Sovereign Ascendant

The air in the tunnels had changed.

Before, there had been silence. Now, there was breathing.

Not his.

Not human.

Gaius stilled, pressing his back against the cavern wall, forcing his own breath to slow, to merge with the rhythm of the stone, the darkness. His body was a ruin of scars and exhaustion, his armor broken, his clothes tattered, but his mind was still sharp. It had to be.

Because the things that hunted him now—they did not fall like the others.

The evolved ones.

He had first encountered them three months ago.

The Dusk Crawlers had always been monstrous, mindless in their hunger, but these creatures were something else entirely.

They stood on two legs now, their exoskeletons shifting, reshaping into a mimicry of human form. Their bodies were heavier, layered in Qi-infused carapace, harder than steel. Their limbs, long and jagged, moved with unnatural precision, their reflexes surpassing his own.

And worst of all—they never came alone.

Gaius exhaled, muscles coiled, listening.

Five of them. Always five.

A shadow flickered. He turned his head by a fraction.

They were here.

They moved without sound, their insectoid limbs folding into their armored bodies as they stepped forward. The tunnel was narrow, but that didn't matter. They didn't need space.

They only needed the kill.

The first leapt.

Gaius twisted—not to strike, but to fall.

He let gravity take him, dropping down the incline of the cavern floor. Clawed hands tore through the space where his head had been moments before.

His feet hit the ground. He rolled, grabbing a shard of Qi-infused rock, flinging it upward.

It struck one of the warriors in the joint of its exoskeleton, piercing through.

It shrieked.

The others moved as one.

Gaius was already gone.

—

For months, this was his war.

A battle not fought head-on, but in the dark.

He became a ghost in the caves, setting traps, striking at their weak points, never engaging for more than a few moments before vanishing again.

He learned their movements, their strategies.

They adapted.

They moved faster. They anticipated his tactics.

He bled for every inch of ground gained.

But he won.

One by one, he whittled them down.

By the time the last of them fell, he was a ruin of a man.

His armor, once the proud crimson of the Imperial Legions, was now shattered, pieces discarded long ago, leaving only a chestplate hanging together by sheer will and cloth wrapped around his arms and legs.

His helmet was gone. His hair, once cut short in military discipline, had grown long, unkempt. His beard was thick, his face hollowed by war.

But his eyes?

His eyes burned.

—

The tunnels opened at last.

Gaius stepped forward, boots sinking into something wet.

A vast cavern stretched before him, its walls rising so high they disappeared into darkness. The space was unnatural, as if something had carved it from the heart of the planet itself.

And at its center—

A sea of blood.

It churned, thick and glistening, stretching beyond sight.

Not an illusion. Not Qi.

Real.

Gaius crouched, grabbing a nearby Crawlers' corpse, tossing it forward. The body hit the surface, sinking without a sound.

No reaction. No disturbance.

He picked up a rock, heavier this time, and hurled it further.

Still nothing.

His fingers tightened. He should have felt relief. Instead, he felt watched.

The whispers of war had followed him since the moment he set foot in the tunnels.

And they were louder now.

A choice.

Turn back.

Or dive into the unknown.

Gaius exhaled.

And jumped.

—

The water was warm.

Not the warmth of life, but something else—like stepping into a memory long forgotten.

He swam.

His body, honed from war, cut through the depths with ease. The deeper he went, the stronger the pull became.

Then, below him, the darkness shifted.

A whirlpool.

It spiraled at the bottom of the ocean, a perfect, silent vortex.

No hesitation.

He swam downward.

The pull intensified.

His vision blurred.

The world snapped—

—

He stood on a battlefield.

The sky was black, not the absence of light, but the presence of something deeper.

The land stretched infinitely. Ash and ruin.

And before him—monsters.

They were unlike anything he had ever seen.

Elephantine in size, humanoid in form. Their bodies were thickly armored, Qi-infused plating covering them from head to toe. Their faces were expressionless masks, their eyes empty voids.

Gaius breathed in.

The knowledge slammed into his mind.

The Warrealm.

This place was not just a dream, not just a test.

It was a proving ground.

The voice whispered.

Kill one thousand. Only then may you leave.

A shimmer before him.

His sword.

His gladius, reforged anew, its blade humming with something old, something waiting.

He reached out.

The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt—

The monsters charged.