Episode 5 – Iron Crown“Ancient War. Modern Blood.”

Episode 5: “Iron Crown”

The Gildari captain’s body still twitched as it hit the stone floor.

Around them, the chamber pulsed in red. Deep within the walls, machinery hissed to life. Vents expelled bursts of pressure. Thin slits opened across the ceiling—just wide enough to reveal shifting metal forms behind them.

The defense systems were awake.

Krozan’s scouter blinked erratically.

“We don’t have time.”

He turned to Veyla.

“Find the armory. Shut down whatever these things are before they kill us all.”

She nodded, already pulling a flat-surface tool from her belt—thin as glass, with pulsing nodes that clamped onto nearby circuitry. She jammed it into the side of a floor conduit and began swiping fast across the interface.

“I’m going in blind. Encryption’s multi-layered, but the command signals are old—maybe even analog at their core.”

Krozan pointed to the others.

“We split. Tarnak—secure the vault. Brazek, you’re on power grids. Pota, with me. We’re taking central control.”

They scattered.

Veyla knelt beside the central column, fingers flying. Behind her, small drones folded out from the walls—angular, floating, each armed with narrow beam projectors. They hadn’t begun firing.

Yet.

Her voice came through the comms.

“I’ve got a handshake on their security net. Give me sixty seconds.”

A targeting light clicked on behind her.

Then another.

Veyla didn’t look up. “Fifty-nine…”

Vault Assault – Tarnak Unleashed

Location: Lower Vault Sector – Gildari Wealth NexusTime: +04:12 since city takeover

Tarnak moved like a machine through the dim corridors, fists clenched, boots slamming against polished stone.

He didn’t speak.

Didn’t ask for directions.

The walls whispered with heat. The air got thicker the deeper he went, like walking through velvet smoke laced with static.

The vault entrance loomed ahead—an obsidian gate three stories tall, covered in gold etching and flanked by four monolithic statues. Each bore the image of a Gildari king, their long arms holding closed the seams of the vault like a warning.

A narrow walkway stretched toward the gate, suspended above a pit of swirling magnetic energy—crackling, hungry, alive.

Tarnak didn’t slow down.

The first defense unit dropped from the ceiling.

It was ten feet tall.Angular plating. Multiple legs. A single glowing sensor eye in the chest. Gold and black armor bristling with rail spikes and heat-seeking blades.

Tarnak blinked once.

Then he lunged.

He hit it center mass, driving his fist through the eye, glass and metal exploding outward. The machine staggered, limbs flailing wildly as sparks burst from its core.

He tore sideways, ripping its chest open with brute force. Parts spilled across the walkway.

Another turret locked on from behind the far statue—firing a volley of burning plasma darts.

Tarnak ducked one, caught the second with his bare hand, crushed it, and threw it back so hard it detonated the turret on impact.

He reached the vault gate.

It towered above him—silent and sealed.

He placed both hands on the doors and pushed.

Nothing happened.

He bared his teeth.

Then he roared.

His aura surged—blazing blue-white, a miniature explosion that cracked the stone beneath his feet. The four statues began to tremble. Gold etchings rippled like liquid.

Tarnak slammed both fists into the vault gate.

Once.

Twice.

The third punch collapsed the left door inward.

Metal screamed. The seam tore open, and the massive slab tilted off balance, slamming into the chamber beyond with the weight of a falling star.

Inside…

Stacks of gold.

But not in bars.

Geometric lattice forms, each one pulsing with internal circuits. Gildari wealth wasn’t just currency—it was living credit, encoded into solid matter.

There were hundreds of them.

Maybe thousands.

But that wasn’t what Tarnak saw first.

From the far end of the vault… a Gildari captain rose.

He wasn’t robed.

He was armored.

Sleek, white and gold plating, shaped like ceremonial guardwear—except modified for speed and precision. His skull was narrower than the last captain’s, and his movements were sharp. Military.

He didn’t speak.

He activated two thin, glowing blades from forearm modules—and charged.

Tarnak’s eyes widened for just a moment.

Then he grinned.

              Countdown Under Fire

Location: Armory Control Access Node – Central TowerTime: +04:47 since city takeover

Veyla knelt with one knee braced against the floor, the glowing interface spread across her gauntlet like liquid glass. Her eyes tracked multiple subroutines at once—her scouter’s HUD displaying string after string of translated code from the Gildari defense grid.

“Defense system is layered in nested protocols,” she muttered over comms. “Everything is keyed to their biometric patterns, even their fire control algorithms.”

Pota hovered nearby, guarding her back, scanning the shifting corridors.

“Can you override it?”

“Not yet,” she snapped. “I’m close—but I need access to the primary signal node inside the armory’s ignition chamber.”

“How close?” Krozan’s voice came through, steady but sharp.

“Thirty seconds and I’ll have the entire eastern quadrant’s turrets offline.”

A metallic screech echoed down the hall.

From the ceiling, a Gildari drone dropped into the corridor—four arms, twin plasma saws, and an ocular beam charging with deadly intent.

Pota blasted it mid-descent, vaporizing it into shrapnel.

“Twenty-nine,” Veyla muttered, unfazed.

Tarnak’s scouter pinged on the shared channel.

“Contact in the vault,” he growled.

His power level began climbing—fast.

Veyla’s eyes flicked to the signal. “That’s not a skirmish. He found a live one.”

The floor beneath her pulsed once—heat. The system was reacting to the breach.

“Come on…” she hissed, inputting the final command string.

Then—click.

The entire corridor dimmed.

Turrets lining the ceiling hissed… then retracted.

Her display turned green.

“Eastern sector: disarmed.”

              Vault Showdown

Location: Central Vault Chamber – Wealth Nexus CoreTime: +05:01

Tarnak stepped forward.

The Gildari captain stood ten meters away, his blades glowing bright white with curved plasma edges. His form was sharp—all precision and speed, the opposite of Tarnak’s relentless brute force.

Tarnak cracked his neck.

[Scouter Reading: 2,000 → 2,100]“Target: Gildari Captain | Power Level: 2,300 (Estimated)”

The captain surged forward first—blinding speed.

His left blade struck downward, aimed to carve open Tarnak’s shoulder.

Tarnak caught it barehanded. Sparks flew.

But the captain twisted—his right blade sweeping low, cutting a line across Tarnak’s side. Blood sprayed.

Tarnak grunted, took the hit, and headbutted him—hard.

The captain staggered. But only for a breath.

Then came the flurry.

He vanished in a flash-step and reappeared behind Tarnak, slashing across the spine. Tarnak spun with a backhand, missed, and caught a plasma knee to the jaw that sent him skidding across the floor.

Metal peeled under his boots. His aura flared in a jagged burst.

[Scouter Reading: Tarnak – 2,000 | Captain – 2,300]

Tarnak growled.

Then he launched—a full-speed charge, fists blazing.

He slammed into the captain like a comet, driving him through two gold-stack pillars and into the far wall. Debris exploded in all directions.

Tarnak followed with a brutal hook—caught.

The captain blocked with both blades crossed, twisted, and drove a knee into Tarnak’s stomach, lifting him into the air. Then he spun and brought both blades down in an X.

Tarnak screamed as they tore into his chest and shoulder.

He dropped—breathing hard now, eyes flickering.

The captain hovered above, blades spinning into new positions—one into a spear, the other into a charged glaive. His form shimmered with white energy veins running through his armor.

Tarnak tried to stand.

The captain descended with the spear angled down, targeting the heart.

[Scouter Reading: Tarnak – 1,780… 1,600…]“Warning: critical level breach.”

Then—a blur.

CRACK.

A full-force boot connected with the captain’s skull.

Krozan’s kick sent the Gildari flying halfway across the vault, slamming into the far pillar wall with a sound like a meteor strike. Cracks ran up the structure. The spear clattered to the floor.

Krozan landed beside Tarnak, eyes glowing.

[Scouter Reading: Krozan – 1,950]

“That looked like a good warm-up.”

Tarnak, bloodied, smirked faintly. “Didn’t need help.”

“Yeah?” Brazek’s voice rang out from the corridor. “Then let me tag in.”

Brazek burst into the chamber, aura flaring bright blue, power rising as he stomped across the broken floor.

[Scouter Reading: Brazek – 2,000]

Tarnak rolled aside, coughing, as Brazek charged the recovering captain—not with elegance, but with raw, heavy-handed aggression.

He slammed a fist into the captain’s ribs, flipping him. Then a spinning backhand cracked into his spine, followed by a two-footed dropkick that broke the ground beneath them.

The captain retaliated—blades reformed, faster now. He slashed across Brazek’s gauntlets, shearing one clean off.

But Brazek didn’t care.

He grabbed the captain’s throat, roared in his face, and hurled him across the vault—right back toward Tarnak.

Still kneeling, bleeding, Tarnak caught the captain midair by the chest.

“Round two.”

He slammed him into the floor so hard the stone cratered.

The dust hadn’t even settled from Tarnak’s slam when the Gildari captain’s body convulsed once—then went still.

Brazek dropped his guard just slightly, stepping forward.

Tarnak rose to one knee, breathing hard.

Then—snap.

The captain’s limbs jolted outward.

White light surged through his veins.

His body lifted itself off the floor without touching it—a vertical rise, arms wide. The blades on his forearms disintegrated, and from beneath his armor, a hidden core ignited, glowing like molten diamond at the base of his throat.

“He’s not done,” Krozan said sharply, stepping forward.

[Scouter Reading: Captain – 2,300 → 2,470]“Core Overdrive Detected”

The captain’s voice finally emerged—mechanical, modulated, vibrating the walls.

“You are not worthy of our future.”

Then he moved.

Faster than before.

He vanished—instant movement—and reappeared behind Brazek, driving an electrified hand into the side of his ribs. Brazek screamed, dropping to one knee, armor sparking and melting.

Tarnak lunged in blind rage—caught a spinning knee to the face, sending him crashing into the far wall.

Only Krozan stood still.

Watching.

Measuring.

The captain turned toward him.

Krozan exhaled, calm.

“He’s overcharging. That core is unstable.”

He opened his comm to the others.

“Listen up. Tarnak: blunt force. Brazek: pressure from below. I’ll open him up. We end this clean.”

The captain launched toward Krozan—fists glowing, energy crackling around his limbs like lightning tethered to bone.

Krozan met him in midair—their clash thunderous.

Krozan didn’t overpower him.

He out-moved him.

He leaned left just enough to slip a high slash, struck the core with a sharp elbow, then ducked low—grabbing the captain’s ankle mid-strike and flipping him through the air.

“Now!”

Tarnak burst from the wall, a feral shout echoing as he hammered the captain from behind, sending him reeling.

Brazek—still holding his side—leapt upward, slamming both feet into the captain’s chest and knocking him into a backspin.

The captain stopped himself in midair, energy flaring wildly—

Krozan was already there.

“You fight like a king. But die like a beat dog.”

He palm-struck the core.

Once. Twice.

The third time—it cracked.

A pulse of golden-white light surged outward.

The captain froze.

His blades shattered. His limbs spasmed.

Tarnak flew in with a full-force uppercut to the gut.Brazek followed with a haymaker to the skull.Krozan grabbed the back of the captain’s neck and drove him into the floor so hard the vault shook like an impact tremor.

Silence.

Smoke rose from the cracked floor.

The Gildari captain twitched once. Then collapsed fully, armor going dark.

Krozan stood over the body, eyes narrowed.

[Scouter Reading: Captain – Offline]

He glanced at the others.

“That was a warm-up. Get ready. Someone’s going to notice this.”

              Command Override – Veyla vs. the City

Location: Inner Armory Command Node – Gildari Substation EastTime: +05:19

Veyla’s fingers flew across the projected interface—streams of gold-threaded code shimmering in the air, resisting her intrusion like a living thing. She gritted her teeth, eyes darting between translated layers and system maps.

All across the city, lights dimmed. Hallways flickered. Energy lines along the floors cut out, leaving stretches of polished obsidian glowing only with the residual heat of shutdown.

Her voice crackled through squad comms.

“I’m in deep—cutting power to armories, shield access, weapon tracking stations… anything with teeth.”

Pota stood beside her, wide-eyed as the city shifted around them. “You’re turning it off?”

“No. I’m rewriting the rules.”

She stabbed another command into the node—citywide blackout confirmed.

For a moment, everything fell still.

But then—the interface locked.

Glyphs shifted into patterns she hadn’t seen before. Her display buzzed with foreign override signatures. Another user had entered the system.

“Someone’s pushing back—fast.”

Panels on the walls sparked.

Control lines began re-routing.

“No, no, no—”

She tapped a reserve drive strapped to her forearm, unrolled a small datastrip, and slapped it across the open conduit.

“Okay… have fun with this.”

She uploaded a pulse-coded virus—simple, elegant, and built for chaos. It burrowed into the system’s roots and began disabling auto-reboot protocols, delaying any counter-overrides.

The control node went red.

Veyla leaned back, breathing hard.

“That’ll hold them off for a few hours. They’ll be blind, disarmed, and cut off.”

She turned to Pota.

“If there’s anyone still breathing in this place, now’s the time to find them and end it.”

Pota checked his scouter. “Hey… we watched the whole fight down in the vault.”

Veyla smirked faintly. “I know. The captain was tough, but they figured it out.”

She stepped past him, rejoining the path that led deeper into the command sectors.

“We need to think bigger next time—rotate flanks, force a scouter overload, collapse their sensor relay while Tarnak takes the first few hits. Krozan’s already running the math.”

She paused at the next hall junction—where the lights remained dim, but not dead.

The corridor walls were different here.

The sleek obsidian was etched with mural-like patterns—scenes of battle, flight, collapse. Gildari warriors with organic bodies—slim, long-legged, alive. Fighting figures that were clearly not Cold Force. Ancient ships falling from skies. Pillars of flame devouring cities.

And then… scenes of transformation.

The same warriors, rebuilt. Limbs replaced with plated tech. Faces elongated. Eyes replaced with glowing modules. One of the carvings showed a line of survivors entering the earth and sealing the surface behind them.

Veyla slowed, her voice quieter now.

“They weren’t born mechanical.”

Pota stepped beside her. “You mean… they were attacked?”

She nodded. “Wiped out. Long ago. Whatever hit them… nearly erased them. The ones that lived made themselves stronger. Harder. Hid underground with what little they had left.”

She traced one hand across the carving.

“They didn’t evolve. They adapted to survive genocide.”

Elsewhere, Krozan stepped into another sector with Tarnak and Brazek.

The halls were wider here. Ornate, almost ceremonial. Doors lay open revealing storage chambers, workstations, and empty dwellings—all cold, all spotless.

Krozan’s scouter beeped—no life signs.

“We’ve got time. Let’s use it.”

Brazek cracked his knuckles.

“Good. I’m not done wrecking their history.”

Tarnak said nothing. But his scouter pinged once—picking up low-frequency energy movement… deeper below.

              “No Graves for Machines”

The city was dying.

Not burning, not exploding. Just… fading.

The drones lining the corridors, once humming with silent energy, now hung limp in their wall mounts—arms frozen mid-fold, sensors flickering and blind.

Brazek stood over a cluster of them, stacked like statues in a recessed alcove. He fired one blast into the center of the pile just to be sure, the energy bolt echoing down the corridor like a cannon in a crypt.

“Glad Veyla shut these things down. If they’d all lit up at once…”

He left the sentence unfinished.

Tarnak stalked through a maintenance hall, bootsteps ringing off the polished stone. He passed several open vaults, each containing precision weapons that glowed with soft energy—but none had moved. Their power cords had gone dark.

He reached one drone chamber filled with crawlers, each equipped with cutting lasers and segmented claws. They sat still like insects frozen in amber.

Tarnak stared for a moment. Then crushed one with a stomp and moved on.

Pota floated through the upper residential quarter—if you could call it that. He passed rows of metal alcoves, each holding the dried husks of Gildari who had long-since deactivated—too weak to fight, maybe too old to upgrade. He didn’t blast them.

He just whispered, “I think they were already dead before we got here.”

Krozan led a slow sweep through the mid-level archive stacks, scanning for movement.

[Scouter: No threats detected]

He paused at a cracked panel.

A terminal had been shattered during the earlier blackout—golden threads spilling like veins. Inside, he could see a failed energy relay that had tried to reboot mid-crash.

“They were seconds away from turning everything on.”

He activated his comm.

“Veyla. That virus of yours? Buy you a drink when we get back.”

Location: Central Transit Atrium

They met beneath a wide dome of layered metal ribs and flickering light bands. The city's transit core—once designed to move thousands of Gildari per day—was now just dust and silence.

Pota arrived first, his armor dusty, but eyes sharp.

Tarnak next, dragging a half-destroyed drone behind him and tossing it into a pile.

Brazek dropped down from above, cracking his neck.

Krozan walked in from the far corridor, wiping black residue off his hand.

Last was Veyla, already scanning the walls again, her scouter cycling for deeper signals.

“The grid’s quiet,” she said. “We’ve cleared every sector linked to defense. They had more drones than troops. Without those, they were glass cannons.”

“Good thing,” Brazek said. “Because ten of those slicer drones at once?”

He shook his head.

“We’d be ash.”

Tarnak nodded. “Next captain won’t go down the same way.”

Krozan looked toward the lower platform—where an elevator shaft descended into darkness.

“Then let’s not give him the chance.”

He stepped forward, motioning for the others to follow.

“Next level.”

              “The Last King”

Location: Deep Core – Gildari Command Nexus

The elevator shaft groaned as it opened to a platform bathed in blue-white light. Below, the Gildari War Chamber stretched wide—smooth, symmetrical, and carved with lines of polished obsidian. The ceiling rose into a dome of glowing glyphs that pulsed like a heartbeat.

At the far end stood the last captain.

His armor was unlike the others—fully plated, golden-black, reinforced with overlapping segments that moved like living metal. His helm curved back like a cobra hood, and in each hand, he held a dual-bladed glaive—one reversed, one forward.

His power leaked from his body like fog—2,300, according to the scouters. Stable. Focused.

[Scouter Reading: 2,300 | Gildari Commander Class]

He did not speak.

He just watched.

Then he stepped down.

The floor shifted beneath his feet—magnetic rings activating, creating frictionless platforms that he launched across like a skating predator.

The fight began.

 Battle

Krozan led.

He rushed in, feinting high with a heavy palm, but dipped low and tried to land a gut strike. The captain parried mid-glide and countered with a vertical slice that scorched the ground where Krozan had been a half-second earlier.

Tarnak came from behind, grabbing one of the captain’s weapons mid-swing. The Gildari twisted and ejected energy from the weapon’s core, blowing Tarnak back with raw force—unhurt, but forced to disengage.

Brazek flanked hard left, using a crate to leap up and crash down with a two-handed overhead slam. The captain crossed his weapons, blocked it, then spun—using centrifugal force to disarm Brazek, his glaive clattering to the side.

But Pota and Veyla were already adapting.

“He uses momentum,” Veyla said over the comms. “Make him stop moving.”

“I got it!” Pota shouted, already airborne.

He fired a concussive blast at the floor just as the captain launched again. The floor buckled beneath him, throwing off his magnetic run.

Krozan was waiting.

“Now!”

He spun behind the captain mid-air and wrapped both arms around his chest, locking him in place.

Tarnak struck next.

He leapt, drove a knee into the captain’s spine, then kicked off him in reverse, bouncing off the far wall.

Brazek caught the captain’s leg, swung him like a weapon, and slammed him into the ground. Concrete cracked.

The captain dropped to one knee.

Bleeding from the mouth, armor fractured, eyes glowing faint gold through cracked lenses.

He raised a shaking hand toward the center of the chamber—where the ancient sigil still pulsed faintly on the floor.

“I’m the last…” he rasped.

“That means…”

His chest heaved.

“…I won the war.”

He looked up—defiant, proud, unbroken.

And that was when Krozan’s hand ignited with a condensed spiral of red energy—swirling tight around his palm like a miniature sun.

Krozan stepped forward.

Tarnak's feet thundered across the floor as he rose beside him, hands clenched. Blue fire erupted from his fingers and spun into a pulsing orb around his forearm—a drill-shaped vortex, spinning faster with each breath.

Brazek rotated one shoulder, then cracked his knuckles—his signature attack manifesting as a jagged, flame-edged beam that sparked like torn metal, forming between his hands with crackling pressure.

Veyla hovered behind them already, a long-range precision strike charging from her left gauntlet, spiraling around a glowing needlepoint core with blinking telemetry lines syncing to the target.

Pota floated above—his palms glowing with two rotating discs of lime-green light, spinning inward until they locked into a single focused pulse above his head.

Together, they didn’t speak.

They just moved.

“NOW!” Krozan shouted.

All five attacks fired at once.

A storm of energy crashed into the captain’s chest, ripping his body apart before the glaives even hit the ground. He didn’t cry out. Didn’t flinch.

He simply vanished in the light—his silhouette frozen for a blink before being obliterated completely.

Then—Silence.

Nothing left but dust and molten scoring on the floor.

The squad stood still, their hands dimming, smoke trailing from fingertips and gauntlets.

No alarms. No echoes. No threat. Just silence.

Krozan walked to the sigil the captain had gestured toward. It was a map—simple, old. Covered in gold-inlaid coordinates and written vows. A list of names. Planets. Victories. Graves.

“It really was a war,” Krozan said. “Long before we got here.”

Veyla sat against the chamber wall, already unpacking her ration container. “They lost the first time. Buried themselves in tech and came back smarter. But not smart enough.”

Pota joined her, biting into a dense ration bar.

A few minutes later, Tarnak sliced the armor off the captain’s torso with surgical precision. Brazek took the limbs. Krozan cracked the helm and split open the shoulder plating.

They crouched around the remains, tearing meat and alloy in strips—chewing bone, tendon, circuitry. It sizzled when they bit down, but they didn’t flinch.

“Tastes like victory,” Brazek said through a mouthful.

Krozan didn’t speak. He stared at the glowing sigil again.

Then nodded.

“Let’s finish this. Then we go home.”

              Unwelcome Arrival

Location: Gildari City – Sector 3, All is quiet.

The city had gone still.

No more pulsing energy. No resistance. No glow from long-forgotten machines.

Just the hum of residual warmth along the alloy floors… and the slow, even breaths of four sleeping Saiyans.

They were spread across what once served as a diplomatic hall—its ceiling open to a hollow dome of starless sky above. Tarnak was leaned back in a half-reclined chair he’d clearly crushed into place with his body weight. Brazek lay sprawled across a slanted table, one leg twitching with every snore. Krozan sat upright in a wide stone seat with his arms crossed, chin low, eyes shut.

Pota was curled in a corner near an open energy duct, exhausted.

Only Veyla remained awake.

She sat with her legs crossed at the far edge of the chamber, perched in front of an active Gildari data terminal—a flat column of refracted glass and glowing symbols. Her scouter pulsed gently, eyes darting back and forth as thousands of files decrypted around her.

City blueprints. Financial contracts. Combat signatures.

“So much of this is predictive,” she whispered to herself. “Like they knew someone would come.”

She didn’t even notice the moment the data stream changed.

Just one symbol—blinking red.

Foreign.

Not Gildari.

Incoming energy signal detected.

Her scouter chimed once.

She froze.

“No…”

She swiped to an orbital window—static flickered, then cleared.

Above the dead planet, a ship had broken through the dust storm. Sleek. Black. Emblazoned with Cold Force elite markings.

[Scouter Reading: Multiple Signatures Detected – 2,100 – 2,400 – 2,500]

Her heart dropped.

Veyla didn’t hesitate.

She stood, spun around, and fired a small ki burst into the ceiling—not a threat, just a noise bomb.

The squad jolted awake instantly.

Brazek rolled off the table mid-snore and hit the floor with a growl.

“We under attack?!”

Tarnak stood without a word, eyes scanning.

Krozan’s eyes snapped open.

Pota sat up, bleary-eyed. “What is it?”

Veyla turned to face them.

Her voice was sharp. Controlled.

“Someone just landed. Cold Force elite signatures. Five of them.”

Krozan’s scouter blinked twice, confirming.

He stood slowly, brushing dust from his armor.

“ These losers are too late.”