Primordial Heir: Nine Stars

The second wave arrived without fanfare. No roar. No thunder. A sudden flash of light followed by steady thud of heavy feet on scorched earth, and the gleam of eyes in the fading storm light.

Fifty of them. Orcs. Not your typical ones.

They came in colors that spoke of different tribes, different bloodlines, different strengths. Green orcs, their bodies thick with muscle, carrying axes that could fell trees. Blue orcs, leaner, faster, their skin dark as a frozen lake, their hands empty but their claws sharp. Red orcs, smaller but radiating heat, their breath steaming, their eyes burning. And at the center, a single gray orc, massive and still, its skin like old stone, its gaze fixed on Nero with an intelligence the others lacked.

Fifty orcs. Each one worth a dozen goblins. Each one a killing machine bred for war.

Nero’s hand tightened on his sword. The lightning storm above had faded, the clouds dissolving into pale mist. He could summon it again. Call down another deluge, wipe them all out in a single cataclysm. But the cost would be high. The first wave had drained him more than he wanted to admit. The second wave would leave him empty for the third.

He needed another way.

He thought of lightning. Not the thunderous bolts that split the sky, not the roaring rivers that turned armies to ash. Something smaller. Something quieter.

What if lightning had no sound? What if it moved not with the crash of thunder, but with silence?

In the meantime the orcs charged like raging bulls.

Nero closed his eyes. He reached into his cores, toward the golden star in his inner world, past the familiar gold of his lightning, past the roar and fury, to something deeper. Something purer.

He imagined lightning not as sound and fury, but as light. Silent. Invisible. Death without warning, silently like a deadly assassin.

When he opened his eyes, they were white.

White lightning crackled around his body, not the brilliant gold of before, but pale, almost translucent. It made no sound. No crackling sound, no hum. It moved like water, like light, like something that had no business being in the world of flesh and bone.

The first orc reached him. A green brute, its axe already swinging, its roar already rising.

Nero moved.

The orc’s axe cut through empty air. Nero was behind it, his sword already sheathed in white fire. The orc’s eyes went wide. It opened its mouth to scream, but the white lightning had already entered its throat, its lungs, its heart. It fell without a sound.

The other orcs hesitated. They had seen the move, but they had not heard it. No thunder. No clash of steel. Just a man, a blur, and one of their strongest dead on the ground.

Nero did not wait. He moved again, and this time, there was no warning at all.

He appeared before a blue orc, its claws raised, its mouth open to spit venom. His sword passed through its chest, and it crumpled, silent as a stone. He appeared behind a red orc, its body already heating, its hands already blazing. His blade took its head, and it fell without a sound.

The orcs swung at him, and he was not there. They roared, and their voices echoed in empty air. They pressed together, forming a wall of flesh and steel, and he flowed through them like smoke.

White lightning was not faster than gold. It was not stronger. But it was silent. And in that silence, there was no warning. No moment to brace, to counter, to survive. The orcs could not track him, could not hear the strike that killed them, could not see the blade that moved like light.

He killed five, then ten, then twenty. The green orcs fell first, their strength useless against an enemy they could not touch. The blue orcs followed, their speed meaningless against a foe who moved without sound. The red orcs tried to burn him, to surround him in fire, but he was already gone, already among them, already cutting them down.

The gray orc watched. It did not move. It did not attack. It simply stood, its stone eyes tracking Nero’s movements, waiting.

Nero felt the weight of that gaze even as he killed. The gray orc was different. Smarter. It would not fall to silence and speed. It would wait for him to slow, to tire, to make a mistake.

And he was being exhausted despite his near inhuman stamina.

The white lightning was draining him. He could feel it in his bones, in his lungs, in the trembling of his hands. Each silent step cost more than a thunderous one. Each kill left him emptier than the last. He could not maintain this for long.

He killed five more orcs, then five more. The field was littered with bodies, forty-three in all. Seven remained, clustered around the gray orc, their weapons raised, their eyes wide with something that might have been fear.

Nero stopped. His chest heaved. Sweat dripped from his brow, mixed with blood from a dozen small wounds he had not noticed. The white lightning flickered around him, dimming, fading.

The gray orc’s eyes gleamed. It raised a hand, and the six remaining orcs charged.

They came at him together, a wall of green and blue and red, their weapons raised, their mouths open in silent screams. Nero raised his sword, the white lightning flaring one last time.

He met them head-on.

He took the first orc through the chest, but its axe grazed his shoulder. He took the second through the throat, but its claws tore his arm. He spun, his blade cutting a red orc in half, and felt something crack in his ribs.

He was slowing. The white lightning was failing. But he did not stop.

He killed the fourth, the fifth, the sixth. Each kill cost him blood, cost him breath, cost him the strength that was already fading. By the time the sixth fell, he was on his knees, his sword buried in its chest, his body screaming.

The gray orc stood over him. It had not moved during the slaughter, had simply watched, waiting for this moment. It raised its hand, and Nero saw the truth in its eyes. It had let its soldiers die, had used them to wear him down, to bring him to this point.

Now it would kill him.

The gray orc’s hand came down, fingers extended like blades, aimed at his throat.

Nero’s eyes flashed white.

The last of his lightning, all that remained, gathered in his free hand. Not as a sword, not as a storm waiting to be unleashed but just a ball of silent, white fire, small as an apple, bright as a star.

He thrust it into the gray orc’s chest.

’’!!!”

The creature’s eyes went wide. It opened its mouth to scream, but the white fire filled its lungs, its throat, its brain. It froze, a statue of flesh and bone, and then it fell.

Nero fell with it, his body collapsing, his sword slipping from his grip. He lay among the corpses, his chest heaving, his blood pooling on the scorched earth. The white lightning was gone. The field was silent.

He was alive.

The notification appeared, soft blue against the gray sky.

Second wave cleared.

Third wave approaching in thirty minutes.

Nero closed his eyes. His wounds were already healing, the earth law working through his flesh, knitting bone, sealing flesh. But it was slow. Too slow. He needed time.

Thirty minutes. It would have to be enough.

He lay there in the silence, breathing, waiting. The third wave was coming. And he would be ready. He had to be.