The infiltration team had one mission: to uncover the Mahasimu's military buildup and assess the true scale of the empire's reach. But what the infiltration team did not know—what no one outside the upper echelons of power could know—was that Queen Suama had already begun drafting plans for a full-scale conquest of the Zelith System. The gears of annihilation were already turning.
Gharar – The Iron Womb of Obedience
Far beneath the scorched skies of Gharar, in the furnace of despair where disobedience was refined into submission, fate was no longer written—it was carved.
Lady Thalia, stripped of her titles, her name now spoken only as a curse, had been cast into Cell 99-A—a triple-warded oubliette embedded in the Oblivion Clutch, a deep-core labyrinth reserved for the most dangerous and treacherous of the shadowmarked. The corridor lights buzzed low as her escort approached—Roko, Jalia, Omari, and Amani, their black armor dusted with psychogenic ash from a thousand condemnations.
Her wrists and ankles were clamped in shadowlock chains, each link forged from alloy cooled in the screams of the broken. The air smelled of iron, blood, and recycled decay.
Captain Nasir, their silent squad leader, gestured without a word. The door unsealed.
"Traitor Thalia," Roko muttered as she was dragged into the oubliette,
"you walk now on ground that eats the soul. Speak carefully. Even your thoughts are not your own in this place."
The door sealed behind her like a final breath being stolen.
Safi's Isolation – The Sanctum of Silence
In the adjacent sanctum, buried in the foundation beneath Citadel Spinalis, Princess Safi sat unbound, but no freer than Thalia. Her chamber was a temple of torment woven from shadowglass and psionic dampeners, a place not of pain—but of reflection. The mirrors surrounding her shimmered not with her face, but with broken fragments of memory, shame, and whispers of futures denied.
"You could have ruled," the voices said.
"You could have burned her world to the ground."
"You were born in blood. Why did you hesitate?"
The mirrors never spoke aloud—yet they were never silent. Each reflection was a weapon, each hour a blade turned inward. She was royal, yes. And because of that, she could not be touched—not until the Ancient Queen herself gave the command.
Above her, coiled like a noose around the planet, stood a million Umbari guardians, unmoving, eternal. They watched not to protect, but to enforce the sentence should the Queen Mother will it. Their stillness was not mercy. It was the cold breath before execution.
Aboard the Giza Mtuji – Judgment Deferred
High above in the sanctified flagship Giza Mtuji, orbiting the twilight world of Hydro, Queen Suama stood alone before the viewing port, her ceremonial garb shed in favor of the black war-cloak of the sovereign. The stars outside were silent, as if watching.
She initiated the holo-call. Across space and time, the Ancient Queen answered. Her form was vast, cloaked in psionic fire and shadowwoven veils. Her eyes, unseen, still pressed on Suama's soul with ancient gravity.
"You have done well, daughter," the Ancient Queen said, her voice like tectonic plates grinding beneath oceans.
"But you should have ended her."
"Her blood is royal," Suama answered evenly. "That right is not mine to claim."
There was a pause. Then, like the rattle of old bones in the dark, the Ancient Queen's voice sharpened:
"Prepare the prison. I will speak with the child myself."
And the line went dead.
Suama remained silent, but her hand tightened around the seal-ring she wore. The time of mercy was over. Judgment would now descend from the mother of all Mahasimu queens.
Kushika Fang – The War Machine Awakens
Elsewhere in the abyssal theater of the Kushika Fang, the Mahasimu dreadnought-class warship, war churned in silence.
Within the Shadow Legion War Room, three figures stood around a slowly rotating holographic sphere of the Zelith System.
General Kizito, wreathed in battle-scars and tactical hunger.
Vice General Tano, master of irregular warfare and entropic insurgency.
Kia, psionic warfare strategist, her eyes black with future-sight runes.
"We strike from Vorn's Maw," Tano stated, stabbing into the map with one clawed gauntlet. "The asteroid belt hides our approach."
"Zelith planetary defenses are fragmented," Kia said, tracing red invasion vectors through the fragile Thalor constellations. "They have yet to unify. Their Council is slow—by the time they act, we will already be in orbit."
Kizito said nothing. He simply stared at Zelith Prime, glowing faintly at the center of the projection, his breath slow. Then he spoke:
"Begin mobilization. We will raze their sanctuaries. No survivors among the command class."
The command was clear. The plan was set.
But what none of them realized was that at that very moment, embedded deep in Akaris V, a Zelith infiltration team was already listening, recording, and preparing.
Akaris V – Embers in the Ashes
In the storm-blasted underlayers of Akaris V, where abandoned Mahasimu mining cities echoed with the memory of screams, the Zelith infiltration team made their move.
Seris Korr, cloaked and still, monitored troop rotations.
Elan Virel ghosted across sealed corridors, planting micro-spikes.
Talan Rynn rigged seismic charges across potential escape routes.
Ishara Vey, her psionic tendrils drifting through the aether, read the memories of dying shadows.
Droven Maal, dressed in Mahasimu officer armor, intercepted internal transmissions.
They had found evidence of total war—billions of tons of supply caches, mobilization orders, purge protocols, and most damning of all: strategic routes through Zelith space already charted and sanctified by the Mahasimu High Command.
Seris Korr spoke into the comm.
"We were too late to prevent it. But not too late to answer it."
They activated the beacon.
The war had already begun.
But now, finally, the Zelith would strike back.