The city of Skyglass Heights sparkled like a lie told too well.
Damian walked silently through the crystallized streets, the weight of blood still clinging to him like a second skin beneath the sterile white of his ZENTHRA Trial Guardian bodysuit. The air was too clean here, as if scrubbed of history, and even the breeze tasted filterednlike the truth itself had been purified.
Beside him, Serena walked with folded arms, her Void Serpent loosely wrapped across her shoulders like a living mantle. Her hood was down, her eyes forward. Neither of them said much.
The towers lood overhead, sky-piercing monoliths of glass and humming light.
Neon veins of aether shimred across their mirrored surfaces, pulsing in rhythm with distant generators buried in the floating infrastructure of Ebonreach. The roads here weren’t paved with stone or steel, but with the privilege of not needing to look down.
There would never be potholes!
And yet, all eyes were up.
"Therion," Serena said quietly, nudging him with her elbow.
He followed her gaze to the right.
Banners. Massive, radiant banners.
Guardian Dawn’s face was painted across the side of a tower in glimring blue. Noble. Unflinching. A warrior-poet in his final, glorified monts.
Guardian Theresa’s image mirrored his. Warm. Composed. Her expression digitally softened, her features angelic, nowhere near the frenzied mask she wore as she unleashed slaughter below.
Above them, looping holographic scripts danced in the sky.
"Ebonreach Honors the Fallen."
"Guardians Dawn and Theresa: Protectors of Peace."
"The Light Rembers."
Not a whisper of the chaos they unleashed.
Not a word of the children they incinerated with golden lightning, the beasts they butchered.
Just silence.
And curated rembrance.
"They’re making them martyrs," Serena muttered, her voice brittle. "Not murderers. Not monsters."
Damian didn’t respond.
He didn’t have to.
The truth was an impossibility in these parts of the city. It didn’t haunt anything, it was exiled.
Only two nas were being honored. The other three? The identities of the remaining Masked Guardians had yet to be revealed. Convenient. Strategic. The narrative needed villains, not broken heroes.
Enforcers in gold-trimd armor marched in synchronized formations down every street they passed, their visors glowing with silent scrutiny. More and more were flooding out from the central Skyglass Heights deploynt zones, heading toward the Pylon Gateway like blood rushing to a wound.
"Martial Law in action and fully being carried out, but not for this place..." Damian murmured.
The world was shifting, and fast.
The price of judgnt, it seed, was walls.
And weapons.
And yet, they continued walking.
Ahead, the towers curved inward around a central plaza, their foundations connected by soaring archways of light. And there, like a glorious obelisk, stood the ZENTHRA Beast Corporation.
It was a temple of power. Black clear glass frad in silver alloy. Neon-blue runes drifted lazily down its surface like falling snow. The air buzzed with kinetic silence, and from the roof, Aerial Vessels ca and went like rays of sunlight refracted through war machines.
As they neared the front steps, a single ssage blinked on Damian’s device as he took it out of his pocket.
[ZENTHRA Official Notice: Your assigned Vessel awaits. You are to proceed to Platform 12. Clearance verified. - Manager Park]
Serena glanced at his screen as the silver nine-tailed Kitsuul nestled tighter around Damian’s neck, her fur rippling with quiet energy.
"He moves fast," she said as she pulled out her phone that had the sa ssage.
Damian nodded. "Do you know anything about him?"
Manager Park. Director of Operations. Lyra’s Father was soone Damian had no idea about, and Serena...
She shook her head.
"I know the sa as you. Not every Glassblood knows other Glassbloods. Those truly powerful keep their own secrets."
...!
Damian took in these words and nodded.
They passed by the checks smoothly as Damian asked for them to be guided to Platform 12, with them being led towards the back of ZENTHRA by a tall, sleek, obsidian Android.
They stepped forward toward the platform, passing automated sentinels and security drones that bowed slightly, just enough to acknowledge their clearance without breaking posture.
A minute later, they reached Platform 12, a circular elevated sky-deck suspended in shimring aether light.
A sleek Model V3 ZENTHRA Aerial Vessel hovered low, its underbelly pulsing with silent turbines and faint traces of Entropic stabilization energy.
A woman in a sharp black-and-white uniform stepped forward from the boarding ramp and offered a curt nod.
"Trial Guardians," she said, eyes scanning both of them. "By order of Director Park, you are to be taken to a privately secured Entropic Rift located in the Azure Depths zone just outside Ebonreach tropolis. Flight ti, fourteen minutes. Please board."
...!
The woman in black and white had a Green Mantis on her heat that radiated a sharp light- her power just below a Symbiotic Resonance Interstellar Beast Masters by a small margin!
Damian processed her words of a privately secured Entropic Rift...outside Ebonreach tropolis?
This was a location he never expected as he nodded.
They didn’t hesitate.
They couldnt hesitate!
Inside, the vessel slled like synthetic leather and ion-charged air. The seats molded to them imdiately. A thin layer of shielding shimred across the glass windows as the vessel began to rise.
Outside, Skyglass Heights unfolded like a vision of the future.
Inside, two Beast Masters prepared to dive into entropy itself as Damian watched the scenery with cold eyes.
He rested a hand on Kitsuul, who shimred faintly and nuzzled into his touch. Her nine tails pulsed with unseen rhythm, starlight caught in fur.
"I’m ready," Serena said silently to herself, as if trying to convice herself!
Her eyes no longer held conflict. Only clarity.
Damian gave her a faint nod, then looked out the window.
Toward the smoke-wrapped horizon behind them.
Toward the blood-soaked ruins of justice.
He didn’t know what they would find inside that Rift.
But he knew what they were leaving behind.
Hollow Stacks...under Martial Law.
And he also knew what he had to beco to survive what ca next.
Not just a Guardian.
Not just a Judge.
But sothing more!
Until the day he could fucking hold the heart of Vex Talon in his hands!
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