The air grew heavy and still as the world seemed to warp around a pair of feet shrouded in an impossible, shifting shadow. Victoria stood before them, her breathing ragged, her heart hammering against her ribs.
An Eldritch voice, echoing as if from the bottom of an ancient, forgotten well, vibrated through the very marrow of her bones. "This shard is off-limits, girl."
Victoria gritted her teeth, her knuckles turning bone-white as she gripped the handle of her hammer. "Who the hell are you! Why the fuck are you stopping me? You don't even know what the shard meant to us!"
"SILENCE!" the voice bellowed. The sheer force of the sound was like a physical blow, bowing the nearby trees and flattening the grass. "I am here to stop you from obtaining this, but I can see what you guys are going to do with it. So, I might give you the shard when the right time comes."
"The fuck are you even saying? Who even ar—"
Before she could finish the question, the shadow's eyes ignited into a searing, toxic green. The world around Victoria dissolved, melting away into a horrific, blood-red vision of things to come.
"Stop what you are doing and your faction at all costs, or this will happen," the voice commanded, cold and absolute.
Victoria watched in terror as the vision focused on a monolithic Calamity Rock. The stone began to groan and crack, the surface splitting apart to reveal the massive, unblinking eyes of The Catastrophic.
"You want to see more?" the voice asked as Victoria's eyes widened, her breath catching in her throat. "Your base will be tormented by the Awakened Army, but it wouldn't likely they will attack, if you told your leader to stop using it."
Victoria began to tear up, her legs shaking under the weight of the vision. "A single dragon titan will attack the artillery field, called the Cursed Devourer, and destroy humanity."
Suddenly, the terrain shifted again, turning into an absolute, pitch-black void. A single, cold spotlight snapped on, cutting through the dark to reveal John standing alone, his back turned to her.
The Eldritch voice turned final and merciless. "Your best friend will die to somebody. You cannot save him."
Victoria's eyes snapped wide, her voice breaking into a raw, desperate scream. "No more! Shut the fuck up!"
The voice instantly dropped to a calm, terrifying whisper. "Okay."
PRESENT DAY
The nightmare vanished as Victoria's boots slammed back into the reality of the Hellspire mud. She blinked, looking up at the sky. Above her, the Curse Devourer opened its massive, jagged maw. A torrent of corrupted flames poured out in a blinding wave, incinerating a line of Abrams tanks in a single, roaring blast of heat and ash.
"RETREAT!" Victoria yelled at the top of her lungs, waving her arm frantically toward her soldiers. "RETREAT FOR A MOMENT!"
She ignored the searing heat of the fire and charged toward the massive artillery piece, her hammer slamming through any corrupted villager that crossed her path. She was a woman possessed, desperate to shatter the prophecy she had seen.
But then... BOOM.
A massive blast of energy streaked across the sky, followed by a relentless, rhythmic hail of burst-fire bullets and a swarm of high-velocity missiles. They slammed into the Curse Devourer with surgical precision, ripping through its ancient scales and exploding in a chain reaction against its wings.
The battlefield fell into a stunned, hollow silence. Even the Awakened Army halted their advance, their corrupted eyes squinting at the sky.
High above the smoke, a cold, metallic frame descended. It was the Eradicator Mark 3.
Victoria stood frozen, her mouth agape as the wind whipped her hair across her face. She stared at the helmet of the machine, seeing the crisp, white letters etched into the reinforced steel: GDA.
Her voice was a mere whisper, lost against the howling wind of the battlefield. "When did the GDA have an Eradicator?"