The sky above the old city trembled as pressure waves rippled across the atmosphere. Deep underground, the Mamachine node buried in South America activated with a blinding pulse that spanned a hundred miles in every direction. The Earth itself shivered.
Kairos, Rex, and Ben stood on the crumbling edge of an overgrown megastructure—once a corporate tech research facility, now a graveyard of half-buried machines. The node beneath them was awake. And they weren't alone.
"Omnitrix is flaring again," Ben said, flicking her wrist. "Something's here. Or... someone."
Rex narrowed his eyes. "Someone else is trying to sync with the node."
Kairos clenched his fists. "It's him."
From the shadows of the broken atrium, a figure emerged. Cloaked in layered black-tech armor, its form was humanoid but barely stable. Nanites bled off him like shadowy mist—wrong in color, in function, in design. They corroded the ground as he walked.
The False God's herald.
"You've wandered far from your designed path, Kairos," the being said. His voice echoed in their minds, like radio signals layered in static. "Come home. Accept your role. You are no warrior. You are a gate."
Kairos stepped forward. "Then this gate is closing."
The enemy lunged.
Instantly, Rex transformed his arms into twin drill-blades and met the herald midair. Sparks and nanite discharges exploded with every impact. Ben shifted into Jetray, blasting from above with neuroshock beams.
But this wasn't just a fight. It was a duel of nanite command.
The herald extended his influence. His nanites swarmed, attempting to overwrite the fabric of Kairos's constructs. But Kairos's mind burned hotter. His nanites adapted—not by resisting, but by evolving.
"They're rewriting themselves," Rex shouted. "Real-time mutation!"
Kairos channeled the Mamachine node. His arms shifted into twin crescents of glowing white. Not weapons—tools of evolution.
He struck the enemy with a focused pulse. The herald screamed—its form destabilizing. For a second, its mask cracked. Beneath it, ancient human features. Twisted. Lost.
Ben's voice echoed. "He's a former EVO! One that merged with corrupted Mamachine code!"
The fight intensified.
Every clash became a battle of frequency, each side trying to impose control. The herald's nanites screamed like tortured metal. Kairos's nanites answered in waves of harmonic pulses—language written in data, memory, and force.
The Mamachine below responded.
CHOICE MADE.
A wave of light erupted, surrounding Kairos. The herald recoiled, his corrupted nanites burning under the light.
Kairos stood, hovering in the air, his body cloaked in evolved armor—smooth, white-silver with glyphs pulsing like living code.
"This is only the beginning," the herald hissed. "The False God is awakening. And he remembers you."
He vanished in a pulse of shadow.
Rex dropped to one knee, breathing hard. "Well... that was worse than a Breach fusion."
Ben returned to human form. "You okay?"
Kairos didn't answer immediately. His mind was still echoing with the Mamachine's words. With the first choice made, others would follow.
"The duel wasn't just about power," he finally said. "It was a test. The Mamachine just accepted me. It sees me as a leader now."
Ben raised an eyebrow. "Then what happens next?"
Kairos looked to the sky, where distant clouds spiraled around a new anomaly.
"The others will come. More heralds. More nodes. The False God won't stop. And we still don't know what he really wants."
Rex sighed. "Guess we better hit up Holiday and get real answers. Before another duel finds us."
Kairos nodded, but inside, he felt the rising tide. Each Mamachine awakened brought him closer to something. A memory. A truth.
And a war that stretched far beyond Earth.