Outside of StreamWalk looked much like the forest he had cratered in not to long ago.

  Just an hour or two prior by Aethernus Vhal’s estimation.

  Thick trees, heavy canopy, thick foliage, and many bushes that made visibility low without forcibly making the forest retreat.

  Aethernus Vhal’s march continued with a quick pace that the rest of the knights could not follow even with their strange energies enhancing their bodies. He pushed through the trees themselves until he broke into a large clearing not to far out of the towns limits. Beyond the roads and farmland though.

  On the way he found hunters, farmers, trappers, and more that were rushing to get back to safety. Hundreds of peoples with their families and belongings.

  None of them noticed him.

  Nothing did until he made it to the clearing where the Breach Spark sat.

  He stepped forward and stood before a strange thing he did not inherently recognize. Yes, it leaked warp energies and maiasma, yet it looked nothing like the Warp Rifts and tears within the fabric of reality. Those were jagged and mean. This was nothing like that. A distortion the size of a man’s torso, flickering in and out like a wound trying to scab while something inside kept tearing it open.

  The air around it shimmered, and when it did, the light bent in ways that made distance feel uncertain.

  Aethernus Vhal felt a familiar pressure every time it wavered. Not warp-hunger, not madness, but the instinctual awareness that reality had become thin.

  He focused on the way it beat and how it reacted to his arrival.

  Aethernus Vhal frowned deeply as he learned a few things from it that made him question the Warden and these Watchers.

  Praven and the second knight arrived a few seconds later. He took deep breaths and stared at Aethernus Vhal as though he was some monster, until he noticed the Breach Spark. He walked up next to Aethernus Vhal and stared up at it. “Spark Breach,” he said, almost to himself. “Minor rupture. Nothing but a probe. Yet, if left unchecked, it would ruin this area down to the very soil. Making this whole place uninhabitable. It shouldn’t be here. Not this close. Not without–”

  Aethernus Vhal did not look back. “It is testing your defences.”

  Praven’s grip tightened on his blade. He looked toward his friend and then back at Aethernus Vhal with a confused expression. He didn’t need to speak to voice his words.

  What is testing?

  “Whatever is behind it. This isn’t a random creation. This was powered and has connecting threads deeper within its womb that vanish beyond what my senses can reach. This isn’t a natural occurrence. Something is manipulating the Breach. War is being waged upon you and you don’t even know.” Aethernus Vhal’s assessment of the generals and most powerful individuals could go one of two ways now.

  Either they were pathetic and incompetent…

  Or they were, for reasons he could not fathom, aiding and abetting these Breaches to continue.

  To help the enemy against humanity? If I find this true, there won’t be enough of them to remembered in their history annals.

  The spark pulsed. Then it tore wider for the first time.

  Something slid through, hidden by the energies that bolted left and right to the senses of Praven and his friend. They recognized something past, but could not make it out until the Breach closed itself.

  Aethernus Vhal had no such issue.

  It was not a beast from the forest. It did not move like flesh obeying muscle. It crawled forward with limbs that suggested an insect’s logic but carried the mass of a wolf, body plated in black chitin that reflected no light, head crowned with sensory protrusions that twitched as if tasting the air. Its mouth did not open. Instead, the air around it vibrated, a low keening resonance that made the hair on the Flame Knights’ arms rise.

  This was an abomination of science and psychic abilities.

  Much like the Breach itself.

  The mastermind behind this whole thing let its frankenstein experiments spew forth into the world.

  A second followed.

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  Then a third and forth.

  Aethernus Vhal did not care for their weakness and abominable forms.

  Praven and the other knight into formation behind Aethernus Vhal, blades rising, runes igniting along their weapons in controlled pulses. Aethernus noted their discipline. He also noted their fear. Their heart rates spiked in unison by roughly 14–22% based on respiration and throat movement. Fear, but contained. That was the difference between trained men and panicking crowds.

  Aethernus Vhal stepped forward alone.

  He held the giant’s sword low in one hand, shield angled slightly. His posture was not aggressive. It was calculated. He moved to a position 6.3 metres ahead of the line, far enough to prevent the spark-things from reaching the formation, close enough that if they surged he could intercept before they gained momentum.

  The creatures paused.

  They adjusted their sensory protrusions toward him.

  Should I test these new skills and mana on them? There is much for me to learn and I require test subjects to test them on.

  Aethernus Vhal felt the spark’s boundary pulse again, as if responding to their attention.

  Then the world-system overlaid text across his vision.

  Breach Entity Detected

  Classification: Unknown

  Comparative Similarity: Void-born (Provisional)

  Threat Rank: Pending

  Observation: Active

  Aethernus Vhal smiled beneath his helm.

  The system was already pulling from his knowledge base again, trying to map the unknown to his known categories. That meant it was capable of learning. He could use it. Not as a guide, but as a tool in his Endless War. Another in his grand arsenal that can be wielded against all the enemies of Humanity in any universe and any dimension he found himself in.

  He raised the giant’s sword.

  The creatures surged.

  They moved faster than their mass suggested, snapping forward with distorted acceleration like something that did not fully obey inertia. The lead entity leapt, claws extended toward Aethernus’ throat line. They reeked of Warp energies tainting the mana that billowed out of them like fog. Contaminating the air and surroundings. No wonder the world became dead when the Breaches remained open for to long.

  Aethernus Vhal did not retreat.

  He stepped forward and let the mana within the surroundings react to his intent.

  It tried to fight back, claw away from his command. But it failed. Rushing forward through his frame and into the sword as [Meteor’s Fell Cleave] came to life.

  A bright flash blinded Praven and the other Knight. The first creature shrieked, only for its shout to get cut off abruptly.

  Aethernus Vhal watched as energy formed a sharp and cleaved through the creature, tore at the ground, and created a five foot deep ravine the went dozens of meters. The rest of the void-beings continued to charge, unthinking creatures that couldn’t recognize danger before them. The perfect frontline creatures that never wavered or hesitated no matter the numbers and likelihood of survival.

  His shield met the second creature mid-air with a single controlled strike that would have shattered a baseline man’s shoulder. The runes on the shield flashed once, absorbing the impact and bleeding kinetic force into the ground. The entity rebounded, disoriented, and Aethernus Vhal’s sword came through in a lateral cleave that did not look like effort so much as inevitability.

  The blade tore through it.

  The chitin did not resist the way Aethernus expected. The crystal veins in the sword flared, and the edge cut deeper than metal should have, shearing through layered armour as if the weapon carried an added principle beyond sharpness. The creature split, its internal matter collapsing into ash-black slurry that steamed where it hit the soil.

  The third void-being reached him a fraction of a second later.

  Aethernus Vhal rotated thirty degrees, kept his feet planted, and drove the sword down in a diagonal cut that took its forelimb and half its torso. It fell without a sound. The keening resonance cut out abruptly, like a signal interrupted.

  The fourth entity tried to flank, but it was to late.

  All its allies were already dead in less than the time it took to blink twice.

  Praven moved to intercept, and Aethernus allowed it. He gave the Flame Knight the honor of engagement, because warfare was not only about demonstrating superiority. It was about letting allies build confidence. Praven’s blade struck with a runic burst of flames and mana, carving a line of light through the creature’s plating. The entity staggered, then the second knight, the Earthen Knight, finished it with a thrust that pinned it to the dirt and split it from sternum to pelvis without using any of his mana.

  Silence returned for a second. Then the spark pulsed again.

  The rift looked to collapse but Aethernus Vhal knew better than to fall for such petty tricks.

  Praven did not. “Seems like this is a tiny Breach Spark. Good. We need to get back and be debriefed on our roles during the actual Breach–”

  “No,” Aethernus Vhal said as he shifted toward the single locality that was invisible. “It has not been defeated.”

  “W-What?”

  The single locality pulsed as though it recognized being caught in its trick. It screamed back to life, widening more than previously.

  “It’s stabilising? That shouldn’t happen on a minor rupture unless, unless something on the other side is feeding it.” Praven’s voice cracked.

  Aethernus Vhal would have been sorely disappointed to have fought nothing but four measly abominations after coming all the way out here. He could feel the difference now. The spark was not random. It was being held open deliberately. A probe that had found something worth observing. A test that had met resistance and decided to escalate. The system overlay flickered again, new lines compiling faster than before.

  Breach Spark: Sustained

  Anomaly Present: Confirmed

  Adaptive Response: Initiating

  Warning: Containment Failure Accelerating

  Aethernus Vhal shifted his stance slightly, weight forward, centre lowered. He adjusted his grip on the giant’s sword, feeling the rune lines warm beneath his palm. Then he spoke, not to Praven, not to the knight next to him, but to the rupture itself. “Send more.”

  The spark answered. Something larger moved behind the thin fabric of the world, and the air began to scream.