The dive chamber reeked of salt and electricity, nothing like the crisp mountain air Micah knew from the Ashari peaks or the rich, loamy smell of Thornkin forests.
Down here in Myrvane territory, everything felt like it was closing in on you—a constant reminder that home was a hell of a long way off.
Captain Marella Seaborn looked like she'd stepped out of a nightmare, wrapped in that midnight-black armor that kept dripping seawater onto the metal grating beneath her boots. The Sorrowhelm Aegis wasn't just gear—it was a statement.
Built for the worst kind of combat zones, all dark metal and those eerie glowing lines that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Watching Marella move in it was something else. She didn't just wear the suit; she was the suit, every gesture sharp and controlled, radiating the kind of quiet authority that made you pay attention.
Micah fiddled with his pressure adapter, feeling the Thornkin sap vial pulse warm against his chest—a little piece of home tucked inside all this alien tech. Lio kept obsessing over his scanner readings, that nervous energy of his fighting against the sterile formality that seemed baked into everything Myrvane.
Kaelin was already deep in soldier mode, running through his gear checks with that grim focus he got before things went sideways.
They'd been through enough together to trust each other, but that didn't make this any easier.
"Twilight Rifts," Marella's voice crackled through the comm, flat and matter-of-fact. "Unstable trench. Active Omniraith forge. The artifact's down there." She had a way of cutting straight to the bone—no drama, no wasted words.
She didn't bring up Omnicide or those stolen blueprints or that damn 'steelborn' label that kept eating at Micah's brain.
The mission was simple enough: get in, grab the hybrid artifact, get out. This wasn't about payback. This was about salvaging whatever future they had left. For Marella, though, Micah could tell it was personal—her sister Talis, her people, this whole bloody war. She needed this to end.
They climbed into the little Myrvane sub, and it was weird as hell—the thing felt alive under their hands, all bio-metal curves and surfaces that seemed to pulse with their own rhythm.
The hatch sealed with this soft sigh, and Micah felt his ears pop as the pressure evened out. As they started dropping, the lights from Vael'Tor—the Myrvane capital carved right into the rift walls—got smaller and smaller until there was nothing but black water pressing in from all sides.
The whole descent had everyone on edge, just the sub's quiet hum, their own breathing loud in their helmets, and these strange sounds the comms kept picking up. Some of it sounded ancient, haunting. The rest had that metallic screech that made your skin crawl—Omniraith tech, no doubt about it.
Marella handled the controls like she was born to it, even with all that bulky armor weighing her down. She was the rock holding this whole operation together, completely in her element down here where the pressure could crush you in a heartbeat.
It was like she fed off the hostile environment, her focus laser-sharp.
Watching her, Micah recognized something familiar—that Ashari way of shoving all the messy emotions into a box so you could get the job done.
But underneath all that military discipline, he could see the real person.
This wasn't just another mission for her. This was personal, like diving straight into her own nightmare.
Outside the viewports, it was a hellscape of crushing darkness broken up by patches of glowing sea life and rock formations that looked like they'd been twisted by some mad god.
Welcome to the Twilight Rifts, where the ocean floor buckled under pressure that could pancake a building.
The sub ghosted through the water, running silent with passive sonar and every stealth system they had. They were threading the needle between vicious currents and razor-sharp trenches, and everyone knew the stakes.
Omniraith probes were scattered all over this place like deadly seeds. Get spotted, and it was game over.
Then the sub jerked sideways—not like they'd hit something, but like a wave of pure wrong had just rolled through the water around them. Lio's scanner lit up red and started screaming. "Energy spike!" His voice cracked with tension. "That's definitely forge signature, and it's close."
Marella just nodded, eyes glued to the sonar readout. "Dropping countermeasures. Get ready to move."
The sub nestled up against some jagged rocks, and part of the hull just melted away, opening up to that crushing void outside. The water here felt thick and wrong, buzzing with an energy that made your teeth ache.
They pushed out of the sub one by one, their pressure suits the only thing standing between them and instant, messy death. Marella took point, and somehow that massive Sorrowhelm armor moved like it was weightless, every step perfectly calculated.
The Omniraith forge sprawled out in front of them like something out of a fever dream, clawing its way up from the trench floor.
his wasn't the sleek, polished tech you'd see from the Ashari—this was a nightmare of twisted bio-metal, melted rock, and what looked like corrupted coral all mashed together.
Smooth metallic sections bled into these grotesque, stone-like growths that pulsed with sickly light from the inside. The whole place reeked of violation, like they were taking living things and turning them into something obscene.
his was ground zero for the Omniraith's new army, where they were using those stolen blueprints to build god-knows-what.
They picked their way through the wreckage, the only sounds the faint hum of machinery still running and the crunch of corrupted debris under their boots. Lio swept the area with his scanner, hunting for the artifact's signature.
"There," he whispered, pointing toward the central hub—this churning mass of bio-matter and metal tubes. "Got the artifact's signature. Looks like it's embedded... maybe partially integrated."
Micah felt something weird pulse through his own gear, a vibration that didn't feel like Ashari tech at all. It was more like that echo he'd picked up in the Hollow under Ironroot Grove.
His eyes got drawn to this section of the forge wall where a chunk of corrupted matter was embedded—unnaturally dark and smooth, almost like black glass.
As he got closer, the pulse got stronger, thrumming through him in a way that bypassed his ears and went straight to something deeper.
It wasn't hostile like the usual Omniraith data-screech. This felt... familiar. Like it knew him.
He reached out with a gloved hand, not quite touching the shard but hovering just close enough. The pulse flared up, and suddenly he was seeing things—a holographic overlay that wasn't showing him the forge, but the artifact's blueprint, all shimmering with complex data streams.
And right there, woven into the pattern clear as day, was his own DNA signature. That voice from the Hollow came back to him: "You were not made to destroy. You were shaped to choose." It all clicked into place—what Lio had been suspecting about that prototype from Gamma-Prime.
It was a bridge node, designed to interface with something.
Or someone. And that someone was him, the "steelborn." The realization hit him like a punch to the gut, but there was no time to wrap his head around it.
"Ambush!" Kaelin's voice crackled through the comms, sharp and urgent.
The forge groaned and shook. Its defenses kicked in, spitting out those twisted hydroforms from the corrupted metal and coral.
The things were nasty—constantly shifting, made from whatever corrupted materials this place could scrape together. Waves of the liquid nightmares came rushing at them.
"Go! Get the artifact!" Marella shouted, stepping up to face them head-on. The way she stood there said everything—nothing was getting past her.
This was her moment. All that grief, all that pain she'd been carrying? It was fuel now.
The Sorrowhelm Aegis roared to life around her. Marella wasn't about firing bullets or energy blasts—her weapon was pure Myrvane tech.
She twisted water pressure into crushing fields that turned hydroforms into twisted scrap with awful crunching sounds.
The sonic emitters in her armor screamed focused bursts that shattered swarms like they were made of glass.
Down here in the crushing deep, she moved like death itself—brutal, beautiful, unstoppable.
A big Warden-class drone broke through, heading straight for Lio and Kaelin while they worked frantically at the central hub.
Marella cut it off. She fired her pressure-burst thrusters, shooting through the water past the Warden's reaching tendrils.
Got in close, grabbed the drone's core with her armored hands, and just ripped the thing out. Clean. Fast. Devastating.
It was exactly how Talis used to do it.
For a split second, she was back in shallow, sunlit water—so different from this crushing darkness—laughing with her sister, running through combat drills.
Talis, never scared of anything, showing off the core rip technique. "Break their heart, Marella. Not for revenge. For survival."
That was it. Survival. Not payback. Every move Marella made, every crushing blow she delivered, came from that memory, that lesson.
Her grief wasn't eating her alive anymore—it was her armor, her weapon. She wasn't here for glory or to settle scores.
She was here to stop this nightmare from spreading, to make sure there could be something better built from all the sacrifices that had already been made.
While Marella held the line, Lio and Kaelin worked like their lives depended on it at the central hub. Lio's hands danced over the holographic controls, breaking through Omniraith security.
Kaelin watched his back, pulse rifle barking controlled bursts, every movement sharp and ready.
"Got it!" Lio's voice crackled through the comms. He lifted the artifact—some weird, complex thing that seemed to glow from the inside, half-buried in some kind of regeneration casing.
"Forge core overload!" Marella yelled back. She triggered something that made the forge's power source go haywire, giving them a narrow window to get out. The whole structure started groaning and twisting in on itself.
"Move! Now!" Micah was already pulling Kaelin back.
They ran, Marella covering their escape, her Aegis taking hits that would have turned their regular suits into scrap metal.
The ground bucked under them, broken energy lines spraying corrupted light into the water. The forge was dying, and it was taking all its horrible creations with it.
They made it to the submersible, diving inside as everything collapsed behind them. The hatch slammed shut. The sub shot upward, leaving the forge's ruins and those twisted hydroforms far below.
The trip back to Vael'Tor was quiet except for their heavy breathing. Exhaustion had settled deep into their bones.
Marella piloted with her usual steady control, but you could see the tension in her shoulders even through all that armor.