Skybound Odyssey – Chapter 20: Omega Awakens
The ground quaked beneath Skyspire as deep rumbling echoed up from the ancient vaults.
Inside the throne room, Ryo clutched his head, staggering. White-hot stormlight flickered across his skin like cracking glass.
"Ryo!" Lyra grabbed his shoulders. "Talk to me—what's happening?"
But his voice was distant.
"There's something… inside the core. Something older than me."
The Emperor, now slumped against a column, laughed bitterly. "You thought you were the first? No, boy. You were just the test. Omega Stormheart was the perfection of our work."
Below the palace, the vault split wide.
From it rose a spherical chamber of floating skysteel. Its walls pulsed with eerie blue runes. Inside, suspended in a stormfield—was a figure.
Human-shaped. Genderless. Perfect.
White hair like vapor. Skin like polished metal veined with lightning. Eyes closed, but glowing faintly.
The prototype's designation burned across the chamber in bright crimson:
> OMEGA-00
The core of Skyspire's power. The true successor of Project Stormheart.
And now, awakened.
---
Meanwhile, in the skies...
Juno watched from the cockpit as tendrils of stormlight lanced out from the base of the Spire, wrapping around towers, dragging lightning inward.
"Uh, guys?" she said into the comms. "The city is absorbing the storm. That's not good. That's the opposite of good!"
Back in the rebel core chamber, Sena stared at the monitors. "The Empire didn't build Skyspire around a storm reactor," she whispered. "They built it around Omega."
Selena, clutching her side, nodded grimly. "He was meant to be the world's failsafe. If the Empire ever fell... Omega would rise."
Sena narrowed her eyes. "Then we'd better bring him down before he decides we're the problem."
---
In the Vault
Ryo descended alone. Lyra wanted to follow—but he shook his head.
"I have to face it myself."
She hesitated. "Don't forget who you are."
"I won't," he said. "But I need to find out... what I am."
The chamber opened like a flower of light.
Omega floated at its heart, eyes now fully open. He turned toward Ryo, as if he had been waiting.
"You are my prototype," Omega said. "The First Spark. I am the Final Storm."
Ryo raised his fists. "Then let's see whose storm is stronger."