Primordial Heir: Nine Stars

The smartphone buzzed in Elysia’s pocket, the vibration piercing the quiet of the ruined village.

She pulled it out and looked at the screen. A special mission. Priority one. Encrypted straight from the academy’s intelligence division.

Organization cell detected. Sector 7-G. Active facility. Kill all hostiles. No survivors. No prisoners.

Coordinates appeared below the text. A location not far from her current position. Less than twenty minutes if she moved fast.

Elysia’s golden eyes scanned the message once, then she pocketed the phone. No questions. No hesitation. She turned from the Wyvern’s corpse and walked toward the tree line.

The mission was simple. Eliminate. No survivors. No prisoners.

She would execute it perfectly.

•••

The facility was concealed within a dense forest, embedded into the side of a gentle hill. From an outsider’s perspective, it appeared unremarkable—a few antiquated stone walls, vestiges of a long-abandoned building. However, Elysia’s keen eyesight noted subtle details others overlooked: the worn pathway leading to an apparently solid wall, the faint shimmer of a concealment ward, and a tiny camera camouflaged in a dead tree branch.

She observed from the treeline for exactly three minutes—counting, assessing, memorizing.

Then she acted.

A flash of lightning whisked her across the clearing in a silent blur. She reached the wall before the camera could track her, pressing her hand against the stone. An electric pulse surged through the ward, shorting it out with a flurry of invisible sparks. The wall flickered and then revealed a transparent, hidden door.

She slipped inside.

The interior was a maze of narrow corridors and small rooms, dimly lit, filled with the smell of chemicals and blood. A low hum of machinery echoed from deeper inside.

Elysia moved silently like a ghost—deadly and unstoppable.

The first guard appeared around a corner, a young man in dark clothing with a rifle slung across his back. He saw her, and his mouth opened to shout.

Lightning shot from her fingertip, striking his throat—powerful enough to paralyze his vocal cords but not to kill. He fell silent, gasping, as she passed him, a casual flick of her wrist sending another bolt through his heart. No survivors were her mission.

She advanced further.

The facility opened into a larger chamber, filled with tables covered in equipment and cages lining the walls—some empty, others holding ragged, broken figures with hollow eyes, victims of the organization and their experiments.

Elysia showed no change in expression. She noted the cages and victims, filing this information away for later. Her focus was on the mission.

Three guards emerged from a side door, better trained than the first—they didn’t shout or hesitate, raising their guns and firing simultaneously.

Elysia was already gone.

Lightning blurred her into a golden streak, tracing impossible patterns through the air. Bullets whizzed past where she had been. Her sword appeared in her hand, swinging swiftly. The first guard’s rifle shattered in two, and the second guard’s head followed in the same split second. The third attempt to run.

He took three steps before lightning struck him between the shoulder blades, knocking him down in a cloud of smoke.

Elysia kept moving forward without pause.

The deeper chambers held the real resistance.

They came at her in waves—guards, subjects twisted by the organization’s modifications, creatures that had once been human and were now something else, something neither human neither monster, disgusting. They attacked with desperate fury, knowing what she was, knowing what she represented.

Elysia cut through them all.

Her sword was a blur of silver and gold. Lightning arced from her blade, from her fingers, from her very eyes. She didn’t speak. Didn’t taunt. Didn’t acknowledge their existence beyond the necessary movements of killing.

A demonized human lunged at her, its body twisted into a wolf-like form, claws extended. It was fast. Strong. It had probably killed dozens of normal soldiers.

Elysia sidestepped its lunge and removed its head with a single, economical swing. It fell, twitching, then lay still.

Another demonized creature—this one insectoid, with chitinous armor and multiple arms—scuttled from a side passage. Its mandibles clicked, spraying venom. Elysia raised a hand. Lightning formed a shield, the venom sizzling into harmless steam on contact. Her sword took off two of its arms, then its head, then the rest of it in pieces.

She kept moving.

The final chamber was the largest. A laboratory, filled with equipment, monitors, and strange glowing tanks. And at its center, three figures waited.

The leaders.

They were human—mostly. But their eyes held that familiar, wrong light. The mark of the organization. The demonization that lurked beneath their skin, ready to emerge.

The eldest of them, a man with gray hair and cold eyes, stepped forward.

”You’re too late,” he said, his voice calm, assured.

”We’ve already moved everything of value. This facility is a ghost. You’ve killed pawns for nothing.”

Elysia didn’t respond. Didn’t acknowledge his words. Her golden eyes swept the room, cataloging exits, threats, possibilities.

The man’s eyes narrowed. ”You think you’re something special, don’t you? A Raizen. A prodigy. You’ve never faced real—”

He didn’t finish, no he couldn’t.

Elysia acted. Lightning carried her across the room in a heartbeat. Her sword was already swinging downard. The man’s demonization triggered automatically, his body beginning to twist and change—

Too slow.

The blade took his head before the transformation could complete. His body collapsed, half-changed, grotesque, and incomplete.

The other two reacted instantly. They had been ready, had expected the attack. Their demonization was completed in the space of a breath. One became a massive, bear-like creature with claws like scythes. The other became a serpentine horror, its body elongating, scales forming.

They attacked together.

Elysia met them head on.

Swoosh!

The bear-creature swung its claws in a devastating arc. She flowed under it like a mirage, her sword opening its belly as she passed. It roared, more in fury than pain, and spun to follow her.

The serpent-creature struck from the side, its fangs aimed at her neck. Lightning caught it mid-lunge, blasting it across the room. It crashed into a bank of equipment, sparks exploding around it.

The bear came again. Slower now, it’s wound bleeding black ichor. Elysia dodged its next swing, ducked under the next, and drove her sword up through its chin into its brain. It collapsed like a felled tree.

The serpent recovered, hissing, coiling to strike. Elysia was already there. Her free hand grabbed its tail, lightning surging through its body. It convulsed, unable to move, and her sword took its head in a single clean stroke.

Silence.

Elysia stood in the center of the laboratory, surrounded by bodies, by destruction, by the aftermath of her mission. Blood dripped from her sword. Lightning still crackled faintly around her fingers.

She looked around the room. At the monitors—all dark. At the glowing tanks—all empty. At the shelves—stripped bare.

The gray-haired man had been telling the truth. They had moved everything. There were no leads here. No information. No trail to follow.

Elysia’s expression didn’t change. She had completed her mission. The facility was eliminated. The hostiles were dead. That was all that mattered.

She sheathed her sword and turned, walking back through the laboratory, through the corridors, past the bodies and the cages and the evidence of horrors committed.

At the entrance, she paused. Looked back once at the facility, now silent and still.

Then she stepped through the hidden door and into the forest, leaving the place to rot in its own silence.

The mission was complete. No survivors. No prisoners. No leads.

Elysia Raizen walked into the deepening twilight, her golden eyes cold, her mind already moving to the next task, to acquire a new toy or destroy it.