The long, winding corridors of the Palace of Rama were jolted awake by the thunderous echo of metal against stone. Kaduel wasn't merely running; he was practically in flight. The rhythmic strike of his armored boots against the marble floor sounded like a hail of gunfire. He didn't stop when he reached the threshold of Toram's quarters; he hammered his fist against the heavy door.
"Doctor! Open this door!" he roared, pounding again. "Toram, get out here! Now!"
The door swung open. Toram stood there, her eyes swollen and heavy with the haze of an interrupted sleep. Yet, the crimson suit—that relentless, punitive armor—remained fused to her skin like a second organic layer. Confusion and irritation flickered across her face. "Kaduel? What is it? It's barely—"
Kaduel had no patience for pleasantries. He reached out, his gauntleted hand clamping around her forearm with the strength of a vice. To him, she weighed no more than a feather. He yanked her out into the corridor.
"Wait! Stop! What are you doing?" Toram dug her heels into the marble, her soles screeching against the polished stone. But Kaduel's strength was absolute, far beyond her mortal capacity. She stumbled after him, half-dragged. "Kaduel! Let me go! Where are you taking me? Have you lost your mind?"
Kaduel offered no reply. He only quickened his pace, his wings twitching behind him, displacing the heavy air of the hallway. "You are going to the place where your questions die," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the rush of his own movement.
"I'm asking you! Why are you dragging me like a prisoner?" Toram's temper finally flared. Summoning every ounce of her strength, she wrenched her arm free and planted her feet. Her voice echoed through the vast hall. "What is happening? Stop treating me like a captive and tell me!"
Kaduel stopped. His shoulders heaved with heavy, ragged breaths. He turned slowly toward her. When Toram saw the swirling vortex of fury and bone-deep sorrow in his sapphire eyes, her anger evaporated instantly. This wasn't the face of a commander; it was the face of a man who had stared into the heart of the apocalypse.
"You want to see?" His voice was a jagged rasp, cutting through her. He took a predatory step toward her. "Do you want to see how your world has been transformed into a literal Hell?"
Toram froze. The words died in her throat. Her heart began to drum a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Her lips trembled as she looked into his shattered gaze.
"Follow me," Kaduel said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly calm level. "You will see everything. You will see the fruit of the catastrophe you catalyzed. Follow."
He didn't grab her this time. He didn't need to. Fear, cold and sharp, seeped into her marrow as she followed him. They moved through the palace until they entered a gargantuan, vaulted chamber that seemed to have no ceiling, opening up into a dark, swirling void. The room was empty save for a single pool of obsidian water in the center. The liquid was motionless, as still as a sheet of black glass.
"Is this... a laboratory?" Toram asked, her voice small and frail.
Kaduel stood by the pool and extended his hand. A surge of blue light erupted from his fingertips, striking the water. "Behold! Behold what remains of Earth."
The water rose. Defying every law of gravity and physics Toram had ever studied, the liquid levitated into the air, expanding into a massive, shimmering sphere. The liquid screen began to flicker with thousands of images—planets, stars, and nebulae. Kaduel swiped his hand through the air, zooming in until he found a single, solitary orb.
It was Earth. But it wasn't the vibrant blue and green marble Toram remembered. It was a dying cinder, suffocating under a shroud of gray ash and oily black clouds. It looked like a world gasping its final breath.
Toram's eyes widened until they hurt. "What... what is this?"
"Look closer!" Kaduel rotated the sphere. The image plummeted through the clouds, piercing the thick darkness of the atmosphere. It streaked across the sky of East Africa and descended toward the heart of Ethiopia.
Toram's hands flew to her mouth, her body beginning to shake uncontrollably. Addis Ababa was no longer a city; it was a sprawling crematorium. The streets she had walked, the buildings she had admired—all were scorched obsidian.
Skyscrapers stood like the ribcages of dead giants, their glass skins melted away, their steel skeletons glowing with the heat of lingering fires. The asphalt had cracked open, and rivers of fire—molten earth from the crust's interior—flowed through the streets like glowing veins of lava. Mangled, twisted piles of cars were stacked in every intersection like metal refuse.
There was no movement. No sign of humanity. Nothing but the charred husks of civilization. Near the Palace at 4 Kilo, the earth had split into a jagged, bottomless chasm that vomited thick, sulfurous smoke. The very air in the projection seemed to reek of death.
"I do not know..." Kaduel's voice broke, his eyes refusing to leave the ruins. "If anyone is left alive... I do not know. I am sorry."
Toram's knees buckled. She collapsed against the cold stone wall, the image seared into her retinas. All that destruction... all that silence... the ruins of her lab. Her parents, her colleagues, everyone she had ever known... reduced to ash.
"Oh God... oh God, no!" she shrieked. Her voice was thin, a broken thread of a sound. She pressed her palms against her mouth, trying to swallow the scream rising from her gut. "What have I done? This is because of me... all of it!"
Her brilliance, her theories, her mathematical equations—they all felt like the matches that had started this inferno. Tears washed over her face as her entire body convulsed with grief.
"Doctor!" Kaduel's voice cracked like a whip, cold and unyielding. He wasn't a sympathetic friend now; he was a soldier. He showed her, through his harshness, that there was no room for mourning. "The solution to this horror is standing in this room."
Toram looked up through a veil of tears. Kaduel pointed his finger at her—at the crimson armor and the twin God-Slayer blades strapped to her back.
"That suit and those blades," Kaduel said, his voice low and heavy with significance. "They are not mere relics. They are the *God-Slayers*. They are the only weapons in existence capable of extinguishing the divine fire within Daruel. They were hidden away after the Great War so that no one would ever find them. We never imagined they were buried on Earth."
Toram sobbed, her voice muffled. "I don't care about the suit! Take it! If you want it, just take it and leave me alone!" She slid down the wall until she was huddled on the floor. "Please... just take it."
Kaduel turned away, and the water sphere collapsed back into the pool, plunging the room into darkness. He knelt beside her and forced her to look at him. "Listen to me! I know you are a scientist, not a warrior. But this armor cannot be worn by anyone without the suit's own consent. It chose *you*. Do you understand? The one who wears this suit does not taste death. They deal it."
Toram swallowed hard, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. In the darkness, the grief in her expression began to solidify into something sharper, something harder.
"What do you want me to do, Kaduel?" she asked, her voice suddenly steady.
A flicker of grim satisfaction crossed Kaduel's face. He saw the fire of resolve ignited in her eyes. "I want justice. Earth wants justice. The dead demand that their end was not in vain. We all want justice."
Toram bit her lip and nodded. Kaduel gave her a thin, victorious smile. He tapped her on the shoulder and walked toward the exit, pausing to wait for her.
"There is no one to blame but the shadow, Doctor. We have no time for tears. Daruel is coming for Rama. To stop him, to save what remains of your world, you must command those blades. We go to the training grounds. You must train until the suit and your soul are one."
Toram wiped the last of the moisture from her cheeks. The dampness felt cold, but her blood was starting to boil. The guilt in her heart was being forged into a weapon of vengeance. She had no other choice. Tears wouldn't bring her world back. Only the blood of the monster who destroyed it would suffice.
"Fine," she said, her voice trembling but filled with a new, terrifying light. "Fine... let's go. I'm going to make that monster pay for everything!"
To be continued...