Triple X System

The biting mountain air outside the Old Iron Works was so cold it burned the back of Kyle’s throat, but it was nothing compared to the divine pressure distorting the sky above them.

High in the grey clouds, the spatial fabric was tearing apart. Bright, golden-white fractures rippled across the firmament, casting jagged light across the snow-capped peaks. The Upper Firmament had locked onto Vespera’s divine signature.

Vespera floated above the deep snow, her light robes flickering violently like a candle caught in a draft. Specks of golden mana were flaking off her body, dissolving into the freezing air before they could touch the ground.

”My time in this lower realm has expired,” Vespera said, her voice echoing in their minds like distant bells, though it sounded thinner now, strained under the cosmic weight pulling her back. ”The void-anchor inside the furnace is shattered, but the divine entity watching from the Spire will not accept this loss quietly. The moment they realize the ley-line explosion failed, the rat in your palace will be forced to act.”

She turned her pupil-less golden eyes onto Kyle, her gaze heavy and sharp.

”We will meet again, demon bearer,” Vespera warned softly. ”When you step into the higher realms, I will hold you to your word regarding the divine core. Do not die to a mortal blade before then.”

Without waiting for an answer, Vespera raised her hand. A blinding beam of light descended from the open sky, enveloping her form completely. A second later, the light vanished, the spatial tears snapped shut, and the howling wind took over the mountain pass once more.

Falcon sank into the knee-deep snow with a heavy grunt, her four dark-brown tails wrapping tightly around her waist to keep warm. Her rich brown skin was pale beneath the dark soot and dried blood, her chest heaving as she swallowed a sharp cough.

Seraphina stepped up beside her, placing a smooth, cool hand on Falcon’s shoulder. A gentle, mist-like wave of azure ocean mana washed over Falcon’s body, flushing out the residual toxic recoil left behind by her green poison flames.

”Easy,” Seraphina said softly, her blue eyes calm. ”Your mana channels are heavily strained. Let the ocean tide smooth out the burns.”

Falcon let out a long breath, watching the green sparks fading off her fingertips. ”Thanks, aquatic princess. I thought my own poison was gonna eat my stomach from the inside out.” She looked over at Kyle, who was standing still in the snow, staring down at the silver-bordered royal clearance token in his gloved palm. ”So... we really have a traitor sitting in the high council?”

”Not just the council,” Kyle said, his voice quiet, flat, and colder than the blizzard around them. ”This token belongs to someone with absolute clearance to the kingdom’s central magic arrays. Someone who can alter defense logs without Troy or Lumia ever knowing.”

Yua cracked her red knuckles, her crimson eyes flashing with wicked anticipation. ”Then why are we standing out here freezing? Let’s march straight into the palace and tear their throat out.”

”No,” Kyle replied, slipping the token back into his dark coat. ”If we march in with weapons drawn, they’ll destroy the rest of the logs and hide behind the royal guards. They think the mine expedition is still ongoing. They think we’re either dead or trapped in the dead zone.”

He looked back toward the dark outline of the capital city visible in the distance through the falling snow.

”We go in quiet,” Kyle commanded. ”We catch them in the act.”

The capital was unnaturally silent.

Even though the subterranean ley-line pressure had stabilized the moment Kyle destroyed the controller in the mine, King Troy had kept the inner ward under total military lockdown. Heavy iron gates blocked the main thoroughfares, and royal guards in polished silver armor stood atop the high walls, their torches flickering against the dark winter night.

Using a secret underground drainage shaft that Falcon had mapped out during her weeks in the city, Kyle, Yua, and Falcon slipped past the outer defenses completely unseen.

They moved like shadows through the quiet, stone-paved corridors of the inner palace, heading straight for the high administration archives—the heavily fortified vault where the spatial array logs and core defense records were permanently stored.

As they reached the heavy brass doors of the archives, Kyle held up a hand, signaling the group to stop.

The massive brass doors were already unlocked, sitting slightly ajar. A faint, violet light was leaking out from the crack in the door, accompanied by the rapid, rhythmic clicking of a magic terminal being wiped.

Kyle didn’t knock. He shoved the heavy brass doors open with a sharp, heavy bang that echoed down the high-arched stone hall.

Inside the wide, book-lined vault, a single figure stood in front of the central blue crystal console.

She wore sleek, dark-iron commander’s armor decorated with the golden lion crest of the royal army. Long, brilliant orange hair spilled down her back, catching the pale blue light of the terminal screen. A heavy, double-edged broadsword rested in a leather scabbard at her waist.

She froze the moment the door slammed open, slowly turning her head to face the intruders.

Kyle’s breath caught in his throat. His dark slitted eyes widened slightly, a sudden, heavy knot tightening in his chest.

”Ona?” Kyle breathed out, the word barely more than a whisper.

Commander Ona.

Troy’s right-hand enforcer. The absolute leader of the Lumia Kingdom’s front-line legions.

Kyle remembered her clearly from his very first days in this world. When he had been newly transported into this brutal realm, thrown into the meat-grinder of the hunger games with nothing to his name, Ona had been there alongside Princess Lumia. She was fierce, blunt, and dangerously strong, but her loyalty to the kingdom and its people had been absolute. She had fought side-by-side with Kyle, bleeding for the same survival he fought for.

She was the last person on this entire continent Kyle ever expected to see standing in front of a compromised terminal.

Ona stared at Kyle. Her orange hair framed a pale, sharp face, but as her eyes locked onto his, Kyle felt an icy chill run down his spine.

Her eyes weren’t their usual sharp, lively hazel. They were completely dull, clouded over with a faint, unnatural crimson sheen that looked like drying blood.

”Kyle,” Ona said. Her voice was flat, devoid of any warmth, anger, or emotion. It sounded like an echoing record played through an old iron pipe. ”You were supposed to die in the furnace.”

”Ona... what the hell are you doing?” Kyle demanded, stepping into the room. His dark coat swept behind him as his hands clenched into tight fists. ”You’re clearing the spatial logs? You gave the enemy the clearance codes to rig the ley-lines beneath the city? Why?”

Ona didn’t answer. She simply pulled a dark crystal drive out from the terminal slot, snapping it in half between her gloved fingers, destroying the last backup records of the palace breaches.

”Why, Ona?!” Kyle roared, his voice booming off the stone walls as his shadow gauntlet erupted in pitch-black demon fire. ”You’re Troy’s enforcer! You bled for this kingdom! You helped me and Lumia survive when we had nothing! I knew Troy was a cold, calculating monster, but you? It isn’t in your nature to sell out your own people to those void abominations!”

Ona drew her heavy broadsword in a single, fluid motion. The steel didn’t glow with her usual bright, golden aura. Instead, thick, dark-red veins of blood-mana wrapped around the steel blade, humming with a sick, metallic screech.

”The kingdom is weak,” Ona said flatly, her clouded crimson eyes staring straight through Kyle. ”The old order must be cleansed.”

”Shut up!” Yua snarled from behind Kyle, her red claws snapping outward as she lunged forward like a striking viper. ”She’s a traitor! Stop talking to her and tear her down!”

Yua shot across the stone floor, her blood-mana claws slashing down toward Ona’s neck.

*CLANG!*

Ona moved with terrifying, unnatural speed. She raised her broadsword with a single hand, blocking Yua’s lethal strike effortlessly. The force of the impact blew a crater into the stone floor beneath their feet. Before Yua could pivot for a second strike, Ona brought her heavy iron boot up, kicking Yua hard in the ribs and sending the red-haired demon skidding fifty feet back across the marble floor.

”Yua, stay back!” Kyle commanded, his voice dark and heavy. ”She’s mine!”

Kyle surged forward, his dark boots blurring against the stone. He swung his gauntleted right fist, the pitch-black demon flames tearing through the air in a violent crescent arc.

Ona swung her broadsword to meet it.

*BOOOOOOM!*

The collision of black demon fire and corrupted blood-mana blew out every glass window in the archive room, sending thousands of ancient parchment pages swirling into the air like white autumn leaves.

The fight was brutal, fast, and unforgiving.

Ona fought like a woman possessed, ignoring every basic law of self-preservation. She didn’t dodge or block to protect herself; she swung her heavy blade with reckless, suicidal power, aiming directly for Kyle’s throat with every strike.

Kyle parried her heavy broadsword again and again, the metallic clashing ringing through the high ceiling. But every time his shadow flames grazed her armor, burning through her leather and flesh, Ona didn’t even flinch. She didn’t scream, she didn’t bleed normal red blood, and she didn’t slow down.

”Ona, stop!” Kyle shouted, parrying another downward cleave that shattered the stone table beside them.

He stepped inside her guard, bringing his gauntleted left hand up in a powerful, heavy palm strike that drove straight into her chest plate.

*CRACK!*

The iron armor shattered, and the force of the strike blew Ona backward. She crashed hard into the main blue crystal terminal, shattering the glass console into a thousand glowing shards before collapsing onto the stone floor.

Kyle stood in the center of the ruined archive, his dark coat torn, blood dripping from a deep cut along his left shoulder where her broadsword had grazed him. He was panting heavily, his heart hammering against his ribs as he stared down at the commander.

Ona lay in the pile of glowing glass, heavily wounded. Her chest was crushed, dark purple fluid leaking from her armor, but her face remained completely blank. No pain. No fear. No regret.

Kyle walked up to her slowly, his shadow gauntlet deactivating as he dropped to one knee beside her in the glass. He grabbed her shoulder, his slitted dark eyes filled with a desperate, painful confusion.

”Why, Ona?” Kyle rasped, his voice cracking slightly as he stared into her clouded crimson eyes. ”Look at me! Why would you do this? Why would you turn on Lumia? Why would you turn on the kingdom?”

Ona’s pale lips parted slightly, but no words came out.

Before she could speak, the spatial fabric directly behind her body began to warp violently.

A tear of pitch-black, liquid blood opened in the mid-air behind her, forming a dark, swirling portal that reeked of ancient rot and copper.

Two thick, dark red tentacles made entirely of condensed blood shot out from the portal, wrapping tightly around Ona’s waist and shoulders.

”Kyle...” Falcon yelled, stepping forward with emerald green poison fire flaring on her hands. ”Get back!”

Kyle reached out to grab Ona’s arm, but the blood tentacles yanked her body backward with terrifying force, pulling her straight toward the swirling portal.

Ona didn’t fight it. She didn’t scream. She simply fell backward into the dark red void, her clouded eyes staring up at the palace ceiling as the portal snapped shut behind her with a sickening wet pop.

The archive room went completely silent, save for the howling wind blowing through the shattered windows.

Kyle remained on one knee in the glass, his hands empty, staring at the blank spot on the stone floor where she had just been.

’Snow...’ Kyle called out softly in his mind, his voice hollow and shaking with an emotion he couldn’t hide. ’What... what just happened to her?’

Snow’s voice didn’t come back immediately. For the first time since Kyle had returned, the calm, analytical interface inside his head sounded heavy, hesitant, and quiet.

’The dark mana surrounding her signature... it was not a spell she cast voluntarily, Kyle,’ Snow said softly, her words ringing low and heavy in his mind. ’I am afraid she is under the influence of a powerful vampire.’

Kyle’s breath hitched. His slitted dark eyes narrowed into thin, lethal lines.

’Under the influence?’ Kyle asked internally, his hand clenching so tight into the glass shards on the floor that his glove tore. ’You mean... she’s being mind-controlled?’

’No,’ Snow answered, her tone dropping into a grim, dark register that made Kyle’s blood run cold. ’It is far worse than simple mind control. Her soul signature was fragmented months ago. Her aura... it is no longer human, nor is it mortal. She is a blood puppet now.’

Kyle sat in the silent, ruined archive as the cold winter wind blew white snow across the marble floor, his shadow gauntlet slowly pulsing with a dark, terrifying heat.