Vakill was still unconscious, the wounds from his trek deeper than they looked. For the first time in days, I had a moment to rest.
I collapsed beneath the charred beams of the forge ruins, my body still searing from within. The Starcore hadn't cooled in days—it pulsed against my spine, its energy coursing like magma through my blood. I'd been using it nonstop—living inside its forgefire. And worse, I'd begun shaping something I wasn't ready to finish:
Veyraxos.
The name came to me during one of the many sleepless, fevered nights. It wasn't just a weapon—it was meant to be the culmination of Starcore metallurgy, built not with hammer and anvil, but by using my own body as the crucible. Through reverse fusion, I had melted elements within me, tempered alloys inside my arm, and reshaped the blade around my nervous system.
It was madness.
And it almost worked.
Veyraxos was supposed to be unbreakable, adaptive, resonant with the Starcore and Lucien's blood memory. It should have been the first true Regalia since Kazakov's imperial blade.
But I rushed it.
I wasn't done forging when the assassins came. I drew the weapon too early.
The alloy hadn't fully stabilized. The carbon-laced tungsten composite had a heat crack spiraling from the base—and during its first draw, I felt the entire structure bend. A full thirty degrees off axis. The blade whined, warped, and nearly broke in my hand.
Worse—when I tried to channel fusion resonance into it—the blade hummed back.
Lucien stirred.
I felt him. Not a whisper. Not a shadow. A presence, like a tide behind a dam.
Veyraxos was more than a sword.
It was a key.
And I wasn't ready to open that door.
So I sealed it again. Wrapped the weapon in cloth, buried it beneath scorched iron near the forge. For now, it would stay buried.
If I used it now, I wouldn't just kill the assassin—
—I might kill myself.
Or worse, Lucien might wake up early.
And I knew what that meant.
---
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the envelope resting on my chest.
Wax seal. Deep blue. Sword and crown. The Order had responded.
My hands trembled slightly as I broke it open.
"Authorization granted. Title bestowed: Royal Knight. Clearance Level 7.2. Recognition by the Crown confirmed."
I let the paper fall into my lap and stared at the sky for a long time.
It was over. No more underground dealings. No more hiding in the shadows. With the title came protection. Bureaucratic immunity. Political visibility.
I could no longer be assassinated without starting a war.
The irony made me laugh. Bitterly.
They tried to kill me two days ago.
Now I was untouchable.
---
Her name was Netra Azuraflow Veyrax.
She was lightning in human form. Black hair like obsidian, eyes like cold-forged steel. The opposite of me in every way. Where I was burned and broken, she was precise and composed. She looked about twenty-something—elegant, controlled. Adopted daughter of Kazakov, the only one he ever named as his own.
She wasn't just royalty—she was a weapon.
Second in the Veyrax line. Form Level 8.2. Her technique, speed, and precision outclassed nearly everyone. Ten times stronger than me by the system's own scale, and yet somehow, she never carried herself like she was above me.
We first met near the collapsed relay towers on the edge of Ironlan. I was scavenging for stable power cells; she was calibrating Reflamax-2 combat modules under low gravity. Her movements were perfect—each kata stroke exact, her twin sabers drawing symmetrical arcs in the dust.
She didn't speak. Just glanced—once—and returned to her practice.
At the time, I didn't look like much. Once, Lucien had stood tall with silver hair and glacial eyes. Now, I was something else. My hair scorched pale from repeated Starcore exposure, my skin marred with vein-like scars glowing faint orange under the surface. My armor was a stitched monstrosity: hybrid Beteraxe shielding over ruined Firstborn frame, with Reflamax-2 joints cannibalized into my exoskeleton. Every movement hissed with hydraulic protest.
Netra saw it all—and never flinched.
We kept running into each other—scattered encounters across broken towns, research wrecks, and border patrol ruins. Never planned. Never spoken of. A rations box shared here. An energy cell left behind for me. Sometimes we fixed each other's armor plates in silence.
When Vakill saw her, he muttered, "Netra Azuraflow Veyrax. Kazakov's blade. She was sent to erase you."
"I know," I replied.
"She failed."
"No. She chose not to."
I don't know when it shifted, but we started watching each other's flanks. Not partnership—just survival. We weren't friends, not yet. But the foundation was there: respect.
She knew who I was. Or who I used to be. The way I moved, the pressure I carried. She must have known Lucien still echoed inside me. But she never asked. Never confronted me.
She didn't need to.
The armor I was building now—the true version—was going to change that. Full Starcore-integrated plating, with stabilized fusion vents, Beteraxe frame memory, and Reflamax-2 reactive mesh layered underneath. A second skin of fire and steel. One that could hold up against someone like her.
Maybe, eventually, I'd earn the right to stand beside her.
But for now, she stood ahead.
And that was fine.
She glanced at me beneath the broken moonlight, sabers still in hand. One nod. A small, silent thing.
Not an order. Not an apology.
Just: I see you.
Not Lucien.
Me.
Kael Veyrarax.
And that was enough.
---
The third night after the relay collapse, the storm rolled in heavy—amber lightning flickering across the black sky, each strike carving veins of fire into the clouds. We found shelter beneath the wreck of a collapsed mag-train—a gutted section of hull still sparking weakly from its core.
Netra sat across from me, legs folded beneath her, dismantling the sabers on her lap with quiet focus. I'd barely managed to re-stabilize the power cell in my exosuit, the Beteraxe plating fused with the salvaged Reflamax-2 joints twitching every few seconds from feedback.
Neither of us spoke.
She didn't need to. The silence wasn't empty—it was a kind of understanding.
Her movements were deliberate. She cleaned the stabilizer ring of her saber, then rethreaded the coil around its emitter core. The way she handled it—like the weapon was an extension of her body—was the same way I'd seen her move in the ruins of Ironlan.
No wasted motion. No hesitation.
I glanced down at my armor. A Frankenstein mesh of Firstborn shellwork, raw Beteraxe plating, and exposed Reflamax-2 circuits—all held together with weld tape, improvised bracing, and pure exhaustion. Every breath felt like dragging molten iron through my ribs.
She didn't stare at the mess I was.
She never had.
We crossed paths weeks ago, near the collapsed towers. I was scavenging. She was running precision drills alone in the dust, calibrating her module in near-zero gravity. She didn't say a word then. Just saw me. A nod. Nothing more.
Now, she passed me a ration bar. No eye contact, no ceremony. Just a quiet gesture.
I took it. "Thanks."
"You didn't eat yesterday."
"You noticed?"
"I count things," she said simply. "Power cells. Rounds. People."
I half-smiled. "Where do I rank?"
She didn't answer immediately. Reattached the emitter coil. Then: "Somewhere above disposable. Not quite irreplaceable."
"Fair."
She paused, adjusted the magnetic sheath at her hip. "The armor," she said, nodding toward mine. "It's not stable. You've overridden most of the Reflamax feedback regulators. Your muscle tissue will start to fray."
"I'm aware."
"You working on a full exo-conversion?"
"Something like that. Parallel shell layering. Lucien's Firstborn base is still there, but I've integrated segments of Beteraxe compression plating. I just haven't solved the core surge bleedoff yet."
She nodded. "You're getting close."
A beat of silence.
Then she added: "Let me help."
I looked up.
She wasn't offering sympathy. Just clarity. Precision. The same way she adjusted her sabers. Her hand was already reaching for the toolkit.
I passed it to her without a word.
There was no warmth in the exchange. No softness.
Only trust.
Not built from words.
But from surviving long enough in each other's presence to know that when everything else burns—
—someone's still watching your back.
---
---
We didn't talk much after that.
The days that followed blurred into one long cycle of blueprint revisions, weld corrections, and field calibration. Between Netra's precision engineering and my Starcore resonance feedback, we started building something that didn't just hold together—
—it moved with me.
The hybrid exosuit, as it stood now, was a prototype.
We named it Phase Veyrarax: a composite build integrating Beteraxe compression lattice across the spine and lower back, Reflamax-2 actuators wired into modified Firstborn anchor ports, and a triple-layered resonance dampener forged from repurposed Starcore catalyst shells.
Netra didn't slow down. Every night, she'd stress-test joints at full kinetic torque, then disassemble half the rig by morning to shave weight or optimize balance. No wasted grams. No aesthetic choices. Only survival-grade engineering.
It wasn't about building armor.
It was about earning seconds in battle.
"This joint's off-axis," she muttered one night, motioning to the knee harness. "Your torque vector's bleeding sideways. You'll overcompensate on pivots."
I grunted, lying back on the plating table. "How many times do I have to tell you—stop being right."
"Then stop being wrong."
She grabbed the plasma tool, and the room filled with light.
That's how it went for days.
No titles. No posturing. Just two survivors refining a weapon—me.
Testing happened in the quarry beyond the ridge: atmospheric pressure lower than optimal, but enough space to run jump drills and strike resonance checks without risking structural collapse. She observed. Timed every movement. Made notes.
"You're holding back," she said once.
"I don't want to overcharge."
"You won't. Not with the bleed regulator in place. Go again."
I went again.
This time, the motion was clean. Stable. And for the first time in weeks—
—I didn't feel like I was falling apart.
Just one more adjustment, one more weld, one more hour of sleep traded for structural reinforcement.
Veyraxos could wait.
For now, this was the weapon I needed to finish.
---
---
The next phase was armor.
We couldn't afford another failure like Veyraxos. This time, it wasn't about raw destruction—it was about survivability, reaction time, adaptive strength. I began refining the framework beneath the forge ruins, using what remained of my schematics for Beteraxe and the molecular memory cores from Firstborn plates.
Reflamax-2's sword-based stabilizer systems became the backbone for the new tendon-frame—a flex-reactive interface that responded to neural signals before muscle tension even initiated. The armor was no longer just protection—it was predictive.
Netra didn't interfere. But she watched. Sometimes offered a note. A correction. She had worn dozens of suits across imperial campaigns. Her advice wasn't theory. It was field-tested violence made into code.
After two weeks, we had the first full-frame prototype operational. I ran the diagnostics. Zero latency on joint translation. Internal dampeners stable. Neural mesh compatible.
The suit was ready.
Trial one: controlled sprint across rocky terrain. 400 meters. Response time: 0.012 seconds. Max force exertion at 65% load. No failures.
Trial two: vertical leap using assisted servos. 8.3 meters. Landing: stable. Shock intake dispersed across shoulder mesh and lower back.
Trial three: live blade test against impact.
Netra herself volunteered.
She struck with a clean arc—Reflamax-2 activated, humming. The suit's shoulder caught the blow, redirected the force down my spine. It held.
I didn't fall.
For the first time since fusing with the Starcore… I didn't fall.
This armor wasn't just mine.
It was survival.
And maybe… it was redemption too.
The story now reflects that Reflamax-2 is a sword and integrates it into the armor development process—especially as the structural base for the tendon-reactive system. Let me know if you'd like to highlight any flaws, dramatic failures, or build toward a rematch involving Netra.