"Cut the scribes, and the record bleeds. But if you want to end the story — you have to face the authors."
—Rain, Echo Herald of Stormwatch
+33 Days After the Ashen Vault Defense
Location: Stormwatch – War Council Hall, Upper Tower
The firelight danced along the steel-plated walls. Maps lined the room, glowing with glyph-laced updates. Allied banners from Hollowpath, Steelpact, and the Sable Fangs swayed overhead.
Jag sat at the head of the table, armored, eyes sharpened by urgency. The scribes were dead, but the tremors hadn't stopped.
Ashra slammed a dagger down onto the stone.
"They're coming. No more proxies. No more rewrites. The Vultures are moving as themselves."
Rain confirmed it with a pulse-scan from the Echo Relay:
[ALERT – Entity Designation: VULTURE PRIME – 3 Presences Detected in Upper Layer]
• Vulture Prime: Aegrid the Binder of Silence
• Vulture Prime: Velna the Flame Editor
• Vulture Prime: Tharn of the Black Record
Verana stood. "We've seen pieces of them. Shadows, recordings, illusions. Never the real things."
Jag looked at them all.
"Then we're done playing defense."
[System Event Triggered – "The Vulture Reckoning"]
Objective: Confront the Three Vulture Primes
Location Branches:
• Aegrid – Frozen Silence in Hollowreach
• Velna – Embercathedral of Lost Fires
• Tharn – Citadel of Black Records
Each Prime must be engaged simultaneously or they will rewrite the battle state in real-time
Unique System Condition:
Player may only personally engage one Vulture Prime.
Others must be faced by allied commanders.
Jag's Decision – Battle Assignment
"I'll take Tharn. He's the core scribe. The archivist behind the erasure of my father's reign."
Rain nodded. "Then I'll handle Aegrid. Silence is my arena."
Ashra unsheathed her twin daggers. "I'll burn Velna's cathedral to the ground."
Verana activated the synchronized strike glyph.
[Initiating Multi-Front Assault – All Teams Locked]
Allied Support Assigned
• Hollowpath units aiding Rain
• Steelpact engineers with Ashra
• Sable Fang operatives shadowing Jag
Jag vs. Tharn – Citadel of Black Records
The Citadel stood at the edge of reality — a tower not built but written into existence. Its walls pulsed with rejected memories, forming a maze of "what never was."
Tharn waited at the peak.
Clad in obsidian robes, wielding a quill that left silence where it wrote.
"You were erased once, boy. I can do it again."
Jag stepped into the chamber, activating Oathbrand.
"No. You erased my father. My house. My people. But I remember now."
The duel began.
[Boss Fight – Vulture Prime: Tharn of the Black Record]
Tharn floated, weaving illusions and edits mid-battle:
• "Unmake" – Jag's attack pattern erased
• "False History" – Jag viewed himself kneeling in surrender
Jag resisted with:
• Echo Shield (Rain's tech) – blocking identity tampering
• Flame Oath Slash – carving through illusions
Tharn summoned rewritten champions — ghosts of generals who never lived.
Jag shouted:
"Stormwatch writes its own history now!"
He launched Namebound Cleave, cutting through the false avatars.
As the citadel shook, Jag drove his blade into Tharn's quill-hand.
"You don't get to write the ending."
Tharn fell, screaming in thousands of voices.
[Tharn Eliminated – Black Record Codex Destroyed]
Bonus: National Memory Integrity Restored to 92%
Stormwatch Legacy Trait Unlocked: "Memory Unbroken" – immune to identity edits
Meanwhile – Rain vs. Aegrid, Ashra vs. Velna
Rain fought within Hollowreach, a frost-locked vault of silenced screams. Aegrid used muting glyphs and void corridors.
Rain countered with feedback pulses, shattering the dome of silence and forcing Aegrid to speak his own forbidden name — destroying him.
Ashra scaled the Embercathedral, dodging flaming revisions and countering them with raw agility. She pierced Velna's rewrite heart just as the cathedral collapsed in a blaze of unedited fire.
[System Update – "The Vulture Reckoning" Complete]
All Three Vulture Primes Eliminated
World Edit Network: Offline
Memory Rewrite Threat: Terminated
Global Recognition Unlocked:
• Stormwatch marked as Primary Node of Memory Preservation
• Jag's Name embedded in 104 official records
• Passive: "Truth Beacon" – Allies resist 20% more psychological warfare
Aftermath – Stormwatch Tower, Dawn
The fire was low. The banners still. But the war room was alive with breath — real breath, not scripted.
Rain sat quietly, watching echoes fade on the glyph-scroll.
Verana smiled faintly. "It's done."
Ashra leaned beside the window. "No more shadows behind every fact."
Jag stood before the great table.
"This isn't peace," he said. "It's foundation. A beginning."
They watched him.
"From here on, we fight not to survive — but to restore."
He raised his blade and drew a single line on the map — through old scars, across old roads, into forgotten lands.
"Now," Jag said, "we take it all back."