The transmission cut off, replaced by tactical data flooding displays—red markers appearing across a planetary map, indicating portal locations. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.
The ship's interior lighting shifted to emergency red.
Caspian was already moving. "Strap in NOW. Everyone. Full harness!"
They scrambled to secure themselves.
"How?" Jake's voice was tight. "How did demons breach Telstra's defenses?"
"Probably cult activity," Caspian said grimly. "Has to be. Sleeper agents using sacrifices as portal anchors to bypass external defenses."
"From the inside," Lirien breathed.
The ship's sensors painted an increasingly dire picture. Portal signatures everywhere—cities, wilderness, oceans.
"Stellar realm contacts emerging," the ship's AI reported. "Mortal Realms: Countless and still rising. Stellar Ignition: 847 and rising. Solar Flare: 293 and rising. Star Fusion: 78 and rising. Red Giant: 12 confirmed."
"Twelve Red Giants," Jake whispered. "On the capital world."
Caspian highlighted tactical data. "Gaia's mobilizing. Look—she's taken control of every automated defense system. Coordinating resistance while human forces deploy."
The map showed thousands of green markers appearing—defense forces teleporting to combat zones, fleets emerging from hangars, orbital platforms activating weapons.
But the red markers still outnumbered them.
Multiple Locations Across Telstra - The First Minute Downtown Velsinor - Commercial District
The portal opened in the middle of the shopping plaza during peak hours.
One moment, families were browsing stores, children laughing, vendors calling out their wares. The next, reality tore apart and Cinderfiend demons poured through like a flood of ash and flame.
"DEMONS!" someone screamed.
Panic erupted. People ran in every direction. Some cultivators tried to fight back—a Meteor Forging merchant firing qi blasts, a Satellite Orbit security guard raising barriers.
The demons tore through them like paper.
A Star Fusion realm Cinderfiend swept its clawed hand across a building. The structure didn't explode—it simply converted to ash, atomized by Law-level fire authority. Hundreds of people inside disintegrated before they could scream.
Then the drones arrived.
Automated defense units that had been patrolling the city suddenly changed behavior. Their targeting systems, now under Gaia's direct control, locked onto demon signatures with perfect precision.
Plasma fire rained down. Energy shields activated, creating barriers between demons and fleeing civilians. Combat robots emerged from garrison stations, buying precious seconds.
"All civilians, evacuate to designated shelters!" Gaia's voice boomed from every speaker. "Defense forces en route. Estimated arrival: forty-five seconds."
A young woman—barely Stardust Awakening realm—clutched her child and ran. Behind her, a Stellar Ignition demon raised its hand to strike.
An automated turret fired. The plasma bolt took the demon in the chest, staggering it. Not killing—these were civilian-grade weapons—but slowing it down.
Forty-five seconds. Just had to survive forty-five seconds.
Orbital Defense Platform Sigma-7
"All weapons free! All weapons free!" Commander Yaris shouted, his hands flying across holographic controls.
The orbital platform's massive lance batteries swiveled, targeting portals opening across Telstra's surface. Each lance could punch through a mountain—but using them on a populated planet required surgical precision.
"Gaia, I need firing solutions!" Yaris barked.
"Calculating," Gaia's voice was everywhere, calm despite the chaos. "Transmitting coordinates. Fire at will, Commander. I am compensating for atmospheric interference and civilian positions."
The lances fired—brilliant beams of concentrated energy spearing down through atmosphere. Each one targeted a demon concentration in unpopulated areas. Forests. Deserts. Oceans.
Explosions bloomed across the planet's surface like deadly flowers.
"Portal emergence rate increasing," his sensor officer reported. "Count now at 15,847 active portals. Demon forces estimated at 200,000 and climbing."
"Where the hell is the fleet?" Yaris demanded.
"Jumping in now, sir!"
Space rippled. The Home Fleet—thirty capital ships that had been conducting exercises at the edge of the system—emerged from FTL right above Telstra. Authorization codes from Gaia herself had given them permission to use FTL inside the restricted zone.
Emergency protocols. The kind that hadn't been activated in fifty years.
"Fleet assets online," Gaia announced. "Coordinating with orbital defenses. Initiating precision bombardment of demon concentrations."
Garrison Station Delta - Velsinor Military District
Captain Ceazo grabbed his weapon—a Divine-grade spear—and ran.
Around him, his entire unit was mobilizing. Meteor Forging soldiers strapping on armor. Satellite Orbit veterans checking their techniques. A few Planetary Core elites leading squads.
"Portal opened six blocks west!" his communicator crackled. "Civilian casualties already in the hundreds! Move, move, MOVE!"
They teleported directly to the combat zone—spatial arrays built into every garrison for exactly this purpose.
Ceazo materialized in hell.
The street was covered in ash. Buildings were collapsing. Bodies—or what remained of them—littered the ground. And in the center of the devastation, five Stellar Ignition demons were methodically destroying everything.
"SPREAD OUT!" Ceazo roared. "Meteor Forging, evacuate civilians! Satellite and above, engage the enemy!"
His unit scattered with practiced discipline. Ceazo himself charged the nearest demon, his spear blazing with a entry level Law.
The demon turned, its ash-body cracking open to reveal ember veins. It smiled—a horrible expression on its inhuman face—and raised a hand wreathed in cinder-fire.
They clashed.
Ceazo's spear struck true, piercing through the demon's chest. But the creature just laughed, ash flowing back to fill the wound, regenerating instantly.
"Persistent little insect," the demon hissed.
Then a blade of pure light cut the demon's head off.
Ceazo looked up to see a Solar Flare realm cultivator—Elder Mei from the Continental Academy—descending from the sky like an avenging angel.
"Fall back, Captain!" Elder Mei commanded. "Stellar realm combatants are arriving. Get the people to safety!"
All across the city, the same scene played out. Garrisons deploying. Powerful cultivators emerging from seclusion. The military machine of humanity grinding into motion.
Commercial Starship "Fortune's Wind" - In Orbit
Captain Rodriguez watched the chaos unfold on her ship's sensors and made a decision.
"All hands, battle stations! Weapons, target those demon concentrations near the southern cities!"
"Captain, we're a cargo hauler!" her first officer protested. "We have exactly two defensive turrets and a shield generator rated for asteroid impacts, not combat!"
"Then we'll use what we have! There are people dying down there!"
All across Telstra's orbital space, civilian ships made the same choice. Cargo haulers. Passenger liners. Mining vessels. Private yachts.
Every ship with a weapon, no matter how small, opened fire on the demons below.
It wasn't much. Their weapons were designed to scare off pirates, not kill Stellar realm demons.
But it was something.
The Stellar Realm Battle Begins
As the first wave of defense forces engaged the demons, the real threat emerged.
Red Giant realm demons rose from the battlefield, their auras crushing everything around them. Star Fusion demons followed, then Solar Flares, then Stellar Ignitions by the hundreds.
Their mere presence was devastating. When a Red Giant demon slightly moved, the shockwave leveled cities. When two of them clashed, the sky fractured for millions of kilometers spread in every direction through out the planet.
Note: Earth is approximately 40,000KM, and since Telstra is 1000x larger, is larger, it will be 40million KM.
"This is Defense Command to all Stellar realm combatants!" Gaia's voice cut through every channel. "You are authorized to use FTL techniques to reach outside the solar system immediately! Take the fight off-planet! I repeat: take the fight OFF-PLANET!"
The demons received similar orders from their commanders—couldn't feast on ash if they destroyed the planet completely.
By some unspoken agreement, both sides disengaged from ground combat.
Red Giants teleported to orbit. Star Fusions followed in streaks of light. Solar Flares and Stellar Ignitions ascended in waves.
Within thirty seconds, every Stellar realm combatant—human and demon—was in space.
And that's when the real battle began.
Near-Orbital Space
Elder Void-Blade—a Red Giant realm cultivator and one of the Eight Supremes' IN NAME disciples—materialized in space directly in front of a Cinderfiend Red Giant.
"You picked the wrong planet to invade," Elder Void-Blade said coldly.
"And you picked the wrong day to die," the demon responded.
They clashed.
The shockwave from their collision rippled outward, creating a visible distortion in space. If they'd been on the ground, that shockwave would have destroyed a the planet along with its solar system.
In space, it just made the stars shimmer.
All around them, hundreds of battles erupted. Star Fusion cultivators dueling Star Fusion demons. Solar Flares trading techniques that burned bright enough to light up the night side of the planet below.
"Keep the fight contained!" Gaia's voice reached every combatant. "I am establishing a combat zone boundary at 50,000 kilometers outside the solar system. Do not let them push back toward the Solar System!"
Human forces formed a defensive sphere around Telstra, preventing any demon from descending. The Cinderfiends, for their part, seemed content to fight in space—they needed the planet intact to convert it to ash later anyway.
Back to Runar POV.
"Estimated civilian casualties in first three minutes: 847,392," the AI reported. "Rising."
Seraphina's hand covered her mouth. "Nearly a million people. In three minutes."
"Are we changing course?" Lirien asked.
"Nearest garrison is forty minutes away," Caspian said. "But there's a shelter network at the academy district. Better defenses. We're closer to that."
He looked back. "I'm getting you all to safety. Then I report for duty."
The ship accelerated hard, pushing maximum atmospheric speed.
"Picking up distress signals," the AI reported. "Civilian vessels requesting assistance."
A new alert cut through everything.
PROXIMITY WARNING
"What—" Caspian's eyes widened. "Spatial distortion forming. Directly ahead. It's—"
Reality tore open in front of them.
A portal. Massive. Spanning nearly a kilometer across, edges writhing with red-black energy.
And from that portal, demons emerged.
Two Red Giant realm Cinderfiends came first—nightmarish bodies formed from cracked obsidian and ash, veins of ember-fire running through dark stone. Behind them, hundreds more. Stellar Ignition, Solar Flare, Star Fusion—spreading out in formation.
"SHIT," Caspian snarled.
One Red Giant raised an obsidian hand. Space solidified, locking down like invisible chains. Every ship in their flight path jerked to a halt, frozen in place.
"Can't move," Caspian growled. "Engines active but we're locked!"
The second demon stepped forward, raising a massive axe that looked forged from a fallen star's core. It began glowing with Fire Rule energy—not just qi, but fundamental authority over combustion and destruction.
Then it swung down.
The axe moved through a specific pattern, and the Fire Rule energy exploded outward. The original slash split into thousands of razor-thin rays, each one independently targeting every ship, vehicle, and person within range.
Runar's eyes tracked them all. His transcendent consciousness calculated trajectories.
Seven hundred forty-three ships would be hit. Including theirs.
Estimated casualties: everyone.
And the attack was already in motion—rays traveling at near-lightspeed, micro-seconds to impact.
"Shit," Runar whispered.
Time seemed to slow from his perspective. His HDCM activated instinctively, pushing his consciousness into that familiar state where reality moved like molasses.
He tried teleporting his family out. Failed—the Space Lock was too strong.
Caspian was reaching for his spatial talisman. It wouldn't work in time.
Jake and Lirien had pulled each other close, refusing to show fear in front of their children.
Seraphina had grabbed Celestia, wrapping herself around her daughter.
Celestia was looking at Runar with absolute trust in her eyes.
He could save his family. Just them. Five or six people if he pushed it.
But that would leave millions to die.
Could he do it? Save his small group and ignore the rest?
If I have the power to help and choose not to, am I any better than the demons?
"Shit," Runar said again.
Then he closed his eyes and let his consciousness fall into the Comprehension Space.
Time stopped completely.