When Evelyn Kane gave the order to initiate the Final Line Protocol, her voice was cold, unyielding, each word striking the command deck like the swing of a warhammer.
The command chamber fell into a silence so heavy it seemed to smother even the distant roar of cannon fire. The senior officers—those who knew what this protocol meant—stared at her with faces twisted in fear, grim resolve… and a flicker of reverence.
"Final Line Protocol confirmed. Activating Hades System."
The electronic announcement reverberated through the chamber like a death knell.
Neo felt the floor tremble beneath his boots. It wasn't an external strike—this vibration came from the depths of the base itself, as though the very stone and steel bones of Prism were groaning awake.
The lights dimmed crimson. Emergency reserves rerouted, channeling everything into one forbidden place.
And in that instant, the whispers in Neo's skull screamed.
Not a background hum, not a guiding murmur, but a raw, psychic howl of agony. Rage. Restraint being torn apart.
Neo understood immediately. The Final Line wasn't a weapon, nor a self-destruct. It was a siphon—an engine designed to bleed the Prime Relic, and unleash its stolen essence as annihilation.
"What the hell is the Hades System?" Neo grabbed the nearest engineer, whose face was ashen with dread.
The man's voice shook. "During early construction… they laid an extraction lattice around the Relic. In theory, it draws and weaponizes its output. It's… a last resort. It's never been tested. Because no one knows what happens when you try to force something like that…"
On the holoscreen, an energy schematic lit up. From the core chamber, a torrent of ghostly blue power was being wrenched free, flooding through conduits hidden deep in the bedrock, surging into every rail battery, every mech reactor, every defense grid.
"All units!" Evelyn's voice cut across every comm line, equal parts fury and fatal resolve.
"Maximum output! Ignore overload! Fire at will!"
And then the battlefield changed.
Rail cannons flared—not white and blue, but deep azure flames, warping space itself with every discharge. Bolts tore across the horizon, not simply obliterating their targets but erasing them, unmaking matter down to nothing.
Mechs howled forward, their energy blades swollen into colossal arcs of otherworldly light, each swing scything entire swaths of abominations into vapor. Even the humble pulse rifles in soldiers' hands now spat beams that burned like acid through reality itself, unraveling beasts cell by cell.
The swarm faltered. For the first time, the abominations hesitated, recoiling before the very essence they had once sought.
But victory came poisoned.
Inside Prism, lights flickered wildly. Walls shook. Stone rained from above. Systems screamed warnings of overload as equipment sparked and smoked.
And in Neo's mind, the Relic howled like a beast in torment. Its balance shredded, its energy field spasmed wildly—surging, collapsing, fracturing.
"Commander!" an engineer cried, panic raw in his voice. "Hades core temperature critical! Stress exceeding tolerance! If we push it further—it'll cascade! The Relic could destabilize completely!"
Evelyn's eyes locked on the falling readouts, jaw clenched. She was gambling everything on the hope that slaughtering enough of the swarm would buy survival before the system tore itself apart.
Then Neo convulsed as something stabbed into his consciousness—sharp, searing, undeniable.
A message. Not words, not language. Meaning itself.
Stop… container… breaking… release… VOID.
He staggered, gasping, and in the same breath felt the mind of the Dominator swell with twisted exultation. No longer only hunger or rage—it now pulsed with greed, with anticipation. It had seen the Relic bleed. It wanted more.
"Evelyn!" Neo lunged to the command dais, desperation cracking his voice.
"You have to shut it down! The Relic's warning me—it's about to rupture! The Dominator's waiting for this—it wants us to break it open!"
Her eyes, bloodshot and furious, cut to him. "Shut it down? And let them gut us alive? We're dead either way!"
"No!" Neo shouted. "If you keep draining it, we'll unleash something worse than all of them combined! The Relic—it's not a battery, it's a prison! It said 'Void,' Evelyn! We're about to open a door we can't close!"
The chamber quaked before either could say more.
A sound like the death-rattle of the earth itself thundered from the depths. The floor bucked. Consoles exploded. The holoscreen fractured, half its display going dark.
"Report!" someone screamed over the chaos.
"Hades core—catastrophic failure! Energy reflux—uncontained!"
"The Relic field—out of control! Readings off every scale!"
"Observation post reports—sky over the base—tearing apart!"
And Neo felt it too. The whispers, the screams—all fell silent. In their place, a silence so total it was suffocating. A void.
He stumbled to the observation window, throat dry.
Above the battlefield, the night rippled like water struck by stones. Light itself bent and broke. The remains of beasts struck by Hades' fire weren't falling back to earth—they were being swallowed, quietly, mercilessly, into those ripples.
And in the distance, for the first time since its birth, the Dominator quailed. Its psychic shriek was not fury, but terror. It whipped its army into retreat, desperate to flee the thing now stirring.
The defenders should have cheered. None did.
Because all eyes rose to the heavens.
At the center of the distortion, a blackness bloomed. Tiny at first, no larger than a coin. But absolute. No light escaped its surface. No matter, no energy. Nothing.
It grew.
The Final Line had held. But it had also torn open the skin of reality.
Neo's heart iced over as he whispered the truth to himself:
This wasn't victory. This was the beginning.
Above Prism Base, the Gate of Hades yawned wider. And from beyond it, something ancient, something endless, stirred.
The true apocalypse was only now beginning.