The skies over Sector 17 burned with tracer fire and streaks of plasma. Military juggernauts rolled over cracked stone and metal streets, crushing makeshift barricades as rebel fighters scrambled for cover. Sirens screamed. Lives were snuffed out by the minute.
The rebellion had begun three weeks ago quietly, with small strikes on communication towers, intel leaks, and stolen gear. But now, it was full war. The military had pushed hard into rebel territory, overwhelming safe zones and slaughtering those branded as traitors.
Inside the war torn ruins of a city once called Cyras, rebel command huddled in an underground server room beneath an old transit hub. Maps flickered. Drones buzzed overhead. The air stank of ozone, blood, and smoke.
"We're losing every front!" shouted Kehl, the new strategist barely 19, with white hair and shaking hands. "We need to fall back. This isn't a fight we win-"
"No," said Juno one of the two powerful siblings raised on the mountain. His left arm was missing now, his spirit cracked but not broken. "We stand. We're not running again."
Beside him stood his sister, Veyla, her hands pulsing with barely restrained kinetic force, her body trembling from exhaustion. "We lose here, we lose everything. Even if we die we die showing them we're more than tools."
Outside, another explosion rocked the streets. Rebels were cornered. The military was using everything: drones, super soldiers, psychics, and erasure units. Even civilians were being harvested for resource data.
And then-
A flash of yellow.
From the burning skyline, riding what looked like a rebuilt exo rig fused with ancient machinery, descended Yellow the rogue engineer thought long dead. His body was plated in scrap enhanced tech, his gloves humming with matter-coding veins, and his eyes glowed like suns.
He didn't speak.
He crashed into the enemy lines like a meteor, tearing through tanks by rewriting their core atoms into rust and ash. He reassembled collapsed buildings into iron shields for retreating rebels, nullified force fields with rewoven energy signatures, and even rewrote a crater into a spiked gravity well that swallowed entire platoons.
"He's back-! HE'S BACK!" screamed someone in the rebel ranks.
Morale surged.
The tides turned.
Until
One of the siblings, Juno, overexerted.
To protect Yellow from a sniper unit, he unleashed a massive Will burst, a force of raw determination and power so pure it obliterated half a battalion.
But the cost was everything.
As Yellow fell from a ruptured core reactor smiling, having done what he came to do Juno collapsed beside him. His soul began fracturing, cracking at the seams from the sheer overload of Will.
His body spasmed. His eyes turned silver. His veins pulsed with ancient light and then shattered like glass.
"JUNO!" Veyla screamed, rushing toward him.
But it was too late.
Where he once stood now twisted a floating, contorted shape the beginnings of a Fragmented, born from overuse of divine Will, where the soul loses cohesion.
The rebellion had won the battle.
But the cost...
Was the birth of another monster.