"We were never the center of the story. Just the part that bled the most."
The first signal didn't come with fire. It came with silence.
Not the quiet of peace — but the kind you get in vacuum, on the edges of a dying transmission. One of the outer colonies, Vaylen's Rim, lost contact with its survey post for seventeen hours before anyone noticed. Another three before a patrol frigate made orbit. The ground team never finished unloading. Their boots never even touched soil. All five vanished before stepping off the ramp.
The frigate's final transmission was a thirteen-second loop of static punctuated by screams and a guttural shriek that shouldn't have belonged to anything carbon-based.
The file was redacted before the next orbital cycle. The UCF stamped it "containment protocol breach" and issued a system-wide comms blackout across the Rim. It was the first lie in a war built entirely out of them.
The truth was simpler: we weren't alone, and they didn't come to negotiate.
---
One Year Later
Earth – Northern Hemisphere Sector Command, Dome City "Eidolon's Cradle"
UCF Priority Briefing – Red Level Clearance
The war was no longer hypothetical. It had a body count.
And it had a name.
"Apex Dreadbornes."
No one called them that on the ground. That was the label used by command analysts and clean-suited politicians. The men and women in UCIC squads just called them D-Borns. Short, sharp, easy to bark over comms when you're reloading under pressure and your squadmate's femur is somewhere it shouldn't be.
In the year since first contact, the D-Borns had spread like infection — carving through outposts, tearing apart survey teams, swarming bunkers and turning colonies into hives. They didn't communicate. They didn't surrender. They just... moved.
A horde, breathing in unison.
And humanity had run out of safe corners.
---
UCF Debrief Log 1139-A
Operator: Cmdr. Lyle Ashford
Date: [REDACTED]
Location: Outpost Requiem, 2 days before collapse
"They moved like they'd done it a thousand times. Like they knew our blind spots before we did. There was no emotion. No hesitation. Just precision and slaughter. They weren't angry. They weren't afraid. They were just... efficient. I watched one tear through a fireteam like it was rehearsing for a show."
"And when we fired back? Nothing. Not a flinch. Armor cracked a little at the knees, sure, but they kept coming. Fast. Real fast. Like gravity didn't mean shit to them. It took three mags and a damn napalm canister just to drop one."
"And that was a normal-sized one. God help us if they get bigger."
---
They did.
The ones that survived long enough began to change. Harden. Grow. Their outer shells darkened to a sick tar-black. These were the Alphas — towering, 12-foot nightmares that shrugged off mid-caliber fire like rain. The UCIC started classifying any D-Born older than a year with that name, but everyone knew what it really meant:
If you saw one, you were already dead.
And now they weren't just striking outposts. They were claiming territory. Digging deep. Building nests — sprawling hives of resin and flesh and bile. Nests that hatched dozens of D-Borns a week. Nests that didn't move. That stayed. That grew.
Nest guardians — the Praetors — were another mystery altogether. Ten feet tall with blood-red shells, they stood like statues until someone crossed a 15-foot threshold. Then they moved faster than anything that big had a right to. And they didn't stop.
No one had ever seen what lay at the heart of a nest.
No one alive, anyway.
---
Intercepted Broadcast Fragment
Source: Unknown
Encryption: Backtomb Protocols
> "—shields holding at 43%. CivSec grid 9-E is collapsing— They're inside. They're inside. Requesting immediate evac — oh god they're pulling— they're pulling the floor up—!"
> [inaudible shrieking]
> "We lost Alpha-12. I repeat, we've—"
[connection terminated]
---
Despite the hellstorm, humanity hadn't folded. Not yet. The UCF had rallied behind brutal logistics, rapid orbital deployment, and the rise of its elite Exo-Warframes — neural-linked suits operated by the genetically and mentally compatible.
Baradiel, Eidolon, Gideon, and Thaumiel. Four per team. Four chances to make the next sunrise.
They weren't soldiers. They were survival rates.
The UCIC squads, 15-men strong, equipped with Lineward-class armor, had become the first line. Their job wasn't to win. It was to survive long enough for the Exo-Warframes to clean up. To hold the line. To buy time. To die screaming, if that's what it took.
---
Dome City Broadcast
UCF Public Channel — Civilian Reassurance Program
> "The threat is contained. Our cities remain safe under triple-tier shield matrices. The UCF thanks you for your resilience. Volunteers for neural compatibility testing will be contacted this week. Remember — you are humanity's first and final bastion."
---
It was a lie.
Dome Cities were not safe. Shield matrices failed. D-Borns breached containment more than once. And when they did, it was the UCIC that got sent in first — and sometimes never came out.
The suits? They weren't a miracle.
They were just a delay tactic.
---
Internal UCF Research Dossier
Project: RAGNARØK ASCENDANT
Status: Prototyping Phase
> "Experimental Exo-Warframe platform with undisclosed neural depth requirements. Intended as a last-line anti-D-Born deterrent. Results inconclusive. Human compatibility at 0.03%. Development continues under BLACK-LEVEL oversight."
---
One year. That's how long humanity had lasted.
One year since the first black spire tore through a colony crust and birthed a nest.
One year since the stars became untrustworthy.
The next strike was already inbound — somewhere in the 74-system sprawl of human expansion.
The suits were gearing up.
The hives were pulsing.
And above it all, silent and unyielding, the D-Borns watched.
Waiting.