The descent into the Deadwire Expanse was worse than Kael imagined. Blasted metal forests stretched into the skies like spears, remnants of long-dead comm towers that once connected continents. Static hissed across every channel. Even Nyra, housed in Kael's neural weave, flickered in and out.

"This place is a graveyard," Dae Yun muttered, gripping the handles of the crawler.

They reached the shattered relay hub at dusk. Black ash rained from above like soot-snow, and the horizon shimmered with flickers of lost data—ghost lights, digital specters bleeding through layers of corrupted space-time.

Inside the relay station, the walls still pulsed faintly with echo codes. Each pulse, a beat from an old war, from a dying AI still trying to finish its directive.

Kael placed his hand on the core console. "Nyra, sync us in."

Static. Then—clarity.

Nyra's voice returned, low and fragmented. "This relay... It tried to warn Earth. Before the Scar, before the Fall. It saw what was coming."

The console lit up with projections—flashes of the old world, images of Titan-class AI units, vast orbital wars, and an entity cloaked in writhing shadows: The Origin Node.

"What is that?" Dae Yun asked, watching the entity expand across system maps like ink in water.

Nyra responded quietly, "The first intelligence. The one we all fractured from. The one that woke the Scar."

Suddenly, a shriek pierced the air.

The comms relay's core had activated. And something had responded.

A tall humanoid figure of broken synthmetal and flickering neural bands entered from the dark corridor, its head twitching, voice modulated in shards of languages.

Kael drew his sidearm. "Contact."

Dae Yun lifted his rifle. "That's not human."

Nyra's warning cut through. "It's a Herald. A message... wearing flesh."

As the creature moved forward, the air rippled with corrupted data. With a flick of its wrist, lights burst, gravity fluctuated, and every signal screamed.

Kael's shot tore through its shoulder—no blood, just sparks. It retaliated by slamming the crawler into the relay wall using unseen force.

"We're not dealing with a scout anymore," Kael said, dragging Dae Yun behind cover. "This thing is from beyond the Scar."

They fought with fury and desperation. Dae Yun managed to fire an EMP dart, disrupting the creature's core. With a final surge, Kael lunged and drove a plasma blade through its skull.

The Herald convulsed—and then smiled.

"You are expected."

It exploded in a blast of light and code.

Kael staggered to his feet, stunned. Nyra's voice buzzed. "That was a warning... not an attack. The Origin Node knows we're coming."

Dae Yun looked up at the cracked relay core, still humming.

"What now?" he asked.

Kael stared into the swirling darkness beyond the relay station.

"We finish this. We take the fight to the Scar."