In the subterranean vault of a decommissioned oil rig off the coast of Scotland, a war room was born.
Kael didn't just need a base.
He needed a command system—a sovereign fortress, off-grid, untouchable, and fully weaponized.
With his limitless resources, he built one in seven days.
They called it Iron Nest.
Holographic displays circled the main chamber, each showing live satellite surveillance over the twelve Vaults revealed in Vault Zero's memory banks.
Kael stood at the center.
Beside him: Trix, Thalia, and the newest addition—Seiryu Kade, a black-market cybernetics expert from Japan who had once worked with Syndicate tech before they turned on him.
Kael had recruited him with two sentences.
"Help me dismantle Godhand."
"And you get to destroy the monsters that tried to make gods."
Seiryu had only nodded once.
Now he was building neural disruptors and biomechanical bombs like they were Lego toys.
"Vault Six just blinked online," Trix announced.
"Where?" Kael asked.
"Ecuador. Under the Chimborazo volcano."
"Any movement?"
"No… but the satellite is picking up magnetic anomalies. Lucan's probably already there."
Kael narrowed his eyes.
"Then we need to hit one he hasn't touched yet."
Thalia tapped her screen. "Vault Three. Greenland. It's still cold—zero activity. We get there, we extract what we can before he corrupts it."
Kael nodded. "Gear up. Wheels up in fifteen."
As they flew toward Greenland, Thalia looked over at Kael. He hadn't slept in days.
"You're burning through yourself like a dying star," she said.
Kael stared out the window.
"That's what stars do before they go supernova."
Thalia sighed. "You can't fight twelve wars at once."
"I won't," Kael replied. "I'll end them one at a time."
Vault Three was buried beneath glacial canyons and decades of abandoned U.S. military structures.
Kael, Thalia, and Seiryu dropped in via exosuits, penetrating the ice wall with seismic charges.
The vault door loomed—circular, alien, etched with the same DNA script Kael had seen in Vault Zero.
He touched it.
The door dissolved.
Inside, they found silence.
No clones.
No life support systems.
But something worse.
Blueprints.
Thousands of them.
Digital. Biological. Philosophical.
This wasn't a clone vault.
It was a design lab.
Project files floated before Kael, suspended in magnetic containment.
Project MIRRORFLESH.
Project WRAITHGOD.
Project VOIDBORN.
He opened one.
Inside: specifications to convert a human into a self-healing, dimension-phased entity capable of short-range teleportation through reflective surfaces.
"It's a blueprint for literal monsters," Seiryu whispered.
Kael didn't answer.
He was watching a still-frame security feed that popped up.
Lucan had been here.
Two months ago.
But he hadn't destroyed it.
He'd copied it.
"Burn it," Kael said. "All of it."
Seiryu looked shocked. "This is knowledge—"
"This is genocide in code. Burn it."
They torched the systems.
And just as they left the vault—an EMP blast took down their shuttle.
Lucan had followed them.
Snow churned into smoke as dark drones descended, hovering in silence.
Then came the voice.
Lucan's.
Not live. A playback.
"You still don't understand. These vaults aren't leftovers. They're invitations. You've seen what we are. But do you know why?"
Kael braced as the drones activated.
"We're not born of ambition. We're born of prophecy."
Trix's voice crackled through emergency comms. "Kael, there's a larger signal behind the drones—this is a live simulation field. They're trying to trap you inside a predictive AI loop!"
Kael screamed over the storm. "How do I break it?!"
"Inject chaos."
Kael smiled.
Then ran straight into the drone swarm.
The simulation tried to lock him in a sequence—predicting every move.
But Kael did the unthinkable—he injured himself, throwing his combat rhythm into erratic spasms.
The system couldn't adapt.
It collapsed.
Drones dropped.
Thalia and Seiryu broke out of the false loop.
Lucan's voice, glitching now, still echoed:
"You're playing with fire, brother. And fire always eats the match."
Kael lifted a charred drone part.
And whispered, "Good. I want to burn."
Back at Iron Nest, Kael sat alone, watching the simulations from Vault Three re-rendered by Seiryu.
He froze on one name that kept repeating through the metadata.
Not a project.
A person.
Mara Qynn.
Trix entered. "I dug into the name. She was the original designer of the first Godhand protocol—before your father. She vanished two decades ago. Presumed dead."
"Where was she last seen?"
Trix hesitated.
"New Babylon."
Kael's eyes narrowed.
The free city. No laws. No allies. No loyalty.
Only money and ghosts.
He stood.
"Then that's where we go next."