The room existed outside of space and time, a pocket dimension of pure, curated silence. There were no windows, for there was nothing outside to see. The walls were a seamless, polished obsidian that reflected no light, instead seeming to drink it, creating an illusion of infinite, starless space. The only illumination came from a circular table at the room's center, carved from a single, milky crystal that glowed with a soft, internal radiance.
Around this table sat the seven Prime Architects.
They were a gallery of perfected horrors. Prime 2 was a shifting mass of bio-luminescent tendrils and calm, all-seeing eyes. Prime 3 appeared as a statuesque woman of impossible beauty, her form flickering with barely-contained gravitational forces. Prime 4, the Butcher of Kongo, sat perfectly still, his black mask still faintly smudged with the psychic residue of the atrocity he had authored. Prime 6 was a being of pure, crystalline logic, his form a complex geometric shape that hurt the mind to observe. Prime 7 was little more than a shadow, a sentient void that whispered of entropy and finality.
And then there was Prime 5. He sat with an air of weary academia, his bronze mask polished to a soft sheen, his gloved hands resting calmly on the table. He was the picture of quiet compliance.
But all eyes, eventually, drifted to the head of the table. To Prime 1.
He looked like a boy of seventeen. His features were soft, almost delicate, framed by a sweep of untidy black hair. His skin was flawless, his eyes a clear, guileless blue. He wore a simple, unadorned white tunic. He was the picture of youthful innocence, a stark and jarring contrast to the assembled pantheon of nightmares. He did not fidget. He did not speak. He simply listened, a faint, placid smile on his lips as the others reported their failures.
"The attrition rate is no longer sustainable," Prime 6 stated, his voice a chorus of chiming crystals. "Subject Welfric's re-emergence has resulted in the total loss of forty-seven primary research facilities and nineteen regional command hubs. The 'Alpha,' Subject E-01, and her companion are systematically dismantling our biological research division. Efficiency has dropped by eighteen-point-three percent."
Prime 4 leaned forward, his synthesized voice a dry rasp. "The hybrid collective in Sector Theta is in disarray. Their 'Queen' is paralyzed with fear. Welfric's message was… persuasive. He is no longer just a subject. He is a competing ideology. A plague."
Prime 3's beautiful face contorted in a flicker of rage that warped the space around her. "He mocks us. He burns our work and recruits our failures. This is no longer an experiment. It is an insurrection."
The complaints continued, a litany of disaster. Through it all, Prime 1 just listened, his head tilted slightly, his smile never wavering. He was the calm at the center of their storm, and his silence was more unnerving than any outburst.
Finally, Prime 4 turned his black-masked gaze directly to the boy. "We have discussed containment, escalation, and targeted annihilation. All conventional models have failed. The question remains, Prime 1. How do you plan to kill Wolfen Welfric?"
The gentle blue eyes shifted to meet Prime 4's blank lenses. The room fell utterly silent. The fate of their entire project seemed to hang on the answer from this… child.
Prime 1's smile widened, just a fraction. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of a viper sunning itself on a rock.
"The solution is already in motion," the boy said, his voice a light, melodic tenor that was utterly at odds with the gravity of his words. "I have, with great difficulty, identified a unique vulnerability in his restored biology. My agents have successfully administered a specialized serum. It does not attack his powers directly—he would detect such a crude approach. Instead, it introduces a subtle, cascading metabolic inhibitor. It weakens the cellular cohesion that allows him to channel energy. In a matter of weeks, his control will become erratic. His strength will wane. He will become… fragile."
A wave of palpable relief washed through the other Primes. Even Prime 4 gave a slow, satisfied nod. It was a masterstroke. Subtle. Insidious.
"Excellent," Prime 6 chimed. "We shall prepare retrieval teams for the moment he is vulnerable."
"The Alpha and her pack will be isolated and terminated," Prime 3 added, a cruel smile gracing her perfect lips.
Prime 1 simply resumed his placid silence, his work apparently done. The meeting dissolved into tactical planning, the Primes now energized, believing the end of their greatest nuisance was finally in sight.
They were wrong.
Every single word from Prime 1's mouth had been a meticulously crafted lie.
---
The truth had been orchestrated weeks earlier, in the shadows of the very war the Primes were now discussing.
After his confrontation with the hybrid scout, Wolfen had not simply vanished. He had gone to ground, and he had sent a message. The method was one of old, pre-fall espionage: a dead drop in a hollowed-out rock in a specific riverbed, a location known only to two people.
Prime 5 had retrieved it. The note was not long, written in Wolfen's precise, angular script.
Five,
The antidote worked. The fire is back. They will be nervous. One, especially. He fears chaos he cannot control. He will propose a solution. A poison. He will task you with its creation. You will make it for him.
But you will not give him what he asks for.
You will create two things for me instead.
First: A counter-agent to Project Chimera. A psionic dissonance frequency, a retrovirus, something elegant. I don't care. When the time comes, I want their great fusion to tear itself apart from the inside.
Second: A vector to weaken Prime 1. Not kill him. That is my privilege. I want a key that unlocks his defenses. A backdoor into his perfection. Find his flaw. There is always a flaw.
Do this, and I will grant you a clean death when the time comes. A better one than you deserve.
- W
And so, Prime 5 had obeyed. When Prime 1, in his infinite, childish arrogance, had summoned him and demanded a serum to cripple Wolfen, Prime 5 had bowed his head in submission. He had taken the boy's vague, arrogant specifications and, in the solitude of his own lab, performed his greatest act of deception.
The "serum" he had crafted and which had been "successfully administered" to Wolfen was not an inhibitor. It was the final, stabilizing component of the antidote. A booster shot, fine-tuning the restoration of his power, ensuring the flames that burned in his hands were hotter and more controlled than ever before.
While the Primes celebrated their impending victory, they were, in fact, pouring fuel on the very fire they sought to extinguish.
And as they planned Wolfen's capture, Prime 5 was already deep into his real work. In hidden subroutines and encrypted files, he was designing the tools for their downfall. The Chimera counter-agent was a beautiful piece of theoretical sabotage, a genetic command that would turn collective consciousness into collective psychosis.
But the second task… weakening Prime 1… that was the true challenge. The boy was the first, the template, the most powerful and secretive of them all. His true form, his true nature, was a mystery locked away behind layers of psychic armor and bio-engineered perfection.
Yet, Wolfen was right. There is always a flaw.
As Prime 5 worked, cross-referencing millennia of genetic data and psionic resonance patterns, a anomaly began to emerge. A tiny, repeating irregularity in Prime 1's core energy signature, so small it had been dismissed as background noise. It corresponded to no known biological rhythm. It was a ghost in the machine. A whisper.
And Prime 5 knew, with the chilling certainty of a master biologist, that this whisper was the key. It was the crack in the god's armor. All he had to do was find a way to amplify it. To make the whisper a scream.
The Primes left their meeting confident, unified, and utterly deceived. They believed the hunter was about to become the prey.
They did not know that the prey had just sharpened his claws on the very stone of their throne, and was now staring at the heart of their kingdom, waiting for the perfect moment to tear it out.