The portal vomited RAID and Talis into a dark desert of broken moons and burned symbols. A canyon stretched out like a scar carved by a fallen god. The sky bled rust. The ground whispered in dead languages. Here, nothing lived — but everything watched.
RAID-13 slammed into the dust, rolled, and sprang up in a single motion. Sovereign Red's frame adjusted mid-air, stabilizers flaring crimson.
Talis dropped next, landing in a three-point crouch. Her armor was bleeding nanofluid.
"That portal wasn't random," she growled. "Lucien dropped us here for a reason."
RAID's gaze scanned the canyon. "Yeah. He's playing chess again. But I'm the one who flips the board."
The Grave Marked 'RAID'
They marched through the canyon — and soon found something impossible.
A tomb.
Half-sunken in obsidian dust, the mausoleum bore RAID's own face. Carved in divine alloy.
Talis's voice trembled. "That's… you."
"I know."
He stepped toward it. The ground trembled. The name on the tomb was written in all known alphabets, each line reading the same:
RAID-13. Here lies the one who refused to be rewritten.
The tomb's door opened by itself.
Talis reached for her blade. RAID lifted a hand.
"No. This is the trap. And I'm walking into it."
She stared at him. "You're sure?"
RAID's voice was calm. "I want to see what this world thinks it knows about me."
He entered.
Echoes of the Unknown
Inside, the mausoleum was a multiversal vault of fractured timelines. Holoscreens flickered. Mech blueprints hung like tapestries. Lost memories replayed in looping fragments — some false, some real.
RAID laughing with a forgotten brother.
RAID slaughtering a temple full of gods.
RAID weeping on a moon.
RAID being built, piece by cursed piece.
One voice rang out through the echo chamber:
"You don't remember us. But we remember you."
A figure emerged — half-shadow, half-light. A mech pilot with no face.
RAID tilted his head. "Let me guess. Multiversal guilt made manifest?"
"No. I'm the prototype you erased. RAID-0."
Mirror of Ruin
RAID-0 looked like a skeletal mockery of Sovereign Red. Thinner, twitchier. Its limbs moved like glitching code. Its eyes — pure data voids.
"You weren't the first," RAID-0 hissed. "You were just the one who survived."
"Guess that makes me the better version."
"We were brothers. We shared the same birth algorithm. But you consumed the timeline. You left me behind."
RAID smiled. "Then come take your revenge."
They clashed in a vault of memory and silence. Reality shattered with every blow. The fight moved through timelines, through pasts that never happened.
Sovereign Red versus Sovereign Hollow.
Red blades against negative energy claws.
Counter-memories used as weapons.
Trauma loops unleashed as offensive tech.
Talis watched from a side chamber, hand trembling, recording it all. "He's fighting his own creation."
The End of Prototype
RAID-0 pinned him against a fractured pillar.
"You erased everything that made us human," it growled.
RAID laughed. "Wrong. I am what happens when a human stops pretending."
With a roar, he activated Overkill Sequence Ω, punching through RAID-0's chest. Data screamed. Light fractured. The prototype dissolved, leaving only a whisper:
"Then you'll become what I couldn't. A god worth fearing."
RAID stood in the silent vault, alone now.
He looked at the tomb one last time. Then lit it on fire.
Outside
Talis stood waiting. "What was it?"
RAID walked past her. "A grave that mistook itself for a mirror."
She followed him without question.
Above them, the moons realigned. A pulse hit the sky. The next gate opened — swirling, violent, pulling them toward the next war.
RAID didn't look back.