The War Chamber was a cyclone of tension. The flickering holo-screens showed aerial views of the monoliths, the laser-straight sky-lines, and most chilling of all—the colossal coil of Ao Shun, whose serpentine mass eclipsed islands as if the heavens themselves had been cracked open.
At the center of the council table, the political and tactical minds of Varkath convened—and clashed.
Dren Havoc stood with his hulking, biomechanical arm resting heavily on the war-table's edge. His molten veins pulsed in sync with the holograms, casting eerie orange glows onto the metal. "If we wait for that thing to announce its next move, there won't be a Varkath left to argue about," he growled, voice like steel grinding stone. "We strike now. All reserves. All powers. While it's still... coiling."
Magistrate Virellia didn't lift her eyes. Her silver prosthetic fingers danced nervously on her datapad, metal tapping echoing like a ticking clock of doom. "You mean panic the entire isle? Declare martial law over a celestial event we don't even understand? We must preserve internal order. Our people need stability, not saber-rattling."
Marshal Korr Thane stood leaning forward on bruised knuckles, half his face melted into a landscape of scarred resolve. "Internal order won't mean squat if that snake decides to 'breathe.' I've seen orbital strikes with less power than one of its beats."
He coughed hard, then continued. "Our guards are already stretched thin with mutant border threats and monolith anomalies. If that moves inward, we can't hold him at the bay doors."
Archivist Arodan Skell, the eeriest of the four, barely visible beneath layers of memory-weaves and veilbands, raised his head like a shadow coming to life. "You're all talking strategy, but you haven't asked the real question. Why now?"
He waved a hand. Several threads of glowing runes spilled across the table from his wristband. "These monoliths are not simply conduits. They are call-signs—markers for celestial guidance. Someone, or something, summoned it."
Skell continued, "And if that serpent was summoned… then someone holds the leash. We must trace the beam origin. That's our only shot at severing the connection before it turns from demonstration to devastation."
"You want to go on a scavenger hunt while our island burns?"
"I want to find the hand before it strikes again."
Virellia, voice clipped and cold, "The civic vaults must be sealed. Evac routes must be prepared. I've issued lockdown orders in zones closest to the monoliths."
Thane cut in, "And what of the mutants under 'lockdown'? We start pulling people off streets without answers, we'll have riots to deal with before the dragon."
Dren slammed his fist on the table—the metal trembled under his strength. "Enough debating semantics. We prepare everything—defense, evacuation, communication. No more waiting. No more hand-wringing."
Dren Havoc let out a sharp, frustrated sigh, the kind that felt like it scraped rust off the walls. He stared hard at the frozen image of Ao Shun in the holo-projection—its coiled body eclipsing cities, its horns like temple spires, its eyes like frozen judgment. "Alright. Enough of this."
He straightened, his biomechanical arm humming as its plates adjusted for tension. "We're wasting time and breath. We're not talking about keeping people safe anymore—we're talking about survival. Period. We only have one thing on this cursed rock big enough to even tickle that flying serpent…" he said, eyes sweeping over each councilor. "…and that's the Varkath Railguns."
There was a pause. A deep, reverent, terrified pause.Magistrate Virellia flinched, fingers frozen mid-air above her datapad. "You can't be serious. Those haven't been fired in—"
"Decades," Dren cut in. "Because we haven't needed to shoot the moon sized serpent until now."
Marshal Thane leaned back with a grunt, half a chuckle, half dread. "You mean the twin cannons buried under Sector 9? They're big enough, sure, but we'd have to reroute all central power just to charge one shot. Not to mention—"
"Exactly," Dren interrupted again. "It'll drain every grid on the isle. Water systems. Transports. Shields. Comms. Gone."
Arodan Skell murmured from the shadows, "We'd be blind and deaf… and glowing like a beacon. If it isn't hostile yet, firing might provoke—"
Dren turned on him, the red and frost-blue glow in his eyes burning brighter. "He's already hostile. He showed up with a light show and monoliths pulsing like doomsday drums. If we wait for him to 'speak,' he'll do it by turning the isle into rubble."
Virellia snapped, "And when the power grid crashes, our hospitals fail. Our shelters lose air-seal. Children in the lower wards—"
"They'll be dead anyway if that thing decides to do a barrel roll over the bay!" Dren shouted. "We fire. Or we die. There is no third option."
Thane muttered, "How many shots do we get?"
"One. Two if we get real stupid. And real lucky."
Skell spoke darkly, "We'll need to coordinate across every sector. Shut everything down. Redirect every ounce of power to the cannons."
Virellia, still pale but calculating, said, "I'll give the override codes for Sector 9."
Without wasting a single breath more, the command was given. "Redirect all power—now!"
Across Varkath, lights dimmed. One by one, the glowing veins of the city bled out—from neon billboards to emergency hospital strips, from transit lines to security barriers. Entire districts plunged into darkness as the island's core reactors screamed under pressure. Deep beneath Sector 9, the ancient rails awakened.
Turbines whirled like howling banshees. Gears that hadn't moved in decades groaned back to life, grinding against the weight of purpose. The twin railguns rose slowly, emerging from their armored silos like steel gods roused from slumber. Their barrels, miles long, hummed with violent anticipation, rings of red-hot coils glowing brighter by the second. "Target locked. Prepare to fire."
A thunderous WHUUUUUMMMM shook the island. The skies parted as if to bear witness. And then—BOOOOOOOM!!!
Twin spears of blinding light erupted, tearing through the heavens with a banshee's wail, slamming straight into the side of Ao Shun, the Black Dragon. A sound like a collapsing mountain roared through the skies as a second shot followed—then a third.
Arcs of energy slammed into the serpent's coiled mass. Fire engulfed him. Electric storms danced around his scales. The very air burned, pressure waves flattening buildings near the impact zones.
For a long, breathless moment, the world held its breath. The dragon was cloaked in swirling smoke, wreathed in flame, buried under the wrath of every last volt Varkath could spare.
Not a soul moved. Children stared from rooftops. Mothers clutched hands. Soldiers gripped guns with white-knuckled fists. Even the Council stood in shocked silence.
And then… The wind shifted. The smoke began to clear. The embers died. And what remained… made every heart on Varkath skip. Ao Shun still hovered in the sky. Untouched. Unbothered. Unscathed.
The black scales of his body shimmered like polished obsidian. Not even a scratch marked his colossal form. His glowing eyes peered down, calm… and amused.
He blinked slowly. Then, with a slow tilt of his head… he smiled. The island of Varkath descended into utter chaos. Panic spread like wildfire. Citizens, previously frozen in place, now scattered like ants beneath the terror. Mothers screamed for their children, families separated, and panic took root in every corner of the island. It was as though Varkath itself was unraveling.
The power grid had already collapsed. Lights flickered and died. Emergency sirens howled into the darkened streets, their red flashes casting long, frantic shadows. Traffic stopped dead, carriages and transports abandoned in the streets as people fled into the shadows, praying they could escape the inevitable.
Mutants, once held under control, now broke free from their cells, their powers surging without the dampeners keeping them in check. Their raw strength mixed with the chaos as they roamed, confused, aggressive, and desperate. Varkath had fallen into a nightmare—without electricity, without order. And above it all, Ao Shun, the Black Dragon, floated seemingly unbothered by the unfolding pandemonium.
His dark, obsidian scales gleamed like a celestial mirror, each one reflecting the terror beneath him. He tilted his head upward, the cold, dead eyes glowing with malicious intent. His mouth opened, and a low growl rumbled from deep within his chest.
The air around the dragon began to crackle, swirling with unnatural energy. Light, like tendrils of lightning, danced across his form, twisting and churning in a chaotic ballet. And then… he opened his mouth wider.
Power surged from every direction as the sky above Varkath darkened. The air itself thickened, charged with the dragon's aura, swirling like an unstoppable storm. Every mutant, every citizen, every watcher from below could feel it—the inevitable doom.
An orb of energy began to form at the heart of the Black Dragon's mouth. The ball shimmered, glowing with a rainbow of colors—violet, red, blue, and gold—shifting in waves like the rippling surface of water disturbed by a storm. Each color pulsed with a power too vast to understand.
It expanded rapidly, spiraling outward, feeding on the fear, the chaos, and the destruction around it. The once calm sky turned into a roiling mass of storm clouds, black as night, swirling with the raw, unbridled energy of the dragon. The orb twisted and morphed, becoming far larger than it had been moments ago.
Everyone knew it was a matter of time before that orb—that terrible, destructive orb—would be launched into the heart of their world, ending the island and every life on it.
Ao Shun's eyes glowed brighter, the orb in his mouth now reaching an unimaginable size. It was no longer just an energy ball—it had become the heart of destruction itself, a source of annihilation waiting to be released.
A moment of pure silence stretched across the island, the world holding its breath. Even the frantic citizens of Varkath seemed to pause, knowing that what was coming would mark the end of everything they had ever known. Then, with a sudden roar, Ao Shun released the energy.
The orb shot forward from his jaws like a meteor, streaking across the sky in a flash of pure power. The air crackled and twisted in its wake, and the landscape trembled beneath the sheer magnitude of the release. It was like a weapon from the very core of the universe, bearing down on the land with an intent that could not be denied. Sector 9, the sprawling mountain range that stood tall in the distance, was its target.
As the energy ball raced forward, it collided with the mountain range with a deafening crack—like the sound of the heavens splitting open. The ground beneath the mountain shook violently, and a blinding explosion erupted in the heart of the range.
The sheer force of the blast sent shockwaves rippling across the island, knocking citizens off their feet, buildings crumbling like paper, and the air itself suffocating under the pressure.
For mere seconds, the mountains were engulfed in a searing light. The ground cracked open, sending boulders and rock into the air like shrapnel. The once-majestic peaks of Sector 9 were obliterated, reduced to nothing but rubble and dust.
Villages that had rested in the shadow of the mountains were swallowed up by the explosion. Homes, farms, and streets disappeared in an instant, their inhabitants unable to even scream before they were consumed by the explosion's fury.
The blast created a mushroom cloud, a fiery pillar of smoke and debris rising up into the sky, darkening the sun as it expanded. For miles around, the earth trembled and cracked, and the very air seemed to thicken with the scent of scorched stone and vaporized life.