The silence after death is never truly silent.
There is always a weight. A hum beneath the air. A pressure behind the lungs. And on Vornex Prime—where gravity pulsed like a dying heartbeat and the sky bled sideways—the silence after Mitus's fall was deafening.
Five stood where six once did.
They didn't speak.
They couldn't.
Even Warmachines—flesh reforged in metal and wrath—felt it. That severing. That cruel subtraction.
Maverick stood over the sealed grave, the black stone mound still steaming. His hands were clenched. One still gripped his hammer. The other rested on the twin glaive-staves now fastened to his back.
Mitus's weapons.
A part of him still breathing.
Candren was still, visor dimmed as he studied the terrain, but his scans had stopped. For once, no data could clarify what needed to be said.
Riven knelt in the dust, gloved fingers brushing the cracked edge of the monolith they'd shattered to kill the corruption that had consumed their brother. He didn't pray. Warmachines didn't have gods. But he muttered something anyway.
A name.
Valkar stood just beyond them, facing outward. He hadn't stopped scanning the horizon since the moment Mitus fell. It wasn't vigilance.
It was guilt.
And Fitus… Fitus had his helmet off. Just for a moment. Just to feel the air bite his skin. His face was drawn tight. Not from sorrow, but from the raw and unfamiliar weight of helplessness.
He had always mocked Mitus.
Always challenged him.
And now…
There was no one left to push back.
⸻
"It should've been me," Fitus said finally.
The words cracked the stillness.
"No," Riven replied without looking up. "It couldn't have been."
Fitus's eyes burned. "I meant what I said, before he turned. I thought he was weak. That he couldn't keep up."
Valkar turned. "He wasn't weak. He was young."
"He was one of us," Candren said, still staring into the dust.
"And now," Maverick said at last, "he's part of me."
They all looked to him.
The glaives hummed softly on his back.
"We carry him forward," Maverick said. "In every strike. Every breath. Every death we bring."
Candren finally raised his visor. "Then let's give him something to rest for."
Riven stood. "We'll make them remember this day. Every cursed thing that crawled from this moon will remember what it cost to take him."
Fitus nodded slowly. "Five."
Valkar raised his hammer.
"Five who remain."
Maverick's voice was low. "Five who finish this."
They didn't need to say more.
They moved.
⸻
They traversed the scorched basin in a five-point formation.
Something had changed in them—subtle, but undeniable. The symmetry of movement. The wordless coordination. It was as if the pain of losing one had bonded the rest even tighter.
The war machines had never marched like this.
Not even at Earth's Siege.
Ash rose in their wake. The obsidian moon whispered as they passed, but the whispers no longer sank into their minds. Mitus had been the crack in the shield.
Now they were forged shut.
They passed ruins that looked like the bones of ancient titans. Hollowed bunkers overgrown with moon-coral and bleeding rust. Melted towers still sparking with dead memories. Every inch of terrain screamed that nothing here had been built to last—except the hate that clung to it.
They reached a plateau near the basin's edge, and paused.
From here, they could see across the valley of failed creation. Broken spires jutted like claws. Rivers of dry black blood streaked through the sands, coagulating into symbols too vast to comprehend.
Candren swept a slow scan.
"Thermal signatures are rising."
"How many?" Riven asked.
Candren frowned. "It's not a count. It's a presence."
Valkar raised his gaze to the far side of the valley.
There—something shifted.
Not fast. Not loud.
Massive.
Like a mountain remembering how to breathe.
A shape rose behind the horizon.
No limbs. Not yet.
Just mass. Smoke and silhouette. But it loomed like a dying god pulling itself out of the grave.
"Colossus," Candren muttered. "Bigger than the first. Twice as fast."
"No," Maverick said.
"Three times."
They watched it unfold.
Its spine split the clouds. Its mouth opened like a cathedral. Light bled from within—not the glow of power, but the ache of souls bound and screaming.
The ground beneath them shuddered as if in prayer.
The colossus hadn't seen them yet.
Or maybe… it didn't care.
Riven's voice was quiet. "We're going to need everything."
Fitus grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Then let's give it everything."
Maverick turned his head, his voice low, steady, wrathful.
"This one dies for Mitus."
They readied their weapons.
And descended into the valley of death again.
⸻
They crossed the obsidian riverbed with speed—no need for stealth now. The moon already knew they were coming. The beast did too.
And still… it waited.
It stood like a mountain, still forming. Its skin was a patchwork of bone, Warmachine plating, and raw lunar ore. Chains of living metal draped from its back like broken wings. A dozen failed faces stretched along its stomach—some human, some almost.
Its eyes were the color of betrayal.
And it smiled.
"This one's different," Valkar growled.
"It knows," Candren added.
"It remembers," Riven said.
"It dies," Fitus finished.
But Maverick only stared.
The glaives on his back pulsed once.
For a moment, he saw Mitus—laughing. Swinging his blades during practice, shouting insults with the enthusiasm of a warrior too young to be cautious.
And then he saw him again—screaming. Twisted. Broken. Lost.
He closed his eyes.
Then opened them.
"Five," he said.
They took their places.
"Who remain," Valkar answered.
The beast bellowed, limbs locking into place.
And the battle began.
___________________________________
The valley ahead screamed with light.
Lightning carved through a sky that pulsed in red and void, illuminating the second colossus as it unfurled from the shadows of broken spires and blackened trenches. It did not charge. It stood tall—watching. Waiting. Daring them to approach like insects challenging a titan.
Its body was a grotesque evolution.
Taller than the last. Leaner. Smarter. Segmental plates layered with sinew and voidsteel moved like armored muscles beneath obsidian skin. Its arms split into jagged tendrils that shimmered with molecular instability—constantly shifting between blades, whips, and claws. Across its chest burned a single crimson symbol: the mark of Armatus.
Worse still… its eyes flickered.
Not with rage.
With recognition.
Maverick stepped forward, fists clenched, hammer humming. The twin glaive-staves of Mitus crossed on his back glowed faintly, reacting to the proximity of something ancient and evil.
"He knows," Maverick muttered.
"Knows what?" Fitus asked.
"That we remember."
And with that, Maverick moved.
⸻
The Warmachines charged as one.
The ground did not tremble.
The air did.
Fitus launched ahead, his rail-pike charged to max output. He fired a shot into the beast's leg, and the blast detonated with a shockwave that split a ridge in two. The colossus staggered, one foot sinking ankle-deep into the black sand—but it didn't fall.
Riven was a blur, his shatterblades screaming through the haze. He vaulted between the colossus's barbed limbs, carving bright wounds into its flanks. Sparks sprayed in arcs of orange and gold. The creature hissed—not in pain, but approval.
"Faster than the last," Riven snapped, sliding beneath a whip-arm.
"And smarter," Candren added, launching an arc pulse that danced between its armor plates. "It's analyzing us in real-time."
The creature lunged.
Its tendrils slammed into the earth like siege pylons, blasting waves of plasma-laced dust in every direction. One blow cracked a cliff behind Valkar. He responded with a roar, planting his warhammer into the tendril's core. The impact burst outward in a quake that knocked the limb clean off.
But the beast didn't scream.
It laughed.
The dismembered tendril twisted midair, reshaping with a hiss into a new limb—bladed and barbed.
Candren cursed. "It's reconstituting! Adaptive biology crossed with corrupted tech."
"Then we hit harder," Valkar snarled.
Maverick was already climbing the beast's back—leaping from broken bones embedded in its spine. He slammed his hammer into its vertebrae with a blow so deep the air detonated around him. Sparks rained like war-born stars.
The hammer screamed.
Mitus's glaives pulsed on Maverick's back. They remembered this corruption. They knew it.
With another shout, Maverick ripped his hammer free—and with it, the creature's spine buckled and cracked.
But still… it didn't fall.
It turned.
A massive fist slammed into Maverick midair. He flew across the plateau and crashed through a jagged outcropping, vanishing in a storm of debris and flame.
"MAVERICK!" Valkar bellowed.
Silence. Then… steam hissed from the rocks.
Maverick climbed out.
His armor smoked. The metal of his shoulderplate peeled in warped layers. But he didn't slow.
"I'm still standing," he growled, hefting his hammer. "Mitus saw something in me. So I'll show him he was right."
⸻
They regrouped.
The formation changed. Tightened.
Valkar and Fitus flanked the colossus's left. Candren and Riven split right. Maverick advanced directly up the middle.
The colossus stood motionless for a breath—then tilted its head.
Its eyes tracked each of them. One by one. Identifying. Calculating.
Then it laughed again—a grinding, rust-filled sound like a thousand bones being crushed inside a furnace.
Riven stiffened. "It remembers us."
Fitus spat. "Let's make it forget."
They moved as one.
Valkar leapt and hammered down on the creature's forearm joint. Bone splintered. Sparks flew. Riven climbed the opposite limb, driving both blades into its upper bicep and carving ancient symbols into the flesh-metal, slicing nerves.
Candren loosed an overcharged bolt directly into the creature's gut. The blast punched a hole in its abdomen the size of a man. Viscera and flame poured from the wound, sizzling against the ash.
Fitus tossed two magnetic mines into its chest. "Say hello to hell," he muttered—and detonated them.
The beast reeled. Its torso flared with molten fractures.
And Maverick?
Maverick sprinted along the falling debris like a prophet chasing doom. He leapt and landed on the colossus's shoulder.
He drew Mitus's glaive-staves.
The moon paused.
The beast saw them.
And for the first time… it hesitated.
"You remember these?" Maverick whispered.
The glaives hissed.
"I do."
He plunged them into the colossus's throat. The weapons surged with righteous fury. The creature screamed—a sound deeper than sound, vibrating the planet's crust.
Maverick twisted, carved down, and ripped the glaives free in a dual arc, severing its voice box. Then he flipped backward off its body, landing on a spire below with godlike balance.
Below, the beast shuddered.
Its movements slowed.
Its legs buckled.
It collapsed, cracking the earth beneath.
The Warmachines gathered, weapons raised.
The creature's mouth opened one last time—and out came Mitus's voice:
"Is this what you wanted?"
Not truly him. A puppet. A memory warped.
But Maverick didn't blink.
"No," he said, raising his hammer.
"This isn't who he was."
And with that—he brought it down.
The colossus's skull caved inward. Bone and metal burst in every direction. Silence fell like judgment.
⸻
But the fight wasn't over.
As the steam cleared, Candren's visor flashed.
"Picking up… something," he said, moving closer.
Inside the chest cavity—half-melted, half-preserved—were mechanical remains. Shoulder plating. Armor cores. A shattered blade.
Riven stepped closer. His face went cold.
"That's Warmachine tech."
Valkar looked closer. "These aren't ours."
"Other units," Fitus said. "But there haven't been other missions here."
Candren checked his logs. "Not that we were told about."
Maverick stared at the remains. "We weren't the first."
A long silence followed.
Then Maverick spoke again—his voice low.
"We were just the first they expected to survive."
They looked up—toward the Maw, where the final path lay waiting.
"We finish this," Maverick said. "Then we go home."
"And then?" Riven asked.
"Then we ask questions."
They moved on.
For Mitus.
For the truth.
And for the reckoning to come.