The metal door sighed open with a long mechanical hiss, and the stale air inside the cell barely stirred. Anissa was slumped against the far wall, her good arm wrapped protectively around the other as if she could will the pain out of it. The cast looked almost crude against her Viltrumite uniform—plaster white cutting sharply against the deep gray fabric. Sweat and dirt glued strands of her hair to her temples. She didn't move when I stepped inside, not even enough to acknowledge I was there. I leaned against the frame, arms folding, letting the metal hum behind me seal us in.
"Heard you've stopped eating."
Her head snapped up with the crack of a whip, and her eyes—cold, bright, furious—locked onto mine. "Get out, ape." Venom clung to every syllable. Her gaze slid over my frame, taking in the white-and-orange Sovereign suit stretched tight across my shoulders, and her lip curled with open disgust. "Filthy animal."
I stepped in anyway.
"That arm's on me," I said, nodding toward the cast. "Shouldn't've broken it that clean." My tone stayed low, even. She bristled at that, pushing herself up despite her body's protests. The torn fabric along her thigh pulled wider with the motion, revealing a tremor in the muscle there. My eyes lingered before I could stop them. "Hurts, doesn't it? Real pain. Something you're not used to."
She flinched—not much, but enough. "Your eyes are crawling all over me again, ape." Her voice tried to hold its edge, but it fractured halfway through, leaving heat blooming along her throat. I stepped closer, slow, careful, the air thickening between us with sweat, metal, antiseptic, and something warmer threading underneath.
"Call it research," I murmured. My gaze trailed from the line of her jaw down the collar of her uniform, where the fabric clung to skin damp with exertion. "Trying to understand what makes your kind tick. Especially the ones who fight like cornered predators."
She didn't pull away. Her good hand tightened into a fist. "You broke my arm," she hissed, but the bite had dissolved. Her pupils had blown wide, turning the blue nearly black.
I leaned in until I could feel the hitch in her breath. "It was war. You'd have done worse." Her scent—ozone and iron, like the air after lightning hits open ground—coiled between us. Her hand twitched, hovering in that uncertain space between striking and grabbing. Her gaze drifted along my jaw, down to the rise of my chest beneath the suit. A muscle jumped in her throat.
"You reek of desperation," she whispered, voice trembling despite her effort to steady it.
A slow smile pulled across my mouth. "And you? What's that blush about? Anger? Or something else?" I brushed my knuckle against her wrist, and she jolted, heat rising beneath her skin. "Admit it," I breathed. "You've never been taken apart like this. Not by a human."
Her breathing shortened, pulling quick and shallow. The plaster scraped on the wall as she shifted, her hips angling without thought, the tear along her thigh widening again. My eyes followed that tiny movement before sliding back to hers. "Bet you've thought about it."
She spat near my boots—missed by inches. "You disgust me." But her voice had dropped, low and uncertain, and her eyes refused to look anywhere but mine. Defiant, yes, but drowning under something raw and involuntary.
I leaned close, letting my breath skim her ear. "Liar."
The word shuddered through her. Her good hand shot up, grabbed my collar, and yanked me against her. For a heartbeat our bodies collided—heat, tension, muscle straining against muscle—her teeth grazing my lip just before she shoved me back with a ragged breath.
"Get out," she rasped, chest rising and falling hard. "Before I break you." But her gaze flicked down my frame again, pupils still dilated, something electric still caught beneath her anger.
I straightened my collar, her scent stubborn on the fabric. "Sorry about the arm," I said, voice rougher than before. "You asked for it." She glared but held her silence, sliding down the wall as she settled, the tear in her uniform widening with the motion. The muscle in her thigh flexed once, sharply.
"War's still going," I added as I turned toward the barrier. "Your people won't yield. We're going to crack Viltrum open. Split the core."
Anissa let out a single sharp laugh. "You think rubble breaks us? Viltrumites endure." She stretched her leg deliberately, slow, widening that tear further. "We rebuild. We breed from ruin." Her eyes followed me to the barrier. "Your Coalition bleeds hope. We bleed purpose."
I didn't look back. "Purpose didn't save your arm," I said as I stepped through the flickering field. "Or your pride."
Her scent—lightning, metal, salt—followed me out.
The corridor outside hit with glare and a sterile hum. Boots clattered across steel, and alarms bled into the air like a pulse. War never rested.
Thaedus stood waiting in the hangar, massive shoulders blocking the flagship's ramp. "She talk?" he rumbled, voice deep enough to shake the floor. Nolan and Mark stood nearby, tension drawn tight across their faces. Oliver fidgeted. Allen's single eye tracked my wrinkled collar, narrowing just enough to be a question.
"Enough," I said, smoothing it out. Her scent still clung faintly. "Viltrumites don't bend. They break."
Thaedus grunted. "Then we'll break harder." He turned toward the ramp. "Sovereign, you're with Battle Beast and Allen—distraction unit. Oliver, stay with your brother. Mark, Nolan—you hit the core. No room for mistakes." His gaze swept across us, lingering on Battle Beast's refitted jetpack and the gleaming curve of his bubble helmet. "Space Racer's wrangling the Ragnars. We move now."
We boarded without a word. The hangar swallowed us in metal and recycled air that carried a faint tang of rust. I dropped into a seat, legs stretched out. Battle Beast lumbered past, his jetpack hissing, muttering under his breath. "This contraption insults the hunt," he growled, claws flexing. Allen snorted, scrubbing his knuckles with a rag that smelled like cheap synth-whiskey.
Oliver slid into the seat beside me, tapping a jittery rhythm against his thigh. I arched a brow. "Nervous?"
He shot me a glare lifted straight from his father—sharp, heavy, defensive. "Just thinking about Mom. Back home. She doesn't even know." His voice cracked on the last word, betraying the truth he kept trying to hide: he was still just a kid being dragged into a war that wasn't supposed to touch him.
Mark reached over and gave his shoulder a steady squeeze. "It ends today," he said, voice quiet but stretched thin. His knuckles had gone white on the armrest, and Nolan, stone-still beside him, stared through the viewport as though he could bore straight down to the planet we were about to ignite. The air thickened under the weight of everything unspoken. Battle Beast's low, restless growl filled the cabin, his jetpack hissing in agitated bursts, and a faint coil of acrid smoke drifted from the vents, stinging our eyes.
The jump engaged with a shudder that ran the length of the hull. Stars smeared into bright streaks, warping into long white blades of light. The familiar tang of ozone—always somewhere between burnt metal and nerves—settled over us. Oliver's knee bounced harder. "What if we can't do it?" he blurted, louder than he meant to. "What if they're stronger?"
Nolan didn't turn from the window. "Then we die fighting. Like Viltrumites." The words fell into the silence like dropped stone, and Mark's jaw tightened until the muscle twitched.
Battle Beast suddenly roared, thumping his chest with a resounding crack. "Failure is prey's talk! We hunt!" His jetpack flared, scorching a dark line along the bulkhead. Allen snorted and shook his head, leaning close enough that his breath stung my eyes. "He's not wrong," he muttered. "Still—numbers look bad. Even with the Ragnars." He cocked his head, his single eye narrowing with a glint of amusement. "That Viltrumite back there didn't give you much intel, huh? Looked… heated."
My jaw tightened. Anissa's teeth on my lip, her trembling breath, her voice—low, uneven—flickered through my mind before I shoved it down. "She gave me enough," I said. "More than she meant to."
The ship bucked violently, metal groaning as alarms washed the cabin in pulsing red light. Thaedus' voice thundered through the comms. "Viltrum's outer perimeter. Brace for exit!" The ramp split open with a deafening hiss, unveiling the void—black, silent, infinite. Below us, Viltrum loomed: a wounded marble of jagged mountain ridges and deep silver scars. Nolan launched first, controlled and cautious, with Mark and Oliver sliding after him like living shadows. Allen followed, his massive silhouette blotting out the starlight as he pushed off.
"Stay sharp, kitten," he rumbled to Battle Beast. The feline warrior snarled, jetpack igniting with a guttural roar that vibrated straight through my bones. Frost fogged his helmet instantly. "This cage mocks me! I will breathe true air or perish!"
Thaedus lingered at the edge of the ramp, a colossal shape carved against the void. He turned his heavy head toward me. "Sovereign. Coordinates are live. Don't linger." His voice was raw iron scraping against stone. "And clean your collar. It reeks of her." He didn't wait for a reply; he simply stepped into vacuum, armor flaring as he dove toward Viltrum's dark side.
I drifted out after Allen and Battle Beast, and the planet unfolded beneath us. But it wasn't the surface that held my stare—it was the ring.
A crown of corpses.
Thousands of frozen Viltrumites encircling their homeworld, bodies twisted in their final agonies, armor cracked open, faces locked in silent screams. A halo forged from pride and punishment, circling the planet like judgment.
I'd seen the stills—the grainy satellite captures, the sanitized briefings—but none of it touched the reality. The Ring of the Fallen wasn't debris; it was a massacre turned monument.
Thaedus' voice cut back in, taut and controlled. "Stay tight. That ring isn't wreckage—it's an ambush waiting to happen." His silhouette moved ahead, weaving through drifting limbs, shattered armor, and frozen coils of hair that drifted like seaweed in black water. I edged closer to Allen's bulk, unwilling to float alone through that graveyard, no matter how many enhancements I had.
A flicker of motion broke the stillness. A ripple behind a massive corpse locked in ice—then Thula burst out. Her braided hair snapped forward, the blade woven through it glinting like lightning. She moved too fast for thought. The hair-sword shrieked across Thaedus' backplate, slicing through reinforced alloy. A spray of frozen blood burst outward in tiny crimson crystals. Thaedus roared, the sound ragged over comms. "Ambush!"
Thula didn't hesitate. She lunged again, her face carved in fury. Instinct took me before conscious thought could catch up. I shot forward, the vacuum offering no resistance. My fist connected with her temple in a brutal, silent impact. Her body went slack, drifting. I caught her by the collar and shoved her deep into the tangle of frozen Viltrumites, their stiff limbs closing around her like a vise. "Stay down," I muttered, knowing the words vanished into the silence.
Thaedus straightened, breathing hard, blood crystals drifting from him like fading stars. "Good hit, Sovereign," he rasped. "Eyes open. They won't stop there."
We pushed past the ring, the dead slipping behind us. Viltrum dominated the horizon now—majestic and brutal, oceans glinting like glass while continents smoked from old wounds. Then the comms exploded with a voice ripped straight from fury itself. Thragg.
"You bring your stink to our world, vermin?"
They erupted from the planet in a swarm—hundreds of Viltrumites, a storm of white-hot rage and accelerating muscle. Thragg led them, chest marked with the sigil, body carved from sheer brutality. His eyes were cold knives.
"I will strip the flesh from your bones!" he roared. "I'll feast on your hearts while your comrades scream!"
The sheer force of them made my lungs tighten. Nolan swore under his breath. Mark's breathing cracked. Oliver froze, trembling. Battle Beast strained against his harness, eyes wild, voice splitting the comms. "UNLEASH ME! LET ME DIE IN THEIR TEETH!" Allen's jaw flexed, his eye darting over the incoming swarm. "This isn't distraction, Thaedus. This is suicide."
Thragg's grin widened—feral, eager. "Kill them all. Leave the traitors to me."
They surged. A living, murderous avalanche. I braced, instincts firing—calculating angles, kill zones, every tactic—and still knowing none of it mattered against that wave. Oliver whimpered, and Mark yanked him behind Nolan, jaw set in grim determination.
And then the darkness blazed.
Not sound—light.
A burning trail carved across the stars. Space Racer. His cosmic cycle tore through the void, and behind him the Ragnars burst forth like living meteors, each one a nightmare built for extinction.
"Sorry I'm late!" he barked through the comms, voice crackling with adrenaline. "Getting these monsters wasn't exactly easy!"
The Ragnars didn't just arrive—they descended like judgment.
Thragg's expression finally cracked as the creatures hit the swarm. A Ragnar—towering, red-skinned, all claws and muscle—snatched a Viltrumite out of the air and crushed him with a wet, explosive pop, like squeezing fruit under a boot. Another beast, sleek and scaled like some prehistoric nightmare, carved through three more bodies with one fluid sweep of its limbs. Space Racer blazed through the chaos, his cycle ripping clean lines of destruction through anything that twitched in his path. "Let's move, people!" he shouted, streaking past in a flash of blue fire.
The entire battle flipped so fast it felt unreal: predators collapsing into prey, Viltrumites torn apart by creatures born and sculpted for the single purpose of ending them. Allen roared as he launched into the melee, his fists flickering in a blur. Battle Beast howled, jetpack screaming as he hurled himself into a cluster of enemies, his claws drawing wide, furious arcs that flung blood and broken armor into space.
Through all that carnage, Thragg hovered motionless—untouched, unbothered, his expression carved from cold iron. Not fear, not even concern, but a calculating, predatory awareness tightened the lines of his face. "Ragnars," he spat, the old hatred in the word almost visible. "Scavengers of the dark. Even we keep our distance from their hunger." Below him, one of the beasts gutted a Viltrumite with mechanical efficiency, the blood freezing instantly into drifting rubies. Thragg watched with disdain curling at the edge of his mouth. "A coward's weapon," he muttered, though his fists flexed and tightened until his knuckles strained against the skin. He saw it—the ancient, untamed power in the Ragnars—even if he'd never admit they unsettled him.
My pulse hammered against my ribs. Thragg. The alpha of alphas. The source of everything vicious and relentless in Viltrumite history. Instinct screamed to stay far from him, but something colder, sharper, and entirely my own pushed me forward. Curiosity. Not the harmless kind—the kind that killed.
How strong was he, truly? How close could I get? Could I measure myself against the living myth for even a heartbeat? I needed that answer. Not from pride. From truth. From the grim mathematics of what it meant to face the king at the top of the food chain.
I moved before thought could catch me. The white-and-orange streak of my suit cut through the battlefield, slipping between Ragnars tearing bodies apart on one side and Space Racer carving neon ribbons of carnage on the other. And at the center of that apocalypse stood Thragg—arms at his sides, posture unshaken, watching the chaos like a bored god surveying the destruction he'd ordered. He didn't even glance in my direction. Or maybe he did and decided I wasn't worth the muscle movement.
My fist found his jaw cleanly, a perfect strike that sent shock up my arm and rattled my teeth. His head turned—barely. Just enough to acknowledge physics existed.
He straightened with unhurried calm. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, dark as old wine, and he let it stay there like an insult. His lips curved into something not even close to a smile. "That," he said, voice rumbling through my bones, "was a fly's kiss." His gaze swept over me, detached and dissecting. "The famed Sovereign. The ape who broke Anissa's arm. This is the strength you bring against us?" A low chuckle scraped across my nerves. "Your Coalition must be starving for heroes."
I never saw the counterpunch. It wasn't speed—it was a momentary absence in reality, as if the universe forgot to render the space between us. One instant he was floating in front of me, the next his fist was already sunk deep into my chest. My suit screamed under the pressure. Air vanished from my lungs in a violent rush. A curtain of white exploded behind my eyes as the impact hurled me backward, tumbling through drifting bodies and the shattered remains of armor. I slammed into a frozen Viltrumite corpse; it burst apart around me like brittle glass, scattering glittering fragments in every direction.
Pain erupted in every cell, a tidal wave of agony that swallowed the world. I'd taken hits that split mountains, walked away from blasts that turned steel to liquid. None of it compared. This wasn't power. This was annihilation wearing skin. My body—my engineered enhancements, every shred of adaptation—collapsed under his blow as though it all had been a lie.
I barely registered where I was when his shadow engulfed me again. Thragg was already there, drifting toward me with terrifying calm. His hand clamped around my throat, enormous and implacable. He lifted me with no more effort than picking up a stubborn child.
"You broke Anissa's arm?" His voice was soft now, the softness of a blade against skin. "A child's trick against a distracted warrior." His other fist drove into my ribs with surgical destruction. I felt the bones give, one by one, snapping like twigs under a boot. The pain was so total it stole thought, breath, and identity. Thragg wasn't merely strong—he was an absolute, an equation with only one outcome. A living rule of the universe, immutable and indifferent.
In that moment, every delusion I'd ever held about my own power cracked apart. There was no adapting to him. No countering him. No surviving him. Only the crushing truth of what it meant to stand before a force that didn't bother to acknowledge limits.
He didn't pause to savor the moment or indulge in even a flicker of triumph; he simply kept working, each motion as deliberate as a craftsman who'd done this a thousand times before. His next strike came for my shoulder—clean, exact, inevitable—and something inside me gave way with a sound like glass surrendering to flame. My right arm tore free in a burst of red that froze midair, suspended like a macabre constellation. I tried to scream, but nothing came; only a trail of blood vapor drifted from my mouth like a comet's tail. Thragg held the severed limb for a single, clinical heartbeat, studying it the way a mechanic inspects a tool that has failed him, then cast it aside.
"One," he said, perfectly even.
Instinct made my remaining hand lash out—a meaningless gesture, the body acting without hope. He caught it effortlessly, twisted, and I felt the bone splinter like stale wood. A precise jerk followed, more surgical than violent, and my left arm tore loose in a spray of blood and ice.
"Two."
My world narrowed to the grip at my throat as he hoisted me like ruined scrap leaking frozen life into open space. The pain was so immense it collapsed into a kind of numbness, a silence that swallowed everything.
His gaze locked onto mine—two bottomless voids stripped of mercy. "You touched her," he said softly, almost gently. "You broke her." His free hand pressed against my chest, fingers sliding through the wreckage of my armor until I felt the heat of his palm and the dull grind of bone beneath his knuckles.
"This heart," he murmured, "stops now."
He drew his fist back with a calm that was worse than fury: the steadiness of someone carrying out the last step of a chore. Around us, the void dimmed. My vision tunneled. Even the battle faded into nothing. There was only Thragg, his poised fist, and the certainty of the end. Sovereign, undone by the hand of a god.
And then Viltrum screamed.
Not with sound, but with light—a white-hot detonation that washed across the void like the birth of a second sun. The shockwave struck us first, slamming into Thragg's back with a force that jarred through my ribs. His final strike faltered, grazing my chest instead of obliterating it. The blow knocked me from his grip, and I tumbled away like discarded debris through a storm of fracturing stone and burning metal.
Below, the world wasn't simply dying—it was coming apart at the seams. Continents split open like cracked porcelain; oceans flash-boiled into vapor that froze into spectral clouds; the core ruptured, spilling fire into the stars. Thaedus and the Graysons had done it—they had shattered the planet. It was terrible. It was beautiful.
Thragg's roar didn't make a sound, yet it vibrated through the void, a pulse of incandescent rage that seemed to rattle the bones I no longer fully had. He whirled, searching the chaos, and saw his empire being devoured. Ragnars tearing through soldiers. Space Racer carving bright arcs through darkness. Allen and Battle Beast reaping Viltrumites with brutal precision. And me—broken, drifting, still alive. I was the crack in his focus. The reason he hadn't noticed the core destabilizing. Because of me, his empire was turning to ash.
"You miserable insect."
The words ripped through my skull, a psychic snarl that tasted of iron and fury. His eyes found me again, burning hotter than the sunlit debris behind him.
"You cost me everything."
He moved—not with speed but with inevitability, like a celestial body drawn along a path no force could divert. In a single stride through the vacuum, he reached me, his fist already driving forward. It pierced armor and flesh and something deeper, something essential. The universe went white. His hand closed around my heart, and the crush that followed was almost tender. Cold spread through me in a rush, hollowing me from the inside out. Breath failed. A ribbon of frozen blood drifted from my lips, painting my chin with red frost.
I met his gaze and found no anger left—only the ancient fury of a god whose dominion had been denied. Because of me, he had looked away from his planet for one fatal second. And in that second, the fire had consumed his throne.
He yanked his arm back, casting a spray of frozen viscera into the dark. My body shuddered once, like a puppet whose strings had been severed, then began to drift, lighter and lighter, thinning at the edges.
Thragg didn't waste a moment. Rage sharpened into purpose as he swept the battlefield with the precision of a predator seeking the source of its pain. He found Thaedus regrouping with the Graysons, crystalline blood glittering along his side. The betrayal—his betrayal—carved itself across Thragg's face like lightning over stone.
And then he vanished.
It wasn't movement. It was absence. One instant he occupied the void; the next, he reappeared before Thaedus. The shock of his arrival rippled outward, scattering debris, ice, and blood in a widening spiral. Thaedus turned, too slow, hand lifting in a futile instinct. Thragg struck not with a fist but with both hands—one seizing the crown of Thaedus's skull, the other hooking beneath his jaw. There were no words, no battle cry—only execution. A single twist, brutal and precise, and a wet, grinding snap shuddered through the comms. Bone tore. Flesh parted. In one smooth, merciless motion, Thragg wrenched the head free.
Blood sprayed in frozen arcs, blooming like crimson flowers in the cold. Thaedus's body hung suspended for one empty heartbeat before folding into the drift. His severed head remained in Thragg's grasp, eyes wide and uncomprehending. The Emperor raised it—not triumphantly, but as a verdict. A warning carved into the void. His gaze swept Nolan, Mark, Oliver—the traitor and his sons. The meaning was unmistakable: You're next.
Inside my ruined suit, my blood had grown thick and sticky, congealing against my skin. The stumps of my arms throbbed dully beneath the creeping numbness spreading from my hollowed chest. His strike hadn't simply destroyed my heart—it had wrecked everything around it. I drifted through the dying glow of the planet's last breaths, watching the battle continue in blurred, distant shapes: Ragnars tearing into flesh, Racer's guns flaring, Allen's war cry echoing across comms, Battle Beast lost in his savage trance. It all felt impossibly far away, as if I were already behind a sheet of fading glass. Stars winked out at the edge of my vision. The cold kept coming.
Then a strange clarity cut through the haze, sharp and unwelcome. Anissa's face flickered through my thoughts—not the rage she'd worn in her cell, but that split-second of raw disbelief when I'd shattered her arm. The heat of her breath. The scent of blood and ozone. And then the drifting shape of Thaedus's severed head slid across my narrowing field of sight, still clutched in Thragg's hand.
Because of me.
The realization wasn't regret—just a blunt acknowledgment. My arrogance had lit this fuse. My hunger to test myself had torn away the Coalition's anchor and dragged me into the grave beside him. A bitter taste crept across my tongue—like biting metal. Sovereign, the unbreakable, reduced to shrapnel before the Emperor's gaze.
The void pressed in, swallowing color, then sound, then everything else, until only silence remained.