The battlefield seethed with chaos.
The fire from Kade's warships lit the sky, casting monstrous shadows over the broken forest. Slaver troops scrambled to regroup, but the children fought with a ferocity that shattered their lines again and again.
Kael could feel it—the pulse—the old connection surging back into life around him.
It wasn't like the Empire's rigid psychic unity.
No—this was wild, free, raw.
Tarin was the first to break through.
Pinned beneath a slavering hound-drone, his cracked suit flickering with damage, he reached deep into himself—into the core of his fear, his rage, his stubborn hope—and willed more.
His suit answered.
With a shriek of tearing metal, it expanded outward—shoulder guards thickening into jagged shields, his broken psychic blade reforging into a twin-edged glaive pulsing with blue flame. Horned plating sprouted along his helmet like a crown.
An Aegis Form.
Not assigned, not granted. Born.
Tarin roared, lifting the hound-drone with one arm and hurling it into a cluster of slavers like a comet. His new weapon spun in his hands, cleaving through armor and bone alike, faster than thought.
Across the battlefield, others felt it too.
Small flickers at first—shifts in color, changes in silhouette. Psychic claws lengthened into luminous whips. Damaged legs reforged into digitigrade striders for speed. Shields sprouted wings of plasma-light.
Each child, under pressure, was rewriting the very nature of their suits.
Kael stood at the heart of it all, sensing the wave of transformation rising behind him.
The Forge is alive, he realized.
No longer just a relic of the past. It's evolving with them.
Kade noticed, too.
The black-armored commander bellowed an order, and his elite guard surged forward—giants in plated suits, heavy with stolen psychic energy, crushing everything in their path.
Kael didn't hesitate.
He charged.
His suit answered his call—armor smoothing, condensing, the gleaming white plates sharpening into aerodynamic curves. His gauntlets retracted, revealing skeletal fingers sheathed in pure psychic current. From his back, ghostly banners of white flame erupted, trailing behind him like wings of smoke.
The Ivory Dread was no longer just a name.
It was a force.
Kael struck the first elite with a psychic fist, the impact imploding the enemy's chestplate and sending the man flying backward through two trees. Without pause, he twisted, dodging a plasma spear, and retaliated with a savage psychic blade that tore the weapon in half—and its wielder along with it.
The children fought like demons at his back.
They weren't an army. They were a storm—unpredictable, wild, and unstoppable.
One by one, Kade's forces faltered.
⸻
Kade himself was unbowed.
He leapt from his mechanical beast, the war axe in both hands, and crashed into Kael like a meteor. Their weapons met again and again, each clash a miniature supernova.
"You think you can save them!" Kade roared, voice ragged with fury. "You think these whelps can survive what's coming?"
Kael's voice was low, certain.
"They won't survive," he said, sliding beneath a vicious swing and driving a psychic blade into Kade's side. "They'll thrive."
Kade howled, staggering back, his armor buckling around the wound.
Kael pressed the attack.
For every step Kade retreated, the children advanced, their evolving suits shimmering with raw will. No two were alike—some sprouted ethereal wings, others crackling chains or bladed tails. Their psychic signatures flared against the night like newborn stars.
The Forge had become something new.
Not just a tool.
An inheritance.
⸻
At last, Kade fell to one knee, blood seeping from his wounds, his war axe buried in the shattered ground to keep him upright.
Kael stood over him, breathing heavily but unbroken.
"You were a leader once," Kael said quietly. "You could have been more."
Kade coughed, spitting blood onto the dirt.
"There's no place for mercy," he rasped. "Not out there. Not anymore."
Kael's psychic blade flickered, ready to end it.
But then, slowly, he lowered his weapon.
"There's no mercy here," he said. "Just choices."
He turned away, leaving Kade broken but alive—a fate worse than death for a man like him.
The children gathered around Kael, bloodied but victorious, their eyes wide with the weight of what they'd done—and what they'd become.
Kael looked at them—not as soldiers, not as tools—but as something entirely different.
The future.
"You chose to fight today," Kael said, voice carrying over the ruined battlefield. "You chose to survive."
He let the words hang in the smoky air.
"This world—our world—isn't safe. It never will be. But together, we'll forge something stronger than any empire."
The wind howled through the broken trees.
Kael lifted his visor, revealing the tired, scarred man beneath the armor.
"And when the galaxy comes for us," he said, a grim smile tugging at his lips, "we'll be ready."
The children raised their weapons in answer—a ragged, defiant chorus against the dying light.
And far above, unseen in the dark, the stars seemed to burn brighter.