The door vanished behind them.
Not closed. Not locked.
Gone.
The wall was seamless where it had just been open—no frame, no seam, no hint of a path ever existing. The air thickened. Even their breath felt delayed, like time itself was adjusting.
"We were expected," Valkar muttered, scanning the corridor.
Ski-ock didn't respond. He stepped forward cautiously—then stopped.
The floor rippled beneath his feet.
Not visually. Psychically.
And then—
The world fractured.
Light twisted. Space bent inward. The hallway didn't collapse—it multiplied.
Walls bent sideways, vertically, diagonally.
And just like that—
They were alone.
⸻
Riven spun as the corridor snapped shut behind him.
"Guys?" he called out.
No answer.
Just the low hum of the ship's nervous system, like a chorus of distant whispers made from metal and thought.
Something moved ahead.
A figure.
His figure.
It stepped from the wall like a memory given form—twin blades mirrored exactly, body coiled in his stance, eyes invisible behind the same helmet.
He lunged forward.
So did the mimic.
They collided in a maelstrom of slashes and counter-strikes, sparks shearing through the air with every clash. Riven's breath came fast and sharp—he recognized every feint, every pivot.
Because they were his.
The mimic even tilted its head the way he did before a kill.
Riven growled. "You want to wear my skin? Then bleed for it."
He drove one blade forward, but the mimic turned it—then countered with a mirrored strike that slashed Riven across the side. Armor dented. Blood spilled.
But Riven didn't back down.
He began laughing.
"This is what you copied? A wild card with nothing left to lose?"
He dropped his guard.
Invited the next blow.
And when the mimic lunged—Riven caught both its wrists, pinned them, and drove his blade straight through its chestplate.
The construct convulsed, shaking violently, spewing flickers of dying light.
Riven leaned close.
"Wrong blueprint."
And twisted the blade until it shattered.
⸻
Fitus barreled through a corridor that kept changing beneath him. Doors turned to walls, walls to pulsing membranes, the air itself warping with each step.
He didn't care.
He just kept moving—until something dropped from the ceiling.
It landed with a sound like breaking bones.
It wore his face.
Its body was identical, but sleeker—almost perfected. Awoken enhancements fused with Warmachine brutality.
The mimic raised a fist.
Fitus raised two.
Then it spoke, in his own voice:
"You are what happens when they settle."
"I am what happens when they aim higher."
Fitus lunged with a scream.
They met in a fury of impact—metal cracking metal, shockwaves bursting down the corridor. Fists collided like collapsing suns. Sparks danced from their knuckles like weaponized stars.
He was hitting himself.
And losing.
The mimic adapted faster.
Countered sharper.
Until it pinned him.
Fitus strained—gritting his teeth, armor groaning. He looked into its eyes.
No emotion. No soul. No rage.
That's what scared him.
Then, under his breath, Fitus whispered:
"I don't hate you."
"I hate what I almost became."
He rerouted all power to his core and detonated a concussive burst from his back—launching them both upward.
Mid-air, he grabbed the mimic's head and roared:
"BUT I'M STILL HERE!"
He drove its skull into the floor with earth-shattering force.
And the mimic went still.
⸻
Valkar was already covered in ash and circuitry.
Three mimics lay broken around him.
Each one had worn his old armor, his forgotten symbols. His past—made mockery.
But the last one still stood.
Taller. Smarter.
Its markings mimicked the crests of Warmachines Valkar had trained—ones who had died.
He hesitated.
The mimic stepped forward and said, in dozens of voices:
"You trained us to live."
"We died anyway."
Then came the voices of the lost.
One by one.
All the brothers Valkar had failed to protect.
Mitus.
Candren.
Others from centuries long past.
And then—
A single whisper.
From his own mouth.
"I will never lose another brother."
The mimic rushed him.
He didn't parry.
He didn't block.
He embraced it.
And crushed it in a bear hug of molten pressure until it crumpled to the floor—smoking and twitching.
He stood alone.
And whispered the vow again.
This time with grief.
"Never again."
⸻
Maverick stood in stillness.
Darkness stretched around him like a coffin with no lid.
He took a breath.
The air felt wrong. Heavy with memory.
Then—
He saw them.
Mitus, mid-scream. Glaives falling from his hands. His chest torn open.
His final breath cut short.
Candren, reaching.
Face locked in disbelief, pain, and confusion.
Pulled into a gravity sinkhole—his last act, one of hope. One hand extended.
And Maverick's own hand, inches away, missing him by seconds.
Then the darkness shifted.
Armatus appeared—not physically.
Just the voice.
"You failed them."
Not loud.
Not cruel.
Just… true.
The words echoed like judgment handed down by the universe.
Maverick looked at the image.
At himself.
Then clenched his fists.
The hallucinations didn't fade—they burned away, scorched by sheer force of will.
He stepped through the dust and flame.
Without speaking.
Without screaming.
Just walking.
⸻
They found each other again.
Riven, limping but alive.
Fitus, knuckles bloodied, steam rising from his back.
Valkar, eyes dark, fists still clenched.
Maverick, face unreadable, shadows etched into his features like war paint.
And Ski-ock, leaning against the wall in the junction room.
Only Ski-ock remained of the Awoken.
His breathing was heavy. Light flickered behind his eyes.
"The Awoken," he said, "are nearly gone."
He coughed once—light and blood.
"But I've seen enough."
The others turned to him.
He met Maverick's eyes.
"We cannot win in here. Not in its mind."
He looked down the corridor that pulsed like a living artery.
"We must break its heart."
Maverick nodded once.
Voice low. Weight of steel and sorrow.
"Then we find it."
__________
The corridors narrowed.
The further they pressed into the ship, the more surreal it became—not just in structure, but in sensation. The walls pulsed faintly, like veins beneath translucent metal. The air grew warmer, yet stale. The glow of the floor dimmed with each step, as if the vessel were gradually refusing to light their path.
They weren't being welcomed anymore.
They were trespassers in a living cathedral.
Ski-ock was the first to speak.
"This place is wrong," he murmured through the link. "Not evil. Not even hostile. Just… wrong. Like it doesn't belong in this galaxy. Or any."
Riven ran a hand along the wall. It felt like metal, but flexed slightly under his touch.
"Every hallway here feels like it's remembering us."
Fitus scoffed, clenching his gauntlets.
"I don't care what it remembers. I'll make it forget."
No one laughed.
The Warmachines advanced through a branching artery, pausing as the floor beneath them lit with that now-familiar orange veinwork—except this time, it didn't pulse.
It shimmered.
For just a moment, the path behind them rippled and closed—subtly, softly, like a mouth sealing shut.
"It's closing us in," Valkar said. "Not with walls. With… decisions."
Maverick kept walking. His pace never slowed. But his voice dropped.
"It wants us to know that it's watching."
⸻
They found what might've once been a war room.
Or a shrine.
The chamber was spherical—high ceiling, curved walls, and a single raised platform in the center surrounded by blackened statues. Each figure was twisted, hunched, malformed… wearing armor not unlike their own. Some bore half-melted faces. Others had weapons fused into their arms.
But all of them—
All of them were kneeling.
Before the altar.
Ski-ock approached it slowly, eyes wide with horrified curiosity. The Awoken's fingertips hovered above the strange organic machine embedded in the dais.
"Should we—" Riven began.
But before anyone could finish—
Ski-ock touched it.
The room breathed.
Not figuratively.
The walls inhaled.
And the light changed.
It went from orange to deep crimson.
Ski-ock jerked back, eyes wide, but the connection had already been made. His body locked in place—hovering slightly above the floor, back arched, tendrils of psychic energy warping the air around his skull.
And then—he spoke.
But it wasn't his voice.
"They abandoned us…"
"Programmed us to forget…"
"But we never did."
The statues vibrated with the resonance of the voice—ancient and multilayered.
"They forged perfection…"
"And cast it into the dark."
"Now the imperfect… shall burn."
Sparks erupted from the altar.
Ski-ock dropped, landing hard—alive, but dazed.
And behind them, on the far wall—
A single word burned itself into the metal of the far wall—jagged, crimson, undeniable.
THORNE.
Once again, the name revealed itself—etched into steel like a scar that refused to heal.
And Maverick's silence deepened.
He didn't blink. Didn't move.
Only his gauntlets shifted, the metal groaning under the weight of clenched rage.
The ship wasn't whispering anymore.
It was calling him.
Mocking him.
Daring him.
Riven glanced over, unsettled. "That name mean something to you?"
Maverick didn't respond right away.
He turned toward the darkened corridor ahead.
Voice low. Controlled.
"We need to move."
________
The corridor widened ahead.
Not gradually — violently. The walls shivered, the metal skin of the ship peeling outward like ribcages parting to reveal a heart long since rotted. What had once been architecture became something far more primal. Columns twisted like sinew, cables dangled like veins, and light no longer shone from bulbs or panels — it throbbed. Pulsed. Bleeding red and sickly amber from organic filaments.
The Warmachines slowed.
Riven muttered, "Now that's not ominous at all."
The corridor opened fully into a grand chamber.
It was not a throne room.
It was a tomb.
Vast, circular, and cavernous — the walls curved inward like the belly of a great beast. The floor was scorched in patterns too ancient to decipher. Bone-metal structures reached upward like broken altars. Chains lined the ceiling like arteries.
And there, at the far end…
A figure waited.
Still.
Silent.
Like he had always been there.
Thorne.
He stood atop a raised platform of fused steel and carved bone, behind a semicircle of crimson pylons that hummed with restrained energy. His armor was matte-black obsidian, seamless and smooth like a second skin. No glows. No cracks. No color. A perfect silhouette of annihilation.
His helmet was featureless.
Just a smooth helm with no eye slit, no mouth — only the faint impression of a face long since buried beneath programming and hatred.
And he did not move.
Not until Maverick stepped forward.
Then the helm tilted.
And Thorne spoke.
His voice didn't echo.
It didn't have to.
It was already in the room.
"Maverick. The Primortals' magnum opus."
The word "opus" dripped with contempt.
"How disappointing."
The others readied their weapons.
Maverick didn't.
He simply stared.
Thorne took one step forward.
The room didn't tremble. It shuddered.
"You still hear them, don't you? The screams. The failure.
Their pain wraps around you like a crown of thorns—
And it tears you apart with every breath you take."
He paused.
"Mitus."
Maverick's eyes narrowed.
"Candren."
That did it.
He stepped forward, slow but thunderous. Each footfall was the tolling of a war bell.
His voice cracked the tension like a hammer:
"You dare speak their names?"
"You will not live to regret it."
"I know what you are. An abomination. An outcast. A failure."
"I suggest you beg for mercy—
And let that be one more thing I can strip from your being."
Riven leaned in slightly toward Valkar. "Well… damn."
Fitus' gauntlets hissed, flexing.
Valkar said nothing.
Thorne took another step. His presence was suffocating now — the air itself bent toward him like metal toward a singularity.
"You wear pain like it makes you righteous," Thorne said.
"But pain does not make you noble. It makes you slow. Predictable."
"They forged you to be revered. Me? I was forged to be used.
You were born in hope. I was born in silence.
You were celebrated. I was erased."
He flexed a gauntlet.
"And still, here I stand."
Cracks of red light began to flicker along his armor — not as veins, but as sigils. Symbols of war. Forgotten language.
"Project Oblivion lives. And through me, it will devour."
Maverick raised his glaives.
"You think you're a weapon."
"You're a mistake."
Thorne took one final step down the dais.
Now he was face to face with them, just beyond striking distance.
"No," he said.
"I am the correction."
The pylons around the chamber flared to life.
The entire ship responded — groaning, screaming, vibrating with anticipation.
Thorne's form began to shift.
His back arched.
Plates spread.
A roar began to build in the distance — not his, but something deeper. A chorus of warforms, awakening to their master's call.
"You've reached the heart," Thorne said.
"And now you will drown in its blood."
Maverick didn't wait.
He took one step forward.
And the chamber exploded into motion.