The corruption howled beneath their feet.
The six Warmachines stood at the fractured ridge, staring down into a chasm that should not have existed. It pulsed—not with light, but with memory. Echoes of screams long swallowed by time crawled up its walls, clinging to the obsidian edges like ash-drenched spiders.
The ground hissed.
Gravity spasmed again.
And then again.
Riven steadied himself as the cliff buckled beneath them. "This moon is not a moon anymore."
"It's a wound," Candren muttered, analyzing seismic feedback from his shoulder module. "A wound that doesn't close. It grows."
"Then we cut it deeper," Fitus growled.
"No," said Maverick. "We cauterize it."
The team pushed forward.
They descended into the chasm—twenty-foot drops at a time, leaping from ledge to ledge, each impact cracking stone like lightning shattering bones. Above them, the sky bent inward. Clouds moved in reverse. Stars flickered like dying thoughts.
As they reached the basin, the terrain shifted again. Black stone gave way to red sand. Then to bone.
Mitus stopped. "…These aren't rocks."
He knelt down, brushing aside dust to reveal a face. Not human. Not beast. Not even alien.
It was the memory of something that once had eyes.
Carved into the skull was a name. Burned into the bone.
He couldn't read it.
"They were made," Valkar said darkly, "only to die."
The bones stretched for miles. A valley of forgotten children, forged by Armatus and discarded in silence.
Riven scanned the area. "Heat signatures—dormant. But the soil is breathing."
Candren replied without looking up. "The soil isn't soil. It's armor fragments. Flesh-binders. Failed attempts."
The moon screamed.
It came as a whisper at first. Then it swelled.
Each soldier gritted their teeth as a pulse struck their minds—like nails dragging across the inside of their skulls. Mitus dropped to a knee, his fists clenched, eyes wide.
"Mitus!" Maverick moved to him.
But Mitus did not respond.
He stared ahead, unblinking.
There—at the edge of the basin—stood a monolith. Black, obsidian, spiraled like a broken spine. Veins of molten hatred ran along its edges. It pulsed in rhythm with the moon's distortion.
"No one touch it," Maverick ordered.
"I'm not," Mitus said quietly. "It's touching me."
He rose.
But something was wrong.
The light behind his eyes—dimmed. His breath—hollow. Steam curled from his back. Not from exertion.
From fracture.
Riven stepped forward. "Mitus—"
"I'm fine," Mitus snapped, louder than intended. His voice cracked like metal under pressure. "I'm fine."
Fitus turned. "We don't have time for your breakdowns, rookie."
"Shut up!" Mitus wheeled toward him. "I've held the line beside all of you! I've bled for you! And now—now you look at me like I'm some kind of infection?!"
Silence.
Then Valkar spoke. "We look at you like we look at ourselves. Because we know what it feels like when something breaks inside."
Mitus's shoulders shook.
But he nodded.
Maverick's voice broke through the air like an axe: "We move. Now. Before the rot knows we're here."
They turned.
But behind them—the monolith shifted.
It was not a monument.
It was a mouth.
It opened.
And screamed.
From it poured creatures not made of flesh, but of agony. Misshapen, spindled, crawling beasts with human torsos twisted onto arachnid limbs. Some dragged swords of bone behind them. Others screamed with no mouths. Some had too many.
They swarmed from the monolith like bile erupting from a wound.
"CONTACT!" Maverick shouted.
The Warmachines ignited.
Valkar charged into the first wave, his warhammer spinning, cleaving through three beasts with a single arc. Fitus activated his magnetic rail-pike, impaling two at once and hurling them into the monolith, cracking its edge.
Riven danced between blades and limbs, twin shatterblades carving through necks and tendons.
Candren knelt and unleashed a volcanic surge, molten plasma fanning outward like dragon's breath, reducing the swarm to char.
Mitus—
Mitus didn't move.
His eyes locked on the monolith.
It pulsed again.
This time—only he heard the whisper.
It was his name.
Not "Mitus."
The one he had before the program. Before the forging. Before the fire.
He staggered.
"Mitus!" Maverick shouted.
Too late.
The corruption struck.
Tendrils of blackened light erupted from the monolith, latching onto Mitus's spine. He screamed—his back arched as if pulled by invisible strings. His armor cracked, steaming from within. Symbols etched themselves across his pauldrons.
The others saw it.
They moved.
But the corruption moved faster.
Mitus turned—and his eyes were wrong. Glowing with red static. His body twitched, stance widened, and when he spoke—
It wasn't him.
"I remember now," he said. "I remember what they did to me."
Maverick stood still.
The beasts halted too—waiting.
"Mitus," Valkar said slowly, "listen to me. You're still in there."
Mitus looked down at his hands. They were smoking. Shaking.
"I never asked to be born for this."
His voice cracked.
"I never asked to die for it either."
Then he attacked.
Faster than before. Stronger.
He slammed into Candren, sending him flying. Dodged Riven's blades with ease. Kicked Fitus into a pillar, cracking it clean in half.
Valkar blocked him.
"Mitus—STOP!"
But Mitus punched through Valkar's guard—his blade-staves igniting with corrupted plasma. He struck again and again.
Then—
Maverick grabbed his arm mid-strike.
The two locked eyes.
"Mitus," he said softly.
The boy froze.
For just a second.
"I know," he whispered.
Then Maverick drove his hammer into his chest.
The impact caved his armor inward. The light faded.
Mitus collapsed—knees first. Then forward.
Valkar caught him.
Steam poured from his wounds. The symbols faded.
He was smiling.
"I didn't want to die as a monster."
"You didn't," Valkar whispered.
Then he was still.
The beasts shrieked and scattered, as if their anchor had been shattered.
Silence returned.
The Warmachines stood over the body of their brother.
Riven turned to Maverick.
"What now?"
Maverick stared into the monolith. Then to the sky above.
"To the ones who hurt and were never named…" he said. "We remember you."
Then, with wrath in his voice:
"Let's finish this."
___________________________________
The ash had settled, but the silence screamed louder than any battlefield.
Six Warmachines had come to this moon. Now there were five.
They stood in a circle around what remained of Mitus, his body half-buried in the crimson dust, steam still curling from the cracks in his armor. His glaive-staves lay beside him, one snapped, the other scorched black. Symbols that once burned with corrupted fury were now faint scars on scorched metal.
No one spoke.
Not even the wind dared intrude.
It was Valkar who finally broke the stillness. He knelt beside his fallen brother and placed a gauntleted hand on Mitus's chestplate.
"He died clean," Valkar said softly. "As himself."
Maverick didn't respond. His hammer was embedded in the soil beside him, clenched in his fist like a tombstone too heavy to lift.
Candren stared at the monolith—the thing that had twisted Mitus, that had whispered into his mind and pulled him from them. The obsidian structure was already beginning to collapse, melting into the basin like a wound that no longer had purpose.
"We didn't save him," Candren said coldly. "We stopped him. There's a difference."
"That's not on him," Riven added. His voice carried no edge, only the deep ache of brotherhood fractured. "It's on this place. On what was done to him. What we did to him long before we landed here."
Fitus scoffed, pacing in tight, furious circles. "We gave him power. We trained him. We forged him."
"We broke him," said Valkar.
Fitus turned. "You want to say that like it's noble, fine. But we need to be broken to do what we do. This life doesn't take whole men. It takes war. And he… he wasn't ready."
"He wasn't weak," Maverick said.
The others turned to him. His voice was low, but it struck the air like a bell rung in an empty hall.
"He wasn't weak," Maverick repeated. "He was open. He still believed in something better. That's why it got inside."
He walked to Mitus's body and knelt beside him.
"Armatus found that small piece of hope still left in him. And used it."
Steam rolled off Maverick's shoulders as he stood again, gaze shifting to the others.
"Hope," he said, "is the only thing we cannot afford to carry anymore."
Riven looked away.
Candren tightened his gauntlets.
Valkar said nothing. But the tremble in his breath was enough.
They moved together without command. Silent, methodical. They gathered Mitus's glaives. Wrapped his body in a thermal shroud. Placed him on a hover-sled drawn from Candren's pack.
"We'll take him with us," Fitus said, voice hoarse. "He deserves to be buried on Earth. Not here."
"No," Maverick replied.
Fitus glared. "What?"
"He deserves better than burial. He deserves vengeance."
They looked up.
Maverick pointed down the path ahead—toward the Maw, where titanic structures twisted like frozen screams and the sky bent around a central spire too tall to exist.
"We carry him until the last beast falls. And then we bring him home."
Candren nodded.
"Then we burn this fucking moon to the bedrock," Riven added.
Valkar whispered something in a language older than memory—an oath known only to the first Warmachines. He drew a line in the dust across his chestplate, then touched it to Mitus's shroud.
They moved on.
⸻
It wasn't long before the terrain changed again.
Where before the ground had groaned under the weight of corruption, now it screamed. Each step triggered the soil to react—black veins of energy pulsing outward like nerves exposed. The path to the Maw had no cover, no respite, no mercy.
Vornex Prime wanted them to feel it.
And they did.
But they didn't slow.
They crossed a field of ruptured bone—once part of a colossus, now shattered and buried by time. Candren's scans buzzed with incomprehensible readings: temperatures that didn't match the environment, seismic signatures that didn't follow gravity, and shapes that moved beneath the surface without mass.
No one spoke of it.
Riven paused at one point, stepping away from the group.
He dropped to one knee beside a piece of armor.
A child-sized gauntlet.
Half-buried. Fused to the stone.
He stared at it for a long moment before smashing it with his heel.
Then he rejoined the others.
⸻
The next cliff brought them to a vantage point.
Below, the path snaked toward the Maw's edge—rivers of molten black flowing into its heart like veins feeding a god. Creatures patrolled the perimeter in mindless loops. Some walked on legs. Some slithered. Some hovered above the ground without form at all.
And in the far distance—
A silhouette.
Too tall. Too still.
Armatus.
Even from here, his presence was undeniable. Like a mountain that watched. A tower of wrath wrapped in armor made of memory and moonstone.
They all felt it.
Fitus stared too long and had to look away. "He's waiting."
"Then we make him wait longer," Maverick said. "We kill everything between here and there."
"No mercy," Riven said.
"No pause," Candren added.
"No fear," Valkar finished.
Maverick raised his hammer.
"Only war."
They descended.
⸻
That night, there was no sleep.
Only preparation.
They sheltered beneath a crag of twisted iron that had once been a drop pod—long ago crushed into the cliffside by Armatus's first wave. The stars above were red. The air vibrated with energy like anticipation.
Fitus sharpened his pike.
Candren recalibrated their ammunition cache.
Riven sat silently, one blade in hand, the other at his side, both humming faintly in response to the moon's pulse.
Valkar stood over Mitus's wrapped form.
"I remember," he said, voice just above a whisper. "When you told me you didn't want to be afraid anymore. That you wanted to fight like the rest of us. That you wanted to belong."
He rested a hand on the shroud.
"You belonged, brother. You always did. It was the rest of us who forgot what that meant."
Behind him, Maverick watched.
He didn't speak.
But in his silence was promise.
Not of peace.
Not of closure.
But of vengeance so pure it would crack the bones of gods.
⸻
At dawn—if it could be called dawn—they moved again.
With each step toward the Maw, the temperature dropped.
The gravity lightened.
And something inside each of them… grew heavier.
They did not carry Mitus's body now.
They carried his absence.
And it made them stronger.
But Maverick lingered for one final act.
He walked to the sled, where Mitus's glaive-staves lay beside the wrapped shroud. They still pulsed faintly—dim echoes of the warrior who had wielded them. He knelt and picked them up, one in each hand, feeling the familiar weight and balance—the precision of Mitus's technique, the reckless joy in his movements, the fire that made him unforgettable.
He turned silently and crossed his arms—slotting the twin weapons across the magnetic clamps on his back.
A soldier's burden.
A brother's honor.
Fitus watched and said nothing.
Riven lowered his head.
Candren tightened a strap across his armor.
Valkar placed a hand on Maverick's shoulder.
"He'll see it," he said softly. "Wherever he is. When you use them."
Maverick didn't reply.
He didn't need to.
They moved on.
The road ahead was long.
But they would walk it together.
For Mitus.
For themselves.
And for the war to come.