[Oliver’s PoV]

  “How about we see the face behind the mask?” Mordred said, his voice low and rough.

  He didn’t wait for a response.

  The shadows obeyed instantly. They surged upward from the floor, wrapping around Khan’s helmet like living smoke. The sound of metal groaning under pressure filled the chamber as the dark tendrils tightened, twisting until the seals gave way with a sharp hiss.

  Then, with a single violent pull, the helmet was ripped free.

  It hit the ground with a metallic clang, rolling once before coming to a stop.

  The room fell utterly still.

  For a heartbeat, no one moved. No one breathed.

  Then they saw him.

  And the silence turned to shock.

  Khan’s face, if it could still be called that, was not human.

  There were traces of humanity there. But the rest was something other than human.

  His skin was translucent, smooth and glasslike, so thin that the faint web of veins and arteries beneath it pulsed visibly with each beat of his heart. His skin, besides being thin, had a unique color.

  It wasn’t any shade found in human skin. It was a shifting blend of emerald and cerulean, rippling faintly.

  His head was large and smooth, devoid of hair, the surface reflecting the faint light like polished stone. Beneath the skin, tiny veins of light, bioluminescent capillaries, glowed faintly, converging toward his eyes.

  Those eyes were enormous and alien, set deep into his face.

  The irises were almond-shaped, their hue a pale, silvery blue. They didn’t blink often, and when they did, a thin membrane slid across them horizontally, not vertically, clearing the surface before retracting again. It wasn’t a blink. It was a cleaning motion.

  There were no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing to soften the intensity of his gaze—only those eyes, vast and unblinking, reflecting the room in eerie detail.

  Where a human nose should have been, there was only smooth skin.

  And just below his jaw were gills.

  They opened and closed rhythmically, releasing faint bursts of vapor into the air.

  Khan’s mouth was narrow and rigid, a thin line that barely moved. His chin, however, was worse, lined with small, delicate appendages that writhed and flexed independently.

  They were tentacles. Short and thin, like the tendrils of some deep-sea creature.

  Katherine took a sharp step back in surprise. Alan froze, his eyes wide, his face caught somewhere between horror and fascination.

  Even Mordred hesitated, his composure faltering for a fraction of a second.

  The rest of Khan’s body was still hidden beneath the battle-worn mercenary uniform. Yet that only left more to the imagination, more space for Oliver’s mind to fill with questions about what lay beneath.

  “What the hell are you?” Mordred demanded, his tone sharp, his golden eyes narrowing as he studied the alien’s face like a puzzle he couldn't solve. "Is this some kind of Boon?"

  Khan’s mouth twitched. His narrow lips tightened, the faint movement of the tendrils along his chin betraying emotion. It wasn’t clear whether it was anger or something closer to shame.

  He didn’t answer.

  His gills fluttered once, releasing a faint hiss of vapor into the cold air.

  “He’s a Cephalid,” Oliver said, his voice quiet but confident.

  Mordred turned sharply toward him, his expression a mix of disbelief and irritation. “A what?”

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  Oliver took a step closer, his eyes flicking between Khan’s face and the faint glow of the gills at his neck. The details lined up perfectly with what he’d seen.

  “A Cephalid,” he repeated. “They were a race from earlier in the Grand Game. An aquatic species designed by a Sovereign that lost the game.”

  Oliver still remembered Athena's memories, how the planet had been destroyed by the Elves.

  Katherine frowned. “Lost?”

  “They were among the earliest to fall,” Oliver went on. “When a race is erased, or its Sovereign is destroyed, they are cast out of the Great Game.”

  “In our case,” Khan said, his voice tight with bitterness, “our home planet was wiped.”

  He glanced at Khan, whose pale silver eyes glowed faintly under the dim light.

  “Now they live inside the Republic of Many Races,” Oliver said.

  Khan’s gaze snapped toward him, sharp and cold.

  “Living,” he said, his tone dripping with disdain. “That’s a generous word, coming from someone who’s never drowned in their own history.”

  Oliver couldn’t hide his astonishment.

  Khan’s voice was perfectly human. The words came out smooth, deliberate, shaped not by translation or mimicry. It wasn’t the broken speech of an alien learning a new tongue; it was fluent and natural.

  That realization hit him, but it was followed by another. Khan had worn a Ranger Armor.

  Oliver’s stomach turned. That wasn’t supposed to be possible.

  The armor was human technology keyed to human biology. Other species had their own ways of channeling Energy through Crystals, but none had ever managed to replicate.

  Until now.

  Oliver lifted a hand and pointed at Khan.

  “You.” His voice was low, careful. “You used a Ranger Armor. How?”

  The question cut through the room like a blade.

  Mordred turned his head sharply, his eyes flicking between them, his curiosity piqued. The others watched in silence.

  Khan tilted his head slightly, the faint shimmer of light running along his translucent skin.

  “It’s long past time we learned your technology,” he said with a shrug. His voice carried that strange, harmonic undertone again. “My employers have been pursuing that knowledge for years.”

  Oliver froze.

  Employers.

  The word struck him like a warning.

  He had assumed that the Republic of Many Races had no interest in the Grand Game. That they would remain neutral, uninvolved, distant from the chaos of Sovereigns and Empires.

  But if Khan was working for someone, someone with access to human tech…

  “Contractors?” Oliver pressed, his voice tightening. “Who are they?”

  Khan’s expression didn’t change, but the faint movement of the tendrils along his chin betrayed amusement.

  Before he could answer, Mordred spat a curse, the sound harsh and bitter. “Shit.” He almost spat on the floor, his golden eyes narrowing in realization.

  “He said you smelled like me,” Mordred growled, jabbing a finger toward Khan.

  Khan’s pale silver eyes flicked toward him, and for the first time since the mask had come off, the alien smiled.

  “Looks like the prince has done the math,” he said with a laugh that rippled through the air, low and mocking.

  “But they were nowhere close to pulling it off,” Mordred muttered, his tone sharp, defensive.

  Khan’s laugh echoed through the chamber. It wasn’t the laugh of a victor. There was bitterness in it, and something that almost sounded like grief.

  “Not after you made your abomination,” Khan said, his voice low, mocking. “They were already watching your Artificial Armor, but once you birthed that monstrosity, they realized what they’d been missing.”

  “If your plan was insane before,” he continued, his voice twisting into a hollow chuckle, “now it’s dust.”

  Mordred’s composure cracked. He turned sharply toward the others, his expression dark, his tone urgent. “We need to leave. Now. We need to make contact immediately.”

  Everyone stared at him, startled. Even Alan looked shaken by the sudden panic in Mordred’s voice.

  “Sir,” Alan said carefully, “who’s his contractor? Who’s he working for?”

  Mordred hesitated, his golden eyes narrowing. The answer came out like a curse.

  “The Orks.”

  Alan’s face went pale, his voice rising before he could stop himself. “The damn Orks?!”

  Khan smiled, if it could be called that.

  “Bingo,” he said softly, almost gleefully.

  Oliver blinked, his mind struggling to keep up. “The Orks? Wait. What? I thought you worked for the Republic.”

  Khan turned toward him then, his expression shifting from amusement to something colder, something personal.

  “Kid,” he said, his voice dripping with venom, “you really don’t know a damn thing, do you?”

  “You think after the Elves destroyed my world, the Cephalids were welcomed into the Republic with open arms?” His voice cracked slightly, the harmonic resonance in it deepening. “We were slaughtered, Oliver. Hunted, dissected, enslaved. The Republic didn’t save us; they buried us.”

  The hatred in his words was palpable, thick enough to taste.

  “I’d rather die than look one of those bastards in the eye again,” Khan spat. “That’s why your plan will fail. Even without the Sovereigns, we’re doomed to tear each other apart. The Republic already proved it. Every ship that crosses into their space gets shot down, and you never even hear about it.”

  The room fell silent.

  Oliver could feel the weight of the truth pressing down on them all.

  The Sovereigns had built the Grand Game to control them. But even without it, chaos had taken root.

  He exhaled slowly.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said quietly. “Maybe we are doomed to fight each other. But if we have to fight, then let it be on our own terms. Not under the boot of a god.”

  “Let’s move. We’re done here.”

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