The wind howled through the canyon like a dying god exhaling its last breath.
But it wasn't wind.
It was breathing.
Thick. Wet. Inhuman. The air carried a tremor that vibrated through Riven's bones. His feet crunched over glass-like ash as he stepped from the mouth of the Starforge gate into the desolate expanse above.
The once-familiar terrain of Sector C-17 was now a broken scar of jagged cliffs and rippling biomechanical terrain. Black spires still rose like shattered monoliths, some twitching, others leaking threads of glowing, acidic fluid. Where once there had been sterile stone and alien ruins, now there was only warping a landscape infected, transformed by Xal'thar's corruption.
The Starforge had stabilized the region below. But the surface was still infected.
[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 79% REMAINING]
[STARFORGE CORE: SECURED | DOMAIN HOLD: PARTIAL]
[WARNING: ELITE VOIDBEAST SIGNATURE DETECTED – INBOUND TRAJECTORY]
Threat Class: C+
Entity Type: Hybrid Organic / Null-Aether Construct
Status: Mutated by Sovereign Parasite [Xal'thar]
Proximity: 1.2 km and closing
Riven stood still, the windless air thick with static. His breath condensed in the open air as if the temperature were falling, but his Threadnet Gauntlet pulsed hot on his arm like the forge inside it was alive, heating his bloodstream.
He flexed his fingers, watching as the luminous threads beneath his skin tightened. The pain of the neural fusion had faded, but a phantom throb still lingered like a fresh scar woven with memory.
He didn't feel fear.
Not anymore.
He felt clarity.
"Let it come," Riven murmured.
And it did.
The ground ahead ruptured in a wet, crunching explosion. Something massive crawled out its emergence tore open the soil like wet paper. The creature stood twice his height, armored in cracked crystal, muscle cords of black flesh braided with silver wiring. Its legs bent wrong. Its arms flexed too many times. Along its back and limbs, dozens of blinking eyes opened and closed like tumors.
Its face was a patchwork of bone and tech part skeletal frame, part fused armor. When it looked at him, Riven's vision trembled.
"Prototype," the creature said.
Its voice was a chorus discordant, layered with echoing tones that hurt to hear. The sound wasn't carried by air. It traveled through data-space, bleeding into Riven's neural weave like corrupted code.
"Sovereign. Unripe. Unforged."
It took a lumbering step forward.
Then it charged.
Riven reacted not with movement, but with will.
He didn't flinch. Instead, he reached outward not physically, but mentally. His mind stretched into the terrain beneath him, searching for anchors, signals scrapborn tech buried in the corrupted zone.
The Threadnet surged to life.
[THREADNET SYNCHRO SIGNAL FOUND]
[ACTIVATING LOCAL INTERFACE GRID]
[FIELD DRONE FABRICATION: IN PROGRESS]
With a flicker of thought, three glowing nodes formed in the debris around him. They weren't drones in the traditional sense they were broken things, half-dead devices awakened by Sovereign code. He didn't build them. He revived them.
The gauntlet hummed.
Unit A: Disruptor Beam – EM-lattice burst weapon
Unit B: Shield Intercept – Kinetic field emitter
Unit C: Detonation Core – Instability payload node
The creature roared again its cry splitting the world like broken binary. It moved like a memory of a beast, arms swinging too wide, legs stomping with glitchy lag.
Unit A struck first.
A piercing burst of blue-white energy sliced through the air, tearing across the monster's flank. Flesh melted. Crystal cracked. The creature reeled sideways, shrieking in a voice that folded over itself like a corrupted file trying to speak.
Riven moved. Fast. Fluid.
He ducked left, claws unfurling from his gauntlet fingers metal-tipped, gleaming with nano-edge resonance. He dove behind a broken stone pillar just as the Voidbeast responded.
It opened its mouth and spat a stream of corrosive black matter sprayed like a hose, melting stone and steel alike. The pillar hissed and crumbled, sending Riven tumbling to the ground, smoke curling off his arm.
[INTEGRITY DAMAGE: 12%]
[THREADNET DRONE CAPACITY: 71% | OVERLOAD RISK]
[SUGGESTED ACTION: REMOTE FUSION STRIKE – UNIT C]
"Do it," Riven snapped.
Unit C a dull, orb-like core buried in the sand ignited. Rings spun outward from it, growing hotter with each cycle. It launched itself under the beast's belly and began pulsing red.
Riven snapped his fingers.
The core detonated.
There was no flame just force. The air warped inward before exploding outward in a controlled singularity shock. The Voidbeast's underbelly tore open, leaking molten black ichor that hissed when it hit the ground.
The creature staggered, limbs twitching. It opened its mouth to scream but no sound came.
Riven was already moving.
He closed the distance in a single sprint, leaping off a half-melted slope of terrain. Claws glinted as he slashed across its throat not deep enough to kill, but enough to expose something hidden beneath: a neural core, glowing green behind a transparent membrane.
He drove his foot forward, right into the open wound.
The core shattered.
[TARGET TERMINATED]
[GENETIC SIGNATURE ABSORBED: PARTIAL MATCH DETECTED]
Trait Acquired: VOID ADAPTATION [LV.1]
Temporary resistance to null-aether fields
Mental resilience to Sovereign distortion
Enhanced cognition in gravity-disrupted zones
The beast collapsed into itself. Not dead in the way organic life dies, but in the way data dies. A slow, glitching unraveling. Its body convulsed, then fell still. Limbs disintegrated into ash and synthetic mist.
Silence followed.
No wind. No voices. No signal.
Only black rain began to fall misty droplets that evaporated before touching the ground. Not water. Not real. Just residual memory from the construct's death.
Riven stood motionless for a long time.
His breathing slowed. Heart steady. The drones around him flickered, then dissolved spent, reabsorbed by the Threadnet.
He looked at the blood on his claws.
He hadn't beaten it with raw power. It had been built to kill someone like him. No. He'd won with dominance of interface by thinking faster and controlling more.
That was the Sovereign difference.
Not rage. Not strength.
Control.
And he was just getting started.
[NEW QUEST UNLOCKED: TRACE XAL'THAR'S SIGNAL]
Objective: Identify and secure the origin shard of the Sovereign corruption
Location: Derelict orbital satellite 11.3 km above planetary surface
Time Limit: 48 Hours
Reward: Sovereign Domain Purge Protocol (Expanded)
Unlock: Sovereign Beacon Fabrication Blueprint
Riven raised his head.
Above, the sky was cracked and unstable where atmosphere blurred into orbit, where satellites hung broken in the black. Xal'thar was hiding something up there. A source. A shard. A fragment of corrupted will still tethered to the moon.
And now, he had a trail.
But he couldn't get there on foot. Not even with teleport beacons. The upper atmosphere was saturated with null-aether interference a side effect of the Sovereign War.
To go higher, he needed more than power.
He needed a vessel. One that was alive, like the Threadnet Gauntlet. One that could evolve with him.
"Looks like it's time to build a starship," he muttered.
The words tasted surreal. Unreal.
And yet… it was the only logical step.
He clenched his fist. The gauntlet pulsed again, responding to his resolve.
The Sovereign System opened a new menu across his vision.
[STARSHIP FORGING UNLOCKED]
Available: NANOFORGE CHASSIS BLUEPRINTS
Core Type: Bio-Neural Seed (Bound AI Growth Potential)
Armor Type: Adaptive Neuroplate
Class: Sovereign Scout-Class Starlinker [Upgradeable]
INITIATE STARSHIP FABRICATION?
Riven smiled. For the first time in hours, it wasn't grim.
It was dangerous. Terrifying. Impossible.
And exactly what he needed.
This was the war between Sovereigns.
And he was done playing catch-up.