The wind screamed.
It wasn't natural wind not anymore. It howled with static, torn from the fractures Xal'thar had ripped into the moon's fabric. Chunks of sky flickered in and out of phase, showing glimpses of other realities some molten, others void.
The corruption had accelerated.
Black spires stabbed skyward like biomechanical tumors. Their growth was erratic, violent. The terrain fractured underfoot as if the moon itself were resisting infection shaking like a dying beast.
Riven ran.
Every step down the slope toward Sector C-17 carried urgency. Not fear. Resolve.
This moon his first claimed world was under siege. Xal'thar hadn't merely trespassed. He'd begun to devour it.
[DOMAIN STABILITY: 74%]
[CORRUPTION SPREAD RATE: 0.82% / HOUR]
[CRITICAL THRESHOLD IN: 68 HOURS]
"Faster," Riven muttered, teeth clenched. "Faster."
He reached the mouth of the ancient fissure an opening in the ground rimmed by ruined machinery, half-buried alien statues, and slumped drone husks whose cores had long since cooled.
He didn't hesitate.
He leapt into the abyss.
The descent began.
Windless. Silent. Wrong.
For a moment, there was nothing but darkness then the Sovereign System flickered back online, casting pale light through his neural HUD.
[OBJECTIVE: LOCATE STARFORGE CORE]
[DEPTH TO TARGET: 3.2 KM]
[ZONE: ACTIVE RUIN | CLASS-OMEGA]
[CANDIDATE STATUS: NEURO-TECH ALIGNMENT CONFIRMED]
The walls of the tunnel changed as he dropped. At first: obsidian stone, fractured and dusty. Then: smooth plates of alien alloy etched with dormant circuits.
At 800 meters, the walls began to pulse faintly like veins.
At 1.6 kilometers, the material changed again.
The tunnel became a throat.
Dark metal flexed beneath his boots. Patches of tissue pulsed between alloy plates. Living infrastructure flesh woven with steel.
It wasn't a ruin.
It was an ancient, sleeping body.
"Something built this," Riven whispered, eyeing a massive glyph embedded in the wall. "Something alive."
But who or what had forged it?
At 2.7 kilometers, he reached a ledge.
The tunnel opened into a vast vertical shaft a hollow cylinder stretching down into the core of the moon, its walls carved with rotating glyphs. Rings of dormant machinery drifted silently, orbiting a central spire of glowing crystal. Floating platforms spiraled downward vertebrae in the spine of a dying god.
Riven stepped forward onto the first platform.
The moment his foot made contact, the structure responded sinking downward with no sound, no friction. Just motion.
Then the voice came.
But not from his system.
Not from Xal'thar.
Not even from the Sovereign interface.
It was older. Wounded. Artificial, but just barely.
[STARFORGE TRIAL INITIATING...]
[SOVEREIGN CANDIDATE: RIVEN NEURO-TECH PATHWAY DETECTED]
[WARNING: FORGING IS FINAL. NEURAL DAMAGE: HIGH RISK]
[FAILURE: PERMANENT DISSOLUTION LIKELY]
The light in the shaft dimmed. The glyphs rotated faster.
And then
Everything stopped.
No motion. No sound. No time.
Riven opened his eyes.
He was standing not falling in a circular chamber.
It defied logic.
There were no corners. The walls breathed, pulsing like metal lungs. Geometry twisted in on itself right angles that looped, impossible shadows, light bleeding upward. There were no visible doors, but he knew: this was where Sovereigns were tested.
And hovering before him were three shapes.
Not weapons. Not yet.
They floated, half-formed, incomplete but pulsing with potential. Each one whispered, not in words, but in intent.
Not crafted by tools.
Grown from will.
[SELECT SOVEREIGN WEAPON CORE]
MINDPIERCER – A neuro-lance designed to disrupt synthetic and organic minds alike. Pierces perception. Shatters command hierarchies. Warps battlefield logic.
THREADNET GAUNTLET – An interface array for controlling semi-autonomous machines. Threads connections to synthetic life. Can create Neuro-Drones for temporary field dominance.
ECHO SPLICER – A temporal memory-blade. Records kinetic actions for 1.3 seconds, then replays in compressed combat bursts. A duelist's recursive nightmare.
Riven stepped forward slowly.
Each weapon pulsed louder as he neared.
The Mindpiercer was beautiful sleek, cruel, promising devastation to hive minds and war-AIs.
The Echo Splicer called to his reflexes, offering battlefield recursion. Every motion multiplied.
But the Threadnet Gauntlet…
That wasn't about destruction.
It was about command.
Dominion.
"I don't want to just survive this system," Riven thought. "I want to control it."
He reached forward.
[WEAPON CORE SELECTED: THREADNET GAUNTLET]
[NEURAL LINK REQUIRED. BEGINNING FUSION.]
[PAIN SUPPRESSION: DENIED]
It was agony.
The gauntlet didn't attach.
It invaded.
Tendrils of liquid metal and fiber-optic muscle slithered into his arm merging with bone, wrapping nerves, threading directly into his spine. His forearm bulged, glowing from within as ancient circuits activated.
He dropped to one knee.
His breath came ragged.
He bit his tongue to stay conscious.
And then
Connection.
Like a door in his mind opened wide.
He could feel every machine in the chamber. Heard them.
Like hearts. Like song.
The Starforge recognized him now.
[THREADNET GAUNTLET: ONLINE]
Synthetic Interface Control: ACTIVE
Sovereign Drone Fabrication: UNLOCKED (LIMITED)
Neuro-Thread Transmission: LINK ESTABLISHED
Micro-AI Weaving: ENABLED
[SOVEREIGN TRIAL: COMPLETE]
[DOMAIN PURGE PROTOCOLS INITIATED PARTIAL COUNTERMEASURE DEPLOYED]
[XAL'THAR CORRUPTION REDUCED BY 21%]
Far above, something screamed.
Not sound. Data.
Riven saw it through his neural HUD waves of hostile code burning away as Sovereign architecture reasserted control. Black spires cracked. Glitched sky healed in patches.
It wasn't over.
But it was a response.
He had answered Xal'thar's challenge with a forge-marked declaration.
Riven rose slowly.
His new arm sleek, pulsing with light flexed as if learning itself. Neural tendrils wrapped under his shoulder and down his spine.
He raised his hand.
With a thought, a small drone emerged from the metal beneath his feet liquid metal assembling into a hovering construct shaped like an angular falcon, eyes glowing blue.
It bowed in midair.
Awaiting commands.
[DRONE: THREADLING CLASS – DESIGNATION: V-01]
[LOYALTY LOCK: 100%]
Riven smiled, blood on his lips.
He wasn't just surviving anymore.
He was beginning to command.
The Starforge pulsed once more behind him. A deep thrumming sound like a heartbeat echoed through the ruins. It was awakening.
And somewhere in the code of the moon, the Sovereign System whispered:
"The first weapon is chosen. The war has begun."