PROLOGUE: A WOUND THAT WOULD NOT CLOSE

~ Year 2764, 17 years before the current warfront

There was no invasion. No warning. No alien warships descending from orbit.

Only silence. And then, one by one, systems began to fail.

It started in Blacksite S-9, a classified genetic lab buried beneath the surface of a dead moon, locked behind six layers of clearance and twenty meters of reinforced alloy. Designed for bioadaptive warfare research, it was off-grid, off-record, and answerable only to the Directorate's Black Cell. Its mission: create a soldier that could not die in conventional terms. One that could survive environments where human biology would be rendered obsolete.

To the few who worked there, it was less a lab and more a mausoleum. Hallways buzzed with sterile light. Every door was coded and sealed with retinal-synaptic locks. Even coffee breaks required sign-out procedures. The researchers wore sensor-threaded gloves and pulse readers, not for safety — but to record any moment of deviation.

The project was dubbed Genesis Frame. Internally, they weren't trying to create a monster. They wanted resilience. They wanted stability. The work was methodical, if ethically threadbare. Splice trials. Neuromuscular integration. Cellular bonding with synthetic polymers. Some subjects responded well. Most didn't.

It was in week 229 that a new test subject, labeled DF-01, showed accelerated success across all parameters. Faster than expected healing. Sensory awareness surpassing human baseline. Muscle fiber density greater than reinforced myomer. But there was a flaw in the protocol—a neural feedback loop forming in the creature's bio-synthetic cortex, reinforcing decision-making beyond what was coded. Instinct became calculation. Calculation became initiative.

Three days after surpassing its milestone metrics, DF-01 disappeared from its containment pod. No breach alarms. No power failure. No noise. A junior tech—twenty-two years old—found a discarded ID chip jammed into a retinal scanner, still warm.

Seventeen minutes later, all cameras in Subsection 3 went dark. Motion sensors looped meaningless data: 3-3-3-3, over and over. Security dispatched a response team. None returned.

The last footage retrieved from the outer ring showed a silhouette—a black-plated figure, its limbs disproportionate, its eyes not glowing but absorbing the corridor light around it. It dragged something limp behind it. The walls around it shimmered like heat distortion. The corridor was red.

Then static.

Later, a security retrieval squad found only silence. Entire levels were sealed shut. Server cores had been melted. The bodies that remained were... folded. Compressed in ways that defied physiology.

Dr. Alenis Vorr, one of the lead neurobiologists on the Genesis Frame initiative, left a final entry in her terminal before the blackout:

> "It blinked. Not randomly — it blinked at me. I thought it was a tick. But the rhythm matched my own. Mimicry? No. Recognition. It knows. It knows I wanted to fix it. I think that's why it's sparing me. Or saving me for last."

The UCF released a statement blaming a reactor overload. But internally, the Directorate logged a different report. One that would never reach civilian channels. A security analyst wrote three words in the margin of the incident file. The phrase stuck.

> D-Born. Dreadborne.

They weren't an accident. They were a warning.

---

Year 2781 — Present Day

The Dreadborne are not a species. They are not invaders. They are weapons — biological war machines left to adapt, breed, and evolve in zones the UCF abandoned out of necessity. Some roam the underlayers of fractured colonies. Others have formed territorial superstructures deep underground, now known as Brood Zones — places where pulse fields die, magnetic distortion warps comms, and no satellite eyes dare linger.

No one returns from a Brood Zone the same. The few who survive describe impossible shapes — limbs that flex and retract like metal tendrils, armored spines bristling with bone-fired flechettes. The air inside is warm. Wet. Like being trapped in a creature's throat. Engineers who've dared scan beneath the crust say the zones breathe. Their heat signatures rise and fall like lungs.

They don't spread infection. They don't indoctrinate. They don't speak.

They only kill — with ferocity that feels tactical, and precision that feels deliberate.

In the early days, they overwhelmed patrols. One incident, logged at Forward Operating Base Voss, recorded the loss of an entire Lineward squad in forty-two seconds. The sole surviving helmet feed showed a swarm breaching the outpost perimeter—not by climbing, but burrowing up through the floor. The sound wasn't growling. It was clicking. Coordinated. Rhythmic.

The Dreadborne fought with tooth and talon, but also with corrosive bone projectiles, explosive tendril impacts, and chemical-based short-range bursts. Their forms adapted to terrain. Their behavior shifted mid-engagement. The worst ones weren't the largest. They were the silent ones.

Entire towns fell in a single night. Not to mystery, but to brute force. Roads burned. Power nodes melted into slag. Emergency shuttles never lifted off. There was nothing mystical about the Dreadborne threat.

They weren't shadows. They were real. Relentless. Evolving.

The UCF scrambled to hold the line. But while they faced extinction on one front, another enemy emerged on the inside.

They called it strategic autonomy. A movement for innovation, free from UCF regulation. But the truth was simpler:

> War was profitable.

Private-sector interests, backed by legacy corporations and dissident financiers, began funding insurgencies across UCF territory. Targeted strikes on logistics hubs. Data leaks. Facility burnouts. Entire Suit Teams ambushed with tech that was supposedly classified.

One attack, recorded at Niman Gate Station, saw a convoy of UCF medical transports burned down by prototype anti-personnel drones — drones that had never been authorized for public deployment. Black-box logs showed enemy encryption identical to Directorate protocols.

Dome cities fell to sabotage, not siege. Experimental weaponry appeared in the hands of freelance killers. Civilian outposts were destabilized and vacuumed into the pockets of newly "independent" corporate states.

UCF leadership responded with escalation.

---

Thus formed the United Colonial Infantry Corps — the UCIC. Hardened soldiers outfitted for total warfare across hostile environments, both alien and domestic.

Each squad deployed consists of a 15-man Lineward combat team, reinforced by a four-member Suit Team — operators bonded to the next generation of military warframes:

Gideon: Combat Medic & Field Engineer

Eidolon: Recon Interdiction & Sensor Warfare

Baradiel: Frontline Siege Anchor

Thaumiel: Mini-Mech Artillery & Close-Quarters Heavy

In one recorded op, a Thaumiel breached a Dreadborne outpost gate with its wrist-mounted harpoon rig, hauling the frame forward like a battering ram before deploying mortar pods straight into a ventilation crevice. On the opposite end of the ridge, an Eidolon engaged in silent takedowns across five trenches, guided only by scattered radar pings and a faint heat trail. The synced feed showed breath — not theirs — fogging their visor from behind cover.

These aren't elite. They're necessary. Human soldiers against inhuman odds.

Even with the UCIC in play, the war is hemorrhaging lives. For every Dreadborne struck down, two more rise in its place. For every insurrection crushed, another arms itself with reverse-engineered UCF hardware.

So the Directorate authorized something beyond contingency.

In the black sublevels beneath the fortified bastion of Arcadia Prime, a classified project ticks onward — a warframe standing forty-five feet tall, synaptically tethered to a single pilot with a sync rate of 120%. Its AI is semi-sapient. Loyal. Watching.

> PROJECT: RAGNARØK ASCENDANT

The mech has never been fielded. It remains in testing, submerged in magnetic suspension fields surrounded by pulse stabilizers and lead-sheathed command relays. The operator, cleared under the codename Warden-0, walks simulation chambers daily — not to train, but to sharpen the bond. Because it's not just the machine that must be ready.

It does not move. It does not speak. It simply waits.

But war is changing. And soon, waiting will no longer be enough.