The moment Ankura stepped into the collapsing corridor, the air shifted.

  The heat, the ash, the sparks trembling off the walls, all of it bent to his presence like stars pulled toward a black hole. His armour shimmered with residual energy, cracked with old scars, and across his shoulder hung the pelt of some beast long extinct. The hallway seemed too small to contain him.

  Behind Rizer, the elite squad stirred, weapons raised.

  “Stand down,” Rizer whispered, his voice barely audible over the flickering ruin. “He came for me.”

  Kael, eyes veiled in psionic mist, turned his head slightly. “You’re not ready.”

  “I’ll never be ready if I don’t even try.”

  He stepped forward.

  Ankura opened his arms like a welcoming host. “You don’t yet understand your gift, boy. You barely tapped it. What you felt earlier? That was a sneeze. I want to see the storm.”

  And then—

  He vanished.

  FLASH—

  Rizer was thrown across the corridor like a ragdoll, slammed into the bulkhead, ribs shattering on impact. Ankura reappeared where he’d stood, hand crackling with black psionic current.

  “Sprint faster. Think sharper. Bleed better.”

  Rizer groaned, rising slowly. He flexed his fingers, and for the first time, his power didn’t fizzle, it answered. White light sparked from his wrists, veins glowing.

  He blinked behind Ankura in an instant.

  His fist collided with Ankura’s back, sending a shockwave through the floor. Metal buckled. Sparks fell like rain. The alien general grinned as he staggered forward.

  “You are learning.”

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  They clashed again. And again.

  Rizer’s vision blurred, he was faster, stronger, but still too raw. Every time he landed a blow, Ankura landed two. Every thought he formed, Ankura had already outplayed.

  “You think this is power?” Ankura growled. “This is a birthright. Untamed. Wasted.”

  And then he grabbed Rizer by the throat.

  The corridor around them dimmed. Rizer screamed, not from the pressure, but from the pull. His skin paled. His bones shook.

  Ankura was absorbing him.

  Not just his strength, his life energy.

  Tartarus – Training Fields

  Elias sat cross-legged in the center of a massive psionic seal drawn into the sand. Around him, high-ranking tacticians watched with growing anxiety.

  He’d been quiet all morning. Then his nose bled. Then the walls cracked.

  Then the air grew cold.

  “Elias,” Commander Jules whispered. “Are you alright?”

  “I saw him,” Elias murmured.

  “Who?”

  “My brother. Dying.”

  Without warning, the sand levitated.

  A vortex of dust and flame swirled around Elias’s body. His eyes snapped open, glowing with deep, impossible gold. Not white. Not blue.

  Gold.

  He stood..and the earth shook.

  Screams echoed as nearby bunkers cracked open like eggshells. Statues toppled. A tower groaned. Psionic sensors across Tartarus began wailing.

  “He’s destabilising the damn core,” someone shouted.

  But Elias wasn’t panicking. He was focused.

  He raised his hand and through pure instinct, linked his mind with Rizer’s across space.

  Gaia-9 — The Corridor of Ash

  Rizer’s body was dimming.

  His arms went limp.

  Ankura sneered. “No final words?”

  And then..a pulse. A tremor.

  An energy unlike anything Rizer had ever felt.

  Elias.

  “SURVIVE!”

  The scream came from inside his skull.

  Rizer’s eyes snapped open, not white, but gold.

  Matching his brother’s.

  BOOM—

  The wall exploded. A wave of light incinerated Ankura’s grip, hurling him backwards like a missile. He smashed through concrete, metal, and flame.

  Rizer dropped to one knee, panting, glowing from the inside.

  Ankura stood, blood trailing from his mouth, armour cracked down the middle.

  He laughed.

  “You’ve finally opened the door. Good.”

  He vanished in a flicker of shadow.

  Back on Tartarus

  Elias collapsed, bleeding from both eyes, smiling through the pain. The lights flickered. Engineers scrambled to stabilise the surrounding facility.

  Jules knelt beside him. “What the hell was that?”

  “I think,” Elias whispered, “he just survived.”

  Earth — The Delta-37 Underground Tunnels

  Adelpha Rae felt the tremor too. She looked up from the growing root system twisting along the roof of the shelter, roots imbued with psionic light, newly awakened.

  The children drawing strange symbols began laughing and weeping at once.

  One word echoed through the carved stone chambers.

  “He’s alive.”

  And deep beneath the Earth, their rebellion roared to life.