When Steel Meets Flame

The battlefield burned beneath a scarlet sky. Craters pulsed with heat as plasma blasts stitched the ground, turning broken asphalt into boiling lava.

From a jagged ledge above the chaos, Kael and Sira watched in silence.

Neil—bloodied, knife in hand—moved like a ghost between seven Red Soldiers. No armor. No enhancements. Just instinct, motion, and sheer refusal to die.

Sira's eyes narrowed. "How is he progressing this fast?"

Her voice held no awe—only calculation.

Kael smirked, just one side of his face lifting. "Maybe... he's the one. But he doesn't know what he is yet."

Sira sliced through the throat of a Red Soldier that had lunged at them, her blade humming through the air like whispered death. She didn't look back.

"That would make us the side characters," she muttered.

Kael didn't answer. Instead, he vaulted down, dodging a plasma shot with inhuman precision, and decapitated another Red Soldier mid-spin.

---

Above it all, hidden beyond the crags of the blackened mountains, a Torvok dreadnought hovered like a silent god. Its presence cloaked in cloud and night, it pulsed with eerie bioluminescence—alive in ways the humans could never understand.

Within its shadowed command chamber, Khoraz watched the battle unfold through a flickering holo-feed projected from the patrol ship's dying cameras.

Behind him, the chamber doors hissed open. Rilvaar, his obsidian armor streaked with frost from re-entry, stepped forward. His posture was relaxed—too relaxed.

"They're fragile," Rilvaar said. "Barely tactical. Our Red Soldiers are wasting time. This isn't war—it's cleanup."

Khoraz didn't respond immediately. Instead, he replayed a single loop of footage—Neil evading a plasma blast by inches, flipping over molten rock, driving his knife into a Red Soldier's throat, and using the falling body as a shield.

"Watch," Khoraz said, voice as cold as the void. "Again."

Rilvaar frowned, arms folding. The clip repeated. This time slower. Neil's eyes gleamed. There was precision in his chaos. Awareness beyond instinct.

Rilvaar scoffed, but quieter now. "One anomaly doesn't shift the outcome."

Khoraz finally turned, locking eyes with him. "That wasn't a warship down there, Rilvaar. That was a scout. A single patrol."

Rilvaar's arrogance cracked slightly.

"You think this is... what? Evolution?"

Khoraz's voice darkened. "I think... he's waking up. And I think when he does, this planet won't belong to the Torvok. Or the Rakshasa. Or anything we know."

Outside, the dreadnought's hull hummed with ancient engines. Far below, Neil and the Red Soldiers danced in death's rhythm.

And somewhere deep inside that boy—something ancient stirred.

---

---

Khoraz's gaze lingered on the flickering image of Neil, who now stood amid the burning wreckage—surrounded by ash, corpses, and the sizzling remains of plasma.

He turned to Rilvaar, voice sharp and deliberate.

"We must report this to Him. Immediately."

Rilvaar didn't flinch. His jaw tightened, eyes burning with something colder than defiance.

"Not yet. Let me test him—just once."

Khoraz stared at him, silent. The space between them pulsed with unspoken tension. The command chamber grew quieter, the hum of distant systems dimming as if the ship itself was listening.

Then Khoraz nodded, once. Not in agreement—but in acknowledgment.

He knew what Rilvaar was. What he was becoming.

Rilvaar's lips curled into a crooked, unsettling grin. He turned and strode from the chamber, his silhouette elongating as he entered the drop corridor. The walls lit crimson as the launch doors peeled open. In a heartbeat, Rilvaar was gone—a blur streaking toward Earth's battlefield like a blade unsheathed.

Khoraz exhaled slowly and turned to the forward viewport. Far beyond the mountain range, past the clouds and burning cities, a massive asteroid-like object hovered silently in low orbit—its surface carved with shifting alien glyphs, its heart pulsing like a sleeping god.

The dreadnought turned and began its ascent, engines rumbling like thunder. Khoraz stared ahead, lips tightening.

"If he is the one… we're already late."

Meanwhile, in freefall, Rilvaar's armor darkened—shifting, warping, almost alive. A new edge twisted into his features. No longer just a soldier. No longer bound by orders. Something older. Darker.

And in his descent, Earth gained a new predator.

---

On the scorched ground below, Neil danced through fire.

Plasma blasts laced the air, hissing inches from his skin. The ground was molten in patches, a shifting battlefield of death. But Neil moved—not with grace, but with terrifying efficiency.

He ducked low, stabbing a Red Soldier in the gut, then hurled the dying body into another attacker. A second blast followed—Neil rolled, dodged, and lunged upward. His knife sank into the shoulder of a third. Grabbing the armored body, he spun, using it as a shield—

Boom.

A plasma bolt struck the Red Soldier square in the back. The man turned to ash in Neil's grip. The raw power stunned him for half a heartbeat.

So that's how strong they are...

Neil didn't pause. He snatched a jagged stone from the molten edge of a crater and hurled it with pinpoint precision.

The rock pierced through a Red Soldier's helmet. The enemy collapsed instantly, dead before he hit the ground.

Another blast. Neil jumped. Rolled behind a shattered slab of concrete as gunfire echoed from a squad of surviving human soldiers.

The Red Soldiers turned to respond—too late.

Neil was already behind them.

One head rolled.

A knife plunged into another's chest—twisted deep.

The last Red Soldier turned, finger tightening on his trigger.

A blur of motion—steel sang.

Sira landed beside Neil, her blade finishing the thought.

The Red Soldier fell in two perfect halves.

Neil looked up, breathless. Their eyes met—hers like twin voids, calm in chaos. His, alight with a fire he didn't understand.

In that gaze, he heard something—his own voice, whispering within:

Who are they? And who... what... am I becoming?

--

Ash choked the air.

Three human soldiers lay lifeless, their armor scorched. Two more crawled behind shattered concrete, bleeding, one barely able to lift his comm device, whispering for backup.

A burnt-out truck smoldered nearby—its five volunteer occupants now just names that would be added to a growing list of losses.

Neil sat amidst the wreckage, knife limp in his hand, its glow extinguished. His chest heaved with rapid breaths. Dust and blood streaked his face. He was exposed. Alive. But shaken.

Kael stepped forward, offering a hand.

Neil stared at it, hesitant—uncertain if he had earned the gesture, or feared what it meant. Before he could answer, Sira walked past, scanning the horizon.

"When did you awaken the powers?" she asked, her tone flat but her gaze sharp.

Neil blinked. "What?" The question caught him off guard.

Kael chuckled softly. "Don't want the hand, huh?" he said, smirking.

Neil finally reached up. Their palms met, and Kael pulled him to his feet.

"There are probably a dozen questions racing through your head," Kael said. "We had them too. The Reflectors… we can read them, like you. And we have abilities, enhanced instincts, speed. But even we don't understand all of it."

Sira turned, voice more level now. "Before this, I was just a competitive fencer. Kael was in reconnaissance. The black box didn't gift us power—it just unlocked what was already honed to the edge of human potential."

Neil wiped the blood from his lip. "I wasn't trained. I… I'm just a software engineer. I've never even been in a fight."

Kael glanced at him, quiet for a moment. His inner voice stirred with curiosity—and caution.

"A man with no combat training just danced through plasma fire and moved like he was born with a blade. That wasn't training. That wasn't instinct. That was something else entirely. The black box didn't just enhance him—it rewrote something in him. Bent the rules. Or maybe… he was never playing by them to begin with."

Kael said nothing aloud. But as he looked at Neil—bloodied, breathless, yet still standing—he felt it.

This wasn't evolution. It was emergence.

--

A plasma-scorched soldier, crawling for breath, cried out—only to be silenced mid-sentence as a single slash cleaved him in two. His body collapsed in silence, one half twitching, the other already lifeless.

Jay stared upward, eyes fixed on the skeletal remains of a fallen building. Smoke curled around its broken spires.

And then he saw it.

A figure—nine feet tall—stepped out from the haze. Broad shoulders. Green-hued skin. Humanoid, but far from human. No mask. No fear. Surrounded by hundreds of Red Soldiers, maybe more.

The creature's gaze cut straight through the chaos and locked onto Neil.

Kael's expression tightened. His eyes followed Jay's stare and froze on the towering figure.

Sira stood near the bisected body of the Red Soldier, blood still spreading like a slow curse across the dirt. Her eyes narrowed as she noticed something impossible: glowing words seared into the blood itself.

> "RILVEER : FEARLESS"

"CLASS: MONSTER — L2"

She whispered, more to herself than anyone else: "Rilveer… a monster."

Kael exhaled sharply. "So, he's their commander."

A voice rumbled across the battlefield—calm, deep, and cutting like a cold wind.

"No. I'm just… above them."

They heard it—not in their ears, but in their bones. For the first time, they heard the voice of something not human. Not even close.

Neil turned to the others, eyes wide. "That voice… could it be because of the Black Box?"

Kael didn't answer. But Sira's grip tightened around her blade.

Something ancient had stepped into their war. And it knew them.