Sigrun loathed Aetheric Mantle surveying. Planting Aetheric Resonators was a tedious and high-risk chore. By anchoring these devices into the crust, the Dwarven Conglomerate could track shifts in the Aetheric sub-layer and predict Rifts before they tore reality open. It was noble work, but being topside meant being bait. It meant being exposed to the elements, the Aberrations, and the humans. To Sigrun, the humans were often the most erratic of the three.

  “Keep your head on a swivel, Sigrun,” Dwalin grunted over the comms. His mobile suit’s servos whined as he adjusted his stance. “I heard the humans call their leader a God-Emperor. Is it true? Do they actually worship an organic being like he is a Super-Mecha?”

  Sigrun sighed while checking the frequency-alignment on her scanner. “They call him the Eternal Sovereign, Dwalin. I have heard rumors that he can fold space with a thought. Just a legend, hopefully.”

  “Hah! If he could fold space, he would have folded our capital into a scrap heap by now,” Dwalin scoffed. “I would like to see him try that against a Mark-IV Siege Breaker. We would teach him the real meaning of dwarven metallurgy.”

  Thrain interjected, his voice tight with veteran nerves. “Do not be a fool, Dwalin. I saw an Imperial Warrior in the Last War take down a heavy walker with nothing but a series of sword strikes. They do not play by our laws of physics. Their power defies the laws of physics.”

  Sigrun ignored them and focused on the last Aetheric Resonator. If the calibration was off by even a fraction, the readings would flatline, and she would have to recalibrate the entire grid physically and manually. She locked the device into the stone and activated the pulse.

  Suddenly, a raw scream tore through the air in the distance. They looked at each other, surprised to hear something like this in such an inhospitable and isolated place.

  “Contact! Multiple visual sensors tripped!” Sigrun shouted into her comms. “Bram, you are on the ridge. What was that? A localized Rift?”

  “Negative,” Bram’s voice came through, cool and detached. Being a General’s son had bought him the best Long-Range Rail-Rifle in the sector. “Just a lone human. Fell right out of the sky like a discarded boot. Quite a spectacle, actually. I would wager he is a splattered mess, but let me check the thermals.” There was a pause. “Wait. Target is mobile. Probably injured, but upright. Squad Leader, what are the directives?”

  “Command Center reports erratic, high-volatile mana fluctuations in this sector,” Kardin, the squad leader, barked. “The readings are off the charts. They have flagged it as a potential Aberrations-class event. Engage Anti-Aberration Protocols. Goggles down!”

  Sigrun snapped her Ab-goggles into place. The world turned a high-contrast neon green, filtered to prevent the visual cognitohazards that Aberrations used to liquefy a soldier's brain. “Kardin, wait. He is alone and injured. Can we not take him as a high-value asset? A prisoner?”

  “Orders are absolute, Sigrun,” Kardin snapped. “Hostiles in a high-static zone are to be terminated with extreme prejudice. Power up your mobile suits. Move out.”

  The Dwarven military did not have the Codex, but they had the most advanced magiscience. Every suit was a masterpiece of magitech, powered by refined monster essences.

  The machine stood exactly two meters tall, a hunched silhouette of blackened iron and brass. It didn't possess the graceful joints of an Elven construct; instead, it was a masterpiece of brutalist engineering. The torso was a barrel-chested furnace of heavy plating, etched with glowing blue runes that pulsed in time with the thrum of a pressurized mana-core. Sigrun’s squad carried the standard loadout: rotating thermal-axes and swords that glowed a lethal orange when activated. Bolted to their left forearms were rectangular tower shields reinforced with layers of reactive mana-glass.

  Instead of a glass cockpit, the pilot sat encased behind a thick, grilled visor that resembled a knight’s great-helm, flanked by two massive exhaust stacks that exhaled thin plumes of white steam. Its limbs were thick and hydraulic, connected by exposed pistons and heavy leather gaskets that hissed with every movement.

  It didn't walk so much as it stomped, the heavy mechanical boots cracking the stone beneath it, a relentless engine of war designed to turn a single Dwarf into a one-man fortress.

  Their propulsion vents hissed, sending them sliding across the sand on cushions of pressurized air. Sigrun felt the familiar hum of her thermal-sword vibrating in its sheath, but as they approached the gray zone, her sensors began to scream.

  “Look at the ground,” Kardin whispered, the bravado leaving his voice. “The matter is desaturated. Everything is ash.”

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  The human was walking away from the gray epicenter. His footprints left behind trails of dead matter. “Kardin, if he killed an Aberration, we need to report this,” Sigrun urged. She had a terrible feeling about everything here. She felt her instincts saying that the human was to be left alone.

  “I will have you court-martialed if you suggest a retreat again,” Kardin hissed. “Bram, target is a lone human combatant. Execute a headshot. Clean and quiet.”

  They watched through their optics as the human stumbled toward the distant Imperial Base. He was talking to himself, a frantic and broken mumble. Bram’s Rail-Rifle cracked. It was a supersonic boom that should have ended the story, but Bram’s precision was not the reason he had been assigned as a sniper. His parental affiliations were the only thing that had earned him the seat. The slug tore through the boy’s shoulder instead of his skull.

  Sigrun skidded her suit to a halt twenty yards away. The human turned. His eyes were not human; they were pits of roiling gray static, bloodshot and overflowing with a terrifying, cold rage. The moisture flowing from his eyes should have been tears, but Sigrun saw only roiling, gray static. It was the same substance dripping from his nose, a visible infection of the Outer World.

  Sigrun switched to the human tongue. Her voice trembled over the external speakers. “There are five of us. Surrender now and you may live.”

  The human’s voice was a low and guttural rasp. “I surrender. I just surrendered. Why did you shoot? I would surrender without a fight. You never need to shoot first.”

  Sigrun felt a pang of horror. He looked so young, like a child playing in his father’s armor. She turned her suit toward Kardin to plead for the boy's life, but Kardin’s face was set in stone. “Ignore her, Bram,” Kardin commanded over the private dwarven channel. “Core-shot. Finish the freak.”

  Sigrun turned her face away from the kid; she didn’t want to see the boy’s death. She watched Bram’s position through her zoom-lens. As the muzzle flashed, a chill like liquid nitrogen flooded the air.

  A split second later, a gray aperture flickered behind Bram’s head on the ridge. The slug he had just fired exited the rift at three times the speed of sound. Bram’s head did not just bleed. It vanished in a cloud of crimson mist.

  Sigrun’s jaw dropped. The human was standing now, his blood dripping onto the sand and turning it to gray dust. “I did not want to kill you!” he screamed, his voice cracking with a revolted, soul-deep anger. “I just wanted to go home! Why won't you just leave me alone?!”

  “Bram is down! The target is a High-Tier Reality Warper!” Kardin screamed, his panic finally breaking through. “Engage Warrior-Mode! Burn him!”

  The three close-combat suits deployed their thermal blades, the metal glowing white-hot and vibrating at lethal frequencies. They lunged. But as they entered the human's personal space, the human started shouting, and the world began to rot. The air felt heavy, greasy, and wrong.

  Kardin opened up with his suit’s integrated machine gun. The human did not hide. He did not even move. He raised his left hand, and a horizontal arc of Unmana formed. It was a shimmering veil of static.

  The bullets hit the veil and vanished from existence, only to reappear a split second later behind Kardin. The sound of lead tearing through reinforced dwarven plating filled the air as Kardin’s own rounds shredded his mobile suit from the back.

  “Why do you keep trying to kill me?!” the human bellowed. He looked less like a boy and more like an avatar of apocalypse. His eyes were no longer eyes. They were windows into a place where matter went to die. “I was not doing anything against you! I was just sent here to observe!”

  Sigrun watched, paralyzed, petrified, as her two remaining companions lunged with their vibro-blades. The human did not parry. He simply expanded the bubble. Dwalin and Thrain were swallowed by the gray light. There was no sound of a struggle. There was only a sudden and terrifying absence.

  Sigrun did not wait. She slammed her propulsion to maximum power. The vents screamed as she fled across the dunes. She did not look back until she was very far away, but when she did, she saw two shapes falling from the upper atmosphere. Dwalin and Thrain were falling for miles before hitting the desert floor with the force of meteorites.

  She screamed, a raw sound of pure dread, as gray apertures flickered in her path. She jerked her controls, sliding her suit sideways and narrowly avoiding the portals one by one. She was not thinking about the mission anymore. She was a messenger of the apocalypse.

  At the Imperial forward base, the sentries squinted into the heat haze. “A mobile suit? Is a Dwarf bringing us a gift?” the Centurion laughed, adjusting his binoculars. “Maybe they are finally surrendering.”

  As the suit got closer, the soldiers noticed something bizarre. It was not walking like a machine. It was jerking and twitching, its movements unnaturally fluid yet grotesque, like a marionette being pulled by invisible wires. Slumped over the suit's heavy metal shoulder was a blood-streaked human boy with navy hair. He appeared unconscious, but his left hand was twitching in rhythm with the machine's mechanical legs.

  The mobile suit reached the gates and simply collapsed into a heap of dead metal. Janus was thrown into the sand, landing in a limp pile.

  “He is one of ours! Medic!” the Centurion shouted. Two soldiers rushed out and dragged the boy inside. “Find his tags! He has a high-velocity ballistic entry in the right shoulder with extensive cavitation! It looks like a C-rank rail-slug; get a trauma surgeon and a high-output healer out here now!”

  The Centurion turned back to the downed dwarven suit. The cockpit hatch was hanging open. He pulled it wide to check the pilot. “Let us see who was driving this thing.”

  When he looked inside, the Centurion immediately recoiled and one of the sentries vomited. The Dwarf pilot was still strapped into the seat, but he was not driving. He was a desiccated husk. His skin was translucent and brittle, stretched tight over bones that had the texture of charcoal.

  He looked like a thousand-year-old mummy, his moisture and life-force utterly drained. His eyes remained wide and glassy, staring at the ceiling of the cockpit with a look of eternal and frozen terror.

  The machine had been walking, but the pilot had been dead for hours.