Into the Void

Missiles thundered across the scarred landscape, their engines roaring as they arced toward the army amassed below. A flash of light exploded on impact, shattering steel, flesh, and bone, leaving only scorched earth in their wake. The initial barrage tore through the battalion with ruthless efficiency. Soldiers screamed in panic, some crouching low behind trembling shields, while others scrambled for cover that offered no protection against such concentrated firepower.

Just as the second volley of repulsor missiles soared through the air, a glistening dome of energy—a stego kinetic shield—flared to life, halting the missiles mid-flight. They hung suspended, struggling against the forcefield that nullified their momentum, then detonated harmlessly in a flash of superheated air, deflected away from the battlefield. The brief reprieve allowed a new weapon to enter the fray: a towering strider, a colossal war machine standing thirty meters tall. Its skeletal frame shimmered as its burst engines whined to life, and with a surge of thrusters, it leaped forward, hovering mere meters above the ground.

The strider's pilot, Lucien Cawl, gripped the controls with fierce intensity. Inside the cockpit, his emerald eyes scanned the battlefield, assessing targets with swift precision. His mind whirred as fast as the strider's processors. Adrenaline thrummed in his veins, pumping with every swift jerk and tilt of the massive machine. The heads-up display lit up with incoming fire warnings as he dodged incoming rounds, twisting the strider side to side with an almost impossible grace for a machine of its size.

A voice crackled through the comms—a woman's voice, laced with worry. Her hologram flickered to life on the cockpit's side screen, her uniform crisp and authoritative. "Ace Pilot Lucien, pull back! You're too far behind enemy lines."

Lucien gritted his teeth, jaw clenched as he maneuvered the strider, narrowly dodging a missile. "Can't," he growled, even as more artillery fire blasted past him. "If I retreat, our front line will take the brunt of the barrage. We're outclassed in range; they'll rip through us."

"Fall back, damn it!" she barked, but Lucien only offered her a thin smile.

"For the Imperium," he murmured, voice steady and resolute. "For the Emperor of Light." And with that, he cut the comms, focusing fully on the battle.

As his strider rocketed forward, Lucien deployed a secondary stego kinetic shield, a protective shimmer wrapping around his metal beast. The rail cannon mounted on his shoulder shifted, locking into place with a satisfying click. With a flash, it opened fire, its powerful recoil absorbed by the strider's braced frame, each blast tearing through the ranks of tanks and mechs attempting to resist.

Lucien pushed his machine's thrusters into overdrive, soaring deep into enemy lines, his stego kinetic shield shimmering with each impact of bullets and missiles. He moved through the carnage, wreaking havoc as he went. Spider tanks scuttled into position, spewing rounds at him with deadly intent, but Lucien's hands worked the controls with flawless precision. His strider weaved between them, dodging and deflecting attacks, his own rail cannon laying waste to their formations in return.

Inside the cockpit, Lucien's senses were sharp, his heart pounding. He maneuvered his strider as an extension of his own body, avoiding blasts with millimeters to spare. But his luck was running thin.

Three enemy striders entered the battlefield, each one equipped with heavy armor and advanced weaponry, their spindly forms moving into a formation designed to encircle him. A rapid series of shots fired from them as they advanced. Lucien's cockpit shook with each impact on his shield, warning alerts blaring as his systems were pushed to their limits. He reacted in an instant, kicking the thrusters to the side, avoiding the deadliest rounds as he assessed the situation.

"They're fast… but not fast enough," he muttered to himself. With a deft flick of the controls, he maneuvered his strider above one of the enemy machines, gaining a tactical advantage. From a compartment on his machine's wrist, he launched a small metallic sphere toward the enemy below—a disruptor. It latched onto the strider's kinetic shield, causing it to flicker and fail.

Lucien took his chance. His own strider's combat knife extended from its arm, a blade as long as a grown man's body. He thrust the weapon downward, piercing the enemy cockpit in a clean strike. With the hiss of released pressure, the opposing pilot's life was snuffed out. One down.

The remaining two striders weren't going to let him take them by surprise. They closed in, flanking him in a coordinated attack. Lucien's strider twisted and dodged between their blows, firing bursts from its shoulder cannon whenever he found a gap in their defenses. But the enemy's counterfire was relentless. He winced as some rounds struck his hull, shaking the entire frame.

Then one of his opponents faltered. Lucien seized the opening, kicking his thrusters to full blast and ramming his strider's foot into the enemy machine, sending it staggering backward. He aimed his rail cannon at point-blank range and fired. The enemy's armor buckled, metal splitting apart as explosions consumed the machine from within. Two down.

The last enemy strider launched everything it had at him, desperate to claim victory. Lucien's strider dodged as best as it could, though the onslaught battered its armor. He retaliated with a volley of small repulsor missiles, watching with grim satisfaction as they struck true, forcing his final opponent into a corner. Lucien unleashed his full arsenal. The enemy strider crumpled under the assault, its own systems overloaded. It self-destructed in a blazing flare of shrapnel.

Lucien's strider staggered from the blast, its systems groaning in protest. Warning lights flared, signaling critical damage. Lucien took a breath, his body aching, mind exhausted. He adjusted his machine, prepared to retreat to his lines.

Just then, a shadow loomed above. The shrill warning of incoming fire filled his cockpit, and he looked up in time to see a repulsor missile arcing down. It slammed into his machine, ripping through the hull. Alarms screamed, metal groaned, and flames licked up around him. Lucien felt the burn, saw his hands blister and blacken.

He closed his eyes and let out a long, final exhale. It was over.

Then there was nothing—darkness, infinite and heavy.

Lucien opened his eyes, expecting oblivion but finding something entirely different. He was adrift, his awareness floating toward a vast, cosmic grindstone, where countless pale flames drifted in a solemn procession, each drawn like moths toward the grinding wheel. The flames seemed to whisper in a language he couldn't understand, filling him with an odd sense of longing.

But just as he approached the stone, he felt himself veering off-course. Something unseen yanked him away from the procession, pulling him back, away from the grindstone, out of the depths of whatever strange afterlife he'd found himself in.

He hurtled through darkness, through vast swathes of empty space, past nebulas and stars that flared into being and vanished in an instant. It felt like eternity and no time at all, a sensation that gnawed at his sanity, yet he was helpless to stop it.

Finally, Lucien emerged from the void, his mind sluggish, his senses strange and muted. He took in his surroundings with a heavy sense of disorientation. The world around him felt… wrong. Everything was enormous, looming, and he… he was small.

His body felt lighter, weaker, almost frail. He looked down, disbelieving, and realized that he had been changed. He was no longer the towering pilot of a fearsome strider, but something far smaller and more vulnerable.

And towering above him were giants—or so they seemed, until he realized the truth. He hadn't shrunk. He'd become something different, something small and insignificant in a world far more twisted and corrupted than anything he had left behind.

This was his new beginning. Or, perhaps, his damnation.