The chamber remained silent.The suppression field hummed steadily around the containment area while the restraints held Lucien firmly in place. Every indicator displayed normal operation.By all accounts, nothing should have changed.Yet someone stood inside the field.Lucien's gaze fixed on the figure at once. For the first time since his surrender, genuine surprise crossed his face.The reason wasn't the intrusion itself.It was the man's appearance.A few meters away stood someone who looked exactly like Ronan.The resemblance went far beyond coincidence. The posture carried a different confidence, the expression lacked Ronan's usual restraint, and the eyes held an unfamiliar weight, but the face was unmistakable.For several moments, neither of them spoke.Eventually, Lucien broke the silence."Interesting."The stranger remained still.Lucien leaned forward slightly."Either I'm hallucinating, or something has gone very wrong."A faint smile appeared on the man's face."Both are

The moment they moved deeper into the sector, everything changed.The space around them no longer behaved like a battlefield. Readings flickered across their systems, distances shifted without consistency, and even movement felt slightly delayed, as if the environment itself had not stabilized after the destruction of Velmora’s main ship.Selene’s voice came through the comms, controlled but tense. “Spatial readings are inconsistent. This area isn’t stable.”Tristan glanced around, tightening his grip. “Then we don’t stay long.”Ronan said nothing. His focus was already forward, because something felt wrong.The first node appeared ahead of them, suspended within a distorted field of unstable energy. It did not look dormant. It pulsed and adjusted the moment they entered its range, as if it was aware of them.Selene’s tone sharpened. “That’s not passive. It’s reacting.”The space around the node shifted again, and four figures formed out of the distortion. They were Velmora units, but

The clash resumed without pause, as if neither of them had ever stopped.Ronan stepped in first, driving forward with sharper intent, forcing speed into every movement. His strikes came in rapid succession, each one layered to break rhythm, to create angles that could not be easily read. He shifted mid-motion, redirected force, and pushed unpredictability into every exchange.It made no difference.Every movement he made met resistance before it fully formed. The other Ronan did not appear faster or stronger. He simply stood where he needed to be, every time. Each strike that should have landed was already accounted for, intercepted at the exact moment it became dangerous.Ronan adjusted immediately, tightening his stance, changing tempo again. He abandoned structure and forced irregular sequences, chaining attacks that had no clear pattern, trying to create something unfamiliar.The counter was already there.Clean. Precise. Unavoidable.Ronan blocked, but the force pushed through his

The command deck was not in chaos.It was quieter than that, filled with the kind of silence that emerged when too many things had happened at once and no one wanted to be the first to decide what they meant.Reports continued arriving in fragments, each one precise on its own but incomplete when viewed as a whole.“The strike unit has withdrawn.”“Node status remains active.”“Environmental instability increasing.”A brief pause followed before the update everyone had already heard, yet still needed confirmed.“Ronan Crowne… status unknown.”No one repeated it. Saying it again would only make it harder to ignore.Across the deck, officers adjusted data streams and refined projections, searching for patterns that were no longer there. The war had not stopped, but for the first time since the destruction of Velmora’s main ship, its direction felt uncertain.Another report arrived.“General Lucas Crowne has left his command position.”The statement lingered in the room. It was clear enou

The strike fell with absolute certainty.Ronan moved without hesitation, his body aligned with a single, final decision. The Eclipse Sovereign Blade cut forward through the unstable space, its edge tracing a path that did not belong to any fixed direction. The pressure surrounding it compressed everything in its path, leaving no room for resistance.The Aegis reacted for the last time.The thin distortion around Broken Ronan flared, trying to hold together under the accumulated force it had been delaying. It did not shatter instantly. Instead, it struggled, bending and flickering as if attempting to fulfill its purpose one final moment longer.It failed.The distortion collapsed inward, unable to contain the force any further. Everything it had delayed surged forward at once, converging into a single impact that no longer had anything to stop it.The strike passed through.Clean and final.Broken Ronan’s body stopped as if time itself had hesitated, acknowledging the outcome that coul