Siege of the Copper Sky

The first pulse from the Organism-Above knocked entire swarm formations out of the air. Myrminian sky-spires quaked, their latticework wings tearing away like brittle leaves. The copper light was not sunlight at all — it was filtering, altering the spectrum so that every wavelength carried an encoded directive.
Creatures began to turn.

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The Turning
Winged warriors mid-flight froze, convulsed, then dove into their own comrades with mechanical precision. Beetle juggernauts abandoned their defensive lines and began tearing down hive walls from within. The Copper Sky’s rhythm was a signal, and it had found a way past the HiveNet’s encryption.
Kael staggered as a tremor ran through his hybrid body — the dark matter residue in his blood responding to the same frequency.If he stayed in the open, he would turn too.
“Kael!”Yia’s voice cut through the static. She was on the far parapet, wielding an obsidian bio-staff that pulsed with stored venom. She tossed it to him.“It’s broadcasting through the Overspore! We have to cut the root network or it’ll enslave the entire planet!”

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Descent into the Root Trenches
They dropped into the old trenches beneath Hive Z-4, tunnels so ancient they predated Myrminian cities. Down here, the air tasted of rust and wet stone, lit only by the pale bioluminescent trails of root-worms.
The Overspore’s great neural roots twisted through the ground like a forest of petrified serpents. But Kael could feel the pulse moving through them — the same copper rhythm from the sky above.
The Dream Architect’s voice whispered in his mind:
> You can cut the roots, but the signal will find new channels. Unless you reverse it.


Kael knew what that meant.He would have to use the mark — the dark matter lattice embedded in his wrist — as a counter-signal generator. But that meant fully opening himself to the Architect’s control.

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The Root War
The moment Kael pressed his palm to the main Overspore vein, the world shattered into visions: insect queens dying in copper storms, human cities collapsing in silence, and the Void Nest’s enormous shadow unfurling across entire star systems.
The counter-signal burned through him, rewriting his neural patterns. He screamed, but his voice carried in two frequencies at once — one for the living, one for the encoded. The Overspore writhed, its roots retracting from the trenches like a wounded animal.
Above, the Copper Sky dimmed. The Organism-Above faltered in its rhythm.
But before Kael could withdraw, something else latched onto him.

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The Whisper Beneath
A voice, deeper than the Architect, spoke through the mark:
> You resist well. But this is not your war, child. You are only the chrysalis. The real Kael sleeps.


His vision blurred. The tunnel became a spinning spiral of bone and void. When his sight cleared, he was no longer in the root trench.
He was standing inside the Organism-Above.
And it was alive around him.