERATOR DOWN
Across Westonglappa, screens replayed the final moments until people could recite them with their eyes closed. Across the AES continents, the clip breached secure rooms and war desks and private phones in the hands of leaders who had survived centuries and still flinched at the sight of a human dying on schedule.
In Sollarisca, General Sunbeam stared at the frozen image of the fallen camera—at the red light still blinking like a heartbeat that refused to accept defeat—and his jaw tightened once, hard enough to crack silence.
"Dispatch," he said, voice low and absolute. "One Supreme Commander. Two elites. Westonglappa. Now."
Because fear traveled faster when it had footage.
And the BRD had just proven they were willing to let the world watch.
Sollarisca-Lunna Border, AES Command Staging Grounds — Dusk
A line of orange radiance shimmered above the coast as General Sunbeam's hand dropped from the comms receiver. His expression was drawn—neither rage nor defeat, but the bone-deep tension of a protector forced to choose who can be saved. Behind him, the headquarters staff waited in respectful silence. Word of Kellan's broadcast, his death, and the harrowing footage of Fortborter had rippled through every echelon of the Allied Evolution Salvation. Grief and outrage warred beneath every order.
Sunbeam turned, cloak swirling. "Deploy Sunflare, Sunraze, and Sunwreath. Secure the outer corridor—no delays." Three new Solar elites saluted: Sunflare with eyes like molten glass, Sunraze with a burning crescent scar, and Sunwreath, whose fingers crackled with golden solar current. They leaped into the air, leaving comet-trails of orange behind, racing for the embattled Westonglappa skies.
Across the command tent, the doors parted for new arrivals: Lady Moonbeam, her blue radiance gleaming beneath an ice-silver uniform, and Professor Galaxbeam—golden-haired, calm as always, the eternal observer in an ever-worsening storm.
Moonbeam's voice was quiet but edged with steel. "Is the Great Wall holding?"
Sunbeam's frown deepened. "So far, the BRD's main force has kept distance. But our naval lines are fraying."
Galaxbeam's eyes sparkled with an unsettling certainty. "The 'Great Wall' is an illusion of permanence. BRD will press until they find a crack, then exploit it with theater."
As if on cue, the field monitors pulsed—live feeds from Lunar and Star Regime detachments sweeping the scarred ocean. Moonbeam's best, Moonarc and Moonsurge, flew in spirals over a graveyard of twisted ship hulls and flaming aircraft. Their powers—lunar frost and wave-warping—combined to freeze, then shatter, enemy warcraft as they scoured the battlefield for survivors. Every shattered mast, every ruined jet, was marked with the carnage of a war fought by immortals and lost by mortals.
Elsewhere, streaks of green and white—Starflare and Starglider—ripped through the skies, their cosmic and meteor powers carving through BRD raiding craft that still harried the AES rear lines. They moved in disciplined tandem, blades of starlight slicing through hulls and scattering the last Blackened and Darkened gunships. In a swirl of superheated vapor and debris, they left nothing but drifting wreckage, then returned to the rendezvous point, armor scorched, eyes hard.
Back at command, Moonbeam awaited their report, standing beneath the flickering tactical holograms. "What remains?" she asked, her voice the same tone she reserved for funerals.
Moonarc bowed her head. "It's an ocean of ghosts. We cleared the last of the BRD raiders, but our own losses... the seabed is paved with our colors."
Starglider added, "We found false enemy wrecks too. Decoys. Cloned emblems. They want us to chase shadows."
Galaxbeam closed his eyes. "As I predicted. While you fought the real threat, the BRD seeded the theater with false targets. Expect more phantom attacks—mirages and distractions, not true offensives. Their objective is to keep us reactive, never proactive."
Moonbeam tensed. "How?"
Galaxbeam's lips curved with bitter amusement. "A small force led by one of their most cunning elites—Darkhitler. They will slip past our lines, using false clones and staged skirmishes, to sow panic on our home continents. Our response must be rapid, but not impulsive."
Moonbeam's eyes narrowed, blue frost shimmering around her. "If he's here, I'll freeze his lungs in his chest."
Galaxbeam met her gaze. "You won't find him until he wants to be found. He is a ghost in the ledger. But the real war is still in Westonglappa."
Just then, the Solar and Star teams returned, bruised and weary. Sunraze knelt before Sunbeam, helmet dented. "We've driven off the last of the shadow clones, but the cost was steep. The sea belongs to the dead tonight."
Starglider nodded in grim agreement. "I recommend we reinforce Auttumotto with whatever reserves remain. The enemy isn't trying to break us at sea. They're bleeding us. Waiting for the main stroke."
Sunbeam, for the briefest moment, allowed his fatigue to show. Then he straightened, voice carrying across the tent: "We hold the coasts. We reinforce Auttumotto. We do not allow fear to set the agenda. All elites: rest, rearm, report in one hour. No exceptions."
As the room emptied, Galaxbeam lingered, the faintest smirk on his lips. "No matter how the pieces move, they all come back to the same board."
Moonbeam sighed, ice dissolving to resolve. "Then let's make the board worth fighting for."
Auttumotto, Westonglappa — Dead of Night
The streets were slick with rain and blood. Darkened Regime soldiers, bolstered by newly-arrived Blackened infiltrators, moved through the shattered remains of joint Westonglappa battalions—precision fire, merciless strikes, no quarter given. For every block reclaimed by AES elites, another was lost in a torrent of midnight violence. Above it all, the maroon banners of Darkwing's authority burned in the storm, and somewhere in the dark, a camera—dropped and forgotten—continued to broadcast, the image flickering between shadow and flame.
Ash Roads and Sunfire
The air in Auttomotto stank of cordite, blood, and fear. Sergeant Vallerin Hoft pushed against the crumbling alley wall, her breath fogging in the cold as she barked orders through a cracked comm-link.
"Move them! Go! I said GO!" she shouted, her voice hoarse, voice breaking like the pavement under their boots.
Behind her, dozens of civilians stumbled forward—parents carrying children, old men gripping handrails tied to stretchers, soldiers dragging the wounded with belts strapped under arms. A cart of medical supplies overturned in the rush. She cursed and bent to right it.
A little girl clutched her leg.
"Mama says we're going to see the sky again... Is that true, soldier?"
Hoft froze. Her own throat clenched. She couldn't lie.
"We're going to try, kid. That's all we ever do."
Above them, the sky tore open with maroon contrails. Darkened marauder units streaked past, dropping denial-flare warheads into the distant exit bridge. An eruption of red lightning swallowed the path they'd planned for hours.
"Bastards knew where we were going..." muttered Lieutenant Kaal from the rear line. "We're boxed in."
Another explosion shook the ground, this time closer. Brick rained down. Screams echoed.
Hoft lifted her rifle, signaling a fallback to a charred pedestrian tunnel—but it wouldn't be enough. The ground team was too exposed. Then, like a sunrise through war smoke, the sky ignited.
A low-pitched hum resonated like a pulse through the bones.
Sunfire descended.
A streak of orange light lanced down from above—one, then three—until Solarstream, Sunflare, and Sunwreath emerged from flame, radiance cloaking them like divine armor.
Solarstream's voice cut through the madness like a blade of command.
"Westonglappa forces, fall back behind the flare line! This street belongs to the sun now."
His orange eyes blazed with righteous fury, his long coat flaring with heat as he raised a molten baton. Twin comets of energy burst from his palms, crashing into the advancing Darkened units with a concussive roar.
Sunflare leapt down from a rooftop, his fist trailing heat mirages as he landed atop a Black Guard and vaporized it on impact.
"Solarstream," he said, smirking. "You always hog the entrance."
"Then stop being late," Solarstream muttered, already carving a solar glyph into the asphalt.
Sunwreath, calmer but commanding, extended both arms wide—glowing ribbons of shield-light unfurled, forming a radiant dome over the civilians.
"Sergeant," she turned toward Hoft, "get them moving. We'll hold until the last soul clears this zone."
Hoft's voice shook. "We don't deserve this."
Sunwreath looked at her, soft but firm. "It's not about deserve. It's about choice."
A Darkened hover-skiff broke through the smoke—its gunner preparing to fire into the dome.
"DOWN!" Hoft screamed—
But Sunflare was already there, launching himself through the barrier with a blast of searing light. He tore the skiff apart with a flying kick and a solar disk that exploded mid-air.
The civilians gasped.
One boy cheered, "We're gonna make it!"
Hoft turned to him. "We're gonna try," she whispered again. Her eyes blurred with tears. Her voice stayed solid.
Through the shield dome, she watched the Solar elites moving like living supernovas—every strike a declaration that Auttomotto was not yet lost.
Far above, the orbital relay stations caught the footage—broadcasting it across Westonglappa, into the cities of Starrup, Lunna, Sollarisca, and Galaxenchi.
The news anchor in Kropolis sobbed on air.
"Three Solar Elites—stood between an entire division of the Darkened Regime... and a hundred children."
"The flames didn't just block death... they taught us to live again."
Meanwhile, in a quiet, solemn valley on the border of Sollarisca, Lady Moonbeam stood beside Professor Galaxbeam atop a plateau overlooking the sea. The waters below were black with wreckage—twisted AES carrier parts, shattered engines, glowing aether cores leaking like blood into the ocean.
"Naval-aerial supremacy..." Moonbeam said, frowning. "I thought we had it."
Galaxbeam's eyes remained closed. "We still do. But supremacy was never immunity."
He pointed into the sea. Star Regime elites soared past on recon flight—Starglimmerelle and Starrarise, sweeping the clouds aside with bright emerald crescents. Their attacks sliced down into surviving BRD vessels like light through mist.
Moonbeam watched their formation. "They're clearing the last wave?"
Galaxbeam nodded. "They'll report soon. But that's not what worries me."
"What then?"
His golden irises flickered. "Darkhitler."
Moonbeam tensed.
"He's already slipped in," Galaxbeam continued. "The BRD used clone shadows to stage attacks on the AES continents. Sollarisca's east ridge saw phantom incursions. Lunna's outer docks reported destroyed fleets that never existed."
Moonbeam clenched her fists.
"They're not just attacking us," Galaxbeam finished. "They're teaching the world how to doubt itself."
A ping echoed—Moonbeam's communicator. The recon elites were returning with footage and lists of the fallen. One of the names made her breath hitch.
Back in Auttomotto, the shield dome began to shrink.
Hoft stood alone at the rear, rifle shaking in her grip.
"Are we the last?" she asked.
Sunwreath nodded. "And we're not alone."
From the smoke behind, more Solar flares rained down.
Another wall of heat. Another chance.
And with it, the last refugees of Auttomotto ran toward hope, leaving behind a road etched in ash, smoke—and sunfire.
The horizon over Auttomotto blazed in red-orange streaks as the shattered remnants of both AES and BRD warships littered the bleeding coastline. High above, plumes of rising smoke twisted into stormclouds while the waters hissed with the carcasses of fallen naval titans. From Calcrine to Verrocay, the air stank of sea salt and burning steel, laced with a tension that never broke—only deepened.
Then came the golden rupture from the heavens.
With a roar that split cloudbanks apart, beams of incandescent orange fire streaked across the sky, outpacing every trace of darkness. A collective gasp broke across the scattered AES survivors below, heads tilting upward as Solar Regime call-signs flared across radar terminals.
"They're here..." a technician whispered, eyes brimming.
Down through the atmosphere blazed Elite Sunflareburn, his limbs wreathed in streaming solar plasma as he cleaved through a blackened BRD cruiser with a single burning arc. "Target swept," he muttered calmly, ember-like eyes scanning for the next. Not far behind him danced Sunrift, dual-wielding blade-aureoles of radiant firelight, spinning gracefully through dark air squadrons. "Let no shadows remain," he breathed.
And then—thunder.
A meteor of burning fury slammed into the last intact Darkened naval behemoth. Supreme Commander Solardye, haloed in solar surges and crowned by flame, rose from its crushed deck with blistering disdain. His voice rumbled beneath the eruption: "You trespassed on sovereign land. You die for the arrogance."
As the flagship collapsed behind him into molten slag, the ocean seemed to breathe again—briefly, until the dying groans of BRD machines dragged into the abyss below.
Back inland, the fleeing civilians of Calcrine stumbled through the war-torn alleys. At their lead, Major Erwin Tallen, grizzled, bleeding, barked orders through smoke as sirens screamed in failing harmony. "South! Through the Westruma corridor—head to the dam! AES pickup zones still hold!"
But before the next step could be taken, a thick black mist exploded across the road. From it emerged Elite Darkhitter, his twin axes slick with some unholy oil, slinging back his shoulders with a mad grin. "Well, well, what a tasty little parade."
Tallen raised his rifle—click. Empty.
Darkhitter's weapon came down—
—but it never landed.
An orange beam of concentrated heat lanced from above, detonating the pavement beneath him. Standing in the aftermath was Elite Sunmarco, golden light crackling from his fists as he stepped forward, calm yet commanding. "Back off," he said. "These people have suffered enough."
Darkhitter snarled—but before he could react, Sunmarco struck, driving him through two walls with a thunderous impact that turned night into day for a heartbeat. Major Tallen dropped to his knees, dazed. "Th-thank you..."
Sunmarco gave him a half-smile and offered a hand. "Get them out. We'll hold the line."
Across Auttomotto, the Solar Regime flared to life.
At Westruma Bridge, as Darkened tanks fired onto evac convoys, Elite Sunbreak caught a collapsing support beam with raw strength, lifting a full passenger bus clear of the blast while his cape billowed behind him in trails of flame.
At Calcrine Stadium—converted into a refugee hub—Elite Sunleaf moved among the wounded with soft hands aglow, her healing light patching wounds and restoring breath to the dying, her expression serene despite the chaos.
Meanwhile, above Verrocay's burning skyline, Elite Sunlance and the twin-blade whirlwind Sunraiko clashed with the trio of Darkened Elites—Darkpest, Darkfelix, and Darkvlad—engaged in swordplay so fast that the eye barely followed. Each clash sent sonic ripples across rooftops. Smoke and light mingled into a surreal aurora over the fractured city.
Miles away, atop the floating Luxrium platform where the skies of Sollarisca and Lunna converged, Professor Galaxbeam watched these scenes unfold across a thousand golden holograms, his gloved fingers weaving anticipatory runes. Standing beside him, Lady Moonbeam exhaled through tightened lips as she tracked the footage from Auttomotto, her gaze fixed on a crumbling coastline.
Galaxbeam's voice was a whisper under his breath. "Darkhitler was never meant to win. The real offensive is elsewhere."
Moonbeam narrowed her eyes. "Where are they heading?"
"Clones. Diversions. They want us spread thin." He tapped a prism—and the screen shimmered with a flicker of falsehood revealed.
"Westonglappa is the beginning... but it won't be the end."
Back in Verrocay, smoke now hid the stars. Sirens still cried. The city burned.
But so long as the light returned—even for a moment—Auttomotto had not yet fallen.
Auttomotto — End of the Sunlight Chapter
The brief light that had touched Auttomotto flickered... and died.
Not because the Solar Regime failed.
But because Lord Darkwing had arrived.
No meteor descent. No blaring horns. No grand speech over hijacked broadcasts. He came with the silence of extinguished hope, descending through the stormclouds like a tear in the sky's skin. The maroon glow that leaked around him wasn't light—it was weight, pressing on every rooftop, alley, and fleeing soul like an unwelcome truth.
Across the cities of Westruma, Calcrine, Verrocay, and Pendammal, Darkwing's Supreme Commanders emerged in synchrony—shadow gates cracking open in the sky and from below ground. Reality bent to allow them passage, and from that violation came enforcement.
Darkhellius, the Chained Oblivion, unleashed black ring-shaped sigils that deleted magic mid-cast, nullifying entire AES units before they could scream.
Darkabbadon, the Winged Malice, flew through Verrocay's skyline on a tempest of claws and whispers, dragging elite Solar troops out of hiding and flinging their corpses across building walls in warning.
Darkpariah, cloaked in veils of unborn flame, turned entire reinforcement squads into obsidian statues—brittle, screaming, and perfectly preserved in agony.
Darktrexx, wielding anti-auroral spears, stabbed the sky itself, collapsing any AES satellites or drones attempting overwatch. Kinetic kill-bolts lanced the air. Debris rained from above like failed prayers.
And then came Darkwing.
He swept through Clattermoor, not with haste but with deliberate cruelty. His maroon aura thickened into a battlefield domain—a zone of absolute dominance where lies, hope, and unspoken pleas collapsed into truth.
"You had your breath," he muttered, each word rippling through the city's concrete. "Now give me silence."
He found AES stragglers, brave elites from Sollarisca and Lunna holding ground near the southern perimeter. He killed them all. Not swiftly. Not cleanly. But artistically—each obliteration a message carved into the bones of the city.
One tried to teleport away.
He caught her ankle mid-jump and slammed her down through three stories of rubble.
Another flared with a last solar nova.
Darkwing devoured it in his palm, turned it into shadow-blood, and spat it back as a wave that drowned her team.
He did not allow broadcasters to flee.
All field journalists were found. Cameras shattered. Eyes gouged. Helicopters ripped from the air by his Black Whip of Reaping Law, its cracks forming pentagram runes in the sky. The live feed cut not with static—but with a scream.
Even refugee escape routes fell under his gaze.
Ships that made it past the outer docklines vanished in maroon fog banks. Those that escaped into bordering states were met by pre-seeded denial sigils, carved into the land by BRD cult saboteurs days earlier. The terrain itself betrayed their steps—cliffs opening, bridges collapsing, forests swallowing people whole. Only a few vessels were seen drifting half-burned toward Zachon and Turreyatch, their decks soaked in blood and silence.
The rest? Lost.
On the final night of the Auttomotto campaign, Darkwing stood atop the Luxrium Cathedral's shattered spire, his cloak lashing in maroon wind, eyes burning like two coals fed by centuries of hatred. His surviving elites and Supreme Commanders formed a ring behind him—kneeling, battered, but victorious.
"Begin the recall," he ordered. "This chapter is closed. The next begins where their hope still dares to whisper."
Darkpariah bowed. "All AES cities from East Verrocay to Pendammal report cleared. Resistance has ended. No survivors on record."
Darkhellius hissed, black chains dripping from his shoulders. "And those who ran... will run forever."
Darkwing nodded once. "Let them."
His gaze turned toward the darkened horizon, where the Great Wall of Sollarisca flickered with desperate flame and the faintest shimmer of opposition still dared stand tall.
"We will come for it next," he declared, voice cold as carved stone. "And this time... I'll burn it with their own sun."
He raised one hand.
Behind him, the skyline of Auttomotto collapsed—buildings falling in precise controlled demolitions, not random destruction. Cities erased as if they never deserved names.
A final broadcast pulsed across the war-torn continent. A single sentence, etched in crimson glyphs on every screen:
"Auttomotto is no longer under AES jurisdiction."
And then—
The feed cut.
The world went quiet.
Auttomotto was gone.
The next invasion had already begun.
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