The air thickened.
Not with heat. Not with pressure.
With presence.
Something old, terrible, and sentient shifted into the world like a god folding space inside out.
At the edge of the ruined spiral columns of cracked obsidian inscribed with glowing alien glyphs Riven stood still, scanning the anomaly blooming before him. Behind him, the remains of the Vorhax Predator rotted in steaming pools. At his feet, the shattered husk of the Earth drone still pulsed faintly with dying data.
But ahead…
Ahead, the spiral pulsed.
Each pillar lit up in sequence, emitting a deep, resonant hum that trembled through the stone underfoot. Circuits ignited blue, then violet, then red. A circle of scorched earth began to ripple, concentric waves spreading outward like a pond struck by a falling star.
[SOVEREIGN GATEWAY ACTIVATING...]
[WARNING: CROSS-SECTORAL SIGNATURE DETECTED]
[ENTITY CLASSIFICATION: SOVEREIGN]
[THREAT RANK: UNKNOWN]
Riven's claws extended involuntarily. His entire nervous system fired signals at once.
Fight or flee?
Stand or vanish?
But the Sovereign System pulsed with calm logic across his vision.
[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ENGAGE.]
[PRIMARY DIRECTIVE: OBSERVE. LEARN.]
The gate opened.
It didn't explode outward. It simply ceased to not exist space peeled away like burnt paper, revealing a circular void suspended in reality. The edges bled quantum static, flickering with impossible colors. And from that threshold stepped…
Something.
It didn't walk. It descended, feet never quite touching the ground. Eight feet tall, cloaked in a biomechanical shroud that whispered as it moved, made of what looked like living membranes stitched to writhing tendrils. Its "face" was a mirrored mask of bone and glass, constantly shifting like light through oil. The very air around it warped, leaving a trail of corrupted metal and scorched soil with every floating step.
Riven's enhanced vision couldn't pin down its structure. It was half-organic, half-synthetic, and entirely wrong.
The Sovereign System's voice flickered in his skull, colder than ever.
[ENTITY: XAL'THAR TITLE: THE WORLD-HUNTER]
[SOVEREIGN CLASS: BETA-OMEGA HYBRID]
[THREAT LEVEL: CRITICAL]
[DIRECT COMBAT NOT RECOMMENDED]
Riven didn't move.
His breath slowed. His mind, enhanced by the Neuro-Tech path, expanded across multiple thought threads. Data streamed in readouts of gravitational distortion, bio-spectral resonance, quantum echo dissonance all of it spelling out the same truth.
This wasn't a fight. Not yet.
This was a warning.
A test.
The entity halted just outside the spiral's central platform.
Its voice didn't come from its mouth if it had one. It arrived in echoes, stitched into his neural interface. Ancient. Dry. Curious.
"Another one?" the voice scraped through multiple spectrums. "You're early. Or you're desperate."
Riven's jaw clenched. His body tensed, not from fear but preparation. Every synapse in his upgraded brain calculated escape vectors, possible advantages. None were favorable.
Still, he responded. Calm. Cold.
"You're not from this system," Riven said. "What are you?"
The creature tilted its head, as if amused.
"I'm what you'll become… if you matter long enough to survive," it said. "Most don't."
Its left arm unfurled literally. The flesh and metal segmented, unfolding like fractal glass, and reshaped into a crystalline weapon: a lance formed of frozen time, vibrating at a frequency that bent nearby matter. Riven's HUD failed to calculate its mass. The weapon shouldn't exist in stable physics.
He didn't back down.
Instead, he let his claws fully extend and shifted his stance, grounding himself. His neural lattice hummed, preparing to overload his motor cortex for one final move if it came to that.
But the lance didn't swing.
Instead, Xal'thar stabbed it into the ground.
The earth cracked.
A pulse detonated beneath the soil black waves of data-corruption spreading like oil through water. Riven staggered a step back as his internal systems screamed.
[ALERT: DOMAIN CONTAMINATION DETECTED]
[SOVEREIGN IMPRINT INFILTRATION 3% AND RISING]
[THIS WORLD BROKEN MOON IS BEING OVERRIDDEN]
Behind him, a black spire erupted from the land. Obsidian and twisted metal rose in a sudden, violent bloom. The sky over the northern horizon turned red blood-red, tinted with aetheric interference.
Xal'thar's voice returned. Cold. Amused.
"Your planet. Your first seed. It's already worthless."
Riven's teeth clenched.
"I just claimed it."
"And now I do," Xal'thar said. "I don't steal. I consume."
The gateway began to collapse.
The air bent inward again. Light folded into darkness. The Sovereign's form flickered glitching out of visible space. As the last of his presence evaporated, the soil sizzled and cracked, leaving only warped geometry and pulsing glyphs behind.
Then
Silence.
The gate was gone.
But the damage remained.
[WARNING: DOMAIN BREACH AT 17%]
[POTENTIAL LOSS OF PLANETARY CLAIM IN: 72 HOURS]
[CRITICAL QUEST UPDATED: SEIZE THE STARFORGE CORE]
Riven exhaled slow and hard.
The red sky above pulsed once. Something deep beneath the earth had awakened.
Location: Beneath Ruins of Sector C-17
Status: Dormant. Guarded. Incomplete.
Time Limit: 72 Hours
Failure Consequence: Domain Loss | Sovereign System Regression | Neural Collapse Risk: 89%
Reward: Starforge Core Activation | System Core Stabilization | Sovereign Weapon Blueprint: Unlocked
He looked to the horizon.
In the distance, far beyond the broken spires and shattered towers, black towers had begun to rise. Alien machinery. Xal'thar's imprint planting itself like invasive roots. A world-hunter's seed, burrowing deep.
Riven clenched his fists. His voice came low, nearly a growl.
"So this is how the game is played."
He'd hoped for a delay time to evolve, to understand. But this was war. No tutorials. No mercy.
"You think you can infect my domain," he muttered, turning toward the now-glowing path leading to Sector C-17. "Then you'll see what happens when a system fights back."
The wind shifted.
Far below, something massive stirred.
Stone gates alien and cyclopean creaked open, revealing a long spiral descending into the planetary core.
The Starforge waited.
Not a weapon. Not a fortress.
A seed of galactic supremacy.