The Owaki estate’s subterranean laboratory sprawled beneath the mountains of Edo like a buried cathedral of iron and artificial light—humming with machines that pulsed and hissed like living organs.
The sterile scent of antiseptic clashed with the bitter tang of oil and ozone, making every breath feel synthetic.
Pale green lights glowed dimly from rectangular panels in the ceiling, casting long shadows that danced over surgical tables and containment pods built into the walls like glass coffins. And each one housed a body suspended in nutrient-saturated fluid.
They were innumerable—rows upon rows, each one bearing the unmistakable face of the Serpent's Heir. They drifted in prenatal silence, their musculature taut beneath translucent skin. Motionless. Expressionless. And yet the air trembled with their latent power.
Within the deeper chambers, legions of scientists moved with precise, machine-like coordination. Clad in muted whites and silvers, they monitored glowing consoles, manipulated robotic limbs, and whispered clipped commands in a language of numbers and sequences from behind surgical masks. The air was thick with sterilized pressure and unseen protocols, a tension that never lifted.
And at the center of it all, stood its architect.
Kenji's form was motionless, surgical lenses locked over his face as he manipulated the conversion ratios of the tenth-generation serum—his gloved fingers moving with impossible precision. His white hair was tied back, bust a few pesky bangs crowned a face carved by time and wisdom. A short, neatly groomed goatee framed his chin, and his eyes—cold and pale as frozen glass—bore down on everything with the same intensity he reserved for his specimens.
He was locked in work—immersed to a point of obsession. He didn’t even flinch when the AI security system chimed softly:
“Recognized: Ren Owaki, ID—G06”
His footsteps echoed across the pristine floor. Ren, the youngest of the Owaki bloodline, entered with the stiff shoulders of a man carrying the weight of expectation. His long black hair was pulled back in a high, traditional knot—every strand controlled, not out of vanity, but discipline. Gold eyes, sharp and luminous, flicked across the lab’s features, soaking in its foreignness with unspoken distrust. He wore the robes of an heir, but his demeanor now stripped of privilege—his toned, muscular frame the only proof needed of his resolve. Since Iwa’s death, Ren had thrown himself into cycles of relentless training. The weakness he once tasted—the helplessness of being unable to stop Jao, or at least fight back—now burned inside him like a dune of coals.
“..Kenji..” He said, his gaze flickering from tank to tank, resting uneasily on the floating Jao doppelgängers. “Still keeping yourself busy, I see,” he muttered, aiming for poise, but his voice cracked faintly.
Kenji didn’t answer.
Ren advanced, stopping just shy of a surgical table where a bevy of instruments gleamed beneath glass. “Father’s… satisfied with your work. Despite.. what has happened, you've managed to return security to the estate in a matter of months. The Serpent clones patrol the halls, the grounds—hell, even the mountains like leashed shadows.”
Still silence.
“..But my father.. he is hard to please. He wants more.” Ren’s voice hardened. “He wants an update with your progress on the cure, and he wants it to be a priority. He says we can no longer rely on constructs alone—no matter how strong.. he claims.. they have made us weak.” Ren's fist tightened with frustration. He could still hear Zeroken's callous words ripping into his mind. “..The Ring is gone. The Serpent has it now. And with Sozen's betrayal.. he now knows where we are.”
Kenji exhaled through his nose—soft, but sharp. He reached for a vial from his workbench, lifting it with delicate reverence. Inside swirled a luminous serum, like moonlight trapped in a bottle—elegant, unstable. His fingers danced across a nearby console, screens shifting with genetic matrices, metabolic scans, combat simulations, and more.
He finally turned, just slightly, toward Ren. Behind his lenses, his eyes were devoid of warmth—clinical, calculating.
“Still your fears.. hush your doubts. For the work is already done.”
Ren blinked. “What? What are you talking about ?”
Kenji gestured to a sleek injector resting within a metallic case—its chamber pulsing faintly with internal light.
“The serum is stable.. And with it, the Affliction can be halted.” Ren's eyes grew wide and bright as Kenji continued. “I have identified the allele behind our genetic corruption and corrected it using regenerative strands from Jao’s cellular structure. Collected from the sample of his blood you managed to retrieve."
Ren stepped forward, disbelief leaking into his breath. “Wait.. you mean.. You actually— But how?! Without Subjugation I thought—”
Kenji’s voice was even. “It is not flawless. The mutagen remains. But it has been made inert—dormant, permanently recessive.”
He removed his lenses, folding them with care before meeting Ren’s gaze. “Assuming, of course, the subject survives the metabolic surge brought on by the transfusion.”
“Assuming?” Ren echoed.
Kenji’s mouth curled slightly—not with joy, but arrogance as he lifted the injector and turned it toward the light. The serum within pulsed gently.. almost like a heartbeat.
“Assuming,” he repeated.
Ren’s voice caught. “Wait, you’re injecting yourself? But if it fails—”
“If it fails,” Kenji cut in, “the data remains. My assistants, however inadequate, will extrapolate from my notes. They’ll have work.. they know my methods.” His tone was surgical. Detached. “They will succeed.”
He rolled up the sleeve of his coat and glanced at Ren—whose expression was pulled taut between horror and awe. Kenji’s voice dipped, lower, almost thoughtful. “As will you.”
Ren's gaze went inward—a reflective trance glazing his eyes. Kenji, though always known for being an empath, could feel Ren's insecurity.. His dread.. his doubt.
“Much will be asked of you Ren. Iwa, with all his ambition, is gone. And the burden to rule will now fall on Kaito's shoulders.”
Ren neglected to meet Kenji's gaze. But the scientist adjusted the syringe in his hand and continued undeterred. “We all have our parts to play, but the time of hiding behind the shadows of others is over.”
Without hesitation, Kenji plunged the syringe into his arm. The serum hissed as it entered, spreading like wildfire beneath his skin. His veins lit for an instant with silver-white light, then faded. “It is time we take what is ours.”
The reaction was immediate.
The serum hissed into his veins, illuminating them with silver-white fire. His muscles locked. For a breathless second, he stood impossibly still.
Then the convulsions hit.
Kenji collapsed to the ground, his body seizing in agony as bulging veins crawled up his neck and face. His groans echoed like metal on glass, jagged and inhuman. Ren stepped forward on instinct, arm outstretched—but was halted by Kenji’s hand rising in protest, fingers trembling but firm.
He writhed. Sweat poured down his face. His body twisted like it was rejecting itself. But then, through sheer will—or madness—Kenji began to control it. Breath by breath. His groans softened. The convulsions faded. And slowly, he straightened.
Silence.
Ren stood frozen, uncertain whether he had just witnessed a triumph or a death sentence. “Did..did it work?” he asked quietly.
Kenji didn’t respond. Not at first.
He examined his hands, the faint silver glow now dimming beneath his skin. He retrieved his glasses from the floor.. Then, wordless, Kenji returned to his terminal and began typing with feverish intensity—his fingers blurring across the interface.
Formulas. Charts. Neurological scans. Naten levels. Ren saw but comprehended none of it clearly—but Kenji saw everything. “Extrodinary..” He mused to himself before, finally turning to Ren.
His face was drenched in sweat. His eyes wild with crazed excitement. And on his lips, a manic smile. “HA! ’m even more brilliant than I imagined.”
Dusk and Dawn
Re: Dusk and Dawn
The main palace of the Owaki Clan stood as a surreal contradiction—its sloping rooftops adorned with sigils of gold, its courtyards bathed in rivers of starlight emitted by the hovering celestial above. Seamlessly blending feudal grace and brutal futurism, the palace was a fortress of ancient reverence—refined by technological supremacy.
Within the throne hall—where polished stone and metal coexisted in the architecture—Zeroken Owaki, the clan's patriarch, sat draped in somber robes of deep jade and rusted gold.
Beside him stood Kaito Owaki, the middle son—and now, reluctantly, the heir. His royal garbs hung heavy on his shoulders, his golden eyes fixed on his father’s expressionless face. There was no warmth left in that gaze—only frost, and the dull sheen of grief fermented into obsession.
The name of Iwa Owaki, firstborn of Zeroken and once the crown of the clan, had not been spoken since the funeral pyres. And yet, Iwa’s absence haunted every corner of the palace. Kaito bore his brother’s shadow like a second skin—never quite good enough, never truly seen.
Zeroken, in his desperation to live, had only grown colder. And Kaito had seen firsthand the dark magic that clawed at his father’s flesh—the rituals, the bloodletting, the whispered pacts. They’d stretched his years but carved something monstrous beneath his skin.
Around them stood the silent advisors—men robed in rusted ochre, their voices hushed with equal parts reverence and unease. Their eyes flicked between father and son, between history and succession.
They too understood their current predicament.
Positioned along the edge of the war table stood a specialized unit of shinobi and mercenaries. They were the Zereze’; The Owaki’s eyes and ears across all of Edo. And today, they returned to the palace, bearing grave news:
“Lord Zeroken.” Said of the tallest of the shinobi, knelt at the foot of the table. “..a growing collective of liberated Shi shinobi have been spotted enroute toward our location."
A quiet storm settled across the room. One loaded with implications..
But Zeroken's expression didn’t change. His calm projected strength, yet behind the stillness brewed recognition. A reckoning. The Subjugation Ring—the Owaki’s most devastating weapon—was lost. A weapon that had once kept the Shi in bondage, and the potential to make the Owaki untouchable.
The advisors murmured, voicing what they feared: “Lord Zeroken.. Sozen's betrayal has undone decades of control. With the destruction of the Tawa No Kami.. and without Subjugation, we cannot posture strength. And our enemies grow bolder because of it..”
But Zeroken dismissed them with a flick of his gaze.
“No,” he said. “..that ring was not strength.”
His voice broke slightly at the end, masked as an exhale—but crimson dripped from his lips into his hand. He wiped it away casually, as if clearing dust. “It has crippled us. I see that now..”
The advisors fell silent; Their faces twisting and turning at the sight. The Owaki sickness; the degenerative disease that stripped longevity from their clan. Zeroken had only delayed the inevitable, and those forbidden magics had twisted what lay beneath his skin.
One advisor dared to speak:“But My Lord —”
But Zeroken swiftly interjected. “And what of the clones?” He said, barely adjusting his gaze to acknowledge what he saw as heckles of doubt. “Kenji's innovations.”
Each of the advisors flinched at the mention of the soulless, engineered sentinels. The figures stalking the shadows of the palace, and every inch of the Mountain. Tireless. Obedient. Oppressive.
One of the advisors responded.
“The clones… they protect the perimeter, but not even they can defend what's in our blood. They’ll outlive us all, regardless of Kenji's programming.”
Kaito’s eyes flicked to the shadows stirring near the stairwell. A sharp whir of metallic limbs signaled the arrival of Kenji.
The Head Engineer ascended the stone steps slowly, his boots clicking with surgical precision. His white hair, slicked back, shimmered with the soft glow of spelllight. The long split of his coat revealed a bandolier lined with instruments—each of them twitching or pulsing in response to the magic that suffused the room. His goatee, sharply trimmed, lent a scene of arrogance to the scowl that framed his mouth.
Two assistants flanked him, moving like shadows, carrying with them satchels and vials.
“Then perhaps it’s time we stopped trying to become what we were... and attained something new.” Kenji's voice drew all attention to him and his trailing assistants. Ren Owaki followed close behind them.
Zeroken didn’t look at him. “..Kenji.”
Kenji’s lips curled into something close to a smile, though it lacked warmth. “Behold..” He lifted a sealed vial from his coat. Inside, something dark shimmered—red-black fluid swirling like a living storm. “That which could not be done..”
Kaito's brow furrowed in confusion. He was never truly fond of the eccentric genius. “Enough of you theatrics Kenji! Speak! What is this?”
“Our salvation,” Kenji responded as he adjusted his glasses. “The future of the Owaki, harvested from the blood of the Serpent.”
“The Shi?” Kaito narrowed his eyes. “You say that like it’s a blessing. ”
Kenji stepped forward, his white coat flowing like a phantom's shroud. “You think small, Kaito.. Always have. But what I've been able to do could not have been accomplished without Ain's essence.”
It was only then that Zeroken's eyes burned bright with a fire long forgotten. He found himself standing before he could make sense of his movements, but Kenji's words had filled him with disbelief. “You don't mean—”
“He has done it, father.” Ren said as he stepped forward—his youthful face lean and rigid with tension. “I wouldn't have believed it but.. I've seen it myself.. He's cured us.”
A silence stirred as the advisors turned to face each other.
“Impossible..” Kaito spat. “How? There were no mention of this? When did you begin human trials?”
Kenji reached into his coat and withdrew a syringe—slender, obsidian-glass, capped in silver filigree. “I injected myself a little over an hour ago. The incubation process takes less than five minutes, but its not a cure. Its more.”
“And.. no adverse reactions?” Zeroken murmured. To which Kenji extended his hand. The veins on his wrist shimmered faintly beneath the skin—golden threads spiraling where dark rot once lingered.
“No weakness. No rejection. No flaw,” Kenji said. “And more importantly.”
Kenji performed an Ava and within his palm, a sphere of blistering blue fire roared to life. The same burning glow radiated from his eyes as he turned around and shot a blast of blue fire through the head of one of his assistants. The fell to ground in a Plume of smoke and embers, causing all in witness to stand in awe.
This was The Ephemeral Art; Netsu. A unqiue arbiter, traditionally only performed by the Shi. “A new beginning. The Owaki reborn.”
Gasps now. Disbelief giving way to awe. Even the Zereze’ were paused in shock.
Zeroken’s hands trembled.
Kaito, skeptical, clenched his fists. But even he stared into the blue inferno and knew:
This was hope—though however twisted and fragile.. it was real.
Kenji then fell to knee, allowing the simmering light from his eyes to fade before he returned his gaze to return to Zeroken. “Let them come, Lord Zeroken. Let the Shi dogs come and see firsthand, the Malestrom of Edo, born again!”
Within the throne hall—where polished stone and metal coexisted in the architecture—Zeroken Owaki, the clan's patriarch, sat draped in somber robes of deep jade and rusted gold.
Beside him stood Kaito Owaki, the middle son—and now, reluctantly, the heir. His royal garbs hung heavy on his shoulders, his golden eyes fixed on his father’s expressionless face. There was no warmth left in that gaze—only frost, and the dull sheen of grief fermented into obsession.
The name of Iwa Owaki, firstborn of Zeroken and once the crown of the clan, had not been spoken since the funeral pyres. And yet, Iwa’s absence haunted every corner of the palace. Kaito bore his brother’s shadow like a second skin—never quite good enough, never truly seen.
Zeroken, in his desperation to live, had only grown colder. And Kaito had seen firsthand the dark magic that clawed at his father’s flesh—the rituals, the bloodletting, the whispered pacts. They’d stretched his years but carved something monstrous beneath his skin.
Around them stood the silent advisors—men robed in rusted ochre, their voices hushed with equal parts reverence and unease. Their eyes flicked between father and son, between history and succession.
They too understood their current predicament.
Positioned along the edge of the war table stood a specialized unit of shinobi and mercenaries. They were the Zereze’; The Owaki’s eyes and ears across all of Edo. And today, they returned to the palace, bearing grave news:
“Lord Zeroken.” Said of the tallest of the shinobi, knelt at the foot of the table. “..a growing collective of liberated Shi shinobi have been spotted enroute toward our location."
A quiet storm settled across the room. One loaded with implications..
But Zeroken's expression didn’t change. His calm projected strength, yet behind the stillness brewed recognition. A reckoning. The Subjugation Ring—the Owaki’s most devastating weapon—was lost. A weapon that had once kept the Shi in bondage, and the potential to make the Owaki untouchable.
The advisors murmured, voicing what they feared: “Lord Zeroken.. Sozen's betrayal has undone decades of control. With the destruction of the Tawa No Kami.. and without Subjugation, we cannot posture strength. And our enemies grow bolder because of it..”
But Zeroken dismissed them with a flick of his gaze.
“No,” he said. “..that ring was not strength.”
His voice broke slightly at the end, masked as an exhale—but crimson dripped from his lips into his hand. He wiped it away casually, as if clearing dust. “It has crippled us. I see that now..”
The advisors fell silent; Their faces twisting and turning at the sight. The Owaki sickness; the degenerative disease that stripped longevity from their clan. Zeroken had only delayed the inevitable, and those forbidden magics had twisted what lay beneath his skin.
One advisor dared to speak:“But My Lord —”
But Zeroken swiftly interjected. “And what of the clones?” He said, barely adjusting his gaze to acknowledge what he saw as heckles of doubt. “Kenji's innovations.”
Each of the advisors flinched at the mention of the soulless, engineered sentinels. The figures stalking the shadows of the palace, and every inch of the Mountain. Tireless. Obedient. Oppressive.
One of the advisors responded.
“The clones… they protect the perimeter, but not even they can defend what's in our blood. They’ll outlive us all, regardless of Kenji's programming.”
Kaito’s eyes flicked to the shadows stirring near the stairwell. A sharp whir of metallic limbs signaled the arrival of Kenji.
The Head Engineer ascended the stone steps slowly, his boots clicking with surgical precision. His white hair, slicked back, shimmered with the soft glow of spelllight. The long split of his coat revealed a bandolier lined with instruments—each of them twitching or pulsing in response to the magic that suffused the room. His goatee, sharply trimmed, lent a scene of arrogance to the scowl that framed his mouth.
Two assistants flanked him, moving like shadows, carrying with them satchels and vials.
“Then perhaps it’s time we stopped trying to become what we were... and attained something new.” Kenji's voice drew all attention to him and his trailing assistants. Ren Owaki followed close behind them.
Zeroken didn’t look at him. “..Kenji.”
Kenji’s lips curled into something close to a smile, though it lacked warmth. “Behold..” He lifted a sealed vial from his coat. Inside, something dark shimmered—red-black fluid swirling like a living storm. “That which could not be done..”
Kaito's brow furrowed in confusion. He was never truly fond of the eccentric genius. “Enough of you theatrics Kenji! Speak! What is this?”
“Our salvation,” Kenji responded as he adjusted his glasses. “The future of the Owaki, harvested from the blood of the Serpent.”
“The Shi?” Kaito narrowed his eyes. “You say that like it’s a blessing. ”
Kenji stepped forward, his white coat flowing like a phantom's shroud. “You think small, Kaito.. Always have. But what I've been able to do could not have been accomplished without Ain's essence.”
It was only then that Zeroken's eyes burned bright with a fire long forgotten. He found himself standing before he could make sense of his movements, but Kenji's words had filled him with disbelief. “You don't mean—”
“He has done it, father.” Ren said as he stepped forward—his youthful face lean and rigid with tension. “I wouldn't have believed it but.. I've seen it myself.. He's cured us.”
A silence stirred as the advisors turned to face each other.
“Impossible..” Kaito spat. “How? There were no mention of this? When did you begin human trials?”
Kenji reached into his coat and withdrew a syringe—slender, obsidian-glass, capped in silver filigree. “I injected myself a little over an hour ago. The incubation process takes less than five minutes, but its not a cure. Its more.”
“And.. no adverse reactions?” Zeroken murmured. To which Kenji extended his hand. The veins on his wrist shimmered faintly beneath the skin—golden threads spiraling where dark rot once lingered.
“No weakness. No rejection. No flaw,” Kenji said. “And more importantly.”
Kenji performed an Ava and within his palm, a sphere of blistering blue fire roared to life. The same burning glow radiated from his eyes as he turned around and shot a blast of blue fire through the head of one of his assistants. The fell to ground in a Plume of smoke and embers, causing all in witness to stand in awe.
This was The Ephemeral Art; Netsu. A unqiue arbiter, traditionally only performed by the Shi. “A new beginning. The Owaki reborn.”
Gasps now. Disbelief giving way to awe. Even the Zereze’ were paused in shock.
Zeroken’s hands trembled.
Kaito, skeptical, clenched his fists. But even he stared into the blue inferno and knew:
This was hope—though however twisted and fragile.. it was real.
Kenji then fell to knee, allowing the simmering light from his eyes to fade before he returned his gaze to return to Zeroken. “Let them come, Lord Zeroken. Let the Shi dogs come and see firsthand, the Malestrom of Edo, born again!”
Re: Dusk and Dawn
The chime for Moonhigh sounded, a low, resonant tone that vibrated through the stone floor. It was time.
He met Jao at the deployment bay. The massive hangar door was open to the night, revealing a sky littered with stars and the pale, broken face of the moon. The wind was sharp, carrying the scent of pine and cold rock. Jao stood at the edge of the platform, a silhouette against the heavens, his back to Yang.
“The transports are prepped,” Jao said, without turning. His voice was different out here, robbed of the room’s echo, sounding flat and dead. “We will make landfall 2 kilometers away from Lord Owaki’s palace. Stealth approach until the outer perimeter. Then Alona will mask our true numbers with a Blizzard. We will exploit that confusion and make for the hidden underground pass.”
"The one revealed to you through Iwa memories?"
"The very same. Though I doubt they would have left anything to chance, however, they are unaware I know of this; nonetheless, we should expect resistance."
Yang stepped up beside him, his gaze fixed on the distant, forested horizon where their enemy slept. “And the non-combatants? The servants? The families?”
“They are tactically insignificant,” Jao replied.
“That was not the question,” Yang said, his voice hard. “That is an order from your grandfather. From the head of our clan.”
For the first time, Jao turned his head. The cyan light from his visor painted the side of Yang’s face in an alien glow. Within the mask, Aphosis tasted the old man’s stubbornness and smiled. Let him think his rules matter. The chaos will be all the more beautiful when it erupts.
“Grandfather’s orders will be followed,” Jao said, the perfect, hollow obedience returning. “So long as they do not compromise the mission’s success. This all hinges on my ability to integrate with their central controls. The nanites coursing through me will allow me to interface with their network core directly. From then on, I can disable their entire power grid...it is something, only I can do."
The unspoken threat hung between them, as vast and cold as the space between the stars. If you become a liability, the orders change.
“I will not be a liability,” Yang said, meeting the cold visor. He was not just speaking to Jao, or the thing inside him. He was making a vow to himself. “I will be your father.”
A low, humorless chuckle, distorted by the suit’s vocoder, was his only reply. “That,” Jao said, turning back to the night sky, “is precisely what makes you a liability.”
Jao took a step off the platform, his suit’s grav-dampeners catching him in a silent, controlled descent toward the ground below.
Yang drew a deep, steadying breath of the mountain air. His resolve would have to be stronger than just the will to take down the Owaki, eldest of the shinobi names. It was for saving a son. Or, if all else failed, for setting him free.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The soft ruffling of leaves was the only acknowledgment of their presence as a legion of shifting shadows scoured over the outer perimeters. Still far enough away to avoid immediate detection, the Slayers were ghosts in the ancient forest blanketing the Owaki mountains. High in the boughs of a gnarled cypress, the gleam of something pristine shone proudly in the cover of the dark. It was Uriko, her lithe form braced against the trunk, brandishing her bow, Silvana. It was no mere composite of wood and string, but a marvel of Eridan’s engineering, outfitted with a scope that allowed her precise, multi-spectrum vision for several kilometers. The archer’s breath was a steady, controlled plume in the cool night air as she began relaying the state of the perimeter.
“We have security across several sectors,” her voice chimed across their shared consciousness, crisp and professional. The ANNI implants translated her thought into a shared sensory experience for the others, her visual feed layering over their own.
“Heh, so the Owaki have doubled down on their paranoia, that they would have scouts out here…” Zanji’s thought was a low, rumbling growl of anticipation. He stood atop a jagged rock formation, a silhouette of corded muscle and twin blades sheathed on his back, his wild black hair dancing in the rising wind. He was a coiled spring, desperate for release.
“Edo’s kneecaps…” Uriko’s thought was no longer a report, but a gasp, a jolt of pure shock that spiked through the ANNI link. The feed she was transmitting wavered, then zoomed with sickening speed. She had caught the face of one of the scouts, then another, and another, all patrolling with unnerving, identical purpose.
“What is it, Uriko?” Merza’s voice was like the stream she perched beside, cool and flowing. Her presence was a calming anchor in the sudden tide of alarm.
“You all have to see this. Sending optic feed.”
The data flooded their minds. It wasn't just a picture, but the raw sensory input of Uriko's discovery. Through the scope’s eye, they saw him: a man with a severe, handsome face, a thin, white scar bisecting his left eyebrow, and eyes that held a chilling emptiness. Then they saw him again, and again, a dozen times over, each a perfect duplicate, each with an alteration of some sort—a legion of singular purpose wearing a single, terrible face. The pseudo-hive mind of the Slayers rippled with a unified understanding, a shared history of data packets and mission briefings clicking into place.
“Wait… is that…” Vern’s voice was tight, his usual stoicism fractured. Through the link, they could all feel the tension in his folded arms.
“Jao?”
The name hung in their collective mind, a specter of legendary violence and skill.
“So they finally succeeded, then,” Eridan’s voice, the commander’s voice, cut through the shock. He wasn't on the field, but through Xetta's unparalleled processing power, he was as present as the ground beneath their feet. “This just got far more dangerous and interesting. Those… things are clones of Jao. I don’t need to explain further if you read the briefing from the previous missions.”
They all felt the flicker of his own conflict—the cold horror at the sight of an army of Heirs, warring with the clinical thrill of a scientist. To have both his Slayers and the AIONS go up against such an opponent… the combat data would be more valuable than the mission itself.
“What should we do?” Alona’s thought was timid, a stark contrast to the power simmering within her.
“The only thing that can be done is to press forward with the plan,” Eridan advised, his decision made. The data was too precious to waste. “But keep your wits about you. If those things are carbon copies of Jao himself, they will possess all of his ruthlessness and power, but none of his restraints.”
“Bring it on!” Zanji cried, his bloodlust boiling over into a triumphant roar across the link.
“Alona, your time to shine,” Merza prompted gently.
“Right.”
Like a light switch, Alona’s passive energy vanished. The sheepish girl was gone, replaced by a stoic warrior whose eyes began to glow with a faint, blue light. She lifted her hands, palms up, and from her fingertips, naten and magic sparked to life. These were not gentle wisps but crackling conduits of raw power, twisting and hardening into a litany of ribbons of frosty magic. Her spell wove itself into the atmosphere, seizing command of the very air. Seconds later, the temperature within the mountains plummeted. The wind’s crescendo became a turbulent wail, a twisting hurricane of frozen destruction. It soared over the mountaintops, a living maelstrom of shrieking wind and razor-sharp ice, making its way through the pass and onto the outer perimeters of the Owaki estate. The tempest aimed to devour land and clone alike.
Then, under the cover of the blizzard, the AIONS deployed. Shimmering distortions in the air resolved into two hundred sleek, vaguely humanoid forms. Whichever clones did not perish in Alona’s immediate strike would come face to face with the silent, deadly efficiency of these nanite sentinels.
“Let’s go SLAYERS, we hold the line!” Zanji’s cry was the starting gun. He took off like a comet of blades, a crimson streak against the darkness and the raging ice storm. He met the first disoriented Jao-clone with a blur of steel, cleaving through its torso before it could even raise its weapon.
Vern, a master of Rhyme Style, Nestu centered around the cold, augmented his suit to sustain in the plummeting cold of the storm, accompanying Alona as backup, riding a stream of ice along the mountain's side towards the estate.
From the treetops, Cain descended. He was adorned with several swarms of the Nanites, which hovered around him like clouds of obsidian insects. With a flick of his wrist, they thrashed into the earth, their chaotic forms coalescing and shifting into four large Hell Hounds. These seven-foot-tall, four-legged behemoths, their hides like cooled lava and their breath like furnace smoke, charged with him, tailing the storm but not directly within it.
Merza’s form slipped into the surrounding stone formation, her body dissolving like smoke into the rock face before she vanished completely from view. An unseen blade, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The first stone had been thrown. The blizzard was the anvil; the Slayers were the hammer. And on the frozen perimeter of the Owaki estate, the fight for their collective freedom had begun.
He met Jao at the deployment bay. The massive hangar door was open to the night, revealing a sky littered with stars and the pale, broken face of the moon. The wind was sharp, carrying the scent of pine and cold rock. Jao stood at the edge of the platform, a silhouette against the heavens, his back to Yang.
“The transports are prepped,” Jao said, without turning. His voice was different out here, robbed of the room’s echo, sounding flat and dead. “We will make landfall 2 kilometers away from Lord Owaki’s palace. Stealth approach until the outer perimeter. Then Alona will mask our true numbers with a Blizzard. We will exploit that confusion and make for the hidden underground pass.”
"The one revealed to you through Iwa memories?"
"The very same. Though I doubt they would have left anything to chance, however, they are unaware I know of this; nonetheless, we should expect resistance."
Yang stepped up beside him, his gaze fixed on the distant, forested horizon where their enemy slept. “And the non-combatants? The servants? The families?”
“They are tactically insignificant,” Jao replied.
“That was not the question,” Yang said, his voice hard. “That is an order from your grandfather. From the head of our clan.”
For the first time, Jao turned his head. The cyan light from his visor painted the side of Yang’s face in an alien glow. Within the mask, Aphosis tasted the old man’s stubbornness and smiled. Let him think his rules matter. The chaos will be all the more beautiful when it erupts.
“Grandfather’s orders will be followed,” Jao said, the perfect, hollow obedience returning. “So long as they do not compromise the mission’s success. This all hinges on my ability to integrate with their central controls. The nanites coursing through me will allow me to interface with their network core directly. From then on, I can disable their entire power grid...it is something, only I can do."
The unspoken threat hung between them, as vast and cold as the space between the stars. If you become a liability, the orders change.
“I will not be a liability,” Yang said, meeting the cold visor. He was not just speaking to Jao, or the thing inside him. He was making a vow to himself. “I will be your father.”
A low, humorless chuckle, distorted by the suit’s vocoder, was his only reply. “That,” Jao said, turning back to the night sky, “is precisely what makes you a liability.”
Jao took a step off the platform, his suit’s grav-dampeners catching him in a silent, controlled descent toward the ground below.
Yang drew a deep, steadying breath of the mountain air. His resolve would have to be stronger than just the will to take down the Owaki, eldest of the shinobi names. It was for saving a son. Or, if all else failed, for setting him free.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The soft ruffling of leaves was the only acknowledgment of their presence as a legion of shifting shadows scoured over the outer perimeters. Still far enough away to avoid immediate detection, the Slayers were ghosts in the ancient forest blanketing the Owaki mountains. High in the boughs of a gnarled cypress, the gleam of something pristine shone proudly in the cover of the dark. It was Uriko, her lithe form braced against the trunk, brandishing her bow, Silvana. It was no mere composite of wood and string, but a marvel of Eridan’s engineering, outfitted with a scope that allowed her precise, multi-spectrum vision for several kilometers. The archer’s breath was a steady, controlled plume in the cool night air as she began relaying the state of the perimeter.
“We have security across several sectors,” her voice chimed across their shared consciousness, crisp and professional. The ANNI implants translated her thought into a shared sensory experience for the others, her visual feed layering over their own.
“Heh, so the Owaki have doubled down on their paranoia, that they would have scouts out here…” Zanji’s thought was a low, rumbling growl of anticipation. He stood atop a jagged rock formation, a silhouette of corded muscle and twin blades sheathed on his back, his wild black hair dancing in the rising wind. He was a coiled spring, desperate for release.
“Edo’s kneecaps…” Uriko’s thought was no longer a report, but a gasp, a jolt of pure shock that spiked through the ANNI link. The feed she was transmitting wavered, then zoomed with sickening speed. She had caught the face of one of the scouts, then another, and another, all patrolling with unnerving, identical purpose.
“What is it, Uriko?” Merza’s voice was like the stream she perched beside, cool and flowing. Her presence was a calming anchor in the sudden tide of alarm.
“You all have to see this. Sending optic feed.”
The data flooded their minds. It wasn't just a picture, but the raw sensory input of Uriko's discovery. Through the scope’s eye, they saw him: a man with a severe, handsome face, a thin, white scar bisecting his left eyebrow, and eyes that held a chilling emptiness. Then they saw him again, and again, a dozen times over, each a perfect duplicate, each with an alteration of some sort—a legion of singular purpose wearing a single, terrible face. The pseudo-hive mind of the Slayers rippled with a unified understanding, a shared history of data packets and mission briefings clicking into place.
“Wait… is that…” Vern’s voice was tight, his usual stoicism fractured. Through the link, they could all feel the tension in his folded arms.
“Jao?”
The name hung in their collective mind, a specter of legendary violence and skill.
“So they finally succeeded, then,” Eridan’s voice, the commander’s voice, cut through the shock. He wasn't on the field, but through Xetta's unparalleled processing power, he was as present as the ground beneath their feet. “This just got far more dangerous and interesting. Those… things are clones of Jao. I don’t need to explain further if you read the briefing from the previous missions.”
They all felt the flicker of his own conflict—the cold horror at the sight of an army of Heirs, warring with the clinical thrill of a scientist. To have both his Slayers and the AIONS go up against such an opponent… the combat data would be more valuable than the mission itself.
“What should we do?” Alona’s thought was timid, a stark contrast to the power simmering within her.
“The only thing that can be done is to press forward with the plan,” Eridan advised, his decision made. The data was too precious to waste. “But keep your wits about you. If those things are carbon copies of Jao himself, they will possess all of his ruthlessness and power, but none of his restraints.”
“Bring it on!” Zanji cried, his bloodlust boiling over into a triumphant roar across the link.
“Alona, your time to shine,” Merza prompted gently.
“Right.”
Like a light switch, Alona’s passive energy vanished. The sheepish girl was gone, replaced by a stoic warrior whose eyes began to glow with a faint, blue light. She lifted her hands, palms up, and from her fingertips, naten and magic sparked to life. These were not gentle wisps but crackling conduits of raw power, twisting and hardening into a litany of ribbons of frosty magic. Her spell wove itself into the atmosphere, seizing command of the very air. Seconds later, the temperature within the mountains plummeted. The wind’s crescendo became a turbulent wail, a twisting hurricane of frozen destruction. It soared over the mountaintops, a living maelstrom of shrieking wind and razor-sharp ice, making its way through the pass and onto the outer perimeters of the Owaki estate. The tempest aimed to devour land and clone alike.
Then, under the cover of the blizzard, the AIONS deployed. Shimmering distortions in the air resolved into two hundred sleek, vaguely humanoid forms. Whichever clones did not perish in Alona’s immediate strike would come face to face with the silent, deadly efficiency of these nanite sentinels.
“Let’s go SLAYERS, we hold the line!” Zanji’s cry was the starting gun. He took off like a comet of blades, a crimson streak against the darkness and the raging ice storm. He met the first disoriented Jao-clone with a blur of steel, cleaving through its torso before it could even raise its weapon.
Vern, a master of Rhyme Style, Nestu centered around the cold, augmented his suit to sustain in the plummeting cold of the storm, accompanying Alona as backup, riding a stream of ice along the mountain's side towards the estate.
From the treetops, Cain descended. He was adorned with several swarms of the Nanites, which hovered around him like clouds of obsidian insects. With a flick of his wrist, they thrashed into the earth, their chaotic forms coalescing and shifting into four large Hell Hounds. These seven-foot-tall, four-legged behemoths, their hides like cooled lava and their breath like furnace smoke, charged with him, tailing the storm but not directly within it.
Merza’s form slipped into the surrounding stone formation, her body dissolving like smoke into the rock face before she vanished completely from view. An unseen blade, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
The first stone had been thrown. The blizzard was the anvil; the Slayers were the hammer. And on the frozen perimeter of the Owaki estate, the fight for their collective freedom had begun.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
The alarms—soft, melodic—echoed through the hallowed chambers of the Owaki Palace like ghosts announcing impending doom.
Zeroken’s pale, withered fingers twitched at the sound.
He pressed one hand against the surface of the war table, triggering a cascade of hardlight projections that mapped the outer region of the estate in shimmering detail.
“An incursion,” murmured one of the Zereze’ warriors, his voice carved from stone.
“They're here,” Kaito said grimly, eyes narrowing at the data. “They've found us— The Shi rebellion. But these don't seem like soldiers… this looks like.. something more.”
Kenji tapped a sequence on the arcane-tech bracer fixed to his wrist. Data streamed across his display—spiking vitals, plummeting temperatures, massive surges of kinetic energy. One by one, the life signals of his original clone battalion vanished—snuffed like candles in a gale.
“Clever,” Kenji muttered, the edge of admiration in his irritation. “They’ve cloaked their advance under a tempest. A veil of sleet and thermal collapse… But yes, Kaito. These Shi troops aren't merely rabid dogs.” He paused to analyze his data before he continued. “The Serpent travels with them.”
The name crashed like thunder through the chamber.
From his table, Zeroken’s eyes ignited behind his sunken sockets before he rose to his feet. “Kenji,” he said softly, “do it.”
Kenji gave a solemn nod.
He turned to the silent woman at his side. She stepped forward, unveiling a case lined with syringes—metal and crystal, glowing with red-black serum.
“I won’t lie,” Kenji said, eyes glinting behind his spectacles as he retrieved a syringe. “Though efficient, this process is far from painless.”
“Good,” Zeroken rasped, exposing his neck. “Then let it burn away what remains of our weakness.”
“Well said, my lord.” Kenji said before driving the needle into Zeroken’s neck. The serum hissed into his bloodstream, and the old man seized—his limbs convulsing, bones cracking under the strain. The old man fell to one knee, gasping… but only for a breath.
Then he rose, and straightened his spine. Immediately, Zeroken found that he skin was no longer paper-thin but taut, weathered with power. With youth. He exhaled sharply, eyes flickering with deep blue light.
“..gods,” Zeroken whispered. “I’d nearly forgotten how it feels to not be so..frail.” He grinned. A terrible, imperial grin. “..Never again.”
His sons stepped forward in unison. Kaito bared his arm in silence. Ren followed, more hesitant, his fists clenched tight as he stared down his fear.
One by one, they screamed.. they collpased..and they rose—reborn.
All the while, Kenji watched them like a god admiring his ascended children.
“The ailment is gone,” he confirmed. “Your cells are no longer degenerating. Strength output, cognitive velocity, Naten regulation—all have exceeded predicted thresholds.”
But none of them needed the report. They felt it. Their blood like wildfire. Their lungs drawing in the air like it was nourishment from the divine.
Ren staggered forward, panting. “Is that it? Am I… are we?”
Zeroken raised his hand—and without a word, conjured a cobalt flame that flickered to life in his palm. “It is done,” he intoned, and extinguished the flame in his fist.
Kaito’s breath was steady, his own eyes glowing with azure colored flames. “So.. this is the power of Netsu,” he murmured, and conjured his own pale inferno. “..and what of the Denkotsu? Have we also been granted Serpent’s gaze?”
Kenji shook his head, gaze still fixed on the war table. “No… that gift belongs only to the Serpent. And now…”
He tapped a final command on his wrist. “...to the Nullborne.”
With a deep rumble, the chamber shifted—sections along the floor slid apart, and from the darkness, they emerged.
Dozens of new models of clones—sleek, monstrous, towering over even the tallest men. They wore Jao’s face, but no longer his humanity. Their flesh replaced with porcelain colored alloy, limbs elongated and corded in tar-black sinew. And their jaws split unnaturally, revealing rows of jagged blackened fangs.. Fangs larger than the heads of most men.
“These,” Kenji said with reverence, “are the Nullborne. My perfected creations.”
He adjusted his glasses, voice cold with certainty. “Not only are they more powerful than their previous iterations, each one bears a practically endless reservoir of energy… as well as access to Serpent's Denkotsu.”
Suddenly, an advisor shouted from across the chamber, drawing attention to the projections. “We’re recovering optic feeds—They’ve deployed some kind of machines. Giant, humanoid drones.. Insects?”
“Nanites.” Kenji corrected, without ever looking away from his new creations. “..how antiquated.”
Zeroken tore his gaze away from Kenji's nightmarish cyborgs and focused now on the images emitting from his table. His fury filled the room with a turbulent heat.
“..unleash your Nullborne, Kenji.” Zeroken said before he looked at Kaito, his eldest. “..the era for posturing is dead. Tonight, I will slather the snow in rivers of Shi blood.”
He said, snapping his fingers and glaring at his nearest servant. “Bring me my armor.”
Immediately, they vanished from the chamber in a blur of footsteps, and returned moments later with a massive chest strapped to his back—A chest far too large for one man, yet he bore it with trembling reverence.
“Kaito.” He called as he lifted both of his arms, allowing several more slaves and servants to surround him and begin dressing him accordingly in the equipment kept within his chest. “You carry my blood… and the strength I once prayed for Iwa. You will lead my army. You will show them what it means to defy us. And I will answer the Serpent in kind."
As he spoke, plates of enchanted metal clicked into place across his torso, shoulders, and waist. A helm was locked onto his crown, built to resist the Serpent’s gaze. And last—fastened around his arm—was a colossal gauntlet, pulsing with red light. At its center was the Owaki’s deadliest artifact:
Ruin: The Ring of Destruction.
Neither Kaito nor Ren, nor even Kenji for that matter, had ever seen Zeroken don his legendary armor. And Ruin was always kept locked away from all but Head of the Clan. With it, their father was hardly recognizable, in both body and spirit
He became more than man. He was a myth, made flesh.
"You will not fail me.” Zeroken said, his voice a molten grumble through his helmet. Kaito could barely move in his presence, but his duty and ambition spurred him on.
“I won't.. Lord Zeroken." Were his only words before he bowed and vanished
Ren however, was left speechless. His father barely seemed to notice him.. a fact that he'd grown accustomed.. but no longer.
"F–father!” He bellowed, his voice cracking from fury. “I am ready to fight. I've completed my training! I'm ready to defend my family—”
“No. You are not.” Zeroken interjected, more a monolith than a human man. “You will remain here.. with Kenji.”
“But I—”
“You will not..defy these words.” Zeroken said with an eerie calm that drew sweat down Ren's back. “You are the future of the Owaki.. Not it's shield.. Not its sword.”
Ren’s hands shook, fury fighting grief. But the decision was final. He watched his father step into war—his shadow drowning the light behind him. “Let us waste no more air. Only death will consecrate our rule.. Only death will silence our enemies.”
—
The Owaki gates roared open—massive doors of blackened steel groaned as ancient seals were undone for the first time in decades. Wind howled through the chilled mountain pass, carrying with it the scent of frost, blood, and destiny.
From the darkness of the inner sanctum, the Nullborne emerged in formation—columns of monstrosities moving with unnatural precision.
They didn’t march.
They glided, their feet never quite touching the earth—levitating just inches above the snow-covered stone, steam hissing from the vents lining their spines.
The mountain trembled at their arrival.
At their head rode Kaito Owaki, clad in battle robes enchanted with sigils unique to the Owaki clan. The wind curled around his figure, feeding the flame that danced at his back—a banner of sapphire fire. A horde of Owaki shinobi flanked him, an elite vanguard of shadow-born killers, their eyes cold and narrowed beneath masks.
“Form ranks,” Kaito commanded, his voice steady, broadcast through the crystalline comm-links embedded in every warrior’s ear. “Fan out. The blizzard hides them, but we have the advantage. We know the terrain, and we will drag them out into the moonlight.”
The shinobi surged forward, vaulting from the gates like shadows unleashed, their bodies flickering between real and incorporeal form—masters of stealth and speed.
The Nullborne followed.
Not as guardians. As ghosts..
As weapons.
They surged forward in synchronized waves, their bodies splitting into mirrored duplicates, warping and twisting midair before reassembling like smoke reforming into steel.
Above them, thunder cracked, and snow began to fall sideways—warped by the magnetic force of the approaching storm.
Kaito raised a single hand—and the air around him ignited in blue fire.
“To the death,” he said.
And they charged—into the maw of war.
Zeroken’s pale, withered fingers twitched at the sound.
He pressed one hand against the surface of the war table, triggering a cascade of hardlight projections that mapped the outer region of the estate in shimmering detail.
“An incursion,” murmured one of the Zereze’ warriors, his voice carved from stone.
“They're here,” Kaito said grimly, eyes narrowing at the data. “They've found us— The Shi rebellion. But these don't seem like soldiers… this looks like.. something more.”
Kenji tapped a sequence on the arcane-tech bracer fixed to his wrist. Data streamed across his display—spiking vitals, plummeting temperatures, massive surges of kinetic energy. One by one, the life signals of his original clone battalion vanished—snuffed like candles in a gale.
“Clever,” Kenji muttered, the edge of admiration in his irritation. “They’ve cloaked their advance under a tempest. A veil of sleet and thermal collapse… But yes, Kaito. These Shi troops aren't merely rabid dogs.” He paused to analyze his data before he continued. “The Serpent travels with them.”
The name crashed like thunder through the chamber.
From his table, Zeroken’s eyes ignited behind his sunken sockets before he rose to his feet. “Kenji,” he said softly, “do it.”
Kenji gave a solemn nod.
He turned to the silent woman at his side. She stepped forward, unveiling a case lined with syringes—metal and crystal, glowing with red-black serum.
“I won’t lie,” Kenji said, eyes glinting behind his spectacles as he retrieved a syringe. “Though efficient, this process is far from painless.”
“Good,” Zeroken rasped, exposing his neck. “Then let it burn away what remains of our weakness.”
“Well said, my lord.” Kenji said before driving the needle into Zeroken’s neck. The serum hissed into his bloodstream, and the old man seized—his limbs convulsing, bones cracking under the strain. The old man fell to one knee, gasping… but only for a breath.
Then he rose, and straightened his spine. Immediately, Zeroken found that he skin was no longer paper-thin but taut, weathered with power. With youth. He exhaled sharply, eyes flickering with deep blue light.
“..gods,” Zeroken whispered. “I’d nearly forgotten how it feels to not be so..frail.” He grinned. A terrible, imperial grin. “..Never again.”
His sons stepped forward in unison. Kaito bared his arm in silence. Ren followed, more hesitant, his fists clenched tight as he stared down his fear.
One by one, they screamed.. they collpased..and they rose—reborn.
All the while, Kenji watched them like a god admiring his ascended children.
“The ailment is gone,” he confirmed. “Your cells are no longer degenerating. Strength output, cognitive velocity, Naten regulation—all have exceeded predicted thresholds.”
But none of them needed the report. They felt it. Their blood like wildfire. Their lungs drawing in the air like it was nourishment from the divine.
Ren staggered forward, panting. “Is that it? Am I… are we?”
Zeroken raised his hand—and without a word, conjured a cobalt flame that flickered to life in his palm. “It is done,” he intoned, and extinguished the flame in his fist.
Kaito’s breath was steady, his own eyes glowing with azure colored flames. “So.. this is the power of Netsu,” he murmured, and conjured his own pale inferno. “..and what of the Denkotsu? Have we also been granted Serpent’s gaze?”
Kenji shook his head, gaze still fixed on the war table. “No… that gift belongs only to the Serpent. And now…”
He tapped a final command on his wrist. “...to the Nullborne.”
With a deep rumble, the chamber shifted—sections along the floor slid apart, and from the darkness, they emerged.
Dozens of new models of clones—sleek, monstrous, towering over even the tallest men. They wore Jao’s face, but no longer his humanity. Their flesh replaced with porcelain colored alloy, limbs elongated and corded in tar-black sinew. And their jaws split unnaturally, revealing rows of jagged blackened fangs.. Fangs larger than the heads of most men.
“These,” Kenji said with reverence, “are the Nullborne. My perfected creations.”
He adjusted his glasses, voice cold with certainty. “Not only are they more powerful than their previous iterations, each one bears a practically endless reservoir of energy… as well as access to Serpent's Denkotsu.”
Suddenly, an advisor shouted from across the chamber, drawing attention to the projections. “We’re recovering optic feeds—They’ve deployed some kind of machines. Giant, humanoid drones.. Insects?”
“Nanites.” Kenji corrected, without ever looking away from his new creations. “..how antiquated.”
Zeroken tore his gaze away from Kenji's nightmarish cyborgs and focused now on the images emitting from his table. His fury filled the room with a turbulent heat.
“..unleash your Nullborne, Kenji.” Zeroken said before he looked at Kaito, his eldest. “..the era for posturing is dead. Tonight, I will slather the snow in rivers of Shi blood.”
He said, snapping his fingers and glaring at his nearest servant. “Bring me my armor.”
Immediately, they vanished from the chamber in a blur of footsteps, and returned moments later with a massive chest strapped to his back—A chest far too large for one man, yet he bore it with trembling reverence.
“Kaito.” He called as he lifted both of his arms, allowing several more slaves and servants to surround him and begin dressing him accordingly in the equipment kept within his chest. “You carry my blood… and the strength I once prayed for Iwa. You will lead my army. You will show them what it means to defy us. And I will answer the Serpent in kind."
As he spoke, plates of enchanted metal clicked into place across his torso, shoulders, and waist. A helm was locked onto his crown, built to resist the Serpent’s gaze. And last—fastened around his arm—was a colossal gauntlet, pulsing with red light. At its center was the Owaki’s deadliest artifact:
Ruin: The Ring of Destruction.
Neither Kaito nor Ren, nor even Kenji for that matter, had ever seen Zeroken don his legendary armor. And Ruin was always kept locked away from all but Head of the Clan. With it, their father was hardly recognizable, in both body and spirit
He became more than man. He was a myth, made flesh.
"You will not fail me.” Zeroken said, his voice a molten grumble through his helmet. Kaito could barely move in his presence, but his duty and ambition spurred him on.
“I won't.. Lord Zeroken." Were his only words before he bowed and vanished
Ren however, was left speechless. His father barely seemed to notice him.. a fact that he'd grown accustomed.. but no longer.
"F–father!” He bellowed, his voice cracking from fury. “I am ready to fight. I've completed my training! I'm ready to defend my family—”
“No. You are not.” Zeroken interjected, more a monolith than a human man. “You will remain here.. with Kenji.”
“But I—”
“You will not..defy these words.” Zeroken said with an eerie calm that drew sweat down Ren's back. “You are the future of the Owaki.. Not it's shield.. Not its sword.”
Ren’s hands shook, fury fighting grief. But the decision was final. He watched his father step into war—his shadow drowning the light behind him. “Let us waste no more air. Only death will consecrate our rule.. Only death will silence our enemies.”
—
The Owaki gates roared open—massive doors of blackened steel groaned as ancient seals were undone for the first time in decades. Wind howled through the chilled mountain pass, carrying with it the scent of frost, blood, and destiny.
From the darkness of the inner sanctum, the Nullborne emerged in formation—columns of monstrosities moving with unnatural precision.
They didn’t march.
They glided, their feet never quite touching the earth—levitating just inches above the snow-covered stone, steam hissing from the vents lining their spines.
The mountain trembled at their arrival.
At their head rode Kaito Owaki, clad in battle robes enchanted with sigils unique to the Owaki clan. The wind curled around his figure, feeding the flame that danced at his back—a banner of sapphire fire. A horde of Owaki shinobi flanked him, an elite vanguard of shadow-born killers, their eyes cold and narrowed beneath masks.
“Form ranks,” Kaito commanded, his voice steady, broadcast through the crystalline comm-links embedded in every warrior’s ear. “Fan out. The blizzard hides them, but we have the advantage. We know the terrain, and we will drag them out into the moonlight.”
The shinobi surged forward, vaulting from the gates like shadows unleashed, their bodies flickering between real and incorporeal form—masters of stealth and speed.
The Nullborne followed.
Not as guardians. As ghosts..
As weapons.
They surged forward in synchronized waves, their bodies splitting into mirrored duplicates, warping and twisting midair before reassembling like smoke reforming into steel.
Above them, thunder cracked, and snow began to fall sideways—warped by the magnetic force of the approaching storm.
Kaito raised a single hand—and the air around him ignited in blue fire.
“To the death,” he said.
And they charged—into the maw of war.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
The wind howled a mournful dirge across the frost-covered battlefield, a testament to the icy wrath Alona had unleashed. Mountains stood as silent witnesses, cloaked in a chilling vengeance born from ten millennia of suffering. Frozen clones dotted the landscape, grotesque sculptures of war, their faces frozen in expressions of shock and silent agony.
"This...is for my sister..." Alona’s voice, a low growl, ripped through the icy silence. Her eyes, once reservoirs of cerulean frost, now burned with a furious crimson, the mark of the Sinder style. The air crackled, the biting cold abruptly yielding to a suffocating heat. A thermal shockwave ripped through the battlefield, shattering the fragile ice sculptures into clouds of crystalline ash. The AIONS droids, ever adaptable, recalibrated their internal regulators, battling the sudden temperature swing.
From the dissipating cloud of frost and ash, Zanji emerged, a whirlwind of lethal motion. Clad in the cutting-edge SLAYER exosuit, he was a force of nature. The Owaki clones, though possessing the formidable combat skills inherited from their source, were no match for Zanji's enhanced speed and strength. His twin blades danced a deadly ballet, severing limbs and cleaving bone with brutal efficiency. Nanites coursed through his veins, pushing his physical abilities far beyond human limits.
As the dust settled, monstrous shapes loomed in Zanji's peripheral vision. Hell Hounds, towering behemoths of muscle and metal, crashed through the remaining clone ranks, clearing a path forward. Cain, perched atop one of the beasts, gave Zanji a knowing wink before urging his mount onward. The SLAYERS, bolstered by the tireless AIONS, were making significant headway towards the opulent Owaki palace.
Then, a guttural groan echoed across the battlefield, the sound of colossal gates grinding open. A new horror waited.
From the maw of the palace, a tide of twisted, skittering creatures poured forth, their movements unsettlingly insectile. At their forefront stood a figure wreathed in swirling blue flames – Kaito Owaki.
"We have hostiles coming from the Owaki palace. Owaki shinobi and..." Uriko's voice, amplified and slightly distorted by her suit, crackled over the comms. Her suit, equipped with gravity-defying mechanisms, allowed her to navigate the battlefield with ease.
"Data profile suggests that it is Kaito Owaki, but are...those flames?"
"What the FUCK are those things following him?" Veryn's scream, laced with terror, echoed in the comm channels. The shared sensory link transmitted the horrific image of the creatures, a grotesque tapestry of flesh and corruption, into everyone's minds.
Back at the command center, Eridan, the maestro of mechanics, frantically sifted through data. "I...I have no idea...but they have Jao's face… So the Owaki have sunk this low? They must have obtained his blood during the last assault. Dammit, attention all SLAYERS!"
The creatures were far more powerful than the clones, their energy signatures registering on the bioscan as nearly inconceivable.
"Those... things aren't like the clones we just faced," Eridan continued, his voice laced with urgency. "Do not underestimate them. We don't know the extent of Jao's power they possess. Assume extreme caution and execute them without hesitation."
Above the carnage, Uriko's bow shimmered with an ethereal light. An arrow, pulsating with a thick, concentrated energy signature, materialized upon the string.
"Firing Serpent Round...I'm going for Kaito."
The mystical technology hummed to life, drawing back the bow with calculated precision.
"Die, you son of a..."
The arrow, named Serpent Round, tore through the air like a fiery comet, its ethereal body contorting into the shape of a fearsome serpent. It was a concentrated blast of necro matter designed to obliterate everything in its path, a desperate attempt to sever the head of the Owaki noble. The serpent spirit devoured space itself, its shimmering form attempting to vaporize as many of the skittering abominations as possible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, while the front line was embroiled in conflict, Jao and Yang neared the Owaki estate. They descended the cliff face like spiders, silent and swift. Jao moved with a liquid grace that was both beautiful and terrifying. He didn’t seem to touch the rock; he flowed over it. Yang was slightly slower, more deliberate. More human.
They reached the outer wall. Two guards, clad in crimson armor, patrolled the parapet. Before Yang could even formulate a plan of attack, Jao was a blur of motion. There was no sound, only the faint thump of two bodies hitting the stone floor, their throats opened with surgical precision.
Yang landed beside them, his stomach turning. It wasn’t the killing that horrified him, but the absolute lack of it. There was no struggle, no fight. Only removal. It was like watching a janitor tidying a room.
Jao didn’t even glance at the bodies.
To the east of the wall of the outer perimeter, there lay a hidden passage behind a stone that led into the Estate. They moved through the passage, a ghost and his shadow. Jao was the ghost, flowing through the darkness, his AIONS suit dampening his sound and masking his heat signature. Alarms were disabled before they could trigger. Guards were dispatched with the same chilling efficiency. Yang followed, his heart a leaden weight in his chest. He saw what Eridan meant. This was what victory looked like when stripped of all humanity. Eventually, they came across the end of the tunnel sheepishly, opening it.
"Permiter appears to be clear...guess our plan worked."
Jao said with a candid smirk as they exited the tunnel. The Owaki palace was a thing of gross elegance and grandeur. Feind inputs of structural modesty adorned with ornaments that could generate generation wealth for the whole of Edo dozens of times over. Yang looked at the architecture with a note of disgust.
"So this is what they've done with the money bought with the blood of our family..."
Yang said his fist was tightening.
"Soon it will be their blood that pays...that I can assure you."
Jao said as his eyes trailed along the ornamented gilded hawk, the Owaki clan's symbol.
They were nearing the central keep when they heard it—not the clash of steel, but a child’s laughter. From an open doorway to their left, light spilled into the corridor. It was the servants’ quarters. A woman was telling a story to her small son, his shadow a tiny, dancing shape on the wall.
Jao stopped. His head tilted in a predatory motion. Aphosis was tasting the air. Like a serpent tongue perceiving a possible meal. Non-combatants. Witnesses. Loose ends.
Yang saw the subtle shift in Jao’s stance, the way his hand tightened on the hilt of his wakizashi. He was calculating. Deciding.
“Jao,” Yang said, his voice a low command. “The order.”
“They have seen our shadows,” Jao’s filtered voice replied. “They are a liability.”
He took a step toward the doorway. Yang moved faster, planting himself squarely in Jao’s path. He didn’t raise his weapon. He just stood there, a wall of flesh and blood against a tide of cold logic.
“You will not,” Yang stated. It was not a plea. It was a fact.
The cyan visor fixed on him. The air crackled. The static over the comm grew louder, angrier. "The distinction is irrelevant," the voice hissed, no longer Jao's hollow tone, but something deeper, ancient, and cruel. " Move… Father."
“No.”
Yang said as Jao’s wakizashi blade ignited with a sharp hiss, bathing the corridor in a sickly green light. It illuminated the terror in the eyes of the woman in the doorway, who had just seen them and was now frozen in fear, clutching her child. The tension between the two of them was like a dam about to break, unable to hold its waters back any longer.
The air in the corridor thrummed with the suppressed energy radiating from Jao. The ignited wakizashi pulsed, a venomous green serpent poised to strike. The woman in the doorway whimpered, pulling her child tighter against her. His small hands gripped her kimono, his wide eyes reflecting the weapon's unholy glow.
Yang stood firm, his boots planted on the cold stone. The word 'Father' still rang in his ears, a distorted echo of a life he barely remembered. A life before the war, before the AIONS project, before Jao became this... this instrument.
“The order was to neutralize the Owaki clan,” Yang stated, his voice steady despite the tremor in his heart. “Not to slaughter innocents.”
"Sentiment," the amplified voice snarled from behind Jao’s visor. "Sentiment is a weakness. It clouds judgment. It allows the enemy to thrive. We kill the hawk, we kill its eggs."
"This is not war," Yang retorted, struggling to keep his voice level and not screaming. "This is an execution. A targeted one."
A low growl emanated from Jao's suit. The blade flickered impatiently, casting dancing shadows that magnified the woman's fear. Yang could feel the heat emanating from the activated plasma cell. He knew Jao, or rather, the entity controlling him, was close to breaking.
“You hesitate,” the voice hissed. “Your hesitation endangers the mission! Stand aside, Yang. Do not make me… terminate… you.”
The threat hung in the air, heavier than the scent of ozone from the ignited blade. Yang knew this wasn't Jao speaking. This was Aphosis...
Yang closed his eyes for a moment, picturing his late wife, Jao's mother. He remembered her warmth, her smile, her unwavering belief in justice. He couldn't let her memory, her love, be sullied by this act of cold-blooded murder.
He opened his eyes, his gaze unwavering. "I will not move, Jao. Or Aphosis. Whatever you call yourself. I made a vow. To my wife, to our people, to my son. I will not break it."
He slowly drew his own katana, the steel gleaming dully in the green light. It represented his conviction, his humanity.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Jao remained silent, his gaze flickering between Yang and the terrified woman in the doorway. He slowly sheathed the wakizashi.
"We continue," he said, his voice still laced with an unsettling hollowness. "But this… this will not happen again."
Yang nodded, though a knot of unease remained in his stomach. This battle was won, but the war for Jao's soul was far from over. He turned to the woman, who was slowly regaining her composure, her grip tightening protectively around her son.
"Go," Yang said, his voice gruff. "Hide. Don't speak of what you saw. And may the gods protect you."
The woman didn’t need to be told twice. She scurried back into the room, pulling her son with her, and slammed the door shut.
Yang turned back to Jao, the weight of their mission pressing down on him once more. The ornate opulence of the Owaki palace felt even more oppressive now, tainted by the potential for innocent blood.
"We have lost time," Jao said, his expression unreadable. "As well as advantage...The Owaki will surely be expecting us."
"Then let's not disappoint them," Yang replied, his voice hardening. They moved forward, deeper into the labyrinthine palace, the image of the woman and her child etched into Yang's mind. He knew that even as they fought to dismantle the Owaki regime, he was fighting an even more crucial battle – the battle for Jao’s humanity.
"This...is for my sister..." Alona’s voice, a low growl, ripped through the icy silence. Her eyes, once reservoirs of cerulean frost, now burned with a furious crimson, the mark of the Sinder style. The air crackled, the biting cold abruptly yielding to a suffocating heat. A thermal shockwave ripped through the battlefield, shattering the fragile ice sculptures into clouds of crystalline ash. The AIONS droids, ever adaptable, recalibrated their internal regulators, battling the sudden temperature swing.
From the dissipating cloud of frost and ash, Zanji emerged, a whirlwind of lethal motion. Clad in the cutting-edge SLAYER exosuit, he was a force of nature. The Owaki clones, though possessing the formidable combat skills inherited from their source, were no match for Zanji's enhanced speed and strength. His twin blades danced a deadly ballet, severing limbs and cleaving bone with brutal efficiency. Nanites coursed through his veins, pushing his physical abilities far beyond human limits.
As the dust settled, monstrous shapes loomed in Zanji's peripheral vision. Hell Hounds, towering behemoths of muscle and metal, crashed through the remaining clone ranks, clearing a path forward. Cain, perched atop one of the beasts, gave Zanji a knowing wink before urging his mount onward. The SLAYERS, bolstered by the tireless AIONS, were making significant headway towards the opulent Owaki palace.
Then, a guttural groan echoed across the battlefield, the sound of colossal gates grinding open. A new horror waited.
From the maw of the palace, a tide of twisted, skittering creatures poured forth, their movements unsettlingly insectile. At their forefront stood a figure wreathed in swirling blue flames – Kaito Owaki.
"We have hostiles coming from the Owaki palace. Owaki shinobi and..." Uriko's voice, amplified and slightly distorted by her suit, crackled over the comms. Her suit, equipped with gravity-defying mechanisms, allowed her to navigate the battlefield with ease.
"Data profile suggests that it is Kaito Owaki, but are...those flames?"
"What the FUCK are those things following him?" Veryn's scream, laced with terror, echoed in the comm channels. The shared sensory link transmitted the horrific image of the creatures, a grotesque tapestry of flesh and corruption, into everyone's minds.
Back at the command center, Eridan, the maestro of mechanics, frantically sifted through data. "I...I have no idea...but they have Jao's face… So the Owaki have sunk this low? They must have obtained his blood during the last assault. Dammit, attention all SLAYERS!"
The creatures were far more powerful than the clones, their energy signatures registering on the bioscan as nearly inconceivable.
"Those... things aren't like the clones we just faced," Eridan continued, his voice laced with urgency. "Do not underestimate them. We don't know the extent of Jao's power they possess. Assume extreme caution and execute them without hesitation."
Above the carnage, Uriko's bow shimmered with an ethereal light. An arrow, pulsating with a thick, concentrated energy signature, materialized upon the string.
"Firing Serpent Round...I'm going for Kaito."
The mystical technology hummed to life, drawing back the bow with calculated precision.
"Die, you son of a..."
The arrow, named Serpent Round, tore through the air like a fiery comet, its ethereal body contorting into the shape of a fearsome serpent. It was a concentrated blast of necro matter designed to obliterate everything in its path, a desperate attempt to sever the head of the Owaki noble. The serpent spirit devoured space itself, its shimmering form attempting to vaporize as many of the skittering abominations as possible.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, while the front line was embroiled in conflict, Jao and Yang neared the Owaki estate. They descended the cliff face like spiders, silent and swift. Jao moved with a liquid grace that was both beautiful and terrifying. He didn’t seem to touch the rock; he flowed over it. Yang was slightly slower, more deliberate. More human.
They reached the outer wall. Two guards, clad in crimson armor, patrolled the parapet. Before Yang could even formulate a plan of attack, Jao was a blur of motion. There was no sound, only the faint thump of two bodies hitting the stone floor, their throats opened with surgical precision.
Yang landed beside them, his stomach turning. It wasn’t the killing that horrified him, but the absolute lack of it. There was no struggle, no fight. Only removal. It was like watching a janitor tidying a room.
Jao didn’t even glance at the bodies.
To the east of the wall of the outer perimeter, there lay a hidden passage behind a stone that led into the Estate. They moved through the passage, a ghost and his shadow. Jao was the ghost, flowing through the darkness, his AIONS suit dampening his sound and masking his heat signature. Alarms were disabled before they could trigger. Guards were dispatched with the same chilling efficiency. Yang followed, his heart a leaden weight in his chest. He saw what Eridan meant. This was what victory looked like when stripped of all humanity. Eventually, they came across the end of the tunnel sheepishly, opening it.
"Permiter appears to be clear...guess our plan worked."
Jao said with a candid smirk as they exited the tunnel. The Owaki palace was a thing of gross elegance and grandeur. Feind inputs of structural modesty adorned with ornaments that could generate generation wealth for the whole of Edo dozens of times over. Yang looked at the architecture with a note of disgust.
"So this is what they've done with the money bought with the blood of our family..."
Yang said his fist was tightening.
"Soon it will be their blood that pays...that I can assure you."
Jao said as his eyes trailed along the ornamented gilded hawk, the Owaki clan's symbol.
They were nearing the central keep when they heard it—not the clash of steel, but a child’s laughter. From an open doorway to their left, light spilled into the corridor. It was the servants’ quarters. A woman was telling a story to her small son, his shadow a tiny, dancing shape on the wall.
Jao stopped. His head tilted in a predatory motion. Aphosis was tasting the air. Like a serpent tongue perceiving a possible meal. Non-combatants. Witnesses. Loose ends.
Yang saw the subtle shift in Jao’s stance, the way his hand tightened on the hilt of his wakizashi. He was calculating. Deciding.
“Jao,” Yang said, his voice a low command. “The order.”
“They have seen our shadows,” Jao’s filtered voice replied. “They are a liability.”
He took a step toward the doorway. Yang moved faster, planting himself squarely in Jao’s path. He didn’t raise his weapon. He just stood there, a wall of flesh and blood against a tide of cold logic.
“You will not,” Yang stated. It was not a plea. It was a fact.
The cyan visor fixed on him. The air crackled. The static over the comm grew louder, angrier. "The distinction is irrelevant," the voice hissed, no longer Jao's hollow tone, but something deeper, ancient, and cruel. " Move… Father."
“No.”
Yang said as Jao’s wakizashi blade ignited with a sharp hiss, bathing the corridor in a sickly green light. It illuminated the terror in the eyes of the woman in the doorway, who had just seen them and was now frozen in fear, clutching her child. The tension between the two of them was like a dam about to break, unable to hold its waters back any longer.
The air in the corridor thrummed with the suppressed energy radiating from Jao. The ignited wakizashi pulsed, a venomous green serpent poised to strike. The woman in the doorway whimpered, pulling her child tighter against her. His small hands gripped her kimono, his wide eyes reflecting the weapon's unholy glow.
Yang stood firm, his boots planted on the cold stone. The word 'Father' still rang in his ears, a distorted echo of a life he barely remembered. A life before the war, before the AIONS project, before Jao became this... this instrument.
“The order was to neutralize the Owaki clan,” Yang stated, his voice steady despite the tremor in his heart. “Not to slaughter innocents.”
"Sentiment," the amplified voice snarled from behind Jao’s visor. "Sentiment is a weakness. It clouds judgment. It allows the enemy to thrive. We kill the hawk, we kill its eggs."
"This is not war," Yang retorted, struggling to keep his voice level and not screaming. "This is an execution. A targeted one."
A low growl emanated from Jao's suit. The blade flickered impatiently, casting dancing shadows that magnified the woman's fear. Yang could feel the heat emanating from the activated plasma cell. He knew Jao, or rather, the entity controlling him, was close to breaking.
“You hesitate,” the voice hissed. “Your hesitation endangers the mission! Stand aside, Yang. Do not make me… terminate… you.”
The threat hung in the air, heavier than the scent of ozone from the ignited blade. Yang knew this wasn't Jao speaking. This was Aphosis...
Yang closed his eyes for a moment, picturing his late wife, Jao's mother. He remembered her warmth, her smile, her unwavering belief in justice. He couldn't let her memory, her love, be sullied by this act of cold-blooded murder.
He opened his eyes, his gaze unwavering. "I will not move, Jao. Or Aphosis. Whatever you call yourself. I made a vow. To my wife, to our people, to my son. I will not break it."
He slowly drew his own katana, the steel gleaming dully in the green light. It represented his conviction, his humanity.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Jao remained silent, his gaze flickering between Yang and the terrified woman in the doorway. He slowly sheathed the wakizashi.
"We continue," he said, his voice still laced with an unsettling hollowness. "But this… this will not happen again."
Yang nodded, though a knot of unease remained in his stomach. This battle was won, but the war for Jao's soul was far from over. He turned to the woman, who was slowly regaining her composure, her grip tightening protectively around her son.
"Go," Yang said, his voice gruff. "Hide. Don't speak of what you saw. And may the gods protect you."
The woman didn’t need to be told twice. She scurried back into the room, pulling her son with her, and slammed the door shut.
Yang turned back to Jao, the weight of their mission pressing down on him once more. The ornate opulence of the Owaki palace felt even more oppressive now, tainted by the potential for innocent blood.
"We have lost time," Jao said, his expression unreadable. "As well as advantage...The Owaki will surely be expecting us."
"Then let's not disappoint them," Yang replied, his voice hardening. They moved forward, deeper into the labyrinthine palace, the image of the woman and her child etched into Yang's mind. He knew that even as they fought to dismantle the Owaki regime, he was fighting an even more crucial battle – the battle for Jao’s humanity.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
Uriko's arrow flew like a bolt of concentrated energy, slicing through the arctic winds in pursuit of its target.
Kaito and his brigade of grotesque soldiers tore across the mountain snow in swift, fluid motions—leaps and bounds that seemed almost preternatural.
They were all in synch; Focused on their task.. But then, the Owaki heir paused his advance—drawing up tufts of snow as he slid to a stop, and looked in Uriko's direction.
It was as if he could hear the wire of her bowstring rattle the air as it loosed her fiery tool of death.. Only to did nothing in reponse but watch as it approached.. Curious.. like a xhild.
**SPLLKTK**
Impact.
Kaito’s forehead was impaled and nearly torn from his shoulders by Uriko's arrow. The necromatter dripping from the ballsitic hissed and steamed as it gnawed through flesh and bone.
At first..
Then, Kaito's clothes and flesh began sloughing off into the snow. And in seconds, the polished facade of Kaito’s form melted away like wax under cruel heat —revealing beneath it a tar-black hide stretched over grotesque, elongated limbs and Jao's face stretched across its head like some sinister mask.
The Nullborne shivered and twisted, pulling at the arrow before a scream tore from its maw—a skull-splitting, reality-fracturing scream that forced the world to bend in nauseating, impossible angles.
Anyone close enough to hear it found their minds literally burning, their vision fragmented.. But Uriko in particular would experience far worse than just that. Shadows generated by the ethereal light of her bow began peeling from the darkness until they surrounded her in a pool of ink and took the forms of creatures she would never unsee.
Dozens of Nullborne clones, grotesque mirrors of the one she had just shot, melded from the gloom. And they moved with unnatural precision. Their jagged limbs snapping and stretching, clawing and scratching, so quickly their would be no pain if they connected. Only death.. The first of many.
Kaito's true position? A mystery.. One cladded nearly full proof thanks to Kenji's innovations. The Nullborne possessed nearly a million different capabilities, harvested from the DNA of flora and fauna collected from across the surface of the planet. In reality, Kenji found the true extent of their abilities to be.. incalculable. And this was, if nothing else, an excellent test run for his greatest creations.
---
Meanwhile, deep within the Owaki fortress, Jao and Yang pressed through the twisted corridors. Alarms shrieked in the distance, mixed with the terrified screams of those still alive. The scent of blood, metal, and ash filled the air, remnants of the dead the Shi had left behind.
But before they could continued much further, a low rumble shook the palace walls.. Until eventually, that rumble escalated into something seismic. That was their only warning before Zeroken emerged from the ground splintered palace floor like a bat out of hell.
White flames licked the edges of his ceremonial armor, and melted the walls like a furious storm. His gauntlet glimmering with a malevolent pulse—had been aimed at Yang’s throat in a deadly, decapitating uppercut.
He had sensed them the second they arrived, and though he was unsure who he was striking first, he did not care. He KNEW the serpent was among them. So Zeroken’s only repeating thought upon dawning his armor.. his Gauntlet was this:
“You will not leave this place.”
Regardless of who found themselves in front of his fist.. Beneath his heel.. It mattered not. He would kill them all.
Kaito and his brigade of grotesque soldiers tore across the mountain snow in swift, fluid motions—leaps and bounds that seemed almost preternatural.
They were all in synch; Focused on their task.. But then, the Owaki heir paused his advance—drawing up tufts of snow as he slid to a stop, and looked in Uriko's direction.
It was as if he could hear the wire of her bowstring rattle the air as it loosed her fiery tool of death.. Only to did nothing in reponse but watch as it approached.. Curious.. like a xhild.
**SPLLKTK**
Impact.
Kaito’s forehead was impaled and nearly torn from his shoulders by Uriko's arrow. The necromatter dripping from the ballsitic hissed and steamed as it gnawed through flesh and bone.
At first..
Then, Kaito's clothes and flesh began sloughing off into the snow. And in seconds, the polished facade of Kaito’s form melted away like wax under cruel heat —revealing beneath it a tar-black hide stretched over grotesque, elongated limbs and Jao's face stretched across its head like some sinister mask.
The Nullborne shivered and twisted, pulling at the arrow before a scream tore from its maw—a skull-splitting, reality-fracturing scream that forced the world to bend in nauseating, impossible angles.
Anyone close enough to hear it found their minds literally burning, their vision fragmented.. But Uriko in particular would experience far worse than just that. Shadows generated by the ethereal light of her bow began peeling from the darkness until they surrounded her in a pool of ink and took the forms of creatures she would never unsee.
Dozens of Nullborne clones, grotesque mirrors of the one she had just shot, melded from the gloom. And they moved with unnatural precision. Their jagged limbs snapping and stretching, clawing and scratching, so quickly their would be no pain if they connected. Only death.. The first of many.
Kaito's true position? A mystery.. One cladded nearly full proof thanks to Kenji's innovations. The Nullborne possessed nearly a million different capabilities, harvested from the DNA of flora and fauna collected from across the surface of the planet. In reality, Kenji found the true extent of their abilities to be.. incalculable. And this was, if nothing else, an excellent test run for his greatest creations.
---
Meanwhile, deep within the Owaki fortress, Jao and Yang pressed through the twisted corridors. Alarms shrieked in the distance, mixed with the terrified screams of those still alive. The scent of blood, metal, and ash filled the air, remnants of the dead the Shi had left behind.
But before they could continued much further, a low rumble shook the palace walls.. Until eventually, that rumble escalated into something seismic. That was their only warning before Zeroken emerged from the ground splintered palace floor like a bat out of hell.
White flames licked the edges of his ceremonial armor, and melted the walls like a furious storm. His gauntlet glimmering with a malevolent pulse—had been aimed at Yang’s throat in a deadly, decapitating uppercut.
He had sensed them the second they arrived, and though he was unsure who he was striking first, he did not care. He KNEW the serpent was among them. So Zeroken’s only repeating thought upon dawning his armor.. his Gauntlet was this:
“You will not leave this place.”
Regardless of who found themselves in front of his fist.. Beneath his heel.. It mattered not. He would kill them all.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
Outside The Estate
Show
The air over the ruined outskirts of Edo was thick with the smell of ozone and burnt ash. The shining moon slipped behind a jagged horizon, casting long shadows that seemed to writhe on their own accord. In the crater‑filled plain, the ragged band of warriors stood over a fresh pile of carnage.
“Target eliminated,” Uriko commented snidely, retracting the sleek, obsidian bow that still sputtered faint neon threads of its last shot. The weapon hummed, its string twitching like a cat’s tail before it fell silent.
“That was easier than expected,” Cain said, his voice a low growl that reverberated through the flesh of the Hell Hound he rode. The massive beast’s claws had just torn through the neck of an Owaki ninja, the bruised flesh of the fallen spilling onto the cracked earth. Cain’s red eyes flickered beneath a mane of black smoke as he pressed his weight deeper into the creature’s back.
“Guess being in power so long dulled their battle senses,” Zanji muttered, flicking the black‑blood of the clones that clung to his katana. The crimson viscera hissed as it hit the ground, staining the soil like ink.
“Right… moving one to these… wait… what is that?!” Veryn shouted, his hand hovering over the glowing glyphs of his healing field. He had been about to bathe the squad in restorative energy when something else caught his eye—a ripple in the darkness, a smear of black tar that seemed to pulse with a life of its own.
The SLAYERS barely had time to celebrate the fall of another Owaki son before the ground itself seemed to sigh. From the tar, a skull burst forth, its jagged edges splintering into a grotesque bloom of bone. The skull was not the skull of any ordinary enemy; it was a malformed construct of flesh, steel, and dark, unknowable magic. As it rose, the black tar that formed its body recoiled, then surged back, reforming around the creature like a living coffin.
The SLAYERS watched in horror as the skull regenerated, each fragment knitting together with a sound like grinding glass. A shrill, rasping scream ripped from its maw—a sound that seemed to come from the very void between worlds.
“These things… defy conventional genetics,” Eridin’s voice crackled over the comms, thin and strained. He was the squad’s tech‑specialist, the Necromatter—a synthetic compound meant to counter the Mazoko legendary regenerative abilities. “Necromatter is virtually useless against them… whatever dark magic birthed them must be far beyond anything we’ve seen. And they’re Shi bodies—an abhorrent hybrid. The Owaki are truly deplorable.”
“Ghhha—what the fuck?!” Zanji’s scream split the battlefield. His mind felt like a storm of static, thoughts scrambling like shards of glass. The others felt it too; each assault halted as a wave of psychic dissonance slammed into their skulls.
Around Uriko, the shadows convulsed. From the eroded space—a tear in reality itself—an onslaught of Jao’s spectral limbs erupted, claws and fangs dripping with an inky darkness that seemed to drink the light.
“Uriko—temporal distortion… omnidirectional!” shouted Eridin, his voice a desperate command.
“!!!” The scream of the borne rose to a deafening crescendo, the noise tearing at their sanity. Uriko’s senses, already warped by the demon’s wail, staggered. She could not react fast enough. The legion of claws, fangs, and serrated limbs closed in on her flesh, poised to rend her soul.
And yet—
Just as the first claw brushed her cheek, a massive AION Sentinel—a towering, chrome‑plated droid of the rebels’ autonomous army—swooped down. Its hydraulic arms clenched her ponytail, yanking her backward with a strength that shattered the surrounding stone. The Sentinel’s core overloaded, its torso erupting in a cascade of sparks as it threw itself into the oncoming maws, buying Uriko a breath.
From the shattered debris, a figure clad in a gleaming nano‑suit emerged: Merza, the squad’s Special Ops. A hollow pad on her cuff pulsed, interfacing with the Sentinel’s dying circuitry. She accessed the AION’s programming panel, rerouting the droid’s remaining power to a self‑destruct protocol that sent a pulse of electromagnetic energy through the borne swarm.
“Get it together, Uriko… or is your age getting the better of you, old hag?” Merza bellowed, a grin flashing across her scarred face.
“I’ll be damned if I take criticism from a girl who pissed herself till she was six,” Uriko retorted, the bitterness in her voice barely masking the tremor that still rattled her limbs.
“Now, ladies… I hate to interrupt, but we are in the middle of a war.” Eridin’s voice cut through the din, steady as ever.
A chorus of whirring servos answered. One hundred AION droids, each a sleek amalgam of alloy and nanite, coalesced into a defensive formation around the squad. Their heads split into a kaleidoscope of neon‑green light, generating a resonance field that dampened the borne’s wail, turning the sound into a muffled hum. The mental onslaught receded, and the squad could think again.
“Great thinking, Merza. These dastardly things are just as twisting and adaptable as the serpent Heir himself… let the droid play with them for a while. You all continue to push towards the Redvoux point.” Eridin ordered, his eyes scanning the horizon where a plume of black fire rose like a demonic beacon.
“Now, let’s show them what these babies can do. Activating Gamma protocol, AION receiving EGO coding…” Eridin called, fingers dancing over the holo‑console.
The AION units shuddered, their chassis convulsing as EGO templates—digitized psychological profiles of each SLAYER—uploaded into their core matrices. The data were not mere statistics; they were the distilled wills, fears, and aspirations of the rebels, forged in the fires of countless skirmishes. The droids began to evolve on the spot:
Warrior templates blossomed into twelve‑foot‑tall behemoths, armored plates clanking as they stomped forward, their fists capable of crushing stone.
Outlaw templates slipped into sleek, semi‑transparent forms that phased through the very tar of the bornes, their blades whispering death.
Mage templates ignited, aurae of crackling energy swirling around them, conjuring bolts of plasma that sliced the night.
The battlefield erupted in a riot of metal and darkness. The bornes—dozens, then hundreds—scuttled from the black tar, their serrated limbs slicing, their shrieks echoing in a chorus of madness. Yet each time they lunged, a Warrior‑AION slammed them back with a thunderous blow; an Outlaw‑AION dissolved into vapor, slipping past a creature’s defenses to slice its spine; a Mage‑AION unleashed a torrent of violet fire that melted the tar away, exposing the grotesque flesh beneath.
Amidst the chaos, Uriko found her footing again, her bow humming to life. The arrows she loosed were no longer mere projectiles; they scathed with her nestu scorching around them, incendiary rounds. Her own AION tech is observing the creatures. They found the weak points in the borne’s regenerative bone, blasting them with a sound like crystal breaking.
Veryn’s healing field, now calibrated for assault, creates a grid of hyperfocus beams slicing through hordes. Cain, astride his Hell Hound, roared and surged forward, the beast’s claws tearing through the black tar as if it were paper.
Zanji, his katana now a conduit of the Mage’s energy, slashed a vortex of flame through a swarm of bornes, his eyes alight with the feral joy of battle. The darkness recoiled, retreating like a tide pulled back by an unseen moon.
The bornes, despite their terrifying regenerative abilities, began to falter. Their regenerative skulls sputtered, the black tar that gave them life curdling under the relentless onslaught of the evolved AIONs. From the shattered remnants of their forms, a terrible, guttural wail rose—an echo of a dying god.
“These things… they defy conventional genetics,” Eridin whispered again, this time not with contempt but with awe. “But they’re not invincible. However, one thing still worries me...If that Kaito was a fake...then where was the real one?”
The Redvoux point glowed with a fierce, crimson light. It was the heart of the Owaki’s dominion, the source of the dark magic that birthed the bornes. The SLAYERS, their ranks now a seamless blend of flesh and steel, pressed forward, the AIONs forming a living shield around them.
“All right, team. One final push. For our families. For Edo.” Uriko shouted, her voice cutting through the lingering hum.
The squad surged as one, a living tide of humanity and machine. Beneath them, the black tar recoiled, the bornes screeching as they fray, continued.
“Target eliminated,” Uriko commented snidely, retracting the sleek, obsidian bow that still sputtered faint neon threads of its last shot. The weapon hummed, its string twitching like a cat’s tail before it fell silent.
“That was easier than expected,” Cain said, his voice a low growl that reverberated through the flesh of the Hell Hound he rode. The massive beast’s claws had just torn through the neck of an Owaki ninja, the bruised flesh of the fallen spilling onto the cracked earth. Cain’s red eyes flickered beneath a mane of black smoke as he pressed his weight deeper into the creature’s back.
“Guess being in power so long dulled their battle senses,” Zanji muttered, flicking the black‑blood of the clones that clung to his katana. The crimson viscera hissed as it hit the ground, staining the soil like ink.
“Right… moving one to these… wait… what is that?!” Veryn shouted, his hand hovering over the glowing glyphs of his healing field. He had been about to bathe the squad in restorative energy when something else caught his eye—a ripple in the darkness, a smear of black tar that seemed to pulse with a life of its own.
The SLAYERS barely had time to celebrate the fall of another Owaki son before the ground itself seemed to sigh. From the tar, a skull burst forth, its jagged edges splintering into a grotesque bloom of bone. The skull was not the skull of any ordinary enemy; it was a malformed construct of flesh, steel, and dark, unknowable magic. As it rose, the black tar that formed its body recoiled, then surged back, reforming around the creature like a living coffin.
The SLAYERS watched in horror as the skull regenerated, each fragment knitting together with a sound like grinding glass. A shrill, rasping scream ripped from its maw—a sound that seemed to come from the very void between worlds.
“These things… defy conventional genetics,” Eridin’s voice crackled over the comms, thin and strained. He was the squad’s tech‑specialist, the Necromatter—a synthetic compound meant to counter the Mazoko legendary regenerative abilities. “Necromatter is virtually useless against them… whatever dark magic birthed them must be far beyond anything we’ve seen. And they’re Shi bodies—an abhorrent hybrid. The Owaki are truly deplorable.”
“Ghhha—what the fuck?!” Zanji’s scream split the battlefield. His mind felt like a storm of static, thoughts scrambling like shards of glass. The others felt it too; each assault halted as a wave of psychic dissonance slammed into their skulls.
Around Uriko, the shadows convulsed. From the eroded space—a tear in reality itself—an onslaught of Jao’s spectral limbs erupted, claws and fangs dripping with an inky darkness that seemed to drink the light.
“Uriko—temporal distortion… omnidirectional!” shouted Eridin, his voice a desperate command.
“!!!” The scream of the borne rose to a deafening crescendo, the noise tearing at their sanity. Uriko’s senses, already warped by the demon’s wail, staggered. She could not react fast enough. The legion of claws, fangs, and serrated limbs closed in on her flesh, poised to rend her soul.
And yet—
Just as the first claw brushed her cheek, a massive AION Sentinel—a towering, chrome‑plated droid of the rebels’ autonomous army—swooped down. Its hydraulic arms clenched her ponytail, yanking her backward with a strength that shattered the surrounding stone. The Sentinel’s core overloaded, its torso erupting in a cascade of sparks as it threw itself into the oncoming maws, buying Uriko a breath.
From the shattered debris, a figure clad in a gleaming nano‑suit emerged: Merza, the squad’s Special Ops. A hollow pad on her cuff pulsed, interfacing with the Sentinel’s dying circuitry. She accessed the AION’s programming panel, rerouting the droid’s remaining power to a self‑destruct protocol that sent a pulse of electromagnetic energy through the borne swarm.
“Get it together, Uriko… or is your age getting the better of you, old hag?” Merza bellowed, a grin flashing across her scarred face.
“I’ll be damned if I take criticism from a girl who pissed herself till she was six,” Uriko retorted, the bitterness in her voice barely masking the tremor that still rattled her limbs.
“Now, ladies… I hate to interrupt, but we are in the middle of a war.” Eridin’s voice cut through the din, steady as ever.
A chorus of whirring servos answered. One hundred AION droids, each a sleek amalgam of alloy and nanite, coalesced into a defensive formation around the squad. Their heads split into a kaleidoscope of neon‑green light, generating a resonance field that dampened the borne’s wail, turning the sound into a muffled hum. The mental onslaught receded, and the squad could think again.
“Great thinking, Merza. These dastardly things are just as twisting and adaptable as the serpent Heir himself… let the droid play with them for a while. You all continue to push towards the Redvoux point.” Eridin ordered, his eyes scanning the horizon where a plume of black fire rose like a demonic beacon.
“Now, let’s show them what these babies can do. Activating Gamma protocol, AION receiving EGO coding…” Eridin called, fingers dancing over the holo‑console.
The AION units shuddered, their chassis convulsing as EGO templates—digitized psychological profiles of each SLAYER—uploaded into their core matrices. The data were not mere statistics; they were the distilled wills, fears, and aspirations of the rebels, forged in the fires of countless skirmishes. The droids began to evolve on the spot:
Warrior templates blossomed into twelve‑foot‑tall behemoths, armored plates clanking as they stomped forward, their fists capable of crushing stone.
Outlaw templates slipped into sleek, semi‑transparent forms that phased through the very tar of the bornes, their blades whispering death.
Mage templates ignited, aurae of crackling energy swirling around them, conjuring bolts of plasma that sliced the night.
The battlefield erupted in a riot of metal and darkness. The bornes—dozens, then hundreds—scuttled from the black tar, their serrated limbs slicing, their shrieks echoing in a chorus of madness. Yet each time they lunged, a Warrior‑AION slammed them back with a thunderous blow; an Outlaw‑AION dissolved into vapor, slipping past a creature’s defenses to slice its spine; a Mage‑AION unleashed a torrent of violet fire that melted the tar away, exposing the grotesque flesh beneath.
Amidst the chaos, Uriko found her footing again, her bow humming to life. The arrows she loosed were no longer mere projectiles; they scathed with her nestu scorching around them, incendiary rounds. Her own AION tech is observing the creatures. They found the weak points in the borne’s regenerative bone, blasting them with a sound like crystal breaking.
Veryn’s healing field, now calibrated for assault, creates a grid of hyperfocus beams slicing through hordes. Cain, astride his Hell Hound, roared and surged forward, the beast’s claws tearing through the black tar as if it were paper.
Zanji, his katana now a conduit of the Mage’s energy, slashed a vortex of flame through a swarm of bornes, his eyes alight with the feral joy of battle. The darkness recoiled, retreating like a tide pulled back by an unseen moon.
The bornes, despite their terrifying regenerative abilities, began to falter. Their regenerative skulls sputtered, the black tar that gave them life curdling under the relentless onslaught of the evolved AIONs. From the shattered remnants of their forms, a terrible, guttural wail rose—an echo of a dying god.
“These things… they defy conventional genetics,” Eridin whispered again, this time not with contempt but with awe. “But they’re not invincible. However, one thing still worries me...If that Kaito was a fake...then where was the real one?”
The Redvoux point glowed with a fierce, crimson light. It was the heart of the Owaki’s dominion, the source of the dark magic that birthed the bornes. The SLAYERS, their ranks now a seamless blend of flesh and steel, pressed forward, the AIONs forming a living shield around them.
“All right, team. One final push. For our families. For Edo.” Uriko shouted, her voice cutting through the lingering hum.
The squad surged as one, a living tide of humanity and machine. Beneath them, the black tar recoiled, the bornes screeching as they fray, continued.
Inside the Estate
Show
The Owaki fortress was a charnel house, a labyrinth of despair. Jao and Yang, seasoned in the brutal ballet of war, pressed through its mangled guts, each breath a swallow of ash and dread. Alarms, like the death throes of a dying beast, shrieked in the distance, interwoven with the ragged screams of those not yet claimed by the Shi. The metallic tang of fresh blood, the acrid bite of melted structural alloys, the cloying sweetness of human fear – it all clung to the air, a grotesque perfume of extermination. It was the stench of ecstasy to the Djynn of Chaos.
They had barely cleared another choked corridor, their boots crunching on twisted debris, when a low, sustained rumble began to vibrate through the very fabric of the palace. It started subtly, a distant growl, but within heartbeats, it escalated, becoming a seismic tremor that threatened to tear the fortress apart. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling, ancient stones groaned, and the ground beneath their feet bucked violently.
This was their only warning.
The palace floor, already splintered and groaning under the siege, exploded upwards. A geyser of pulverized rock and shrapnel erupted, and from the dust cloud, Zeroken emerged, a literal bat out of hell, cloaked in an inferno of pure, searing power. A deity of flames given flesh and form.
White flames, impossibly hot, licked the edges of his ceremonial armor, not merely illuminating the corridor but actively melting the walls, turning stone and metal into molten rivulets that hissed and steamed. His presence was a storm, a hurricane of destructive intent. His right gauntlet, forged in some hellish forge, glimmered with a malevolent, pulsating light – and it was already in motion.
It was aimed at Yang’s throat, a deadly, decapitating uppercut meant to rip his head from his shoulders before he could even register the threat.
"Move you fool!"
Jao, with but a second to spare, threw his body into Yang, tossing him into a wall. While the blow missed Jao's head, it landed in his gut. Jao’s torso slammed through several crumbling walls with the force of a battering ram, the blast of the impact sending a shower of dust and splintered obsidian across the corridor. The nanites embedded in his dermal plating instantly reacted, spreading a lattice of iron‑carbon fibers that hardened like a second‑skin armor around his wound, sealing the breach just in time. The pain was a white‑hot pang, but it did not stop the surge of adrenaline that coursed through his veins.
"This one still fights...a flea clinging to light..."
Aphosis's voice slithered, for the briefest moment, that even the Nether Serpent's vice grip could not hold back Jao's desire to protect his father.
"Jao!"
Yang, shaken but alive, struggled to regain his footing amidst the chaos. He looked back at the scene of the explosion, expecting to see Jao crushed and lifeless, but to his astonishment, he saw Jao's hand emerging from the rubble, the nanites in his suit working overtime to repair the damage.
His grief, sharp and blinding, was instantly cauterized by a cold, acidic calm. Jao wasn’t dead. He couldn't be. The nanite lattice was strong; Jao was stronger. But he was buried, broken, and helpless. The thought was a whetstone against the edge of his rage.
"Zeroken Owaki, the Hawk perched upon the pinnacle of Edo....I gotta say... you're looking a lot healthier than I expected...the Withering hasn't eaten away at you yet?"
He didn't waste a breath on a reply. Though internally, he was baffled. Zeroken was several centuries old; he should have been a bag of bones by now, and yet here he stood, nearly just as young and vital as he was the day he took this place as head of the clan. Yang's hands snapped to his sides, and with a hiss of compressed air, twin reverse-grip blades, their edges shimmering with a monomolecular keenness, deployed into his grasp.
He fell into a low crouch, the posture of a cornered wolf, every line of his body coiled with lethal intent. The debris-strewn floor was his jungle, the melting walls his canopy. And like a serpent, he sprang into action. The Crimson X upon his chest whirred to life, having absorbed some of the kinetic force of the powerful explosion, repurposing it into increased power for an overhead cross slash that was monstrous in weight.
They had barely cleared another choked corridor, their boots crunching on twisted debris, when a low, sustained rumble began to vibrate through the very fabric of the palace. It started subtly, a distant growl, but within heartbeats, it escalated, becoming a seismic tremor that threatened to tear the fortress apart. Dust rained from the cracked ceiling, ancient stones groaned, and the ground beneath their feet bucked violently.
This was their only warning.
The palace floor, already splintered and groaning under the siege, exploded upwards. A geyser of pulverized rock and shrapnel erupted, and from the dust cloud, Zeroken emerged, a literal bat out of hell, cloaked in an inferno of pure, searing power. A deity of flames given flesh and form.
White flames, impossibly hot, licked the edges of his ceremonial armor, not merely illuminating the corridor but actively melting the walls, turning stone and metal into molten rivulets that hissed and steamed. His presence was a storm, a hurricane of destructive intent. His right gauntlet, forged in some hellish forge, glimmered with a malevolent, pulsating light – and it was already in motion.
It was aimed at Yang’s throat, a deadly, decapitating uppercut meant to rip his head from his shoulders before he could even register the threat.
"Move you fool!"
Jao, with but a second to spare, threw his body into Yang, tossing him into a wall. While the blow missed Jao's head, it landed in his gut. Jao’s torso slammed through several crumbling walls with the force of a battering ram, the blast of the impact sending a shower of dust and splintered obsidian across the corridor. The nanites embedded in his dermal plating instantly reacted, spreading a lattice of iron‑carbon fibers that hardened like a second‑skin armor around his wound, sealing the breach just in time. The pain was a white‑hot pang, but it did not stop the surge of adrenaline that coursed through his veins.
"This one still fights...a flea clinging to light..."
Aphosis's voice slithered, for the briefest moment, that even the Nether Serpent's vice grip could not hold back Jao's desire to protect his father.
"Jao!"
Yang, shaken but alive, struggled to regain his footing amidst the chaos. He looked back at the scene of the explosion, expecting to see Jao crushed and lifeless, but to his astonishment, he saw Jao's hand emerging from the rubble, the nanites in his suit working overtime to repair the damage.
His grief, sharp and blinding, was instantly cauterized by a cold, acidic calm. Jao wasn’t dead. He couldn't be. The nanite lattice was strong; Jao was stronger. But he was buried, broken, and helpless. The thought was a whetstone against the edge of his rage.
"Zeroken Owaki, the Hawk perched upon the pinnacle of Edo....I gotta say... you're looking a lot healthier than I expected...the Withering hasn't eaten away at you yet?"
He didn't waste a breath on a reply. Though internally, he was baffled. Zeroken was several centuries old; he should have been a bag of bones by now, and yet here he stood, nearly just as young and vital as he was the day he took this place as head of the clan. Yang's hands snapped to his sides, and with a hiss of compressed air, twin reverse-grip blades, their edges shimmering with a monomolecular keenness, deployed into his grasp.
He fell into a low crouch, the posture of a cornered wolf, every line of his body coiled with lethal intent. The debris-strewn floor was his jungle, the melting walls his canopy. And like a serpent, he sprang into action. The Crimson X upon his chest whirred to life, having absorbed some of the kinetic force of the powerful explosion, repurposing it into increased power for an overhead cross slash that was monstrous in weight.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
As the battle waged on, the armada of Voydkin began to falter against the relentless precision and coordination of the Slayer Strike Force. Despite the ferocity of the Owaki bioweapons, their disjointed assaults and engineered resilience could not withstand the seamless unity of the Shi’s warriors.
And the emergence of the amorphous AION sentinels only drove the Owaki's desperate machinations further back. They mimicked mages, bruisers, swordsmen.. all coordinated toward a single goal—cleaving away the swampy sea of Voidkyn in droves.
Their cohesion made resistance inobtainable..
But then, something shifted.
The tar that seeped from the wounds of the Voydkin clones did not spill aimlessly across the ground. It slithered with haunting sentience.. Thousands of black streams pooled from across ice and stone into a bottomless, murky singularity. The corpses of the dying Voydkin twitched and writhed along the snow, as they too were drawn together by this grotesque sbyss.
The sound of wet bones snapping and liquefying filled the air as something truly horrifying emerged from the bubbling maw in the snow.
What rose was no longer many, but one—an amalgamation. An abomination..
This homunculus clawed its way into existence—a daunting mountain of writhing tarlike flesh, dripping black death from its form in steaming rivulets that sizzled through stone and snow with acidic consistency.
And through the oozing mire forming upon its shoulders, a face emerged. Jao's face—stretched, and warped behind a nightmarish maw of jagged fangs. The visage of terror leered back at the Shi strike force with an appetite for cruelty. Its limbs were massive, overlong, and crooked like broken towers, all of them ending in claws sculpted to rake the stars from the skies.
Then it wailed.
A ghastly wail that was neither human nor fae. But eldritch in nature. An abhorrent sound that warped thought and split the air into serrated fractures of noise. The force barreled outward in a concussive wave so powerful it caused reality itself to stutter.
The ground quaked as the mountainside split apart into a roaring cascade of snow and stone. In moments the battlefield was swallowed in a storm of chaos; the sky choked with dust and sundered stone, and the air alive with screams drowned out by the colossus’ fury.
And still it stood—unmoving amidst the riptide of snow and gravel, oozing tar and petulent fumes..
Oily eyelids began to peel open across its surface—several at first, then dozens. Each one glowing with sickly violet light. A light these Shi dogs would recognize far too well if they were foolish enough to gaze upon them.
This.. was The Serpent’s Gaze, or rather, a horrid bastardization of it.
To look into them, even for a moment, was to have your very essence pulled from you—ripped away with callous indifference. The Shi knew its power more intimately than any other, and this titan of otherness was scouring the debris for anything moving using all three dozen of its haunting eyes.
Be them Man or Machine, the monster would find them, and smite them to dust with extreme prejudice.
—--
Zeroken’s pale eyes fixed on Yang from behind the slits of his helmer, a faint curl tugging at the corner of his lips. And while he connected with his true target, he recognized the face of the man before him immediately.
This was the Viper of Edo.. The final bastion of a breed of shinobi, Zeroken thought long dead. But his legend mattered not.. Even now, with his eyes somehow restored, Zeroken saw nothing but glory through his helm.
“..die, Shi dog.” His words were few, carried on a voice sharp as broken glass.
He then clenched his gauntlet, and the Ring of Destruction responded.
A crimson, translucent wave burst erupted from the tiny stone embedded at the center of Zeroken's fist, rippling like liquid fire through rancid air. It wasn’t merely heat or light—it was annihilation given form. The power of Ruin. The wave tore through the chamber, through wood, through stone, through bone— dissolving all into a fine red mist in the blink of an eye. And Zeroken barely needed to lift a finger.
He basqued in the weight of his power, reveling in the familiar pain ripping through his body whenever he utilized the power of Ruin. It was worth it.. This new body could take it.
But theirs would not endure.
And the emergence of the amorphous AION sentinels only drove the Owaki's desperate machinations further back. They mimicked mages, bruisers, swordsmen.. all coordinated toward a single goal—cleaving away the swampy sea of Voidkyn in droves.
Their cohesion made resistance inobtainable..
But then, something shifted.
The tar that seeped from the wounds of the Voydkin clones did not spill aimlessly across the ground. It slithered with haunting sentience.. Thousands of black streams pooled from across ice and stone into a bottomless, murky singularity. The corpses of the dying Voydkin twitched and writhed along the snow, as they too were drawn together by this grotesque sbyss.
The sound of wet bones snapping and liquefying filled the air as something truly horrifying emerged from the bubbling maw in the snow.
What rose was no longer many, but one—an amalgamation. An abomination..
This homunculus clawed its way into existence—a daunting mountain of writhing tarlike flesh, dripping black death from its form in steaming rivulets that sizzled through stone and snow with acidic consistency.
And through the oozing mire forming upon its shoulders, a face emerged. Jao's face—stretched, and warped behind a nightmarish maw of jagged fangs. The visage of terror leered back at the Shi strike force with an appetite for cruelty. Its limbs were massive, overlong, and crooked like broken towers, all of them ending in claws sculpted to rake the stars from the skies.
Then it wailed.
A ghastly wail that was neither human nor fae. But eldritch in nature. An abhorrent sound that warped thought and split the air into serrated fractures of noise. The force barreled outward in a concussive wave so powerful it caused reality itself to stutter.
The ground quaked as the mountainside split apart into a roaring cascade of snow and stone. In moments the battlefield was swallowed in a storm of chaos; the sky choked with dust and sundered stone, and the air alive with screams drowned out by the colossus’ fury.
And still it stood—unmoving amidst the riptide of snow and gravel, oozing tar and petulent fumes..
Oily eyelids began to peel open across its surface—several at first, then dozens. Each one glowing with sickly violet light. A light these Shi dogs would recognize far too well if they were foolish enough to gaze upon them.
This.. was The Serpent’s Gaze, or rather, a horrid bastardization of it.
To look into them, even for a moment, was to have your very essence pulled from you—ripped away with callous indifference. The Shi knew its power more intimately than any other, and this titan of otherness was scouring the debris for anything moving using all three dozen of its haunting eyes.
Be them Man or Machine, the monster would find them, and smite them to dust with extreme prejudice.
—--
Zeroken’s pale eyes fixed on Yang from behind the slits of his helmer, a faint curl tugging at the corner of his lips. And while he connected with his true target, he recognized the face of the man before him immediately.
This was the Viper of Edo.. The final bastion of a breed of shinobi, Zeroken thought long dead. But his legend mattered not.. Even now, with his eyes somehow restored, Zeroken saw nothing but glory through his helm.
“..die, Shi dog.” His words were few, carried on a voice sharp as broken glass.
He then clenched his gauntlet, and the Ring of Destruction responded.
A crimson, translucent wave burst erupted from the tiny stone embedded at the center of Zeroken's fist, rippling like liquid fire through rancid air. It wasn’t merely heat or light—it was annihilation given form. The power of Ruin. The wave tore through the chamber, through wood, through stone, through bone— dissolving all into a fine red mist in the blink of an eye. And Zeroken barely needed to lift a finger.
He basqued in the weight of his power, reveling in the familiar pain ripping through his body whenever he utilized the power of Ruin. It was worth it.. This new body could take it.
But theirs would not endure.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
Outside the Estate
Show
The uniform tactics of the SLAYER squad were proving vastly incomparable to the gathered Owaki forces. Though they tried their best to forestall the movements of the battalions, the Voidkyn and the shinobi that accompanied found themselves continuously outpaced by the coordinated strikes of the squa and their AIONS. There was once a time in the lands of Edo where one would never see such abstract methods used. It was once a land of blood and sharpened steel, grit and gain by way of subterfuge and hidden blades. But such was how the world had evolved.
The Owaki had made a fortune by harvesting Shi genitcs and organs to further their own agendas and ends, taking the lives of countless Denkoushi to form the battered blocks of their entire society. It came to them as a barely as surprise now to see them twist the Serpent's heir's face into these slick shadows. Even so, despite the many ways the shinbi way had evolved and at some point even altered underneath the gelmaing metals and heinous forbidden magic at its core, the skirmish remained the same.
To use whatever tool was needed to overcome one's foe
It was the entire preicpes for which Eridin chose to partner with Hyperia. To stand upon not the pinnacle of Edo itself, but to become an agent of change for which a new future may be etched upon her. And though this unfortunately would not be the "War To End All Wars," it would serve as a remarkable preamble of things to come, of how the oppressed under those born with power would no longer allow themselves to be cowed under the thumb of would-be lords. Whether that Be the Owaki, The Yaarou
Or even B'halia itself.
They would fight tooth and nail, scrape the bottom of every barrel possible to claw their way to the summit of freedom. nd Pay whatever blood price they must to achieve it.
That was the oath that sat not on Eridin's heart, but that which beat fervently within the chest of every SLAYER gathered on the battlefield here today. And it is with this oath in mind that they continued to celebrate throughout the ranks of Voidkyn.
And yet what transpired next was something beyond even that Oath
For the Owaki being the first, and Eldest of SHInobi lines still clung to the eldest ideoglyph, the one that birthed Edo's turmoilrous culture of blood and bone
Survival
The air crackled with their dominance. “We’re pressing the bastards back!” Veryn’s voice was a triumphant roar over the comms, his words punctuated by bursts of cobalt light. A shimmering energy field erupted from his palms, cleaving through a flanking party of VoidKyn, their shadowy forms dissolving into nothingness.
Across the field, Zanji was a whirlwind of motion. "The Soul of Edo favors us this day!" he bellowed, his twin katanas, humming with Nestu energy, carving arcs of death through the enemy ranks. Beside him, Warrior AIONS moved with lethal, synchronized grace, their energy cannons and vibro-blades systematically eviscerating entire platoons. Wounds littered Zanji’s body—a deep gash on his shoulder, a puncture in his thigh—but they were already steaming, the flesh knitting itself back together in a testament to his augmented physiology.
Not far off, Merza moved like a predator. Her chromesteel claws dripped with the crimson viscera of an Owaki ninja commander. With a grim satisfaction, she plucked a series of organs from his still-warm corpse, her movements as practiced as a surgeon and as savage as a wild animal. On a ridge overlooking the fray, the battlefield was illuminated by flashes of searing light. Alona, a figure of deadly stillness amidst the chaos, had just recalled the last of her Nestu whips—living threads of plasma that had bisected their foes with surgical precision.
This was their rhythm, their dance of destruction. It was the future they were fighting for, a future torn from the hands of the old guards who had built their empire on the harvested genetics of the Shi people and the broken bodies of the Denkoushi. The Owaki had twisted the Serpent's heir's lineage into the grotesque VoidKyn, but the SLAYERs were twisting the very nature of war to fight back.
“Jao and Yang have encountered Zeroken,” Eridin’s voice, calm and measured, cut through the din. “The mission has changed. Kaito has yet to reveal himself; we can only assume he may rendezvous with his father.”
A wolfish grin spread across Cain’s face. Astride his armored Hell Hound, surrounded by a legion of the cybernetic beasts, his adrenaline was singing. “Then one final push, and we make way to support that slithery upstart… let’s end this with style!”
With a guttural howl that was echoed by his mechanical pack, Cain charged. His orders had been to hold the line, to buy time for the infiltrators to disable the Owaki power grid. But with the plan shifted, a direct pierce was the only option. They would shatter the Owaki front line and carve a path straight to the estate.
It was this charge, this singular act of triumphant defiance, that triggered the end.
As they thundered across the battlefield, a strange stillness fell. The spilled black blood of the VoidKyn, which had pooled in countless viscous slicks, began to move. It was not the passive flow of liquid, but the deliberate, horrifying crawl of something alive. Like a reverse tide, the tar-like blood slithered from every corner of the battlefield, converging on a central point. It pulled with it the mangled carcasses, the shattered armor, and the splintered bones of the dead, both VoidKyn and Owaki shinobi, drawing them into a churning, propagating vortex of blackness.
A pulsing amalgam of death coalesced. The SLAYERs, even Cain’s charging legion, slowed to a halt. From the cesspit of gore and corrupted blood, a shape began to rise. It was a homunculus, a blasphemy given form. It clawed its way into existence, a daunting mountain of writhing, tar-like flesh. Black death dripped from its colossal form in steaming rivulets, sizzling through stone and snow with the acidic hiss of forbidden magic. An unbearable stench of ozone and rot washed over them.
The comms, once filled with boasts and battle cries, fell silent. The squad stood frozen, their breath caught in their throats. For all their power, for all their advanced weaponry and burning oaths, they were suddenly insignificant before this towering behemoth of despair.
“.....Dear God...” Eridin’s voice was a hushed whisper of pure disbelief, a fragile sound in the suffocating silence. It was the calm before the tolling of a death knell.
And then the creature wailed.
It was not a sound, but an event. A reality-shattering bellow that tore through the very fabric of the world. The mountains surrounding the highlands fractured like diamonds struck by a hammer, great sheets of rock and ice cascading down in thunderous landslides. The earth itself split open, fissures cracking across the battlefield. In that single, horrifying moment, one hundred of their state-of-the-art AIONS were swallowed by the earth or crushed under the avalanche, their metallic screams silenced in an instant.
“We can’t give up! CHARGE!”
It was Cain, reckless and indomitable, his spirit still soaring on the adrenaline of their prior victory. He refused to be cowed. He spurred his mount onward, a lone rider with his fifty Hell Hounds charging headstrong into the maw of oblivion.
And then the SLAYERs understood. They witnessed the full, terrifying totality of the Owaki clan’s ingenuity and their utter madness.
As Cain and his legion closed the distance, the homunculus’s form rippled. From all over its amorphous body, a litany of massive, jagged eyes burst open. They were a constellation of malice, glowing with a vile violet light—the signature bloodline trait of the stolen Shi genetics. This was the Serpent's Gaze, the Dankestu, an otherworldly power that did not kill the body, but unmade the soul.
For Cain and the hounds at his side, the world dissolved. It was not pain, but a sudden, absolute emptiness. A monsoon of supernatural dominance washed over their very essence, a psychic pressure that bypassed flesh and bone to grasp the light of their being. They felt their life force, their memories, their very souls being siphoned with unnatural quickness, pulled from their bodies like thread from a spool. There was a moment of utter confusion, a fleeting sense of being hollowed out, and then… nothing.
Their momentum carried their bodies forward for a few more feet before they simply collapsed. Cain toppled from his saddle, his eyes wide and vacant, a hollow echo where a life had been. His fifty Hell Hounds fell around him, their systems powering down as the animating spark within them was extinguished. They lay lifelessly upon the blood-soaked snow, silent statues marking the spot where a hero’s charge had become a tombstone.
On the comms, there was only the sound of ragged, horrified breathing. The triumphant preamble to their revolution had ended. The battle was not over, but their victory was dead. The oath that beat within their chests had just been answered by the Owaki’s oldest, cruelest creed—survival. And the blood price, they now realized with chilling certainty, had only just begun to be paid.
"CAIN!!!"
Uriko's voice cut through the silent comm with blood-curdling cadence; her anguish shook the others back into reality, breaking the still-pertifying grip of fear just in time for them to regain their senses.
"SLAYERS CUT YOUR VISUAL FEED IMEADITLY!"
Eridin followed with a crisp command; none of them back argued.
"Generating Nestu ordinance field, it will allow you to perceive the beast without the use of your eyes, but remain cautious, even exposed to such raw and potent ebbs of crushed naten will still create an intense field of disorientation. We... We are going to have to fight this thing as if we were Sunless."
In preparation for the reality that any one of them could be captured during a mission and made sunless, all Shi 10 were required to undergo the training given to the Sunless. Should their light ever be stolen from them...to have to resort to such a tactic now, after all this time, and after having so many sunless restored, felt like a massive step backward in their fight for freedom. Nonetheless, it very well may prove to be their only means of survival against the veritable Hydra of soul-stealing retina.
"I can't believe Cain is..."
"We don't have time for that... We all knew the risk..."
"SLAYERS...Prepare for Synthesis Protocol...Alpha...Omega"
And so they did, straggling and narrowly avoiding the blistering gazes of the orbiting eyes sovereign over the rubble. Many of the AIONS could not adapt in time and found themselves shut down and decimated by the cursed one's gaze. This would leave the giants desmize solely upon the shoulders of the SLAYERS themselves and their next course of action. Each of them began to weave ava, finding a temporary spurt of coverage where they may in preparation for their assault.
The Owaki had made a fortune by harvesting Shi genitcs and organs to further their own agendas and ends, taking the lives of countless Denkoushi to form the battered blocks of their entire society. It came to them as a barely as surprise now to see them twist the Serpent's heir's face into these slick shadows. Even so, despite the many ways the shinbi way had evolved and at some point even altered underneath the gelmaing metals and heinous forbidden magic at its core, the skirmish remained the same.
To use whatever tool was needed to overcome one's foe
It was the entire preicpes for which Eridin chose to partner with Hyperia. To stand upon not the pinnacle of Edo itself, but to become an agent of change for which a new future may be etched upon her. And though this unfortunately would not be the "War To End All Wars," it would serve as a remarkable preamble of things to come, of how the oppressed under those born with power would no longer allow themselves to be cowed under the thumb of would-be lords. Whether that Be the Owaki, The Yaarou
Or even B'halia itself.
They would fight tooth and nail, scrape the bottom of every barrel possible to claw their way to the summit of freedom. nd Pay whatever blood price they must to achieve it.
That was the oath that sat not on Eridin's heart, but that which beat fervently within the chest of every SLAYER gathered on the battlefield here today. And it is with this oath in mind that they continued to celebrate throughout the ranks of Voidkyn.
And yet what transpired next was something beyond even that Oath
For the Owaki being the first, and Eldest of SHInobi lines still clung to the eldest ideoglyph, the one that birthed Edo's turmoilrous culture of blood and bone
Survival
The air crackled with their dominance. “We’re pressing the bastards back!” Veryn’s voice was a triumphant roar over the comms, his words punctuated by bursts of cobalt light. A shimmering energy field erupted from his palms, cleaving through a flanking party of VoidKyn, their shadowy forms dissolving into nothingness.
Across the field, Zanji was a whirlwind of motion. "The Soul of Edo favors us this day!" he bellowed, his twin katanas, humming with Nestu energy, carving arcs of death through the enemy ranks. Beside him, Warrior AIONS moved with lethal, synchronized grace, their energy cannons and vibro-blades systematically eviscerating entire platoons. Wounds littered Zanji’s body—a deep gash on his shoulder, a puncture in his thigh—but they were already steaming, the flesh knitting itself back together in a testament to his augmented physiology.
Not far off, Merza moved like a predator. Her chromesteel claws dripped with the crimson viscera of an Owaki ninja commander. With a grim satisfaction, she plucked a series of organs from his still-warm corpse, her movements as practiced as a surgeon and as savage as a wild animal. On a ridge overlooking the fray, the battlefield was illuminated by flashes of searing light. Alona, a figure of deadly stillness amidst the chaos, had just recalled the last of her Nestu whips—living threads of plasma that had bisected their foes with surgical precision.
This was their rhythm, their dance of destruction. It was the future they were fighting for, a future torn from the hands of the old guards who had built their empire on the harvested genetics of the Shi people and the broken bodies of the Denkoushi. The Owaki had twisted the Serpent's heir's lineage into the grotesque VoidKyn, but the SLAYERs were twisting the very nature of war to fight back.
“Jao and Yang have encountered Zeroken,” Eridin’s voice, calm and measured, cut through the din. “The mission has changed. Kaito has yet to reveal himself; we can only assume he may rendezvous with his father.”
A wolfish grin spread across Cain’s face. Astride his armored Hell Hound, surrounded by a legion of the cybernetic beasts, his adrenaline was singing. “Then one final push, and we make way to support that slithery upstart… let’s end this with style!”
With a guttural howl that was echoed by his mechanical pack, Cain charged. His orders had been to hold the line, to buy time for the infiltrators to disable the Owaki power grid. But with the plan shifted, a direct pierce was the only option. They would shatter the Owaki front line and carve a path straight to the estate.
It was this charge, this singular act of triumphant defiance, that triggered the end.
As they thundered across the battlefield, a strange stillness fell. The spilled black blood of the VoidKyn, which had pooled in countless viscous slicks, began to move. It was not the passive flow of liquid, but the deliberate, horrifying crawl of something alive. Like a reverse tide, the tar-like blood slithered from every corner of the battlefield, converging on a central point. It pulled with it the mangled carcasses, the shattered armor, and the splintered bones of the dead, both VoidKyn and Owaki shinobi, drawing them into a churning, propagating vortex of blackness.
A pulsing amalgam of death coalesced. The SLAYERs, even Cain’s charging legion, slowed to a halt. From the cesspit of gore and corrupted blood, a shape began to rise. It was a homunculus, a blasphemy given form. It clawed its way into existence, a daunting mountain of writhing, tar-like flesh. Black death dripped from its colossal form in steaming rivulets, sizzling through stone and snow with the acidic hiss of forbidden magic. An unbearable stench of ozone and rot washed over them.
The comms, once filled with boasts and battle cries, fell silent. The squad stood frozen, their breath caught in their throats. For all their power, for all their advanced weaponry and burning oaths, they were suddenly insignificant before this towering behemoth of despair.
“.....Dear God...” Eridin’s voice was a hushed whisper of pure disbelief, a fragile sound in the suffocating silence. It was the calm before the tolling of a death knell.
And then the creature wailed.
It was not a sound, but an event. A reality-shattering bellow that tore through the very fabric of the world. The mountains surrounding the highlands fractured like diamonds struck by a hammer, great sheets of rock and ice cascading down in thunderous landslides. The earth itself split open, fissures cracking across the battlefield. In that single, horrifying moment, one hundred of their state-of-the-art AIONS were swallowed by the earth or crushed under the avalanche, their metallic screams silenced in an instant.
“We can’t give up! CHARGE!”
It was Cain, reckless and indomitable, his spirit still soaring on the adrenaline of their prior victory. He refused to be cowed. He spurred his mount onward, a lone rider with his fifty Hell Hounds charging headstrong into the maw of oblivion.
And then the SLAYERs understood. They witnessed the full, terrifying totality of the Owaki clan’s ingenuity and their utter madness.
As Cain and his legion closed the distance, the homunculus’s form rippled. From all over its amorphous body, a litany of massive, jagged eyes burst open. They were a constellation of malice, glowing with a vile violet light—the signature bloodline trait of the stolen Shi genetics. This was the Serpent's Gaze, the Dankestu, an otherworldly power that did not kill the body, but unmade the soul.
For Cain and the hounds at his side, the world dissolved. It was not pain, but a sudden, absolute emptiness. A monsoon of supernatural dominance washed over their very essence, a psychic pressure that bypassed flesh and bone to grasp the light of their being. They felt their life force, their memories, their very souls being siphoned with unnatural quickness, pulled from their bodies like thread from a spool. There was a moment of utter confusion, a fleeting sense of being hollowed out, and then… nothing.
Their momentum carried their bodies forward for a few more feet before they simply collapsed. Cain toppled from his saddle, his eyes wide and vacant, a hollow echo where a life had been. His fifty Hell Hounds fell around him, their systems powering down as the animating spark within them was extinguished. They lay lifelessly upon the blood-soaked snow, silent statues marking the spot where a hero’s charge had become a tombstone.
On the comms, there was only the sound of ragged, horrified breathing. The triumphant preamble to their revolution had ended. The battle was not over, but their victory was dead. The oath that beat within their chests had just been answered by the Owaki’s oldest, cruelest creed—survival. And the blood price, they now realized with chilling certainty, had only just begun to be paid.
"CAIN!!!"
Uriko's voice cut through the silent comm with blood-curdling cadence; her anguish shook the others back into reality, breaking the still-pertifying grip of fear just in time for them to regain their senses.
"SLAYERS CUT YOUR VISUAL FEED IMEADITLY!"
Eridin followed with a crisp command; none of them back argued.
"Generating Nestu ordinance field, it will allow you to perceive the beast without the use of your eyes, but remain cautious, even exposed to such raw and potent ebbs of crushed naten will still create an intense field of disorientation. We... We are going to have to fight this thing as if we were Sunless."
In preparation for the reality that any one of them could be captured during a mission and made sunless, all Shi 10 were required to undergo the training given to the Sunless. Should their light ever be stolen from them...to have to resort to such a tactic now, after all this time, and after having so many sunless restored, felt like a massive step backward in their fight for freedom. Nonetheless, it very well may prove to be their only means of survival against the veritable Hydra of soul-stealing retina.
"I can't believe Cain is..."
"We don't have time for that... We all knew the risk..."
"SLAYERS...Prepare for Synthesis Protocol...Alpha...Omega"
And so they did, straggling and narrowly avoiding the blistering gazes of the orbiting eyes sovereign over the rubble. Many of the AIONS could not adapt in time and found themselves shut down and decimated by the cursed one's gaze. This would leave the giants desmize solely upon the shoulders of the SLAYERS themselves and their next course of action. Each of them began to weave ava, finding a temporary spurt of coverage where they may in preparation for their assault.
Inside The Estate
Show
"THIS IS FOR SUZAKU!!!"
Yang came down like a war hammer upon a stubborn nail, his strike landing against the solemn gauntlet. The clang rang out, a thunderous note that split the air and sent a shockwave spiraling across the obsidian floor. The floor itself fractured, a crater blooming in the center, its rim curling like a blackened rose. Yet, even as Yang’s blades connected, a flicker of disbelief crossed his eyes. How could a single hand— the gauntlet‑clad hand of Zeroken—hold back a force that should have shattered mountains?
Zeroken’s posture was unyielding. The talon of the Hawk clan’s leader was a steadfast grip, an iron fist forged in centuries of tyranny. He stared back at Yang, eyes cold as the ice that formed on the highest peaks of the Northern Ranges, his presence a living wall of oppression.
"!!!!"
A sudden, metallic scream ripped through the soundscape. The ring that glinted on Zeroken’s armored hand caught Yang’s eye—an ancient heirloom from the Age of Shinoboi, the Ring of Ruin. Legends whispered of its power: a pulse of aqueous devastation, a torrent of annihilation that devoured anything it touched.
When Zeroken twisted his wrist, the ring flared. A pulse of sanguine energy erupted, a wave of watery destruction lashing outward like a tsunami of pure, unfiltered ruin. It struck the crater’s rim and turned the shattered stone to vapor in an instant. Yang’s heart hammered; the ring’s power was beyond anything he had ever faced.
But then a ripple of onyx darkness surged through the air, a slithering wave of black steel that slammed against Zeroken’s hand. It was as if the very shadows of the estate had been summoned, a dark tide that ripped the ring’s energy off‑balance. The pulse faltered, giving Yang a sliver of time—just enough to evade, but not enough to emerge unscathed.
The ring’s assault, though disrupted, still found its mark. A blade of pure annihilation tore through Yang’s right arm, severing flesh, bone, and the implanted nanite lattice that held his augmentations together. The nanites, however, reacted with frantic precision, sealing blood vessels and beginning a rapid regenerative cascade.
Yang fell to his knees, the metallic taste of blood mingling with the acrid smell of burning alloy. He clenched his remaining hand, teeth grinding, eyes never leaving Zeroken. In that moment, the monster before him was not just a tyrant; he was the very embodiment of the suffering that had been inflicted upon the woman Yang loved—Suzaku—her name a whispered prayer on his lips.
From the direction the scalding metal serpent came from would be seen Jao standing fully on his feet, yet around him would be several gurgling pillars of scalding black liquid metal. It bubbled like magma and boasted an overwhelmingly devastating potential. This was Jao's signature technique, Sinder Style; Dark Matter enhanced by the AIONS circulating through him. His mastery was such that it allowed him to freely manipulate Ophidian in ways that even the most seasoned engineers could only dream of.
"Why so short, Zeroken? I've never known an Owaki who did not like to boast and lord his grandstanding amongst others....Though I must say....you are nothing like your son's memories paint you out to be."
Jao said with a cruel, coy smirk complacent upon his face. His eyes barely lingered on his injured father.
"In his mind....in his soul, rather, you're a feeble old man whose senile ways had him one foot in the grave. Yet here you stand before me, practically a spring chicken..."
Jao took a step forward, and as he did, the haunting glow of his Dankestu began to illuminate his face behind his dark visor helmet.
"Just how many Shi dogs did it take to get you feeling viral again?"
The term Shi Dogs slid off Jao's tongue like a salacious venom, contempt in his every syllable. Here stood before him the man who epitomized all the suffering of his people. The progenitor, inheritor of the legacy of shinobi that tortured his mother and kept her as a pet, cut, sliced, poked, and prodded her remains all for the sake of emulating a power they were never destined to possess.
The twisting pillar of molten Ophidian nanites began to morph into an array of serpents, each the size of a mortal man, with obsidian scales that oscillated in the dim light of the room. Their maws open, baring enormous serrated serpent fangs that dripped upon the floor, corroding away the surfaces they hit like a snake's venom. This was Sinder Style; Dark Matter; Kuro Kiro Oku no meaning many black snakes.
"WELL?! TELL ME?!"
It was then that he accosted Zeroken, a blazing blur of writing cybetnics and shadows. He came in with a powerful left kick, a feint, for it only gave him to momentum to drift into a crouching position, twisting to the right side of Zeroken; however, the serpents around Jao merged into a single massive creation whose head rammed into Zeroken with awe-inspiring force. The scalding metals splattered upon his armor with their impact, aiming to send him flying through the ceiling above them.
Yang came down like a war hammer upon a stubborn nail, his strike landing against the solemn gauntlet. The clang rang out, a thunderous note that split the air and sent a shockwave spiraling across the obsidian floor. The floor itself fractured, a crater blooming in the center, its rim curling like a blackened rose. Yet, even as Yang’s blades connected, a flicker of disbelief crossed his eyes. How could a single hand— the gauntlet‑clad hand of Zeroken—hold back a force that should have shattered mountains?
Zeroken’s posture was unyielding. The talon of the Hawk clan’s leader was a steadfast grip, an iron fist forged in centuries of tyranny. He stared back at Yang, eyes cold as the ice that formed on the highest peaks of the Northern Ranges, his presence a living wall of oppression.
"!!!!"
A sudden, metallic scream ripped through the soundscape. The ring that glinted on Zeroken’s armored hand caught Yang’s eye—an ancient heirloom from the Age of Shinoboi, the Ring of Ruin. Legends whispered of its power: a pulse of aqueous devastation, a torrent of annihilation that devoured anything it touched.
When Zeroken twisted his wrist, the ring flared. A pulse of sanguine energy erupted, a wave of watery destruction lashing outward like a tsunami of pure, unfiltered ruin. It struck the crater’s rim and turned the shattered stone to vapor in an instant. Yang’s heart hammered; the ring’s power was beyond anything he had ever faced.
But then a ripple of onyx darkness surged through the air, a slithering wave of black steel that slammed against Zeroken’s hand. It was as if the very shadows of the estate had been summoned, a dark tide that ripped the ring’s energy off‑balance. The pulse faltered, giving Yang a sliver of time—just enough to evade, but not enough to emerge unscathed.
The ring’s assault, though disrupted, still found its mark. A blade of pure annihilation tore through Yang’s right arm, severing flesh, bone, and the implanted nanite lattice that held his augmentations together. The nanites, however, reacted with frantic precision, sealing blood vessels and beginning a rapid regenerative cascade.
Yang fell to his knees, the metallic taste of blood mingling with the acrid smell of burning alloy. He clenched his remaining hand, teeth grinding, eyes never leaving Zeroken. In that moment, the monster before him was not just a tyrant; he was the very embodiment of the suffering that had been inflicted upon the woman Yang loved—Suzaku—her name a whispered prayer on his lips.
From the direction the scalding metal serpent came from would be seen Jao standing fully on his feet, yet around him would be several gurgling pillars of scalding black liquid metal. It bubbled like magma and boasted an overwhelmingly devastating potential. This was Jao's signature technique, Sinder Style; Dark Matter enhanced by the AIONS circulating through him. His mastery was such that it allowed him to freely manipulate Ophidian in ways that even the most seasoned engineers could only dream of.
"Why so short, Zeroken? I've never known an Owaki who did not like to boast and lord his grandstanding amongst others....Though I must say....you are nothing like your son's memories paint you out to be."
Jao said with a cruel, coy smirk complacent upon his face. His eyes barely lingered on his injured father.
"In his mind....in his soul, rather, you're a feeble old man whose senile ways had him one foot in the grave. Yet here you stand before me, practically a spring chicken..."
Jao took a step forward, and as he did, the haunting glow of his Dankestu began to illuminate his face behind his dark visor helmet.
"Just how many Shi dogs did it take to get you feeling viral again?"
The term Shi Dogs slid off Jao's tongue like a salacious venom, contempt in his every syllable. Here stood before him the man who epitomized all the suffering of his people. The progenitor, inheritor of the legacy of shinobi that tortured his mother and kept her as a pet, cut, sliced, poked, and prodded her remains all for the sake of emulating a power they were never destined to possess.
The twisting pillar of molten Ophidian nanites began to morph into an array of serpents, each the size of a mortal man, with obsidian scales that oscillated in the dim light of the room. Their maws open, baring enormous serrated serpent fangs that dripped upon the floor, corroding away the surfaces they hit like a snake's venom. This was Sinder Style; Dark Matter; Kuro Kiro Oku no meaning many black snakes.
"WELL?! TELL ME?!"
It was then that he accosted Zeroken, a blazing blur of writing cybetnics and shadows. He came in with a powerful left kick, a feint, for it only gave him to momentum to drift into a crouching position, twisting to the right side of Zeroken; however, the serpents around Jao merged into a single massive creation whose head rammed into Zeroken with awe-inspiring force. The scalding metals splattered upon his armor with their impact, aiming to send him flying through the ceiling above them.
Re: Dusk and Dawn
The battlefield was chaos—blinding snow torn apart by the lumbering wrath of the Voydkin titan, its every movement shaking avalanches loose from the peaks above. Amid the storm of stone and ice, the Shi SLAYER strike force fought desperately to maintain ground, their lines fraying with each deafening crash.
But despite their apparent peril, not all of their foes had revealed their hands. The Voydkin was simply the frontline.
High above, cloaked in a mantle of clouds, Kaito waited. He had been still as the grave, a shadow lingering at the edge of perception, biding his time until opportunity called. Through the whisper of his earpiece, Kenji’s voice cut in, cold and deliberate:
"Now. The Shi are pinned. It is your moment, Kaito."
He said, surveying the chaos through the cameras embedded in the unblinking eyes of the scattered clone husks of Jao. Their corpses only looked like trash buried in the snow, but the sentinels were fulfilling their true purpose. Giving Kenji the tactical advantage from the safety of his lab.
From his chair, the man held every vantage point. Every sway of momentum was laid bare before him via three dozen holographic screens hovering around his head as he typed away on his keyboard. And at his mark, the heir of the Owaki clan spurred to action.
“Finally.”
Kaito mused as he raised his head, his breath steady despite the storm raging below. His hands began to move—swift, precise, deliberate. Fingers weaved through the ancient ava of the Owaki Clan, with each completed handsign igniting sparks across his skin. When his final seal struck, his eyes split open with blistering veins of blue light, smoldering like a pair of furnaces beneath the storm.
And the heavens answered his call.
A swarm of blackened clouds coiled into existence in the arctic sky, thick and roiling with unnatural fury. They gathered with sentience.. with malevolent intention until the visage of a hawk like beast could be made out in the clouds, with veins of lightning roiling through its underbelly.
Until.. with a sharp gesture, Kaito unleashed its wrath.
Bolts cascaded downward in a relentless storm. And they were more than mere flashes of light, but jagged lances of molten death. Each strike split the air with deafening force, tearing into the snow-choked ground below with extreme prejudice. Any cover the SLAYER strike force intended to use would be vaporized beneath the assault—stone, ice, steel, and flesh alike atomized in eruptions of thunder and fire.
And as the riptide of snow peeled away beneath the cobalt assault, the Voydkin titan turned its multitude of gazes upon the now-exposed SLAYERs.
And all the while, Kaito watched from the belly of the storm above, his expression carved in stone, as the chaos he had birthed consumed the battlefield.
“Rally all you want.. this moutain will become your tomb.. shi dogs.”
He said to himself, a wicked smirk splitting through his mug of fury. In this moment, he could feel his father's ambition—his blood boiling in his veins, possessed this moment and this moment and alone. This is what he was born for, what his father saw so clearly in Iwa.. The power to rule. Kaito looked at his hand, coiled in a fist of electrical power. He would make his father proud.
"Our time has come."
—--
Zeroken felt sweat collected beneath the plates of his armor. Witnessing Jao summon his Serpent's of shadow and metal caused him to shift his stance.. but by then it was too late. Jao's body flickered, vanished, and reappeared in blinding bursts of motion. Zeroken used his unarmed hand guard against his initial kick, and postured himself to counter with his gauntlet—a deadly uppercut that would decapitate Shi youngling in a single blow.
But then, the serpents struck next, slamming into Zeroken’s torso with crushing force. The assault sent his body crashing through the stone of the palace as if it were paper. The ceiling split, raining dust and fractured marble as Zeroken’s was hurled into the upper chambers of the Owaki palace.
Silence hung for only a moment before heavy footsteps resonated above. And then, Zeroken emerged at the ledge, breathing calmly, his body unmarred.
“How many Shi had to die for this?” He smiled, before he chuckled beneath his helm at the naivety of a child—a deep, scornful sound.
“Do you count the grains of rice in your bowl, boy? Do you mourn the ones that fall to the floor?”
The words were tailored poison, laced upon a serrated blade. Zeroken's mouth watered watching Jao's rage rippled through his voice. And he drank in his pain like a fine wine.
But before Jao could answer, the shadows around him and Yang twisted to life. Three figures peeled themselves from the walls—liquid black bodies with tar-slick skin and limbs stretched far too long. Each of them wore Jao’s face, pulled tight like a grotesque mask and jaws splitting wide to reveal serrated fangs.
These were Voydkin Clones, enhanced versions developed by the Owaki Chair Of Engineering himself to lend the Head of their Clan the proper help he deserves.
They lunged, a blur of claws and teeth, forcing Jao and Yang into a tightening circle of CQC.
And above them, Zeroken raised his hand. The gauntlet strapped to his arm pulsating with a dreadful rhythm, veins of black lightning crackling along its length. He formed an Ava with his other hand, and the air shuddered with bolts of black arcing wildly about his Gauntlet. "The Hawk does not mourn the worm."
But despite their apparent peril, not all of their foes had revealed their hands. The Voydkin was simply the frontline.
High above, cloaked in a mantle of clouds, Kaito waited. He had been still as the grave, a shadow lingering at the edge of perception, biding his time until opportunity called. Through the whisper of his earpiece, Kenji’s voice cut in, cold and deliberate:
"Now. The Shi are pinned. It is your moment, Kaito."
He said, surveying the chaos through the cameras embedded in the unblinking eyes of the scattered clone husks of Jao. Their corpses only looked like trash buried in the snow, but the sentinels were fulfilling their true purpose. Giving Kenji the tactical advantage from the safety of his lab.
From his chair, the man held every vantage point. Every sway of momentum was laid bare before him via three dozen holographic screens hovering around his head as he typed away on his keyboard. And at his mark, the heir of the Owaki clan spurred to action.
“Finally.”
Kaito mused as he raised his head, his breath steady despite the storm raging below. His hands began to move—swift, precise, deliberate. Fingers weaved through the ancient ava of the Owaki Clan, with each completed handsign igniting sparks across his skin. When his final seal struck, his eyes split open with blistering veins of blue light, smoldering like a pair of furnaces beneath the storm.
And the heavens answered his call.
A swarm of blackened clouds coiled into existence in the arctic sky, thick and roiling with unnatural fury. They gathered with sentience.. with malevolent intention until the visage of a hawk like beast could be made out in the clouds, with veins of lightning roiling through its underbelly.
Until.. with a sharp gesture, Kaito unleashed its wrath.
Bolts cascaded downward in a relentless storm. And they were more than mere flashes of light, but jagged lances of molten death. Each strike split the air with deafening force, tearing into the snow-choked ground below with extreme prejudice. Any cover the SLAYER strike force intended to use would be vaporized beneath the assault—stone, ice, steel, and flesh alike atomized in eruptions of thunder and fire.
And as the riptide of snow peeled away beneath the cobalt assault, the Voydkin titan turned its multitude of gazes upon the now-exposed SLAYERs.
And all the while, Kaito watched from the belly of the storm above, his expression carved in stone, as the chaos he had birthed consumed the battlefield.
“Rally all you want.. this moutain will become your tomb.. shi dogs.”
He said to himself, a wicked smirk splitting through his mug of fury. In this moment, he could feel his father's ambition—his blood boiling in his veins, possessed this moment and this moment and alone. This is what he was born for, what his father saw so clearly in Iwa.. The power to rule. Kaito looked at his hand, coiled in a fist of electrical power. He would make his father proud.
"Our time has come."
—--
Zeroken felt sweat collected beneath the plates of his armor. Witnessing Jao summon his Serpent's of shadow and metal caused him to shift his stance.. but by then it was too late. Jao's body flickered, vanished, and reappeared in blinding bursts of motion. Zeroken used his unarmed hand guard against his initial kick, and postured himself to counter with his gauntlet—a deadly uppercut that would decapitate Shi youngling in a single blow.
But then, the serpents struck next, slamming into Zeroken’s torso with crushing force. The assault sent his body crashing through the stone of the palace as if it were paper. The ceiling split, raining dust and fractured marble as Zeroken’s was hurled into the upper chambers of the Owaki palace.
Silence hung for only a moment before heavy footsteps resonated above. And then, Zeroken emerged at the ledge, breathing calmly, his body unmarred.
“How many Shi had to die for this?” He smiled, before he chuckled beneath his helm at the naivety of a child—a deep, scornful sound.
“Do you count the grains of rice in your bowl, boy? Do you mourn the ones that fall to the floor?”
The words were tailored poison, laced upon a serrated blade. Zeroken's mouth watered watching Jao's rage rippled through his voice. And he drank in his pain like a fine wine.
But before Jao could answer, the shadows around him and Yang twisted to life. Three figures peeled themselves from the walls—liquid black bodies with tar-slick skin and limbs stretched far too long. Each of them wore Jao’s face, pulled tight like a grotesque mask and jaws splitting wide to reveal serrated fangs.
These were Voydkin Clones, enhanced versions developed by the Owaki Chair Of Engineering himself to lend the Head of their Clan the proper help he deserves.
They lunged, a blur of claws and teeth, forcing Jao and Yang into a tightening circle of CQC.
And above them, Zeroken raised his hand. The gauntlet strapped to his arm pulsating with a dreadful rhythm, veins of black lightning crackling along its length. He formed an Ava with his other hand, and the air shuddered with bolts of black arcing wildly about his Gauntlet. "The Hawk does not mourn the worm."
The team