Chapter 183: The Unseen Battle
Aboard the spaceship, the tension was a physical weight, thick enough to choke on. Three hours had passed since the viewscreens had dissolved into static, and the silence from the planet below was more terrifying than the cataclysmic battle had been.
The ship's technicians were at their wits' end. "It's impossible, Director!" one reported, his voice strained. "We can't get a stable lock. The primary interference is that energy field surrounding the male combatant—it's a constant emission of blinding, scarlet light. Our sensors are completely overwhelmed. It's like trying to stare directly into a miniature sun."
He brought up a chaotic data-stream on a secondary monitor. "And their speed... it's beyond our ability to track. One moment, our long-range scopes pick up a thermal signature on the eastern continent, and a nanosecond later, it's registering an impact crater on the opposite hemisphere. They're moving from the planet's core to the upper atmosphere in the blink of an eye. We're not watching a fight; we're trying to track two gods playing tag across a celestial body."
Dr. Voss paced the length of the bridge, his face a mask of agonized worry. His life's work, his daughter's very soul, were down there in the middle of an apocalypse he had inadvertently set in motion. "My Anne... what have I let them do to you?" he murmured, his voice cracking.
Lisa stood by the main observation port, staring down at the world that was now marred by vast, new scars of brown and grey amidst the violet and amber. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the railing. She was a banker, a woman who dealt in cold, hard numbers and predictable contracts. The sheer, raw, unpredictable power on display—and the fact that Kai was at the center of it—sent a chill down her spine that had nothing to do with the ship's climate control. She found herself worrying less about the multi-trillion-credit artifact and more about the man who had, until a few hours ago, been her silent, stoic bodyguard.
Her gaze then fell upon Moon. He was leaning against a console, arms crossed, his expression one of calm, almost bored, observation. He looked less like a man whose brother was fighting a battle that was reshaping a planet, and more like someone waiting for a slightly delayed shuttle.
The stark contrast between his demeanor and her own rising anxiety finally became too much to bear.
"Moon," Lisa said, her voice sharper than she intended, cutting through the bridge's tense silence. "Your brother is down there, fighting for his life against... against that! How can you just stand there? Why aren't you helping him?"
Moon turned his head slowly, a small, knowing smile playing on his lips. It wasn't a smile of amusement, but one of deep, unshakable confidence.
"First of all," he began, his tone infuriatingly level, "Kai told me to protect you. My being here, ensuring your safety, is what he needs me to do right now. Leaving you to run into that," he gestured vaguely at the scarred planet, "would be disobeying a direct order. And second," his smile widened just a fraction, his eyes seeming to look not just at her, but through her, as if acknowledging an audience she couldn't see, "tensing up is useless. He can handle her. I know he can."
He paused, and his next words were delivered with a subtle, almost imperceptible wink, a secret shared not with Lisa, but with the very fabric of reality itself. "And as for the main reason I'm not worrying... well, that's a story for another time. Let's just say, the people who truly need to know... already do."
It was a bizarre, almost meta moment, a crack in the fourth wall that left Lisa more confused than reassured. But before she could demand a clearer explanation, a shout came from the sensor station.
"Director Voss! The energy signatures... they've stopped!" the guard monitoring the scopes yelled, his eyes wide. "The fight is over. The massive energy readings have vanished. There's... there's a lot of dust and smoke, but I'm getting a clear bio-sign now. Just one. It's... it's the man. He's standing. And he's... he's holding the girl. She appears to be unconscious."
A collective, held breath was released on the bridge. The storm was over. But what was left in its wake?
The image on the viewscreen was grainy, resolving slowly through the haze of settling dust and toxic smoke. It showed a single figure standing amidst a wasteland of shattered crystal and molten rock. The person's features were obscured by the grime and the lingering atmospheric distortion, but the logic was inescapable: only one bio-sign remained. It had to be Kai. And in his arms, he held the limp, unconscious form of Anne.
A wave of palpable relief washed over the bridge, so potent it was almost dizzying. Dr. Voss sagged against his chair, his hands trembling as he watched his daughter, seemingly whole, being cradled.
It was Moon who broke the stunned silence, his voice cutting through the emotional atmosphere with pragmatic clarity. "Alright. I'm going down to get him. He's probably running on fumes; doubtful he has the energy left for a planetary ascent."
Lisa spun to face him, her eyes wide. "You can do that? Just... go down there?"
Moon didn't answer with words. Instead, he simply turned and strode towards a specific, heavily reinforced door at the rear of the bridge, marked with interstellar hazard symbols. A security officer, understanding the unspoken command, rushed ahead, inputting a complex code. The door hissed open, revealing a small, spherical chamber with walls lined with heat-resistant plating. It was the ship's emergency drop-pod launch bay, retrofitted for high-atmosphere insertion.
As Moon stepped inside, the door sealed behind him with a definitive, thunderous clang, isolating him from the bridge. For a few seconds, there was only silence. Then, through the reinforced viewport, they saw the interior of the chamber depressurize, the air visibly whisked away. A moment later, the outer hatch on the opposite side slid open, revealing the breathtaking, star-dusted void and the scarred face of Thal'Ryn far below.
Without a suit, without a pod, Moon stood at the edge of the void. He took a single, calm breath, then launched himself forward into the emptiness. He didn't fall; he dove, his body slicing through the vacuum in a perfectly aerodynamic pose, arms tucked back, legs straight, aimed like a living missile towards the coordinates where his brother stood.
---
On the planet's surface, the air was thick with acrid smoke and the smell of ozone and charred earth. The very atmosphere was now a poisonous cocktail, a direct result of the continent-level battle.
Moon's descent was not a gentle landing. He hit the ground like a meteorite, the impact sending a shockwave through the already traumatized landscape. A new, deep crater formed, spraying pulverized rock and blue clay in a wide radius. He rose from the epicenter, dust and minor debris sliding from his shoulders, his eyes instantly scanning the area.
"Kai?" he called out, his voice echoing unnaturally in the sudden quiet.
There was no answer.
His brother was gone. The only sign of his presence was the devastation itself and the lone, fragile figure lying a short distance away. It was Anne. Her body was frail, looking smaller than ever amidst the destruction. The malevolent Red Diamond Crown was nowhere to be seen. But her chest rose and fell in shallow, weak breaths. She was alive, but exposed to a hostile environment that would kill her in minutes.
Moon's mind worked with lightning speed. Kai's disappearance was a problem, but one he trusted his brother to handle. The immediate, dying girl was a problem he could solve right now. His priority shifted instantly.
He moved to Anne's side, kneeling beside her. A soft, bluish energy —his own pure essence energy—bloomed from his hands, enveloping her in a protective, life-sustaining bubble. It would shield her from the toxic air and stabilize her fragile life force for the short journey.
Scooping her up gently, he looked up towards the sky, calculating the ship's position in low orbit. He bent his knees, coiling the immense power in his legs. Then, with a force that cracked the ground beneath him, he launched himself vertically. The launch created a second, smaller crater beside the first. He became a golden streak rocketing back towards the safety of the ship, leaving behind the silent, scarred battlefield and the mystery of his brother's whereabouts.
Moon's ascent was a controlled explosion, but even his immense power had its limits against planetary gravity and atmospheric drag. As he neared the sleek, metallic hull of the spaceship, his velocity bled away until he was floating just meters from the airlock. With a final, effortless push against nothing but the void, he reached out and grabbed a handhold, his grip firm and sure.
Almost instantly, the outer airlock door hissed open, and Dr. Voss's anxious face appeared. Moon propelled himself and his precious cargo inside. The outer door sealed, the chamber repressurized with a loud rush of air, and the inner door slid open. Moon stepped onto the bridge, ignoring the stunned stares, and gently laid the unconscious Anne into her father's waiting arms.
"Actually," Moon stated, his voice cutting off the doctor's stream of grateful questions. "Kai was missing. The atmosphere down there is toxic, especially for her in this state, so I brought her up first. I have to go back. I need to find Kai. The crown is probably with him."
Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel, marched back into the airlock chamber, and cycled the doors again. Before anyone could process his words, he was gone, launching himself back into the void for a second meteor-like descent towards the scarred surface of Thal'Ryn.
---
BOOM.
Moon landed hard, his boots cratering the bluish clay. He immediately stretched out his senses, searching for the familiar, calming presence of his brother's trace . He found nothing. The entire area was a sensory nightmare, choked with psychic static and the lingering, malevolent energy of the crown.
"Kuro," Moon commanded, his voice a low rumble.
A shimmer of crimson light materialized beside him, resolving into the formidable form of his bonded beast.
Find Kai.
Together, they began their search, a master and his hound navigating a hellscape. They moved through valleys of shattered violet crystal, across plains of glassed sand, and through forests of smoldering, skeletal trees. Kuro's muzzle was low to the ground, his powerful senses filtering through the chaotic energy residue, seeking the one signature they knew better than any other.
For long, tense minutes, they found nothing but devastation. Then, Kuro stopped. His head snapped up, not towards a point in the distance, but towards a denser patch of swirling, grey smoke ahead. A low, guttural growl started deep in his chest—a sound not of discovery, but of warning. It was a growl laced with confusion and a sudden, sharp spike of alarm.
Moon's eyes snapped to his companion, then followed his line of sight. "What is it, boy?"
He took a step forward, his guard instinctively rising. "Kai? Are you in there?"
The response was not a voice.
It was a blur of motion. A figure erupted from the smoke with impossible speed. Moon, a veteran of countless battles, had only a split second to register the attack before a fist, wreathed in corrosive red energy, connected with his face.
CRACK.
The sound of his nose breaking was sickeningly loud. A spray of crimson blood, darker than Kuro's markings, misted the air. Moon staggered back, shock and white-hot pain overwhelming his senses.
"WTF, KAI! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" he roared, clutching his face.
Just then, a weak gust of wind pushed the obscuring smoke aside, revealing the figure clearly.
It was Kai. But it wasn't.
His eyes, once a calm, deep blue, now blazed with the same vicious, bloody crimson as the Red Diamond Crown sitting arrogantly upon his head. His hair, though still black, was now streaked with filaments of violent red, as if dipped in blood. And in his hand, his trusted sword, Luminis Aquae, which had always glowed with the pure light of water, now pulsed with a sickening, scarlet radiance, its blade humming with a ravenous hunger.
He stood before them, not as their brother and friend, but as a puppet of the crown, his body a vessel for its ancient, maddening power.
To be continued…