Chapter 3: Beneath the Iron Sky
Vireth-9 wasn't a planet. It was a scar.
From orbit, it looked like a splintered orb of rust and ash, wrapped in clouds of iron dust and remnants of orbital debris. Long-dead satellites drifted like broken bones in space, while massive chasms tore through the landscape like claw marks. No cities. No lights. No sign of life. And yet, the moment Ruby descended into the upper atmosphere, she felt it—that pulse beneath the ground. A thrum older than war. Older than Titans.
The Seraph's Howl cut through the toxic fog and hovered low over a collapsed plateau. Her sensors screamed static, but Ruby didn't need tech to feel the truth. The Red Eclipse had been here. Recently. And they hadn't come to mourn.
She exited the ship in full armor—obsidian plating, lined with adaptive phase-threads, and a black visor that masked her eyes. Her boots crunched across brittle soil that smelled of iron and rot. Wind howled across the wasteland like a mourning beast. There was no sun here, only dim light bleeding from a fractured sky.
Her steps led her toward the anomaly. A wide sinkhole at the edge of a forgotten ruin, partially sealed by crumbled metal pylons. She approached slowly, then dropped to one knee and pressed her palm to the ground.
A low vibration hit her bones.
Titan resonance.
Faint, but unmistakable.
She stood and activated her gauntlet. A small blue hologram flickered into the air—schematics of the site, historical scans, topography overlays. The old ruin used to be a research facility—Titan origin. Pre-war. Her people had studied dimensional tears here. It had been lost during the second purge, when the Red Eclipse began targeting knowledge centers.
Ruby descended into the sinkhole, using the ruined pylons for support. Each step took her deeper into silence. By the time she reached the base, the sky had vanished entirely behind her. Only darkness remained—cold and waiting.
The ruins below were worse than she expected.
Crushed corridors. Burned sigils. Blood on walls that hadn't been washed in years. But the worst part wasn't what she saw. It was what she didn't.
No bodies.
No bones.
Only absence.
Something had devoured them all.
Ruby's hand hovered near her sidearm, but she didn't draw it. Not yet. She moved through the ruins like a shadow, careful not to disturb the silence. And then, a voice cut through the dark.
"You wear your father's gait."
Her blood turned to stone.
The voice was calm. Male. Unhurried. But it carried weight—weight she hadn't felt since the war. She turned slowly.
Nex Varrow stepped from the shadows like a ghost that had never truly left. He looked older—skin pale, arms reinforced with synthmetal, eyes glowing faintly with voidlight. But his presence was unmistakable. The man who had butchered her kin. The scientist who'd tried to unlock the Titan genome by tearing it apart.
"Nex," Ruby said, her voice like a drawn blade.
He smiled, thin and sharp. "And here I thought they'd sent a machine. Imagine my delight when I saw it was you."
She raised her weapon. "You should've stayed dead."
"I tried," he said, raising his arms slightly in mock surrender. "But the void had other plans."
"I'm not here for conversation."
"No," he said, nodding slowly. "You're here for the bounty. To clean the stain. Finish the legend. Isn't that what we all want?"
Ruby stepped forward. "I want justice. I want peace. But most of all? I want to stop you from desecrating what's left of my bloodline."
Nex's expression didn't change. "What makes you think you're the last?"
Ruby froze.
"What did you say?"
"There are others," he whispered. "Not many. Not pure. But alive. Hidden in the fractures between worlds. They've been altered. Evolved. Some willingly. Others... not so much."
She didn't lower her weapon, but her heart cracked open. Hope warred with suspicion. Could it be true? Could others have survived?
"I don't believe you," she said, voice shaking.
"You don't have to," Nex said. "But you will."
He moved, faster than she expected. One moment standing still, the next swinging a kinetic blade from his forearm. Ruby dodged, drew her own sword—a compact plasma-forged edge—and met him mid-strike. Sparks danced in the dark.
They fought in silence. No screams. No wasted words. Each strike was precise, born from history and pain. Nex fought like a man who had studied Titan weaknesses. Ruby fought like one who had none left.
She landed a blow to his side. He countered with a stab to her shoulder. Her body healed instantly, the wound sealing before blood even hit the ground. Nex recoiled.
"Still cursed, I see."
Ruby spat to the side. "Still breathing, unfortunately."
With a roar, she drove him back into the central chamber of the ruin, where a strange device sat—pulsing with dim purple energy. A containment pod. Inside, suspended in a field of crystallized ether, was a body.
A girl.
Silver hair. Pale skin. Eyes closed in eternal sleep.
Ruby felt her heart collapse.
"Lyra," she breathed.
"She survived," Nex said, staggering beside the console. "I found her... barely alive after the siege. She begged me to save her. I did what I could. Her Titan blood was unstable. Mutating. She's not what she was."
"You turned her into a weapon."
"I gave her a second chance."
"You stole her choice!"
The room trembled with the force of Ruby's rage. Her powers surged without warning—waves of heat and force rippling outward, shaking the very walls of the chamber.
Nex shielded his face. "Careful, Warborn. You shake the ground too hard, and the void will answer."
Ruby advanced on him. "I'll free her."
"She's not yours to free."
She didn't reply. She struck.
This time, her blade found his chest. The light in his eyes dimmed, and he fell without ceremony. No last words. No grand speeches. Just silence.
She turned to the pod and stared at Lyra's face. Her cousin looked so small now. So still. But alive.
"Hold on," Ruby whispered. "I'm getting you out of here."
She tapped her gauntlet and opened a channel. "Seraph, prep medical stasis. I'm bringing someone home."
"Understood," the AI replied. "Should I warm the tea?"
Ruby let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. Make it strong."
As she lifted Lyra from the pod, her heart was a battlefield—grief and guilt, hope and fury, all colliding under her skin. She didn't know what Lyra would become when she woke up. She didn't know what the Red Eclipse still had planned. But she knew one thing.
The war wasn't over.
It was just beginning.