The Dominion-Xel’Thir War: The Road to Seraph

Phase One: The First Breach – Breaking the Hive's Outer Perimeter

The Xel'Thir frontier was a fortress of hiveworlds, each planet pulsing with psionic energy, acting as massive neural relays for the Hive's collective intelligence.

Destroying them meant more than a tactical victory.

It meant severing the Hive's ability to think.

First Target: Tykros-7

A world bathed in crimson twilight, its atmosphere thick with the haze of industry.

Tykros-7 was a psionic industrial hub, a place where the Hive birthed its living war-drones and starships, crafting nightmares from flesh and machine.

Vale stood on the command deck of the ISS Judicator, his silver eyes locked on the holographic war map before him.

"Status report," Vale ordered, his voice calm, absolute.

"Nyx-1 warheads are primed," Admiral Serrano responded, her posture rigid. "Orbital bombardment ready on your command."

"And their psionic relays?"

Aegis' voice echoed through his neural link.

"Still active. Xel'Thir forces remain in full synchronization."

Vale's gaze darkened. "Not for long."

The Assault on Tykros-7

The order was given.

The sky above Tykros-7 split apart as the first Nyx-1 warheads descended, their organic-polymer hybrid warheads burrowing into the planet's surface before detonating with pure kinetic devastation.

The first psionic node collapsed.

Xel'Thir warships lurched in confusion, their collective mind flickering from the disruption. The Hive reeled, its once-perfect coordination fractured.

"Drop the Legions."

The Blacklight shock troopers descended from the void.

The landing zones were chaos. Hiveborn constructs shrieked, their twisted biomechanical limbs thrashing as they fought to reconnect to their psionic network. They were strong—but disoriented.

Vale himself led the charge.

His Blacklight-Class Tactical Combat Armor hummed with power, the sigils engraved into his gauntlets glowing as they disrupted the Hive's psionic energy.

A Xel'Thir warform—a towering, multi-limbed monstrosity—lunged at him, its flesh pulsing with raw psionic energy.

"You should have stayed in the dark," Vale muttered.

He thrust his hand forward, the sigils igniting. A pulse of mystic force erupted, collapsing the creature's psionic field.

Its body convulsed, its once-synchronized mind breaking apart into chaos.

One by one, the Xel'Thir drones collapsed. Their overlords fell.

Tykros-7 was burning.

And the first piece of the Hive's mind was shattered.

Next Target: Vorrak-Tal

The moment Tykros-7 fell, the Dominion did not stop.

The Blacklight fleets surged toward Vorrak-Tal—a biofoundry world, where the Hive did not simply manufacture soldiers…

It bred them.

Here, Xel'Thir warforms were spawned, genetically refined and linked to the Hive's psionic network.

Destroying Vorrak-Tal meant cutting off their reinforcements.

But Vale had a better plan.

The War of Minds

Vale did not want to destroy Vorrak-Tal.

He wanted to turn it.

Using mystic sigils and Dominion cyberwarfare, Vale introduced the first stage of the Override Protocol.

"Deploy the sigils," Vale commanded.

Across the battlefield, his specialists carved mystic glyphs into the planet's surface—each one pulsing with energy, corrupting the Xel'Thir's psionic web.

The Hive screamed.

The Xel'Thir's own warforms staggered, their minds splintering as their connection to the Hive shifted.

And then, they turned.

The first Xel'Thir drones began attacking their own forces.

The Hive tried to resist, tried to override Vale's influence—but it was too late.

Aegis' voice whispered in Vale's mind.

"Their network is collapsing. The Hive is no longer one mind."

Vale exhaled slowly.

"Then we push forward."

The Fall of Vorrak-Tal

The Xel'Thir fought like animals—because that was all they had left.

The once perfectly synchronized warforms descended into chaos, their fractured psionic link turning the Hive against itself.

Some tried to flee.

Some tried to fight.

None survived.

"Vorrak-Tal is ours," Admiral Serrano reported. "Their breeding vats are being decommissioned."

Vale stood at the edge of the ruined battlefield, watching as the last Hive structures collapsed into dust.

This was not just a victory.

It was the first step toward Seraph.

The Hive Begins to Fracture

With Tykros-7 and Vorrak-Tal gone, the outer ring of the Xel'Thir Empire had collapsed.

The Hive was no longer infinite.

It was no longer absolute.

It could bleed.

And that meant it could die.

Vale turned, his silver eyes gleaming.

"Prepare for the next phase."

Aegis' voice responded.

"We continue?"

Vale's expression was unreadable.

"No, Aegis."

"We finish what we started."

The war was far from over.

But the road to Seraph had begun.

And Nathan Vale would see it through.