////
LOCATION: Sederis Surface — Glass Desert of Bones / Upper Ruins Perimeter
TIME: 00:31 AM — Orbital Strike Window opened...
WEATHER: No wind. Heatless starlight. Static pressure rising within the perimeter of the Homeless King.
GORGON Battleships DIRECTIVE:ERASE THE TARGET WITH HIS OWN POWER.
////
The sky opened.
Not with a portal.
Not with thunder.
With authority, has the battelships fleet of Gorgon flew in the horizon at the midnight hour.
A chain of lights appeared above Sederis—one by one—like cold eyes blinking awake in orbit.
Then came the sound.
Not a roar.
A humming choir of engines and runic turbines as the Capitol Fleet arrived: thousands of ships, layered in formation, their silhouettes cutting across the wrong stars like blades across velvet.
It wasn't a patrol.
It was an execution.
The Immortal Homeless King stood alone on the glass sand as he had rose to the surface to face this threat by himself.
Barefoot.
Rags fluttering.
A tired man beneath a sky that had decided to become a weapon.
He looked up, squinting, as if mildly inconvenienced.
Kye was far behind him, hidden by wards in the broken ribs dimension of Sederis' ruins.
Faerisy's presence slept inside her like a knife in a sheath.
The King did not turn to check.
He already knew.
That this was coming.
It always came... following him like a damocles sword above his neck.
A voice boomed from the heavens—broadcast through a thousand speakers and a million skull implants across Berkal:
TARGET CONFIRMED IMMORTAL KING.
OPERATION APOCRYPHA: ACTIVE.
COMMENCING AURA MIRROR STRIKE.
The air changed.
The glass sand vibrated like it wanted to flee.
And above, the fleet's underbellies opened.
Runic pylons aligned.
Orbital satellites reoriented.
A vast circle of glyph-light formed in the clouds—an enormous halo of corporate divinity.
Then the beam came down.
Not fire.
Not laser.
Not magic.
Him.
A weaponized surge of stolen Immortal King aura—compressed, refined, and fired back at its origin like a mirror deciding to kill the face that made it.
The strike hit.
The world flashed white-blue as the sand began to get erased around him... Matter itself getting rewritten...
The King didn't have time to dodge.
Not because he was slow—
Because the strike wasn't aiming for his body.
It was aiming for his existence.
The beam carved down his silhouette, ripping rags into ash.
Cloth became smoke.
Smoke became nothing.
His skin ignited—blue flame crawling over his torso, his shoulders, his throat—burning him the way his own power burned everything else.
For the first time in a long time—
He screamed.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just a raw breath forced out through clenched teeth, like a man remembering pain after centuries of pretending he couldn't feel it.
His flesh peeled.
His bones glowed.
Then his regeneration kicked in.
Skin reformed.
Muscle rebuilt.
Nerves rewove—
But the pain stayed.
Because the beam wasn't just heat.
It was identity rejection.
A divine backlash forced into him by a civilization that had learned to monetize and steal the power of gods and demons alike.
In his mind—
Something laughed.
A voice in the dark.
Old. Familiar. Cruel in a friendly way.
"Ahahah—look at you.""Still getting stripped of in public, Jester."
The King's eyes trembled.
That voice hadn't spoken in a long time.
It slithered through the halls of his mind like a ghost wearing a crown.
"Are you going to rest here and die here?"
"Even if the system orders you around… are you going to obey?"
The beam intensified.
His veins lit like blue rivers as the battleships poured in their aura stocks into their beams...
His jaw tightened so hard the air cracked.
The voice continued—soft, amused, merciless:
"I'm sure you will.""After all… the halls of your memory are overcrowded."
"So many faces."
"So many sacrifices."
"You didn't get this far by being kind, Homeless King."
The King's hands shook.
His skin regenerated again.
And again.
His eyes burned.
Not from the beam.
From something deeper.
"Go on," the voice whispered.
"Show these mortals what it is to be an Ascendant."
"The last one."
"Fight."
Then the fleet moved.
The beam ceased.
Not because they were done.
Because it was time for phase two.
The Capitol Fleet opened drop hatches across the clouds.
Star Troopers poured out like metal rain—armored soldiers wrapped in aura-enhanced exosuits, their boots equipped with gravitational anchors, their rifles loaded with rune-bullets designed to rupture regeneration cycles.
Behind them came void skimmers—fast strike crafts whipping through the air like knives, leaving trails of burning glyphlight.
And deeper in the formation, heavy ships rotated forward:
Siege Vessels.
Built to crack floating cities.
Built to kill gods.
A hundred troopers landed in a circle around the King.
Their helmets clicked into alignment.
Their guns rose in unison.
The leader's voice came through a loudspeaker, trembling despite the technology:
"Immortal King.""By order of Gorgon HQ, you are to be erased and your remains studied."
"Do not resist."
The King stared at him.
Naked except for smoke.
Skin still steaming.
Eyes calm again.
He exhaled.
"…i'v died before that won't happen in this lifetime again..."
Then he lifted his hand.
The air folded.
THE WAR BEGINS
He rose.
Not by jumping.
By the world refusing to keep him grounded with his Wind God attribute.
He floated into the air, a ragless silhouette wrapped in blue scar-light.
Troopers fired.
Rune-bullets screamed upward.
The King moved once.
A blur.
A tap of windless force—
And an entire platoon ceased existing, turned into explosive dust without sound.
A skimmer dove at him from the left.
He caught it by the nose.
One-handed.
The ship screamed as its engines tried to flee his grip.
He swung it like a hammer—
BOOM!
It smashed into another skimmer midair, exploding into a blooming sphere of fire and rune-shrapnel.
The fleet's formation tightened.
Siege cannons charged.
And still he rose, higher, drifting among them like the ghost of a forgotten throne.
A heavy ship fired a compressed aura lance.
It struck him.
His left arm detonated off his body—gone.
Blood vaporized.
For a heartbeat, he hung in the air, missing an arm, expression blank.
Then regeneration surged.
Bone rebuilt.
Flesh returned.
Fingers reformed.
And the pain…
The pain arrived late like an unpaid debt.
His face twisted.
A low growl escaped him.
"...my aura still hurts."
He grabbed the edge of the heavy ship.
With one hand.
And pulled.
The entire vessel tilted, engines screaming, crews panicking—
He spun it into the sky and threw it.
A star-sized explosion erupted as it collided with another warship.
The night became fire.
////
Far away, beneath wards in the ruins—
Kye woke up feeling uneasy.
Her eyes flew open.
Faerisy stirred inside her blood like a nightmare inhaling.
And she whispered, barely audible:
"He's fighting again… i can feel it in my soul."
The King hovered in the inferno of burning ships.
Alone against thousands.
Skin repairing. Mind laughing. Soul aching.
And in the deepest corner of his mind, the shadow whispered one last time:
"Good job jester."
"Now you can forever stop pretending that you're still a human.... You chaotic monster..."
The King's eyes hardened.
Blue light ignited around him.
Not the old aura.
Something sharper.
Something that moved.
A wind without wind.
A divine breath.
The Forgotten Wind God's blessing began to awaken.
And the fleet—for the first time—hesitated.
////
The sky became a graveyard.
Warships burned as they fell, trailing molten alloy and broken runes like comets being dragged back down to earth. Their explosions didn't sound like thunder—because the desert air had been ruptured too many times.
It sounded like paper tearing across reality.
And in the center of it…
The Immortal Homeless King hovered.
Bare skin steaming. New flesh still knitting over wounds. Blue aura scars crawling across his shoulders where his own stolen aura had tried to rewrite him into ash.
His expression was not wrathful.
Worse.
It was tired.
////
The Capitol Fleet did what it always did when faced with a threat it couldn't understand:
It multiplied violence.
New formations dropped in.Trooper platoons landed in concentric rings.Void skimmers dove like sharks.Heavy carriers repositioned to create overlapping kill-grids of aura-laser and rune artillery.
The air filled with tracers of light and screaming bullets blessed with counter-regeneration curses.
An officer screamed through the comm-net:
"FOCUS FIRE! DO NOT LET HIM RECOIL INTO THE RUINS!"
"BURN THE SKY AROUND HIM—MAKE THE AIR UNLIVABLE!"
The order was obeyed.
The fleet began firing around the King—turning the atmosphere into a cage of flame, pressure, and killing light.
A prison made of aura enhanced artillery.
For a moment, it almost worked.
A siege-lance clipped his ribs—his torso split.His spine flashed bare.His blood turned to vapor.
He jerked once in midair, face twisting—
Then regeneration surged, brutal and immediate.
New flesh wrapped around bone like cloth being stitched by an unseen hand.
He inhaled sharply—
And the pain made him smile.
Not from joy.
From the absurdity.
"…Still the same," the shadow in his mind chuckled."Always the same."
"They burn you. You heal. You suffer. You keep moving."
The King's eyes narrowed.
Blue light and wind energy crawled up his forearms.
He did not tap.
He did not invert.
He simply lifted his palm.
And the Rune of Antioch pulsed under his skin like a heartbeat awakening.
*THE FORGOTTEN WIND GOD ANSWERS*
The wind returned to the desert.
Not natural wind.
Not weather.
A decree.
A spiral of blue air formed around his palm—silent, thin, and impossibly sharp. It didn't howl.
It cut.
The first skimmer to dive at him had its wings sheared off without contact—like something had erased the concept of "left side" from the ship.
The skimmer split mid-flight.
Its pilot didn't even scream.
Because the cockpit wasn't there anymore.
The second skimmer tried to climb—
The blue wind struck through it like a needle.
The vessel imploded inward, folding into itself as if the air inside had been evicted violently.
The third skimmer turned to flee.
The wind followed.
And the machine fell apart from the tail forward, each bolt unfastening itself like it had decided it no longer believed in being assembled.
The soldiers below froze.
Some fired anyway.
Their bullets curved.
Not because the King dodged—
Because the wind rewrote their trajectory with contempt.
He moved forward.
One step in midair.
And the atmosphere in front of him compressed into a spear of blue silence.
He thrust his hand—
The spear shot out.
It didn't explode.
It punctured a heavy carrier clean through.
A single hole.
A perfect line.
For half a second, the ship remained intact.
Then its entire internal pressure collapsed and it broke apart like a hollow egg, raining pieces over the desert.
Below, Star Troopers tried to lock formation.
Their aura-enhanced boots anchored them into the sand. Their commanders screamed for discipline.
But discipline was a lie in front of the King.
A trooper launched a sealed legendary harpoon missile—one of the many rare legendary weapons owned by Gorgon HQ, an anti-divine tether meant to bind his movement.
The harpoon struck.
It latched.
For the first time in the battle, the King's body paused.
The troopers cheered.
The officer shouted:
"WE'VE GOT HIM! FULL CONTAINMENT—NOW!"
A second tether launched.
A third.
A fourth.
The King stared down at the chains attached to him, transpiercing his flesh.
His face remained calm.
Then he raised one finger.
He One Tapped his own torso...
The wind flicked.
And every tether snapped at once, as clean as a sword cut, the metal still glowing where it had been severed along his flesh and bones... his beating heart remained as a weird blue curse magic protected it from the blast before regenerating from its matter annihilation.
The troopers went silent.
The King descended slowly.
Feet almost touching the sand.
He walked forward.
And the troopers began to back away—despite orders, despite training, despite the billions invested in their bodies.
Their instincts screamed:
This isn't a battle. It's a dead end against an immortal monster...
////
ORBITAL STATION — THE TWELVE WATCH THEIR LOSSES*
In the Obsidian Spire above Ber'Herek, screens flickered with the battleships satellite footage.
Aura-loss graphs surged into the red.
Ship-count numbers dropped like a dying heartbeat.
Aurex Caldren (Seat II) screamed in rage from his golden exo-suit:
"THAT'S SIXTY-SEVEN WARSHIPS! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THAT COSTS?!"
Korvak Coinbone Drahl (Seat III) slammed a rune-stamped ledger onto his armrest.
"That's not cost, that's ruin.""Insurance won't cover theses events We need to save what can be now!"
Nyssara, Oracle of Holographic Nerves (Seat VII), moaned like an addict watching a masterpiece.
"The fear spike he is inspiring them is... is divine… I can taste it through the feed…"
Ezarion Vel'tharn leaned forward, thunder flickering behind his eyes.
His smile had faded.
His voice was quiet now.
"He's awakening the Wind God branch."
Varnex Mal'Reth—face hidden behind ivory—laughed softly.
"This proves the ancient scrolls theory Ezarion... he is... an Ascendant... And our fleet is feeding his powers..."
Seat XI, Miralune of the Glass Lattice, narrowed her eyes.
"If we continue, we risk a full Ascendant breach, the last kill over 10 000 years ago almost wiped out an empire of mage in the same desert if i recall."
A pause.
Even the Twelve stopped laughing.
Because "Ascendant breach" meant something they did not like:
A god weapon no longer playing by the rules of this mortal world.
////
Director-General Netharyn Vos appeared on the central war-table feed, face pale with fury.
"Fleet integrity is collapsing. We've lost command stability in three squadrons—pilots are panicking. The anti-divine grid is failing at 22%. We can't maintain the strike zone! CALL IN THE RETREAT OF ALL UNITS !!"
Ezarion's fingers tightened.
"Pull them all back."
Aurex snapped:
"Retreat? From a homeless man in rags?!"
Seat XII did not speak.
But the room chilled.
And when the Silent Shareholder moved one gloved hand—just slightly—
the war-room systems obeyed before anyone else could.
A stamped glyph appeared across every fleet channel:
[GORGON PRIME ORDER: RETREAT CONFIRMED][OPERATION APOCRYPHA SUSPENDED][REDEPLOYMENT: ORBITAL HOLD POSITION][PRIORITY: SURVIVE]
BACK TO SEDERIS — THE SKY RUNS AWAY
The fleet began to pull back.
Ships turned, engines screaming.
Troopers were recalled by force—teleport anchors snapping them out of the desert in beams of blue extraction light.
Even then, some failed.
Some were too close.
Some were too afraid.
Some were simply unlucky.
The King watched the retreat without chasing.
He hovered in the burning sky, surrounded by falling debris.
His skin reformed one last time over the last deep wounds.
He exhaled, slow.
And in his mind, the shadow laughed again:
"See?"
"They always run."
"They always come back."
"And you…"
"You endure, through time and agony..."
The King's jaw tightened.
He turned his head toward the ruins.
Toward where Kye slept.
Toward the tower beneath the lake.
Toward the seven-day promise.
"…I'm not staying for them." he murmured to himself or watever that shadow in his head was..."I'm staying for her, its been millenia since the system spoke to me... maybe i still have a chance to go back..."
The blue wind around him calmed.
Not gone.
Just waiting.
Like a blade returned to its sheath.
Above, the last warship vanished into the night.
And below, the desert continued to burn.